Side Hustle King: The Most Profitable Business You’ve NEVER Heard Of! | Chris Koerner

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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Jack Selby?

  How did you become known as the side hustle king?

• 0:32Speaker 02

  Probably by starting 80 side hustles.

• 0:34Speaker 03

  I've always said that the overlooked businesses are the ones that are the most profitable.

• 0:39Speaker 02

  Any side hustle can become a full-time business. Anything.

• 0:42Speaker 03

  There is a million ways to make a million bucks. This is a business that nobody talks about.

• 0:46Jack Selby?

  So how much are you making in total from all of these businesses?

• 0:49Speaker 02

  Millions of dollars a year, net to me, personal income.

• 0:52Jack Selby?

  Why do you think most people never even start?

• 0:55Speaker 02

  What do people think about me? That's the number one thing. They need to care less about that than they care about being broke. There has to be a great enough need. I like to say that everyone needs to hit their own personal rock bottom. What do you think could be a death sentence for an entrepreneur? The worst situation we can be in is when our job is just good enough. But sometimes when the boats are burned for us, it can be the best thing that ever happens to us.

• 1:19Jack Selby?

  And what qualities make the best business?

• 1:22Speaker 02

  It comes down to...

• 1:29Jack Selby?

  Chris Koerner, thank you so much for coming on the Iced Coffee Hour.

• 1:32Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:33Jack Selby?

  So you have some pretty crazy statistics with all of the different businesses that you run. But first, we have to ask you, is passive income a scam?

• 1:41Speaker 02

  No. There's just a big asterisk by it. You have to work your way up to passive income, which takes a lot longer than most people think.

• 1:49Jack Selby?

  So it takes active work to then create passive income at some point in the future?

• 1:53Speaker 02

  Yes, or money, or a lot of money.

• 1:55Jack Selby?

  Why do people think it is a scam?

• 1:58Speaker 02

  Because there's a lot of course creators that make a lot of money by putting those two words in the name of their course.

• 2:03Jack Selby?

  So there's a lot of passive income stuff that isn't actually passive income.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, because the click through rates and all the metrics show that it converts better if you call it that, but it's not actually that.

• 2:13Jack Selby?

  So how many businesses have you built?

• 2:15Speaker 02

  Over 80.

• 2:16Jack Selby?

  How many have failed?

• 2:17Speaker 02

  Well, do you define like me pivoting away from it as a failure? Or like probably less than five have like properly failed.

• 2:26Jack Selby?

  So why spend your time building all of these businesses when you could spend that time building one massive one?

• 2:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, because it's really fun. And I, no one will be able to prove that I made the wrong choice, right? I can't A B test my life and say, Chris, if you just want to focus on that one, like, who knows? There's too many variables. But what I do know is that like, I don't want to report to a board. I don't want a bunch of shareholders. I don't want to take a company public. I don't want to be in meetings all day or Zooms all day. I don't want to be away from my family. And to build a billion dollar business, I feel like I would need to do those things.

• 2:58Jack Selby?

  And what's the biggest business you currently run? And how much does that make?

• 3:03Speaker 02

  Let's see, I have a portfolio of RV parks that I'm a partner in. That is worth, in about a month or two, it'll be worth $250 million. I'm one of many partners in that, but that's the biggest asset I have.

• 3:17Jack Selby?

  So how much are you making in total from all of these businesses?

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Millions of dollars a year, net to me, personal income. Between two and six, depends on the year.

• 3:25Jack Selby?

  How is there so much variance in your income? That's crazy. I feel like very few people we talk to have a 3X variance.

• 3:32Speaker 02

  It just depends on the year. It depends on, do I exit something? Is there a big distribution one year? Did something fail the year before? Did I have a good year in some, a bad year in others? It's just all across the board. I've had multiple years in a row with zero dollars of income. So if you would have asked me a few years ago, it would have been much, much lower number.

• 3:50Jack Selby?

  I could be getting the numbers wrong here, but if I'm doing some reverse math, if you run 80 businesses, but you can make $2 million a year, then wouldn't the average business be like $25,000 a year?

• 3:59Speaker 02

  I've started 80 businesses. I don't have 80 today.

