How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, QVC for Mobile, and More
When you go fish in a part of the pond that nobody else is fishing because everyone else thinks the water is too deep and it's too scary over there, the rewards are like disproportionate even to the effort and the work that goes in.
All right, what's up? What up, dude?
How are you doing? Um, who did you have as a guest on the last episode when I, I was doing my own episode and then you tweeted out you wanted to guess who came on?
Two different people. The first was our own Ben. And so Ben and I did an episode where we talked about like, uh, thing, people in history and if there's any commonalities between a bunch of them. And then Noah Kagan, my friend Noah from AppSumo, I asked him if he would come on and he said yes. So I just recorded two that day.
Cool. Did they turn out good or, you know, amazing?
We'll see. Noah, Noah was good. Uh, Ben and I's was good as well. I just hope that— I don't know if that top, the topic is gonna be a winner. So we'll see. Noah is amazing. Do you know about AppSumo?
Uh, I know like loosely about AppSumo. So here's what I know. You tell me what I don't know. So what I know is that AppSumo is basically, it's a website where you can go to get like kind of software deals, I would say. Um, they kind of like, they go find cool software, they make a deal, they say, hey, we'll get you in front of like whatever, 50 million people, but you got to offer a deal to our audience, like sort of Groupon style or Woot style. And apparently he's doing extremely well. He's been doing it for a long-ass time, 10+ years. I think it does over $100 million in revenue. So that's what I know about it.
You almost all right. So AppSumo started as basically Noah, he emailed the founder of Imgur, and basically said, hey, you guys charge $10 a month. If I give you a bunch of new customers at $6 a month, can I get a little cut of the pie?
Right.
And that's how we started. He made 10 grand doing that by emailing a bunch of friends. Eventually it kind of still is this way, but they're gonna, they're becoming more of a marketplace and a website. But for like the last 10 years, it's basically an email list. And I think there's only 300,000 people on that email list. And they email out a few deals a week where they find, uh, companies that say, uh, hey, give us a discount and give us a cut of the revenue. Right. And it was doing okay for years. It just— some years it didn't do better than the year before. Sometimes it did a lot better. And I think it only did okay for a few years. Now, after close to 10 years, he— their goal this year was $100 million in revenue. They're going to miss it by a little bit, but he said they're going to get north of $80 million in revenue. Now, he didn't say it on the podcast. If I just— if you just Google it, it appears as of that $80 million in revenue, they pay out 30% to their partners and they get around 60 or 70% of the of the actual revenue and he owns most of the company, has never taken any outside money and, uh, they have like 150 employees at this point.
Wow. Uh, I, I didn't realize some of those things and, uh, okay, so 300,000 people on the list. So do you know if they send out an email about some product, uh, have they ever done it for The Hustle by the way? Did they ever like, did you promote The Hustle in there somehow or no? Cuz it's already a free email.
I, I, no, I don't. Well, no, I don't think we've done it in a traditional way.
Trends you could— I think we've done trends, but we've not done it in a major way. So you You can, um, sometimes they'll only send it to part of the list. And I think that we've done like a part list, but, uh, some of their partners, they'll make over a million dollars in the, in one day.
Well, I guess my question is how many people take them up on their offer? So how many do they need for this, this business to kind of work? So is it like, cuz I think it seems like maybe bigger than it is. I wouldn't be surprised if it's like, yeah, 1,000 people click the thing and 1,000 people is enough for this business to work when 1,000 people to take the offer. Is it 1,000 or is it more like 10,000?
Uh, I would think that it's in the single-digit thousands if I had to guess. That's how many buy because the products are like $400 a year or something like that. So you don't actually need that many people to buy in order to make $500,000 to $1 million. And you're sending— they're sending emails constantly. And now they have a website that people are doing stuff. Now here's where it gets interesting. I asked him, how much could you sell this business for right now? He was like, the huge range is $300 million to $1 billion. I think that's what he said.
Right.
Wow. Pretty crazy, right? It's, it's, it, it, it's like Noah.
Good job.
Good job, Noah. And like a lot of things, like The Hustle included, like people are like, and I say it as well, well, it's just an email list. It's really simple. And yeah, that's true. It is just an email, but there's definitely a machine behind it. And AppSumo is like inherently quite simple. Um, they just holler at companies. They say, give us a discount and give us a cut of the pie. And then they just email that out to people. And it's so simple and it just creates so much value.
There's a— Ryan Hoover did this a while back. He created a list of big companies that started off as, quote unquote, just email lists. So he created Product Hunt. Product Hunt started off as an email list. Product Hunt got acquired by AngelList, which is like a $3 billion-ish company or more. AngelList started as just an email list, just a list of angels that he was doing. Craigslist started off as an email list. And so there was a whole bunch of products that started off as just an email list. Some became more than that, some stayed an email list.
And so, you know, don't underestimate, do not underestimate email. I— that's not tattooed on Sam's back, uh, do not underestimate email. Uh, let's talk about a couple things. I have a— I have another business idea. I have another business I want to highlight that's a, uh, one of these like That's so simple, are you joking? That's the business. But first, before we do that one, we gotta talk about this Squid Games thing that happened, the Beast Games by MrBeast. Um, did you watch it when it happened, or have you watched it after the fact?
I heard basically Casey Neistat, who I follow on Twitter, was talking about saying MrBeast, uh, what he's doing with the Squid Games thing is one of the most epic things I've ever seen on YouTube. And Casey Neistat is one of the pioneers of YouTube, and him saying that meant a lot.
Yeah, exactly. That's, you know, Denzel saying, wow, the great acting in this movie. So, all right, so, um, for those who didn't see it, all right, so Squid Game was this ultra popular— I think it is the most popular show ever on Netflix, um, most watched show. And it's this kind of like crazy, uh, Korean death game show type of idea where, you know, a bunch of people enter this game and they're trying to win the big prize, and then they get killed. The losing is like you die, basically. That's like the short version of it. I actually didn't watch Squid Game, so maybe I got something wrong there, but I did watch the MrBeast version of it. So what did MrBeast do? He basically decided, I'm gonna recreate Squid Games, but I'm not, obviously people aren't gonna die, but he did it even better. So he invited 456 people to this arena that was built for this, and the prize was the number one, the, the winner of the games was gonna win $456,000, runner-up $10K, and everybody who, who went got $2,000 each.. And in total, the production plus the prize money. So I think he did about $1.5 billion of prizes and $2 million to build and produce it. $3.5 million is what he spent on this content, on this 25-minute video. So let's talk about what happened. So first, uh, players showed up, they're wearing the same outfits as in Squid Game. It's like kind of green windbreaker jumpsuit type thing. And, uh, they all have a number. So Player 1, Player 2, Player 3, all the way up to Player 456. And inside their shirt they have this like pack, and the pack is like, um, exploding paint. So if you— let's say one of the games is called Red Light Green Light, the old like game we used to play as a kid where if you say green light you start moving, red light means you got to stop. If you keep going after they say red light, you're out. And so they— here's a green light, then he said red light, and if somebody flinched after that, their little pack inside their shirt would explode and red paint would come out as if they got shot, like, you know, like the real Squid Games. And then they would be out, and then, hey, you got to go to the next that you didn't make it to the next game. And so in the end, uh, you know, player whatever, player 27 ended up winning $456,000. So here's, I, I think this is amazing and this ties into some stuff we've been talking about. So just some numbers. The video got about 130 million views in 7 days, which is crazy. I think, I, I believe, Ben, you can fact check me on this. I believe 130 million views is more than what the actual Squid Game got on Netflix.
