Transcription
This episode’s with Cody Schneider, so we gave away three trends that we think you can build a bunch of Internet businesses on top of. One is an AI landing page builder. I’m becoming obsessed with this trend, uh, because this is something that we do internally, and it’s an absolute pain, and all the tools that are out there just suck. So, one is the buy it for life uh, Trend that we got from Reddit. Dude, I’m obsessed. I’m obsessed with this community, by the way. Like, I am one of these people, so uh. And the third is uh, viral formats on TikTok and how to build a business around that. The opportunity here is that people are trying to find the formats or the TikTok templates that are going viral currently. These are three trends we think are super, super interesting. We tell you why we think it’s interesting; we give you the tactics on actually how to build businesses there, um, and you’re going to learn a lot from this conversation. People gatekeep the sauce, but we don’t gatekeep the sauce on the Startup Ideas podcast. Uh, enjoy the episode. [Music]
Start. All right, we got Cody Schneider on the podcast. The man needs zero introduction today. What we’re going to talk about is we’re going to go through the few trends, the three or four trends that we’re thinking about, and from those trends, we’re going to come up with startup ideas on the fly. Welcome to the pod, Cody. What’s what’s good, dude?
I don’t know, man. It’s so it’s been so busy. I’m stoked to be here, but this week has been chaos, but I’m wired. We got we’re caffeinated; we’re ready to go. We’re ready to go.
Okay, so the first trend we’re going to talk about is the buy it for life trend. Uh, this actually came to me from the subreddit. Dude, I’m obsessed. I’m obsessed with this community, by the way. Like, I am one of these people, so so yeah, maybe talk about what what it is, what the movement is, and and let’s let’s go from there.
So, pro, my understanding, it stems stems from like anti-consumerism. I look at it more of like I just want to buy the best of whatever it is. Um, so, for example, we just bought a blender, and I bought this like industrial blender that is their suggestion, like their buy it for life suggestion, basically, where it’s like, oh, this thing is going to last multiple generations. And so um, there’s this push back right now for like kind of buying cheap stuff that’s uh gonna break right, um, and whether it’s clothes, whether it’s it’s you know, like homegood products, etc. And so this subreddit, basically people go in and they ask, and they’re like, hey, I want you know, X thing, or I’m about to purchase X thing, uh, what should I get? Like, what’s the best quality that I can get, uh, you know, for whatever the category is in, and then people come in and they basically will tell their story. So that’s kind of the the high level of what this what this looks like.
Are you in this, or do you do you kind of like are you a part of this, G, or did you just find it and find it interesting?
Um, I heard about it. I just started perusing it. I saw, you know, one of the posts. I think it might have been this post went on the front page. I gave my dad this Batman wallet 10 years ago. I was like four or five years old, and I got it in preschool. He uses it to this day. So from this post, I think I I I started just perusing, and um, then I just started going to Google Trends. Um, I use uh an app called Glimpse. I’m not associated with them or anything. I just think it’s it gives you like a better view on on Google Trends. Um, so I saw that, and I was like, okay, is this a big movement, or is a small movement? And it seems like it’s literally I mean, it’s it’s it’s gaining a lot of steam. 69,000 searchers in the past month, and it just got me thinking that there’s an opportunity uh, yeah, there’s an opportunity to build some businesses on on top of this trend.
100%. Um, the first one for me and like I wish this existed again, being in this kind of buyer persona, uh, I want to be able to make a wish list of like like all the products that I’m looking to purchase that are these buy it to for life. So to take a step back, how the community works is it’s like every category they like, so they have like a whole list of like for every category, here’s the best product that you can buy for each of those categories. So say you’re trying to get like a a a washing machine, right, and you want it to last for forever, um, you can go in, you can find their list of washing machines that are the best washing machines, um, but the thing is is what I want is I want basically alerts for when those washing machines come into like they’re they’re on sale, basically. So how I’m imagining this is like a platform that’s like, you know, scraping all of the major retailers for these specific products, and then I get a notification when like a price or you know, sale happens. Basically, like I would pay for this tomorrow, specifically for like, you know, there’s these pair of boots, right? They’re like Doc Martens, but it’s the it’s the company that used to manufacture Doc Martens, and then Doc Martin Martin got bought by PE, and the quality went to like to [ __ ], and then this company started producing their own boots. They’re like out of the UK, super expensive; they go on sale sometimes, and so I’m just imagining like it’s basically a listening tool for that for these buy it for like products because a lot of these products typically they have like a higher I mean, it’s just they’re more expensive, right, because the quality is so good, and so I I imagine you could build something like this, and this this entire community would probably be all over it, right? And it’s just again this listening software. Um, there’s probably an affiliate play play as well, so it’s like, you know, for example, it goes on sale, uh, you know, on Walmart or or you know, Nordstroms or whatever, and you uh get an affiliate commission for all that traffic that you’re driving. But I feel like this could be a combo, like maybe it’s a newsletter is what it starts out as, and then from there it evolves into like a whole platform, but I’m curious your thoughts, like business-wise, what would make what what you think is opportunity.