• 4:01Jack Selby?

  So how many do you currently operate?

• 4:03Speaker 02

  Like nine to 11.

• 4:05Jack Selby?

  Nine to 11.

• 4:06Speaker 02

  What you call like a business versus an investment, it's, it's kind of fluid, yeah.

• 4:09Jack Selby?

  Okay, that makes sense.

• 4:10Speaker 02

  Call it 10.

• 4:10Jack Selby?

  And so how many businesses have you exited?

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Less than 10. Most of the 80 businesses that I've started, I've just moved away from.

• 4:18Jack Selby?

  Why would you move away from a profitable business?

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Um, opportunity costs. Sometimes they weren't profitable, right? They weren't failing. I could see like the path to scale, but shiny object syndrome, ADHD, opportunity costs, whatever you want to call it. I just decided to put my energy and efforts elsewhere.

• 4:33Jack Selby?

  And how did you get started doing all this? What sparked the interest?

• 4:36Speaker 02

  I grew up poor and I lived across the street from a golf course. And these golf balls would fly into my yard. And for whatever reason, I had the thought to sell them, to sell them to golfers. And so I lived on this busy road um in Logan, Utah. And I put up this big piece of plywood, I leaned it against my mailbox and it said, use golf balls, three for a dollar. And at eight, nine, 10 years old, um, I would just haggle with these golfers and just sell them used golf balls so I could pay the bills.

• 5:04Jack Selby?

  Did they know you were so young when they would show up and see the sign?

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Probably not. Um, looking back, I think it's kind of crazy because I have a nine year old. I mean, I would let him do that, but I just can't imagine him doing that. Like talking with 35 year old golfers about like, can you do four for a dollar like? But that's what I was doing.

• 5:23Jack Selby?

  Why were you different than your son in that capacity?

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Well, my son didn't grow up poor. Um, and I, to me, it was just like a necessity, right? A lot of times people ask me like, why are you an entrepreneur? Why do you start businesses? And they want like this big like philosophical answer. And it was just like, I just wanted to be able to have money for a yearbook or a bike or candy. It was just a necessity.

• 5:49Jack Selby?

  A lot of people are going to hear your story of selling golf balls when you were young. And they're not going to be able to relate to that at all, but they know that they want to be an entrepreneur. And so there's going to be like this, this weird dissonance with most of the viewers where they're like, tuning in because they want to be a business owner, but they're like, I, I have not been that person. What would you say if they could look inwards are the main traits that would be indicators of them being a successful entrepreneur?

• 6:13Speaker 02

  There has to be a great enough need, right? Because some people just like the idea of entrepreneurship. But then they try it, they taste it, or they have a good job that pays them well. And they just, it doesn't give them energy because they don't really have a need. So they, they kind of need to be at like their own personal rock bottom. I like to say that everyone needs to hit their own personal rock bottom. Right. And that looks different to different people, but there needs to be a big enough need there. And they need to have a bias for action, like they need to just be impatient. Impatience can be a superpower. They need to just, just do things like not just like research endlessly, but like be willing to go out there and like, try to get a customer. And if they're not willing to do that, then they probably don't want to be an entrepreneur.

• 6:55Jack Selby?

  And then what personality trait do you think could be a death sentence for an entrepreneur?

• 7:00Speaker 02

  I think anyone can be an entrepreneur, not that anyone should.

• 7:04Jack Selby?

  Anyone can?

• 7:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:06Jack Selby?

  I don't agree with that.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Really?

• 7:07Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 7:08Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, I think some people are just naturally can't do it. Or they're way too impatient. Well, when Jack talks about qualities, the first thing that comes to my mind is impatience.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:17Graham Stephan?

  And wanting something too fast.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  I think that we are survivors as humans, right? We haven't had to survive in centuries. But if we truly had to, if, if I'm a father and I have to feed my family and there are no jobs, I would, if I didn't have an entrepreneurial bone in my body, I would find a way to make it work, to feed my family. I might not like it, it might not be my true nature, I might be terrible at it. But I think that everyone has the capacity. I don't think everyone should. I don't think everyone would like it. I think most people would not like it. It's not as free as people would like to think. But maybe I oversimplify it because it's all I know.