Now Netflix is a paid service and whatever, but like, and people watched, uh, like multiple episodes. Yeah, 12 hours of footage. It's still—
yes, it's still amazing. The fact that it's comparable, the fact that somebody just watched the show and was like, oh yeah, we'll do like a backyard version of that and got 130 million people to watch is insane. So, uh, he spent $3.5 million on it. Just to kind of put this in perspective, um, that's basically half the cost of a 30-second Super Bowl commercial.
Wow, really? Did you have a sponsor?
It was fully paid— I believe fully paid for by Brawl Stars, the, the big, the super popular mobile game. So if you look in the arena where it was, where it was hosted, it's a giant Brawl Stars arena. They have a huge logo that was in every shot. And so for Brawl Stars, this such a smart move. They basically paid half the cost of a Super Bowl ad, got more viewership than a Super Bowl because you get 130 million people. The video is like 20 minutes long, 27 minutes long, versus a 30-second clip. And, um, this is an epic thing that's gonna get shared. And then they could take this content, repurpose it for ads or anything else they wanted to do after the fact if, if they wanted to. So really smart. You know, for Brawl Stars, $3 million is probably their daily— is a one day of ad spend on Facebook or something.
Brawl Stars is owned by Supercell and Supercell's like the, the biggest game, um, publisher.
Yeah.
Yeah. And so if I, I, I don't know if this is how it, it, it would've worked. If I'm MrBeast, I think he could have— so he would have gotten Supercell to pay for the whole thing. So $3.5 million. I bet he also would have gotten another like $500,000.
Just like there's a vig on top of that.
Just like just for that. And then they would have probably— I would have said to them also, I'm going to keep YouTube ads on this. And MrBeast, I get all of it. And so if MrBeast is getting 130 million views in the first 7 days and if you do maybe $4 per CPM, That's around $500,000 that he got in the first week.
Plus, I believe his deal is going to be a lot better than $4 CPM because he's the number— he's like, you know, one of the faces of YouTube. These guys have custom negotiated deals that I would bet a lot of money is better than the standard kind of $4 to $5.
What do you think it is?
I bet he's getting closer to $10 CPM.
So if it's $10, that's $1.3 million. Yeah.
And just in a week.
In a week. Plus According to our notes, it looks like he got 10,000 new subscribers.
Million.
Million. Sorry. Sorry. Oh my God. 10 million new subscribers in the first week. In a normal week is 400,000 subscribers.
So he's 20x his subscriber growth. So, so what does this do? He continues to be the content leader. He gets 10 million new subscribers and those people are going to get notified for his next video. He makes $1 million on ads. He gets the whole thing paid for by a sponsor. And this is a great example of something we've talked about before. We talked about this with Elon when Elon does epic stuff, like I'm gonna go to Mars. We talked about it with, I forgot the guy's name, uh, Mark Lasry or whoever it was that's building that epic train, train system, uh, in America. Uh, I, I ranted about Disney, uh, Disneyland last week because again, when you shoot for these epic projects, things that get people inspired and excited, it's, it seems like it's harder to pull off, but in many ways it's easier to pull off cuz you'll get, talent to pour in cuz they wanna be a part of something bold. You'll get sponsors to pour in cuz they wanna bet on this, this epic thing that's gonna happen. They know that it's gonna get a lot of visibility. And so, and you get your own motivation to get outta bed every day because you're working on something that's so, so grand that, you know, you're more motivated. Everybody does their best work and people tune in to watch, which is like, uh, so Ben just looked it up. 140 million, 142 million people watch Squid Game on Netflix, 132 million. Watched, uh, Beast Games on YouTube. So about the same, 1 to 1. So you get disproportionate prizes when you go fish in a part of the pond that nobody else is fishing. Cuz everyone else thinks the water's too deep and it's too scary over there. The rewards are like disproportionate even to the effort and the work that goes in.
I had a friend, it could have been Noah. In fact, you know, Noah, who we talked about, he was the number 20th or something employee at Facebook and he got fired. 9 months into his employee working there. And so he didn't get any of his equity. But I have a friend who spoke to Mark Zuckerberg and he said to Mark, you know, why don't you just sell the company for $1 billion or why are you raising all this money? Like things are growing. He's like, look, it's good. I only have 24 hours in a day and I'm only going to work the same amount of time in the day, whether it's big or small. So I might as well make it as big as I possibly can because that's what interests me and it's just as hard. It's equally hard to go big as it is somewhat like mild success. And that's a perfect example of what MrBeast has done is it's actually of equal work, you know, it's same amount of time in the day. But when you see someone building someone something so epic, it's exciting. So many people who don't give a shit about MrBeast, of which I am one of them, I know about this and I cared about it.
Small ambition and large ambition take the same amount of effort if you wanna win, if you want them to work. And, uh, and, and that's exactly right. And so I think this was brilliant. I think this is another example of MrBeast being one step ahead of the curve. You're gonna see a lot more people try to clone this. So the next thing that comes out, you're gonna see 4 YouTubers who are the wannabe MrBeast try to jump on it and recreate this. And by the way, this wasn't the first thing he did like this. Like obviously he's been doing stunts, but he even did like a, I'm gonna recreate Fortnite. They like went to an island. It was 100 people playing paintball and it was like a game of Fortnite. And he made a video on that. And I think it did well, but it wasn't this, it wasn't this level, but it's those reps that you, you know, you put in that give you the A, confidence and B, shots on goal until you get something to work like this. And I also was watching a clip of MrBeast yesterday, just coincidentally. And somebody said, are you, you, you know, you've talked about you wanna be a billionaire, you wanna be the, you know, quote unquote, the first billionaire creator. Although there have been other creators that are, worth a billion dollars. So you wanna be a billionaire? And they're like, are you there? Are you there already? He goes, no, no, no, I'm not there yet. And he goes, I'm, he goes, I'm probably the cash-wise, I'm probably the, the poorest person in this room. And they're like, no, no way. He goes, yeah, cuz whatever I have is like paper. It's not like, it's not liquid. And any cash I get, I just reinvest the next and reinvest my videos. He goes, if we make $3 million this month, I'll put $3 million into the next video. Oh, we have razor-thin margins. He goes, I just reinvest the whole thing into content. I think on average he said he, he said he was spending something like $2 or $3 million a month on his content.