Yeah, so okay, first of all, you know, if you’re looking at my screen, it’s you know, it’s shows clothing, bags, kitchen tools; it basically creates a directory of uh of of these threads where people are recommending products. This is like surfing Craigslist; how this is ridiculous! Like when I see this all, you know, my I my eyes light up because there’s an opportunity to build the directory just way more with filters, way more beautiful. No one wants to cycle through this; this is not going to hit the mainstream, right? So I think that there’s an opportunity to build; first, you build the directory, and we’ve talked on the show about how to build the directory. Um, you can use tools; we had um John Rush come on, and you can use a tool; he has a tool called um Quick Break in the PO to tell you a little bit about Startup Empire. So Startup Empire is my private membership where it’s a bunch of people like me, like you, who want to build out their startup ideas. Now they’re looking for content to help accelerate that; they’re looking for potential co-founders; they’re looking for uh tutorials from people like me to come in and tell them how do you do email marketing? How do you build an audience? How do you go viral on Twitter? All these different things; that’s exactly what Startup Empire is, and it’s for people who want to start a startup but are looking for ideas, or it’s for people who have a startup, but just they’re not seeing the traction uh that they need. So you can check out the link to Startupempire.co in the description. Anyway, if you go search John Rush, you’ll find it; you’ll find it, um, and uh or or recently we had someone else on come on the pod that was like just make it using WordPress and and figure out the keywords with H refs. Anyways, the point being that you can build a directory like pretty simply nowadays, or honestly use cursor um or or or lovable or a bolt. So you create the I mean, you figure out what uh what domain like what domain do you think would make sense for a directory like this? I would try to get it like as exact match as POS possible, um, so like something that has like buy it for life in it, uh, I mean that would be you know, what I would go after personally because I try to I would want to try to rank this for the exact match keyword, right? Um, I don’t let’s see; buy it for life is available or something. By the way, you know what I was thinking about recently? I just I just went to godaddy.com, you know you’re over 30 when you go you still go to godaddy.com. I love it, right? Do you know instant domain search? No, check it out. Um, it basically like will it live streams like in the application the op if you do like buy it for life, you’ll oh sick, yeah, they’re great. So maybe it’s like you want to buyitforlife.com, and what I would probably look at to is like uh like buy it for Life Products, some variation that that looks like it’s taken, uh, you get you know, find some variation of that. Buyitforlifeproducts. Go snack for sure, and also you want buyitforlife.com available as well. So these exist; don’t tell us that you can’t get the do; we don’t want to hear it.
100%. Um, so I would do that personally, and then I think the angle that I would go at this from on the I mean, you could probably use the subreddit as the way to like drive initial traffic if you did it really uh like basically provide a ton of value, and then at the bottom of the post like be like, oh, I also made this curated list directory where you can filter by specific you know things and then the retailers that sell this etc. But I’m just looking on SEMrush on my side though, G, and there’s all these longtail keyword variations, so buy it for life vacuum, buy it for life couch, buy it for life shoes, wallet, cookware, jeans, socks, belt. Let’s go on; there’s about a thousand of these uh that that you could go after, so it’d be build this directory, and then you make these landing pages where it’s the for each of those longtail keywords, build some backlinks too. I mean, that it’s easily the the way to kind of get the in the initial traction for this. Then from there, I think you could sell where it’s like you have a you know, again a sale listener; they exist; they’re easy to build, and or you just have an affiliate like play on this on this directory where it’s oh, you drive this them off to again Nordstrom or wherever, and you get an affiliate commission for that traffic that you’re driving, and like they’ll pay you for that traffic, right? So that traffic that’s coming off that page, uh, you can then take that, and you uh I mean, that’s kind of the initial way to get traction. The other side is then you know, put MediaVine or one of these ad uh display ads companies on that that site and get traffic from that as well or get uh ad spend B basically PID for that traffic that you’re you’re um getting from people coming there.