• 7:53Jack Selby?

  No, I think that's, that's a better justification is like, okay, everyone's sure they may have the capacity. Like if they, if it was that or death, then yeah, I would assume people can find a way to spin up some bucks to continue living. But also like, would they end up living a fruitful, successful life? I would say not many people have that ability.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  It's all I know. So it looks easy to me, it feels easy. It's all I've ever done. And so I tend to oversimplify it, but.

• 8:19Graham Stephan?

  How do you scale up from golf balls though? Like you're making money as a kid. How do you turn that into all of these different businesses?

• 8:26Speaker 02

  At 11, I moved away from Utah. I moved away from the golf course, I moved from Utah to Florida. And I just worked odd jobs. I wasn't even an entrepreneur. It just kind of went dormant, right? I waited tables, I mowed lawns, whatever it took to, to make money. Um, my parents got divorced at thirteen. My mom, um, raised by a single mom. She was a waitress. She busts, she waited tables at this Mexican restaurant. I bust tables. And then everything changed when I went and served a two-year mission for my church. I went to Hungary. I learned Hungarian and I knocked doors and I approached people on the street as an extreme introvert for two years. And that just like completely rewired my brain to make me embrace failure, embrace embarrassment and,

• 9:11Speaker 02

  and just not care anymore.

• 9:12Graham Stephan?

  What sort of failure did you see knocking doors?

• 9:15Speaker 02

  Everything. Like we were selling Jesus. We were teaching people about our religion. And in a post-communist European country, in most countries that doesn't go over well. In Hungary, it especially didn't. It was especially difficult.

• 9:28Graham Stephan?

  And what did that teach you about people going door to door like that?

• 9:31Speaker 02

  It made me grateful for America, honestly, because these people, that's all they knew. They had lived in like this communist society for decades and all they knew was darkness. There was no hope. And so it didn't like make me a pessimist. I'm an optimist.

• 9:46Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  It made me grateful for America. And so to answer your question about how do you go from, you know, selling golf balls as a ten-year-old to eighty businesses, I came home with like no fear of failure, no fear of rejection. And that entrepreneurial gene that was, you know, implanted in me at age ten was reawakened. And I came home just like ready to take on the world.

• 10:06Graham Stephan?

  How long did it take you to get over the fear of knocking on someone's door?

• 10:10Speaker 02

  This might surprise some people, but for the entire two years of my mission, every time I knocked on a door, I would kind of silently hope they didn't answer. I never got over it. Like it was hard the entire time, right? Now, when they rejected me, I said, no, that got a lot easier. I didn't take it personally after a week, maybe. But I never like, I never wanted them to answer the door. But then when they did, I would go all in. You know what I'm saying?

• 10:37Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  It's kind of like you, you don't want to go to the gym, but you go anyway and you're glad you did when you're done, but.

• 10:43Graham Stephan?

  I had a similar occurrence. I did a video where we would go door to door, window washing. And I hated it. Going door to door was so scary for me to knock on a door and feel like I'm intruding. I'm bothering them. And every single time I thought the same thing. I hope they don't answer.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. I did the same thing for a video like a month ago and it was no different. I was, it was just cringe. It was. It was bad.

• 11:06Graham Stephan?

  But when you start your first big businesses that start making money, how much did that cost you? And what gave you that idea?

• 11:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I was a student at the University of Alabama, and I had learned about another business that was fixing iPhones from a retail location. And they were, they were like bragging to the local news that they were making 20,000 a month. And I'd been reading these business books. I'd been like looking for my thing to start. And for whatever reason, I said, I can do that. I can fix phones. And so right around the same time, one of my classmates gave me a broken iPhone. And I saw like a flyer on the bulletin board for a guy that fixed iPhones. And so I went to his dorm room and I had him fix my iPhone in front of me. And I asked him all kinds of questions. And then I went and signed a five year lease on, on a store.

• 11:51Graham Stephan?

  How did you sign a five year lease on a storefront with no income?