I would have bet—
which is wild.
I would have guessed that he made around $2.5, $3 million a month in revenue. I would have guessed around $30 million in revenue off his operation. And so that makes total sense. In fact, we talked to a couple of people. I believe he has— MrBeast has around 30 to 40 full-time people working for him. And I actually recently read about like what I was like, what is it like to work with him? And a lot of people complained. They said, they said working with him is horrible. He's horrible to work with. And I was like, well, you know, what's going on? Why? And they go, he's a perfectionist. I was like, oh, okay. So it's actually not that bad. They would say, why isn't this good enough? Why is this so bad? And he would analyze every single frame. And frankly, that made me even love him. But there is something interesting about this, which is I actually think being him is exhausting because you have to go up every single time. And so let me give you an example of two YouTubers. That are incredibly interesting to me. Graham Stephan and Meet Kevin. Do you know who those guys are?
I know Graham Stephan. I don't know Meet Kevin.
All right. Meet Kevin, I think, is even more famous, and he has 2.5 or 3 million subscribers. He recently did a video and it was called Here's My Entire $50 Million Portfolio at Age 29. So I— and I noticed that he had done one of these.
I'm clicking.
Okay. Okay.
Double click, full screen. Headphones on.
And I noticed that he did another one of these like 9 months ago or 13 months ago, something like around a year ago. And his net worth then was only $25,000. And I was like, what is going on? This guy is nuts. And so he's basically— this guy, Meet Kevin, I don't know his full name. He makes like 3 to 4 videos a day and he is talking about like which stocks he's buying, which types of houses he's buying for investment properties and he shows his entire portfolio and at the end he goes, now here's proof. And he logs in to all of his accounts and you can see all of it.
Screen share.
Yes. Which is amazing for many reasons. One, he's only 29 and he's a YouTuber with $50 million. $50 million.
How did he get that money? So he's just off of his YouTube or he has some other business that he started with?
At age 19, I believe he started as just a real estate agent. So just a normal guy. Okay. And he made a little bit of money, like $100,000 a year, took that $100,000 a year and bought some properties and then started a YouTube channel in 2010 or 2011. And he just started documenting about his real estate investing. Slowly that started making additional income. Using that income, he bought even more properties. Eventually he had like a course and things like that where he was making like $1 or $2 million a year. So a significant amount of sum or a significant sum. Then he took that money and he started investing it and started talking about what he was investing. And you could see this entire growth over the last 5 years of his portfolio and how it's grown. Of course, it helps that, A, he's got now a significant stream of like $4 million a year, I would imagine. And we're in the best bull market of all time. And so it kind of works. But that's how he's done it. And interestingly, this guy Kevin, when Gavin Newsom was being recalled, Kevin ran for office and there is this Republican named Larry Elder who got second behind Gavin Newsom. Kevin was third with something like hundreds of thousands of votes. And so it's— this kid's amazing.
And so that's surprising. I feel like a YouTuber who's got a big following should crush any politician.
He doesn't have that big a following. He only has 2.5 or 3 million. It's not significant. And it has to be a California above-18 voter. So it's not like— it's not significant. But my point being with a lot of these YouTubers is this video was nutty. And Graham Stephan did the exact same thing.
oh, absolutely—
whether you want to be president or not, you could, you know, I think the original Trump playbook was, I'm gonna just throw my hat in the ring, I'm gonna get tons of attention and press, I'm gonna build my brand off the, the massive amount of attention that goes into elections, and I'll be the, the kind of curveball story that everybody wants to cover, everybody's got an opinion on. Like Kanye, Kanye did it, or whatever, he threw his name in. You're gonna see the wild, wild west of people trying to put their name in the hat for running for office or running for these kind of like positions that will sound, you know, how could a, how could a 21-year-old YouTuber be doing this? And they're gonna get a little momentum, and then that's gonna create a press cycle, and that's gonna create more momentum. I don't think they'll actually win. I don't think they even want to win, but it would just be a smart move for the dog-eat-dog world of YouTube trying to get views.
Yeah, and, and, but here's back to the original point of getting views. What an exhausting life that you have to go. And, and I'm thankful that MrBeast does what he does. I'm thankful that this Kevin guy and Graham are crazy enough to log in and show me their— that is so cool. They are fucking nuts. That is nuts.
I had this exact thought the other day. We, um, I forgot who I was talking to, but I was talking to somebody and it was like, oh yeah, that's a great YouTube— I've had like 5 ideas about like Oh yeah, if we did that as a YouTube video, it would get clicks, right? Like, one was, um, I was gonna show how you can make $10,000 being a Santa, like a Santa Claus for Christmas. And I was like, oh, this is easy. I'll buy the suit, I'll show the economics of that, I'll go do the thing, that'll make for a funny thumbnail, and it'll make for this little story that's semi-viral. Another one is going and buying, buying fancy shit. And like, actually, like, like Justin Khan did a video where he toured a $50 million home.
It was amazing.
And is it, you know, just, it's interesting content, right? It's like super, it's junk food that people in our niche, we just like to consume that stuff. Like, oh yeah, what, what is it like? You know? How do you do it? How much money do you make? How do you invest it? And there's all these videos that you can make around this. And every time I think of one, I think, oh, that would work. I think to myself, I do not want to get on that treadmill. I just don't want to get on the treadmill. Cause I know it's like, the difference between sort of like knowledge and wisdom. It's like, I know this would work, but I'm also wise enough to know that that is not a path I wanna double down on. I do not wanna double down on the treadmill path cuz I don't feel that way about this podcast. For example, this podcast feels ongoing. It's a, it's a breeze, dude. We show up, I just shoot the shit with my friend for an hour. Um, people seem to like it. It's so like, it's 2 hours of my week that I like, I'm on the, I'm on camera, I'm on, uh, I'm on, I'm being recorded and I don't have to like, and also because it's a podcast, I'm not like, worried about how I look and the angle and the this and the that. Like maybe I should a little more, but I just don't. I like the way that you do when you're recording YouTube videos and you have to edit everything and clip it and like do all these cuts. Podcasting is, podcasting has that risk reward ratio or that like effort reward ratio that works for me. And this like YouTube treadmill I think has a much bigger prize, but I don't wanna win that way. Uh, there's other ways to win and that treadmill is exhausting.
It's exhausting. And there's a reason—
it is exhausting.