So by the way, with the Reddit thing, you bring up a good point, which is how do you get traffic from Reddit without getting your post banned or your account banned? Um, and something I usually do is I’ll I’ll respond; I’ll create a post and just add as much value as possible, and then at the end just sign my name and like Greg, and then you know, Greg from buyitfornowproducts.com, and just link that. So you’re not even saying like go here, check this out; it’s just like people are are generally curious, and especially if you’re going to get that uh that domain and you’re speaking to that community like you you will get free traffic.
100%. I and I there’s such a there’s actually a newsletter play that I see a lot of people use for local newsletters. Uh, they go to a subreddit uh for that that area, so like Toronto as an example, and they’re like, here’s 20 things you can do this weekend in Toronto, and then it’s like you want more like this, and then then at the bottom of the post they’re like sub to this email newsletter. Um, such an easy tactic that is just like crushing it right now, and so then strategically what you do is you do the post in the super early morning, so like 4 AM or whatever, um, for and typically the mods of that location are are uh geography based, so they’re going to be in that location, and then you go, and you can buy Reddit upvotes, and you can basically ride the wave into people waking up then scrolling Reddit; you hit page one, and then you’ll go you know, you go to the top of the page. So random tactical thing that I know exists that that that friends have shown me works.
So love it. Okay, so that’s idea number one. Pretty simple. Basically, uh, building on top of that community, uh, pick the domain name with the exact term, um, build a directory mostly using AI, um, you know, layer on a a beehive or a newsletter piece for sales, um, and then get traffic via SEO, Reddit, um, that sort of thing. But dude, go to buylife.com right now; this is literally the exact business that we’re talking about, which is hilarious. I have not seen this; just throwing this out there. I just went to it like if you Google B for life, you don’t go to it. I just went to the exact domain cuz I saw it was owned by somebody, and this this is literally the exact business. So when you see this, when you see this, are you like, I okay, I don’t want I don’t want to create this business now? Like, what’s your thought process now?
Immediately, I’m like, validation, cool; I can go and compete in this, right? Like people get so worried about competitors in Internet businesses and like online businesses, and I think that it is such a terrible way to think about it. Like there’s 20 you know, 50 window cleaning companies in your your wherever you live; there’s like a ton of businesses that clean windows, and all of them can exist and make money, but for some reason, we don’t think about the internet in the same way. Like all of these businesses businesses can exist and make money, especially in a category like this where there’s like 70,000 searches per month for buy it for life; you’re telling me that that you can’t go and compete in that category? Like you can 100% do that. So what do what do you use to check uh if a if a website has traffic?
I just use uh SEMrush and then uh SimilarWeb. I can look them up on SimilarWeb right now; give me a second. So SEMrush, not a ton of traffic, but it’s it looks like it’s really like they’re brand new uh like in July of 2024; it looks like they started publishing, and then let me go to SimilarWeb; I’ll do the same thing. Yeah, SimilarWeb showing about 5,000 uh uh uh in traffic a month, so again, s probably super early or sorry, not even 5,000, about about 2,000 in traffic per month, um, so it’s interesting; the guy who started this, Darcy buy it for life, I’m on his X account; he tweets about investing in domains, right? So this is a guy who’s a domainer, basically.
Yeah, this is like the easiest business on the planet is something like this; like you find a subreddit that’s like starting to pop off; you validate with Google Trends and H refs; you either build a domain or you buy the domain, and then you start with the directory; you add a newsletter, and and then you you know, eventually add some software.
100%. I just bought a jobdescriptiongenerator.com for $800.
Okay, and what are you gonna do with it?