There's a reason why you don't see Casey Neistat anymore. I've watched a couple of recent interviews with him and he said, now I don't do anything. He goes, for those 3 years that I was recording daily vlogs, everything in my life, everything in my day, if someone invited me to dinner, I had to message them and saying, I can't unless someone interesting is coming or you want to go somewhere intriguing because it has to be content. And I lost a lot of friends. Me and my wife almost divorced and it was exhausting. And now he's 37 years old, he's financially successful, and he goes, I'm not doing it anymore. I have to take a break.
And so I think it's cool to dabble with it, but I am wary of the treadmill. Now you did a video, so kind of on the other side of the coin, you've been putting out your fitness content, which I think is probably just fun for you and motivating. It's fun. And then you did a video that I loved, which was you put a video up on, I think your own, just your personal YouTube channel of this real estate project you're doing. So I wanted to ask you about this. Here's what, for those who didn't watch it, here's what, here's the summary of the video. Uh, you bought a piece of land right next to your house, I think, like adjacent to, or like literally my next door neighbor, your neighbor. You bought the neighbor lot next to your house and it's got this like really rundown shack on it. Like it's a large piece of grass with a really shitty shack that somebody was living in and it's like 20 years, looks brutal. Like there's like, you know, I wouldn't wish this on an enemy, uh, these conditions. So it looked like just like this rundown shack. And you're like, cool, like, here's the thing I bought. And you, you broke down the economics. You're like, you know, I brought this. So how much did you buy for exactly?
$650,000.
$650,000. You bought the whole thing and you bought it leveraged or you bought it all cash?
Cash.
Okay, you bought it all cash. Why didn't you borrow?
Because I wanted to purchase before they put it on market. So basically the background— buy now— it was a 90-year-old couple that who owned it and they rented it to a guy and I The day I moved into this house, I used a little bit of research and I found who they were and I said, hey, you know, just so you know, my name's Sam. I'm— I live now next to your property. If anything ever happens, you want to sell this, please contact me. And so the man died on a Monday. The wife called me on a Wednesday and said, would you like to buy it? And I bought it on a Thursday.
Amazing. Okay. I love that. And you're like, this is going to be my first kind of like— you don't know shit about real estate. You don't know shit about building any like a home. And so you're like, this is gonna be fun. It's gonna be a hands-on project. I'm going to kind of document it as I go. And then you had this spreadsheet which basically said, All right, look, I bought it for $650K and, um, and then, you know, in this, in this area, there's a sort of like a price per square foot that you can get and here's the range. And then I talked to, you got bids from some contractors and you were like, you know, I can, uh, you know, on the low end it seems like you could build it for this much. And then if I'm conservative and it might be more expensive than we think, it might cost this much. So I might have to put $1 million in to build the actual structure in the home, modern, ground up. And, uh, so, you know, I might be in for $1.6 million, but based on the, the price per square foot I'm in this area, I should be able to sell this for 2. It should be worth 2 or 2.5. Like when I'm done with this thing, I'd like— the margin of safety was really strong. It seemed like just like an absolute no-brainer of a deal, assuming this is how you want to spend your time, right? Like the time is almost more expensive or the risk here more so than the buy is great. You made your money on the buy, as they say in real estate, rather than trying to make your money on the sale.
Yes. But it's not taking nearly as much time. And I'll tell you why. So what I did was before I even bought the piece of property, I found things in the area that sold for my ideal price per square foot. Right. I went on Zillow and Redfin. I found the architect and then I called them and then I also called the builder and I go, hey guys, how much would it cost to build this exact same home right now?
Right.
And they told me and I go, great. Um, and I do that.
Yeah.
And I bought this lot and I call them again. I go, hey, Hey, you know that house that just sold for $1,000 a square foot? Do that again over here for me, please.
So you're not trying to innovate and add the Sam Parr touches of like a, you know, a 3,000-square-foot gym and like a 1,000-square-foot house. Like you're doing a normal house build-out.
It's a normal house build-out, but I said make it a 2-car garage because I may, if I decide to live there, I'll build the gym there. And that's basically it. Yes. Okay. I just said, I took smart. I took a house that was crushing it that I just sold for a lot of money, and I said— and I hired the same people and I said, do it again. By the way, so I'm not—
I don't—
I'm not spending any time on it. I spend no time on it.
Just the fact that it's next door also is surprisingly going to be like a 50% savings in the time and headache that's involved with this. Because, uh, like, my family did this. We've— we, uh, we had a house in San Francisco, and then we bought a house two doors down. And just the fact that it was two doors down had like all these extra benefits, which was like, it was super easy to go see. It was super easy to like manage any, any construction that was going on. It's, we, they like share a fridge in the like garage. It's like, oh yeah, just use the extra fridge across the street. Uh, my sister runs a business outta one of 'em and so, and she's able to manage it from like without having to get in her car and commute somewhere. And just the, just it being like within eyesight and, and like a 2-minute walk away is so important. And like if anyone's gonna do a project like this, Do not underestimate that. I've now seen it a couple times and I feel this way. This is my rule with friends and family also, which is you wanna live so close to your best friends or family that you could go unplanned to their house. Like you don't need to pack a bag and think about, okay, well then how will I get, what, you know, when should we go? Should we beat the traffic? And then, oh, we're gonna have to head back for the night. It's like I should be able to pop over and pop back unplanned cuz it's so convenient. And like the difference between 15 minutes away and 4 minutes away is going to fundamentally change the way— like the amount of times you see that person or do that thing.
Because I thought it was awesome.
Oh, thanks.
And I just wanted to hear more about the, like, the, like, the actual real estate side of the side.
I think that the numbers are the way they're going to work out. And not a lot of people believe me, but I think it's going to happen this way. I'm going to make half a million dollars in profit or more from it. I think there's a world where I make closer to a million than half a million.
Is your plan to sell it or rent it out?
There's a, I have a few options. I can live in it and sell my home. Yep. But the way that all this math is going to work, it's going to be what both this house and that house, I'll have made around $1 million in profit in like 18 months. Right. Um, because things just worked out. And so I'll make more from this real estate project than I will my entire hustle salary combined ever.
And it only in this project, for example, but you're gonna have to invest, right? That's the, that's the kicker here. So like you, you couldn't have done this back then cuz you didn't have a spare $1.6 million to go like invest in buying the lot plus building the home out.
Or if I did do it, it was like all of my money, right? Yeah, exactly. Yes.
Uh, so you know, you would've had to go like completely all in on it.
Can I tell you about, what else we got? Can I tell you about, let me tell you about a company that interests me. Okay, so I was talking to someone recently and I can't say who it is, but they had a Google Chrome extension that made something like $25 million in revenue with only 2 guys, 2 people. It's amazing. So I got curious.
Extension did or no?
No, I, um, roughly, uh, helping people on Amazon sell stuff. Okay, cool. So like kind of like a, what's that thing called? Jungle Scout, something in that world. Yeah. Um, and so basically, uh, I started, I got kind of curious. So there's two extensions that caught my attention. The first, and they're basically the same thing with almost exactly the same name. The first is this thing called Adblock. I think that's the one I use. The second one is called Adblock Plus. So that's why it's a little confusing. And so Adblock was created by one guy in Georgia named Michael Gunlack. And he, uh, uh, he just kind of built this thing in 2009 and he's been the only employee the whole time. And I went to his personal website to learn about him. And he only has 55 followers on, uh, Twitter. His website is called sorryrobot.com. That's his personal website. And he has like Python projects, a Unity game that he built called Asteroids, and he even has an MP3 of him singing a Christmas song at church during Christmas time.
This is like, by the way, his LinkedIn, uh, his job description is just a guy. Uh, he lives in Duluth, Georgia, and it says, I am not available for work. Please do not contact me about job opportunities. I created an ad block. The most popular Chrome extension for Google, uh, Chrome extension and for Safari with around 20 million users. It's neat. Before that, I did some other neat things.
And he was the only employee. And then I did some research on his competitor called Adblock Plus. Now this company, they have a few bit, few more employees. I think they've got 20 or 30 people. And because they're based in Europe, when you're a European company, oftentimes, at least in England, and I know it's a lot of the, uh, a lot of case in different European countries. If you make over $20 million in revenue, you basically have to file a report that reveals your revenue and profit. And so I went and looked at this company called Eyeo. It's called Eyeo. They own Adblocker Plus. In 2017, they did $44 million in revenue and $26 million in profit, which is astounding. And they had at least 100 million users. However, if you look in the, the Chrome plugin store, Adblock Plus has around 150,000 reviews and says they've got over 10 million users. If you look at Adblock, which is the one founded by this one guy, they've got something like 300,000 reviews. And also it says 10 million users. And so there's potential that this one guy had a business making all of this money, tens of millions of dollars a year, very likely tens of millions of dollars a year in profit just off a Chrome extension. Is that amazing?
This is amazing. I'm still on this guy Michael Gunlock's website, sorryrobot.com/resume, um, .pdf. And I, I think you said this, but I was reading while you were talking. So he was an engineer at Google working on Google Ads and Google AdSense. Did you already say that part?
And so his job was, he goes, at Google, I kept the global Google Ads and AdSense networks alive and kicking. Um, and my, my spare time, I built this other thing and I built this other thing. Uh, you know, like 'cause Google has that 20% time. He's like, I built this JavaScript framework, blah, blah, blah. So basically he goes from working at Google on Google AdWords and AdSense to creating Adblock and, and makes $20 million, uh, makes more than that, uh, off 20 million users who, who love this thing.
I believe like '05, 2005. Yeah. So, which is like right after the IPO basically.
Yeah. So he probably made $30 million at Google, like collectively. It's pro— that's what it's worth now outta—
he killed it.
Yeah. If you held it. So he made tens of millions of dollars off that. And then reportedly, now the thing about this guy is everything's very quiet about this guy. He's hard to find. Everything's impossible. However, I think in 2015, an anonymous buyer bought Adblock.
Interesting.
There's a world where it could have been sold for like $200 or $300 million. I mean, there, there's a world where that exists. Uh, maybe it was lower, but it was, it's a, it's a huge profit.
It looks like he stopped, he, he, he stopped working on Adblock or, you know, it sold. Probably 2015, which is kind of scary because these Chrome extensions are a giant security hole for people because Chrome extensions can like read and write all the data on your— that as you browse the web. So that's all, every email you're writing, the text is, can be picked up by these Chrome extensions. And even if they start off safe, because, you know, just a guy from Duluth, Georgia built it and he's an engineer who has the right intentions. Somebody who buys it with the wrong intentions can really like, uh, do some dirty stuff. Yeah. Uh, you know, with the data and even modifying it and things like that. So you gotta be careful with Chrome extensions. I try to install the minimum amount of Chrome extensions as possible.
Yeah, they are pretty scary. And, um, yeah, they're nuts. And the, but it's a wild business. I think that what, here's here. So I love these extension style businesses. There's a few platforms that I think are quite interesting. The first, Google Chrome still makes a ton of sense. The second, Shopify still makes a ton of sense. Our friend Andrew has a business where all he does is buy— buys Shopify plugins and its market cap. It's a publicly traded company, is like in the $600 million range. It's on the Canadian Stock Exchange. But the third thing, which you probably have not thought of, and the fourth thing you definitely haven't thought of, Salesforce plugins. And then finally, Zoho plugins. Incredibly interesting. So we used to hire this engineer, uh, at The Hustle and he would, he was in another country and we would pay him $20 an hour to just build little apps for us, for our sales team.
Yep.
And, uh, I think Zoho, I would imagine is, which is like a Salesforce competitor, but a little jankier, has an equal amount of users as Salesforce. I think you could build a really great business just doing Salesforce plugins, right?
Yeah. And, or rolling them up. Um, so I, I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about this, but I'll say it in a vague way. Uh, met a guy, I heard about a guy that was rolling up games inside of a big gaming platform. So there's like a very popular game and then there's games within that, or little like modules people create and they monetize. And this person was rolling them up and they're like, dude, does that mean like these are created by like— I don't play games, kids, like, you know. Okay, so for example, there are big gaming platforms like Fortnite and Minecraft and Roblox and like all these different games that exist. And inside the game you can create little experiences and you can monetize them.
Um, kind of like people who create like different colored guns for Call of Duty.
Yeah. Yeah. Although I don't know if, I don't know if you could, do people create those? I thought the game created those, but like, yeah, there's, there used to be mods and, you know, mods of different games and maps and things like that that you can create. That's always been kind of like a part of it. But some of these games now are so big and they actually like formalize their little creator economy inside the game. And the person I knew was rolling them up and they were like, these are selling for nothing because they're like, it's just like a kid who made this. It sells for like less than, you know, like 1x revenue or something like that. Like, it's like crazy. Like compared to going and buying that same cash flowing asset on whether it's FBA or Shopify or something else. And now everything has a different profile of like, maybe this game is a fad. Maybe people will stop using this. Maybe, you know, the game could change the rules and you're screwed all of a sudden. So yeah, there's some risk, but, uh, I love these game plans of go to these niche platforms. We've talked about Etsy, we've talked about Poshmark, um, FBA. We've talked— now you're talking about Zoho and Salesforce and Slack and like all these different platforms. There are little apps that just make $50,000, $100,000, $50,000 a month. And you can go and you can buy these out and you can roll them up and you can have a company that does $10 to $20 million of revenue profitably and you could buy your way there, uh, without even having to invent anything. All you got to do is go get cheap, cheap debt, buy this thing, and profit. Um, and it's really like that simple.
But there's one major thing, which is if Call of Duty or Fortnite or whatever it is, they go, hey, we're gonna go in a different direction.