So uh, what we’re seeing in SEO is that when there’s branded searches for the website, you can create these niche niche sites basically around them. So all little history, all the niche sites got clapped with all the Google updates, right? Um, but all the sites that were performing really well, they had some amount of branded searches going to them, and so our thesis was like, okay, well, like Google is factoring in is this like is branded searches coming to the website, and then if that’s a portion of the traffic like a decent amount, then that means that like this is kind of a real company, right? So we’re like, okay, let’s go buy this exact match domain; I just got it like two weeks ago, um, so we’re still in the process of doing this, but go bu that exact match domain; we go build backlinks that are job like exact match keyword backlinks, niche edits that are job description generator; we get that page to rank for that exact match keyword, but then the long-term plays we go and we do job description templates for every job that exists, right? Um, and then you basically turn this into niche site, but because the homepage of the website is like a tool, naturally what will happen is that when you hit page one for that target keyword, you’re going to create this like link flywheel around that website, right? So people search job description generator; they land on the site; it does the job; you know, writes a job description for them; they then will then you know, include that within their blog post or you know, a journalist includes that within their blog post or it gets it naturally uh will build links for that website once you hit page one, and so because of this, you’re going to build this domain authority; you’re getting branded searches to come to the website, and then I can go and build out you know, 10,000 longtail landing pages that are blog posts uh for every template, every uh you know, every other keyword that’s in this category, right? Then you go and you turn this into uh you know, it’s it’s probably some type of display ads uh play for us. How we’re thinking about it is as a way to drive traffic to our talent sourcing agency, so we get all this; if you’re searching job description generator, typically early signal that you’re trying to hire; we can use that to drive traffic to people that are trying to hire, so.
And did that that idea did it come to you just naturally or were you like kind of searching around like how how did I’m just curious of how how it came to you.
Yeah, I mean, this was based off of everything that we were seeing on the SEO side where it’s like I mean, I I I’ve owned niche niche sites for the last you know, 10 years, and tons of them got clapped, you know, I had this one that was doing like I don’t know, close to 30,000 in traffic a month, and now is doing like I think a hundred, right? And uh, I mean, and it’s an old site; like it’s like it’s been around for forever, right? Um, and so when we saw that we’re were like, okay, why why aren’t these real Brands being affected, and the kind of thing that we landed on is like, oh, it’s because people searching for this real Brands, and so Google is prioritizing companies that look like real companies, right? Like there’s branded search that’s coming to it, and so if that’s the case, then you know, we again started thinking about uh, okay, how do you how do you build how do you build niche sites that can exist in this new uh you know, new paradigm, and then from there kind of connected these two ideas of everybody’s been using building calculators, tools, generators as a way to create link magnet flywheels for for their their their websites, right? Um, so for example, like one we just built recently was remodel cost calculator; we built that for our client; we embed it on the website; we build niche edits back to it; that starts to rank; it naturally builds links, and and so like the links that we build become even more effective, like more at at getting the site to rank, and so then connected those two dots together, well, hey, let’s you know, let’s buy an exact match domain; let’s uh we know that branded searches are a factor in in in new sites ranking; we build links to that exact match; the tool does a thing; the tool will naturally build backlinks, and then this turns into a niche and again super super early idea, but this is this is something that I think is a huge opportunity for somebody that’s trying to start their first online business is go find like all the longtail keywords related to generator, related to calculator, related to tool. Uh, if you can find an exact match domain, go buy it, um, there some can be expens like more the more competitive they are, they’re going the more expensive they’re going to be, um, and then go use these like again AI tools like Bolt, like lovable, like you know, whatever to spin spin these up, uh, embedded on the homepage like on a word you know, on a literally it’s a WordPress website is like the jobdescriptiongenerator.com; we just embedded the the app like on the homepage, and then we’re just going to use the classic WordPress like CMS functionality to do all the blog post; like it’s not complicated, right? So anyway, that’s kind of where the origin of all this came from.
Yeah, I mean, and and to think that there’s people listening to this podcast that go want to go out and buy real estate, get like a million-dollar loan from the bank, right? It’s insane. Go buy…
Yeah, I know; it’s literally insane to me. Like I tweeted this, I think yesterday it was; I’ll read it right now. It’s like, why would you buy a business anymore? You could start one in an hour. By end of day, you can have 30 clips uh and you got a thousand views uh on each of those clips, and your first signups. Why would you buy a business?
Yeah, and like yeah, and also it’s like go, you know, and that’s why I wanted to do a trend episode with you is it’s not like we have to guess around the trends, right?
No, the data is there; it’s public. The data is there; it’s public, right? Um, Cody, I want to go through two more trends uh before we head out today. Um, let me share my screen real quick. [Music]
So the second trend, AI landing page; what were you thinking about here?