Yeah, exactly. And that's why you got like— that's same thing with FBA, right? And all these like Thrasyo and all these roll-ups. FBA is not— I mean, it's— you're dependent on a single platform which is Amazon, that's known to compete very hostilely. And there's other, there's other, they could change the algorithm and all of a sudden your thing that was at the top is now at the bottom. Um, there is definitely risk. And so you gotta look at like, okay, if my payback period is 9 months, I feel pretty good about it. If it's 3 years, I don't feel so good about it anymore. Sure. And so that's where you gotta like, you know, place your bets. All right. Can I tell, can I tell you about a really random small one like that? Okay. So our buddy, uh, Ramon tweeted this out. He goes, here's an example of a silly stupid business. So Ramon is, he's Ramon Van Meer on Twitter. Uh, so he goes, simple website moneymaker. This emoji website gets 5 million visitors a month and all it does, and I use this by the way all the time, cuz if you're on your computer and you want to use an emoji, it's not easy to get the keyboard up for the emoji thing. So you just, you, you just Google like laughing emoji and then it gives it to you and it says click to copy your, to your clipboard. And then you go and you like copy it, you paste it in Twitter or paste it wherever you're writing your email or whatever. And so, um, all it does is it lets you look up, look up emoji, copy paste them, and it'll also explain what the emoji means. Um, so there's like Emojipedia is a, is a good example of this. So Emojipedia.
Emojipedia.
Yeah. I don't know if you've ever seen this. It's like the top ranking, um, one that comes through, uh, when you, when you search for this stuff. Uh, it's like Wikipedia, but for emoji. And so Ramon was looking at, you know, like depending on, and it's just plastered with ads. There's like ads everywhere on the site. And it's like, depending on what the ad revenue is, like this site could be making between $50,000 and $150,000 a month of all profit. Like, do not underestimate these small, simple sites. And we've talked about this with crosswords, uh, Sudoku games, uh, things like that. Just like these really simple things that people like to search for. And if you could own the domain and you could just have the really simple, like, online game or like Scrabble, Scrabble word solver, um, you know, crossword hint, get hint cheats, you know, whatever. Um, those little websites can be really good. So this emoji one I thought is another example of that. And even better, I was like, oh, who owns this thing? I was looking for the Michael Gundlock, some random engineer who's like, oh yeah, I got a huge company that owns. So some company bought it, they own it, and it's called Zedge. And I was like, okay, what the heck is Zedge? How do you say it? Z-E-D-G-E. And this is one of those companies that you're like, really? This— so Zedge is a public company. Its market cap is around $130 million. So it's a very small, small-cap public company on the New York Stock Exchange. And what they do is they— it's a publisher or a roll-up. They bought a bunch of these little apps and websites that just get a bunch of traffic because people want self-expression. So they bought wallpapers, ringtones, stickers, uh, alarm clock sounds, emoji, Emojipedia, like things like that. They bought all these, bought 'em all under one roof, and then they're a public company. So you can go see a bunch of their numbers. So they'll do like, you know, uh, it's almost like 50%, um, they'll, they'll do like 50% profit on their, on their, uh, on their product or like at least operating profit. Um, and then, you know, like the EBITDA will be closer to like, you know, $2 million or whatever on their, uh, on each quarter.
Why the hell would a company like that go public? Don't go public.
Uh, yeah, I think there's a bunch of reasons why they might go public. Um, but I just thought it was interesting. So they have about 350 million people have downloaded like their wallpaper app. They have— they say they have 40 million monthly active users. Um, and these companies that are just hidden in plain sight, so it's like Um, you know, let me just look up their annual revenue again. I don't know if I have annual or quarterly. I think that they do about $20 million a year in revenue and $10 million, $10 million of operating profit. And, um, yeah, so they did 2017, they did, um, let's see, pull this up. Okay. Sales and revenue. I said it's a little lower than what I saw here, but I'm doing this quick. So basically for the last 5 years, it's just been flat, like $10 million of revenue. $2 million of COGS, you know, their gross income is between $7 and $8 million. And then, then they pay for a huge amount of, you know, like, um, other sales and, you know, SG&A, uh, expenses. Um, and so, you know, they're not, they're not showing a bunch of profit at the end, but I would bet that these things are like spitting off profit if you want. Uh, you know, they're, they're putting money in their own pockets basically, uh, out of this. So I thought that was just like a really crazy little company behind, behind this stuff. And it just shows you how much money's in really simple things that a lot of simple things that a lot of people use. So like alarm clock sounds, wallpapers, that sort of thing.
What, um, what's live reviews?
Uh, this is an idea. So, so I just got a sauna, and I know you're in the market for a sauna.
Oh, what time did you get?
So I got a Sanctuary, a Clearlight Sanctuary, uh, like the infrared sauna. And I like a lot of it. Like, I like the size, the look, the shape, all that. But it doesn't make me sweat enough. And so I'm like, well, that's the problem with infrared.
That's the problem with infrared.
That's the point of the sauna. So I'm like, well, that's a bust. Um, and I'm like, so I'm like, first I realized, okay, I didn't have one of the panels plugged in, so that's why it was like, you know, part of it was like dead. Okay, that was one issue. It got better. And then it's like, well, the best way you use it is you break a little sweat before you go in. So you just do like a quick 5-minute, 10-minute cardio, just warm. Because what infrared's doing is it's not warming up the air, it's warming up your body. Body.
Yeah. It's like microwaving you.
It's microwaving you, which seems like pretty awful for you, but I guess it's not so bad. I guess it's good for you actually. You know, blah, blah, blah. Heat shock proteins, blah, blah, blah. So, so I, you know, I broke a sweat before I got in and it was better, but I was like, dude, I'm not trying to do all this. I'm trying to go sit in the sauna and sweat in 5 minutes. So I think for my house, my space, like I didn't wanna do extra electrical. I didn't wanna like do, I didn't want to, I didn't have a huge space where I was putting it. I put it in my garage gym. So like I w— the dry sauna in retrospect, I would now hold out for a dry sauna, but, uh, it didn't really fit my current situation. So, you know, whatever it is, what it is. So I was thinking like, God, I, I actually did the research. I, I, I talked to people, I read reviews, but you know, the thing that I feel like is missing is I wish there was just, so like people have tried this QVC thing where you, it's like, oh, I'm gonna go live and I'm gonna sell this item., and people have tried to make QVC for mobile and it's never really worked. And I don't know if this would work either, but I kind of wish this existed just based on this current experience. And told me maybe there is a, maybe there is a product here, which is why can't, uh, why can't I go on and just say, I'd like to talk to somebody about saunas and why isn't there a person live on video who is a third-party impartial source that can basically show me live on video, talk to me about what I'm looking for. Dude, this is exactly what Mark Mark Lore said—
so Mark Lore, the guy who started Jet.com, he sold it for $3 or $2 or some billions of dollars to Walmart. He said one thing that they were working on at Jet that could have been a massive business, but they shut it down for a bunch of different reasons. But he goes, I actually think it still could be big with concierge shopping. So you simply log on and you just tell us, you know, I'm looking for a toaster and a clerk is online saying, okay, for your needs, I think this is best. Would you like this one? And he said that that would be a big business.
Yeah. And so like, even with this, I actually, if you go to the website to buy this thing, you can't just buy the sauna. There's no buy button. You had to call someone, but this is their sales rep, right? So I called the sales rep, it's 8:00 PM. She picks up, she's an American person. I was like, whoa, what the hell? Like, I was like, you work this hour? Like, who, what, who are you? Like, you were really good at what your job, like, you know, you built a lot of trust quickly and you got me over the line to buy the $6,000 sauna., on the phone here. And, and she was like, yeah, like we're, there's a network. The, the way we work is we only sell to a network of— yeah. So it's owned by Jacuzzi, the, the, the, you know, the Jacuzzi company. So she's like, yeah, it's basically we have a network of sales reps. We all pick up the phone. Uh, you could, if you're offline, you're offline. You, you didn't get that commission. She's like, I get a commission if you buy. Um, and that's how we make our money. And she's like, yeah, like I make good money. Like I'll sell. I was like, how many of these do you sell on a day? She's like, on a good day I could sell like 4 of these in a day, and on a bad day I'll sell like 1 or 0.
And dude, listen, the reason why you and I are pretty good at what we do, which in this case I'm referring to just coming up with ideas— like, people say shit to us all the time, is— and I get— I'm kind of like jerking ourselves off here, sorry— but because that question that you just asked, and I do that all the time, and people are amazed that you could do that. Like, when you're just going to a food truck, you'd be like, hey, how many customers you get a day? And they just tell you. And so what you just did is a perfect example. You got intel that is hard to find, but it was very easy to get.
And I asked multiple— so I asked, and you could triangulate. That's the secret. If you don't ask a very rude question, which is how much money do you make, or how much does this company make— I said, what's a good day? You know, how many do you— how many of these do you sell on a good day? So already I softened the blow by saying good day, and I'm asking just for a day. That doesn't seem like top secret information. Okay, cool. Then I say, and then I was like, I was like, and you're great at this. Like, I was like, I really like this. Like, this was like kind of an awesome experience for me on the phone. Uh, I was like, are you one of like the better sales reps? Like, do you like, are you like a top performer or are you like, uh, like, are you kind of like middle of the pack? She's like, no, I'm like actually one of the top performers, blah, blah, blah. And she's like, you know, I picked up the phone at 8:00 PM. A lot of people just don't pick up the phone. Like, I'm, I work, like I work hard. And I was like, oh, interesting. Okay, cool. And then I was like, I was like, how many reps are there? I'm just like, and again, I'm not like digging, I'm not like saying like, and, um, okay, my next question is how many reps are there? I'm like, I'm just sounding amazed.
Cause I was amazed. What you say to that reply is, wow, are you guys all in America?
Yeah.
Yeah. We're, we're all in America. Wow. I mean, what are there like 10,000 of you? Of course, you know, it's not even close at, oh no, it's way smaller. Hundreds. Oh, like a hundred. Uh, more like 800.
Right, right, exactly, exactly. And so I was able to like suss out how this system works. I was like, I was like, wow. I was like, that's great. So I was like, I was like, so this is awesome. So I bought this thing and you're gonna make like what, $400 or $500 off this?
Yes.
And she's like, so now I know the commission structure. And so like, you know, I was able to kind of like, and I'm just doing it cuz I'm curious. I have no agenda. I'm not starting a sauna company. I don't care, but I'm just trying to learn. And then like, you know, I took a piece of that to our own, I had a meeting with our own team for e-commerce. I was like, Hey, you know, I had this kind of great experience, you know, should we be having a phone number on the site? And like, should we be helping people like that? Like, how would that work? We're a way lower price point. Like, would this still work? And, um, and then I met this guy, um, Ezra, Ezra, uh, Firestone is his name.
Yeah. He's amazing.
He's super well known in the e-commerce space and he's got this famous brand called Boom by Cindy Joseph or something like that.
Is that, it's makeup, right?
It's like kind of like makeup and like anti-aging looking stuff, face cream, stuff like that for like women who are like 50 to 70 or something. That's what it looks like to me at least. And this brand does great. I think he's pretty open about it. Like he publishes stuff like that. I think they do like $80 or $100 million a year of revenue. And he told me that, uh, he told me on a, we, I did a talk at Ecom World. He was interviewing me.
And of course, when was that?
Uh, this was like, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago.
Oh, that's pretty sick. His, that's a pretty legit thing.
Yeah. So he goes, uh, he was like, you know, so how do you do your sales? Like, I don't know what, what do you mean? Like, this is Shopify. You push the buy button. He's like, okay, so you don't do any live chat? I was like, yeah, we have chat, but like, whatever, customer service. He goes, okay, interesting. He goes, for us, we do phone. He goes, you don't do phone? I go, no, we don't do phone. I go, do you? Does anybody do phone? Does that shit work? Same thing. Same type of question that will get somebody to like defend the thing they do.
Does that shit work? That's what you said.
I was like, there's no way.
Does that shit work?
And then the takeaway from here, the next thing that you ask is, yeah, but there's no way that's profitable. And they'll say, yeah, of course it's profitable. We only pay them $18 an hour.
Am I a bad entrepreneur? No, I'll tell you that. I'll tell you how it all breaks down. Um, so yeah, that's exactly the—
how much do they pay people? How do they pay people? How much do they pay people an hour?
I, I don't know. I didn't ask in this case because we were live on the panel, but you know, had this been a normal conversation, I would have, would have been, uh, breaking it down.
That's badass. Um, all right, you want to do one more? Um, wait, what's this fluffy stuff about luck of timing?
Let's do that. Let's do a non-fluffy one because I feel like I've been doing a lot of fluffy stuff lately. I feel like we've kind of been on a kick of like sort of fluffy stuff because if you let me, I'm going to talk about mindset all day. And the second thing is, uh, we did a lot of like gossip about like like, you know, like billionaires and their like affairs and shit like that. So I'm like, okay, just noted, I'm gonna like to turn that down a little bit. So I want to do one more cool idea because I think, you know, people love that shit. Okay, so Rebase. Um, have you seen this before, before I put it on this sheet?
No, I'm looking it up now.
oh, I love that guy.
Kind of like, his name's Peter Levels, I think is his name. Uh, his handle is Levels.io. So he's, he's an amazing prolific guy. He ahead of the curve on like remote work. So I remember maybe 6 years ago he was— he created, you know, Nomad List. He created remote, like a remote, like, uh, remote working Slack. He was like, oh, if you're a remote worker, pay $10 and get into Slack. And he had like 6,000 members. I was like, whoa, you made a lot of money off this little, like, just a Slack invite. I've never seen that.