Yeah, so I’m I’m becoming obsessed with this trend, uh, because I like this is something that we do internally, and it’s an absolute pain, and all the tools that are out there just suck. So um, so landing pages, why you use them? So, for example, we run paid ads for clients; um, we need to build specific landing pages so that the uh media that we’re running aligns with the page that they’re landing on. So somebody searches you know, X keyword, and then they land on a page where the H1 of that landing page is that X keyword. So a lot of the times clients like they don’t really have a CMS that they’re using for their current website that like allows for us to go build a 100 different V landing page variations, right? So you go and you use something like Instant Page, Instant Pages, or LeadPages. Um, there’s this new one uh uh that’s absolutely crushing it right now; I don’t know if you’ve heard of it yet; it’s called Perspective; it’s Prospective.do.co. Um, it basically allows you to build; it’s basically a funnel builder, Greg; it’s so sick; you should have Neil’s on the the show; also, he’s a gangster; just they’re uh they’re out of Berlin, out of Germany, self-funded, bootstrapped, 10 million ARR in like three years, absolutely stupid. Um, literally using their software for all of their their their acquisition. So the difference is that it’s built for mobile, so it’s funnels but built for mobile, and it feels like an app; you can kind of see it here on the screen where it’s like you can have like yes/no checkboxes, and they click it, and it like does confetti; it like it feels like an app when the when the user opens it, but it’s actually just a lead form that gets them down the funnel. Um, but the the I think the the opportunity here on the on the landing page side is I want to just be able to go in and be like, here’s kind of this Brand’s like aesthetic; go build me a landing page template like based off of this automatically; I don’t want to have to like drag any of these blocks, do any of that, and I think it’s possible right now; like you’re seeing this already with like how people are using VZ or using lovable; like you can do this, but there isn’t an easy way to deploy it to a subdomain. So, for example, we use like lp.example.com, right? So we’re living on that subdomain for for our clients. So how I imagine this working is you have like a brand template for each of your clients, and then it goes; it generates this landing page template, and then you can go and in and modify these landing pages uh uh using you know, a point-and-click solution, right? So I I think there’s a huge opportunity here just to do that for uh uh these um uh this category, and you can see it there; like tons of people are searching for this, but the I I’ve been pitched so many of these; like I’ve talked about this idea for like the last you know, three months; I’ve been pitched so many landing page builders, and it’s like a full website builder; like I I’m not trying to do that; the the angle here is digital marketing agencies that are running ads or just anybody that’s running display ads or Google ads; this that’s who you’re selling this to, right? It’s not you know, really what this is is like imagine Webflow, but you could chat with it like you do with Cursor to create a landing page like that; that’s what you’re trying to to to to accomplish with this, and then once you figured out that template, okay, I can go and duplicate that a hundred times, change the H1 100 times, etc.
So I saw last week Webflow launched an AI assistant; did you see this?
No, I haven’t. Is it good? Have you tried it yet?
No, I haven’t tried it yet. Someone needs to try it. I’m going to try it this weekend, probably. But um, that’s my question to you on this is like it’s so obvious that the website builders, the funnel builders are going to have this; you’re and also Shopify launched one, I think, as well; saw Toby tweeted it.
Toby, let me pull it up; Toby, the founder of Shopify, both Toby and uh Harley tweeted it, so you know that it’s like they’re gonna push it; y they’re gonna push it; describe your business and AI; we’ll get you started with just the right design; we have lots more coming on this front; so he’s teasing it; incredibly incredibly excited about how much more accessible entrepreneurship will become due to the power of AI tools. So again, like we talked about competition; you see things like this coming from Shopify, Webflow, um, you still think it’s a good business idea?
100%. I I mean, that’s just Shopify, right? Like think about I mean, I think LeadPages does 50 million a year if I remember correctly; like that means it’s a huge category; like this is a huge category that you can go; this is the same thing; like I mean, there can be Mailchimps and Clavos and uh you know, Kits and uh Beehives and all all of these email service providers, and they can still all be massive companies because it’s such a huge category; this is one of those categories, right? This is the fact that Perspective can come in and in you know, years, bootstrapped, go from zero to 10 million ARR like signals how big this this audience is, right? Um, so again, if and also if the big dogs are doing it, that is a strong signal that people want this, so you I mean, you just got all the validation you need; you have the search volume validation; you’ve got the incumbent validation, and they’re going to move super slow on it. I mean, you can probably like a crack team of two engineers go do this, and then you just run Google ads to it for landing page builder, or you go sponsor YouTubers that run uh that do Google ads videos, right? Like how to do Google ads for real estate agents or whatever, right? You go; they you you pay them to use your tool within their video. By the way, side note for people watching this on YouTube, the Perspective AI website is the most gangster beautiful website I’ve seen in a long time; like they did it ge perfectly; it’s gorgeous; it’s absolutely gorgeous, and look how much video is on this, right? Like it’s 2025; people they don’t people don’t want to read; they want they want these videos. Um, you know, they’re on Instagram stories; going through stories; they’ll they’ll watch videos, and the affinity that you’re going to get; your conversion rate is going to go through the roof, and they do it in a really tasteful way.
You kidding me? The 15-minute express demo popup; beautiful. I’ll I’ll intro I’ll intro you to Neil; you need to you need to have him on; he’s just like they’re so they’re so locked in on this, G; like it would be a great episode.
Okay, cool. We do… all right, you have time for one last uh trend?
Yeah, let’s do it.
Okay. TikTok template trend; 98, 98,000 searchers in the past month, uh, what are you thinking about here?
Yeah, so to me, you had you had Lauren on recently, right? And he was talking about uh basically how they’re using TikTok to get mobile app downloads; I think they went from zero to 100,000 downloads on the App Store in like 15 days if I remember the data, right?
Insane.
Um, and the the opportunity here is that people are trying to find the form or the TikTok templates that are going viral currently. So I think there’s an angle to go and uh build like an email newsletter that’s basically like, hey, here’s the formats that are going viral this week on TikTok, and here’s how you can go and use these for your brand right now, right? Um, so I’d almost just look at like what Jason Levan is doing with MemeLord uh Technologies, I think is the brand name, and they have an email newsletter; like daily, they basically drop like here the viral meme templates that are going viral in the last 24 hours; one-button click, and you can jump into their editor and like make your own version of it. I think it could be the same idea where it’s like, here’s the viral TikTok formats, the templates that are going viral at the moment, and then basically drops them right into it so that they can go and build these, right? Um, that’s how I’m kind of imagining it as the step one; then I mean, it could it could evolve into where it’s like a whole video editor that’s specifically for it, and maybe there’s like a social scheduling application, but I think the first and then my acquisition would be literally like it would just be Twitter threads with like here’s the five formats that are going viral on TW TikTok this week, right? And it’s like boom boom boom, and then it’s like it breaks down each of the formats, and then at the bottom of it, it’s like join my email newsletter for to get these you know, daily or whatever, right? Uh, I I think that that Tomorrow is a company that anybody could go start; you know, crushes on those threads; this dude…
100%. With short; you follow this guy?
Yeah. Yep. No, they do a… so he yeah, he’s doing pretty much what you’re saying, right? He’s going and saying, um, you know, this prayer meditation app is doing a million Mr. 5 million downloads, um, and then usually he he didn’t in this particular thread, but he’ll oh yeah, here this is; he he did do it; he’ll he’ll show what what is the content mix and how they’re doing it; what is the format so that you can go and copy it totally. And just imagine this exact same like template, but the call to action is you know, sub to my email newsletter so so you can get this on a daily basis, right? Then that email list, you go and monetize it; you know, it’s the classic just playbook. Then from there, you could build tech; I mean, you can take it as far as you want, right? Where you go and you build technology on top of it, etc. But I mean, you can make it a paid email newsletter where it’s it’s like the free version is only once a week, and then the paid version is daily.
Yeah, exactly. I think people sleep on paid newsletters.
100%. Dude, I yeah, I stand behind this; I think we talked about it on the on the show at some point uh in the past, but basically redoing Scott’s Cheap Flights but doing it just as an email newsletter. So you can set up alerts on Google Flights for specific airports to other airports, and then anytime that the price drops for a future flight, it’ll email you. So like literally all you’d have to do is put like an email listener on the email for like whatever location you’re trying to fly from; you know, say it’s Seattle, and then you go and like every time that a go you basically do a roundup of all the Google Flights for that day, and then each day you send the flights, right? I think you could charge for this super easily because those flights they’ll only be cheap for like 72 hours, and so basically like people you know, they it’s it’s it’s uh there’s like a time sensitivity to it; also, going just like sucks now; like and so I think because of that, there’s a disruption opportunity, and like I don’t think it’d be crazy; sucks; the name is the brand name; just like you don’t feel anything, right?
Totally. You felt you felt something with Scott’s Cheap Flights; like you kind of resonated. And this is this is exactly how not to brand something in 202…
Totally, totally agree. All right, dude, it’s been a pleasure.
Always a pleasure having you on.