And he, um, reveals all of his revenue. So, uh, I don't— what's his— so it's levels.io. That's his— that's one of his sites. He's got like 4 sites, I think. And if you go to Levels and then scroll all— okay, so he has his, his, his Twitter name is Levels.io. I, yeah, it's probably pronounced actually differently. And you could see a link to all of his websites and looks like he's got close to 10 there.
And if you click them and then scroll below that, see the little meter in his location.
Oh, that's amazing.
For one.
Amazing.
That's amazing. Stealing that.
Oh my God.
That's beautiful. So good. So what did— on Twitter where you put your location and most people just write like San San Francisco or New York. Instead, he just— he used the emoji for— to create like 10 squares, and it's like a meter, and it go— and at the end of the meter it says $5 million a year. And then he shows the meter is like, uh, like 60% of the way there, um, which shows that he's kind of like, you know, he's probably at $2.5, uh, to $3 million a year is what he's making. It's just a subtle subtle. It's a subtle thing. Very nicely done. Very interesting. Very cool. I like it.
And if you go to any of his sites, so it looks like he's got 8 or something sites listed, and you click around, you're gonna see a phrase on all of his sites called Open Startup. Yeah. And I just sent you a link. Do you see the link I sent you? And you could see all of his metrics. So you can see how much revenue they have, how much, like, he's got weird metrics, how much CO2 removed from the atmosphere, GitHub, uh, commits. Daily revenue, daily signups, meetups organized, new paid membership, live streaming events, last month signups, how many customers are in total, how many page views, where the page views are coming from. You can see everything. The, the uptime of the websites. This guy's amazing.
And so just Nomad List is doing $531,000 a year. It's halfway to the goal of $1 million a year from this business.
And this guy, we just explained how he's kind of got this like unique little Easter egg on his Twitter. He's got like little things like that throughout all of his websites. And so this guy is, in my mind, he, this man's an artist. He's an artist. He's an artist who just so happens to, uh, his art just so happens to make money. This guy's, I love this guy. I don't know his name.
Peter, Peter, I think it's Peter Levels.
Uh, that's his full name. I didn't know that. I always just thought his company was called Levels.
So if you look at like one of his, um, things I was gonna show you, so, okay. So his latest thing, this thing called Rebase, and he tries to like sniff out a trend and then quickly spin up the semi-viral, slightly profitable, like a semi-viral, simple, profitable version of a website. So, uh, what is Rebase? Rebase is people are trying to relocate with the pandemic and with tax changes and with cryptocurrency and all this good stuff. People are are more like kind of, uh, you know, like fluid than ever. There are people are gender fluid and their location fluid. There's a fluidity, uh, going on. So he basically said, uh, Portugal came out and Portugal said, we wanna— they, I think in 2021 they had the largest population, uh, decrease in the last 50 years. And so they said, all right, our population is shrinking, we need foreigners to come live here and spend here and work here. So they said, the Portuguese government said, we wanna attract high-tech remote workers. And they gave out, they create a program called the NHR program. And so the NHR program basically has a bunch of benefits. Now, I don't know if they're all as good as advertised, meaning like I didn't go read the fine print, but here's some of the things it says. 0% tax on foreign income, so they're not gonna tax you for income that comes outside of the state. Um, 0% tax on crypto, it's considered a currency, unlike in the US where it's considered a property. Uh, 0% tax on dividends, 0% tax on wealth, 10% tax on pension, 20% tax on freelancing. So that's like, you know, where, what a lot of people would do There's no minimum stay. You can get fast track for EU passport. Um, you know, they have a whole bunch of like, you know, sort of things that are, uh, benefits for coming here. You know, we're, we have a 90% vaccination rate. We have friendly people, blah, blah, blah. So that's the, so he created a website that just has the sales benefit, the benefits of if you wanted to relocate or get a pa, a passport in Portugal. And then what Levels did was he basically created a, okay, you, here's the on-ramp to Portugal. So it's like, like, for $150, you'll do an onboarding call and we'll walk you through it. And there'll be a tax expert and a lawyer that'll analyze your situation. For $650, we'll get you set up with Portuguese residency and you'll get a Portuguese tax ID. For $150 a year, $150 a year, we'll do your taxes. And it's like, start now, here's the button. And I was like, this is such a smart, simple, you know, simple idea. And already it's like booked out. So, you know, he, his max was that he could do the, the lawyer could do 50 calls per month. And immediately it was at 300 calls per month. And so he's like trying to hire another lawyer so he can scale it up a little bit more.
If you had to ask, like someone asked me the other day, like who I admire, and I would ask it a little bit differently, which is who am I jealous of? This guy, Peter, I'm looking at his websites. I am jealous of, I'm jealous of so many things about him. First, his creativity. It just oozes. And second, he can do it. Like every, like everything that I see on his website, I'm like, oh my God, this is perfect. This is the perfect example of how a product should be made. Uh, he's, this guy's incredibly prolific and incredibly capable.
He's like a music producer to me. Like he's a producer of websites. He's just making these little hit songs. Uh, and they're not like, he's not trying to be Justin Bieber, like the one mega hit franchise, uh, that goes on tour. He's just a producer that makes dope beats. And instead of beats, he just makes dope websites and his websites pay for a dope lifestyle.
Yeah, I mean, and a lot of the subscription revenue he's got, like, look at inflationchart.com. That's one of his. Yeah, this website tracks real inflation, which is happening that the governments don't tell you about in their official numbers. Okay, super easy. I understand. That's just a really cute, neat widget. I get it.
It's awesome. Even on, um, on what's it called, the website I was just talking about on Rebase, the very first benefit, it goes, McDonald's has the Royale Deluxe. McDonald's in Portugal has the Royal Deluxe and the Big Tasty Double. That was the first benefit, right? Cuz he could have just gone into like tax benefit, tax benefit, tax benefit. But he, let me get you, look, let me break the, you know, let me, let me break the ice here. Set a little fun, little Easter egg, a little fun, little nugget that just shows you who the site's built by. It's built by somebody who's got a personality. It's built by an indie software maker, not some stiff company or bureaucracy. And I think these little touches matter. That's why he's an artist.
This guy's amazing. I love this guy. Okay. Good, good, good find. I've known about him for a little while. I always thought he was really talented. I didn't realize that he was like the Kanye of like internet website builders.
Yeah, he's great.
Okay.
So, I wouldn't even say he's like, you know, Rick Rubin or something like that. He's got his own shtick. Anything else you want to do? Otherwise, we can wrap it.
No. No. Well, we could wrap it. We could save that other— I want to hear about some of these things that you have on here, but we could save them Okay, sounds good.
We're out.