Thanks for hosting, man, like always. I
Zero. Did like I, I, I was ghost on everything, right? And that was, you know, it was intentional. Then we realized, oh, this is this massive leverage point. Like if we go and build this, so it's like, cool, just go to each channel, figure out the game, like right now I'm figuring out LinkedIn. Right? I have no idea how to do LinkedIn, but like I'm almost there from cracking it. Like there's two formats that I'm seeing work: you do a video that's about news, and then you take that news—goes viral every time—and the other side is like, make some huge claim in a long-format post and then have a, a, a, an image that is a, uh, um, vertical aspect ratio. So when somebody's scrolling on their mobile device, it takes the post—takes over their whole screen—with like some huge claim. If you just go to my LinkedIn, you'll see this exact format; those are working. Like that's—but this game is the same for every channel. It's like, figure out what works, do more of what works, and less of what doesn't. You can do, you can build these audiences, dude. It's like 24 months of—that's all it takes. It's not—it's just showing up, right? Like you show up, you're beating 95% of people. And like to be the, to be the best, like to be in the top 1%, all you have to do is just look at what works and do more of that. So all it takes—the place and what works as public—you can see what works. It's crazy. It's crazy. I—it's been funny watching you like grow, Greg, because I feel like all these shows have popped up now that it's the same format. It's like, here's these business, you know, here's startup ideas, here's these business ideas that you can do. And this is like, this is the game, right? Like you invented this new format or remix this, you know, this, this format, and then suddenly it goes viral. And then all these other people go and copy it, and then it's just like, you just do this, do this in every platform where you're trying to build audience.
So totally. And it's, it's a game of constant reinvention. So you have to be okay to switch it up, switch formats, and, uh, and, and that's kind of like Vibe Marketing in a lot of ways, I guess, right? You're like reading vibes to see like, is this, is this format working? Is it not working? And you're kind of iterate on the fly. 100%. Like my, the thing I, there, what I always tell people or like Founders in particular when they're trying to grow companies is like, you are agnostic to what works. Uh, like your job is just to do a bunch of things, see what's performing best, and then just follow that data, right? Like you, you don't have an opinion on it; the data is going to tell you the best outcomes. Your job is to not have an opinion; it's to just let the data speak for itself and follow, you know, keep pulling that thread. So, but I think it's the hardest thing for people; they like want to impose, like I see this all the time where they're like, oh, this content format isn't working on this channel. It's like, of course it's not working on that channel, like you're like, that's like, uh, you know, when the internet first started and they just like move print like on to, to, to, to a website. Like, of course it's not working, right? And what, what, what worked? It was like this new format that was like blog content, and now suddenly, you know, the New York Times is actually making money again because they, they transitioned over—this is a whole other conversation because they're actually a games company, which I find fascinating. Like they're like a media company that sells subscriptions to games, and like that's actually how they make their money. That's a, that's a whole other, you know, rabbit hole that we don't need to go down. My other—quick rabbit hole that I'll just seed people with—is that YC is a YouTube channel, not a startup accelerator. 100%. They're a media company; they're not a media compy. Totally. Um, yeah, but they, but specifically their YouTube channel—I don't know if you've been paying attention—like they've been putting so much effort into growing it, and they're actually doing an amazing job; they're crushing it. They're crushing it; they're absolutely crushing it. No, I say this with like, good on YC, like it's cool that like if I were doing, if I was the CMO of YC, I would be doing exactly what YC is doing. A16Z is also killing it. I think they're doing the game. It's crazy to me, too, that like every VC doesn't have a podcast and an email newsletter. Like, totally insane to me. Insane. Are you doing, dude? It's nuts. They're like, they're like, oh, we, we, we, we naturally get the best Founders, and I'm like, okay, like, like capital is basically a commodity at this point; the only differentiation is going to be like you being, you know, a cult leader personality. And so I, the fact that they're not investing in this is insane. I mean, this, I, we're, uh, working with the, for, for the podcasting agency that I own, like we're working with, uh, some investors on this; they're like, we're working at this finance company, right? And in the last two years, we made the founder like from nobody knows him in the industry to he's famous to the point where like big four banks are trying to sponsor the show, right? Like that is what can happen, but for some reason they're like, oh, no, like we're core man, like we're not going to do this. I'm like, this is, it's just ridiculous to me. So all right, man, well, I appreciate you, and, uh, I'll see you next time. Thank you, brother. We'll talk to you soon. Lat everyone. Peace. [Music]