• 11:54Speaker 02

  So I went to all my previous bosses. Cause I didn't grow up around wealthy people. My parents had no money. And I basically said, hey, Danny, like, I want to start this business fixing iPhones. This was 2010, so iPhones were still very new. No one thought it was viable, right? And the only data point I had was one news article I read about some guys, right? But he's like, no, I went to my boss at the Thai restaurant where I was waiting tables. He said, no. Everyone I knew said, no. Until I went to a guy that I met on my mission in Hungary. He was Austrian, but he was living in Hungary. And I knew he owned a few businesses and I told him and he's like, no question. How much do you need? And I had some Pell Grants. I had some credit card advances, but I needed 20,000.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  And he gave me the 20,000 and, and I put my Pell Grants in, my credit card advance and started the business.

• 12:42Graham Stephan?

  Why could you not just do that from your dorm?

• 12:45Speaker 02

  That's what everyone told me to do, right? And that would have been wise, but I looked at it as every day that I don't open, I'm losing money. Like I'm effectively losing money. And so if I start small and scale this, I'm losing money. I want to be at scale now. And I did do some research. So I, I scraped every single iPhone repair shop in the country with some random piece of software I found online. And I learned that a city of 100,000 could support about two iPhone repair stores. And the city I lived in, coincidentally, had a hundred thousand people and there were no stores. And it was, it was a similar demographic city as Baton Rouge, where Louisiana State was.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  So I thought, okay, thirty thousand students, they're all gonna get iPhones or smartphones. There's no one here fulfilling this need. I just knew like this will work, this works in all these other cities, it will work here.

• 13:38Graham Stephan?

  And how much did you make from that?

• 13:39Speaker 02

  Um, I sold it a few years later for a million bucks, right at a million bucks.

• 13:44Graham Stephan?

  Who bought it?

• 13:45Speaker 02

  Um, a private, just a guy that wanted to quit his W two. He had a six-figure job and he wanted to own his own business.

• 13:51Graham Stephan?

  And you just had one storefront?

• 13:52Speaker 02

  We had four.

• 13:54Graham Stephan?

  Okay, so you had expanded and how many in that city?

• 13:57Speaker 02

  Um, one, and it's still there, fifteen years later, that store is still there.

• 14:00Graham Stephan?

  So how much did you make in your first year running this iPhone screen fixing business?

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Not much at all.

• 14:05Graham Stephan?

  No?

• 14:06Speaker 02

  No, the second year, maybe sixty, seventy thousand. And then I partnered with another business and they took over it. I owned a third at that point. And then they added one or two more stores and sold it.

• 14:17Graham Stephan?

  So why do you think most people never even start?

• 14:20Speaker 02

  They're just afraid of what people will think or say. And people don't care. That's the whole secret is people don't care about you.

• 14:26Graham Stephan?

  Do you think it is that or do you think people just overthink?

• 14:29Speaker 02

  They do that too.

• 14:29Graham Stephan?

  What they want.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  Absolutely, yeah. They get their dopamine from research. Cause it feels good to like crunch numbers, make spreadsheets, copy the sheet, make this scenario, this scenario. It feels really good and we're getting dopamine from that. But we need to get our dopamine from action, right? From calling and trying to get a customer, trying to get a sale, like trying to call and negotiate a lease. We get dopamine from both things, but the, the former is easier, the research side of things. So they get stuck in that loop forever until they get bored with it and then they move on. And then they tell people, ah, it just didn't work out.

• 15:03Graham Stephan?

  So how do you encourage somebody to start if they're either overthinking the idea? Or afraid of approval?

• 15:10Speaker 02

  I was afraid of what people thought as well. And so I did something kind of dumb. I, I put like a false constraint on myself and I was like, I'm not ever gonna post about this to Facebook. Because if I have to, what I told myself was if I have to start a business that relies on my friends and family, then they might not scale. You don't have a business. But what the real reason was, was I don't want people to see what I'm doing because I might fail. I might not do it. I don't want to be publicly accountable. Right? So everything I did, I did without the help of my friends and family who were willing to help. They were willing to be my first customer, right? But I didn't use that. So people need to like, just let go of that and be willing to ask for help from their friends and family to be their first customers. And they need to do something every single day to keep the ball moving.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  Because we, we focus a lot on focus, right? That's the question everyone asks me like, what if you just want to done one business? What if you focus? Well, what happened if you focus? But we don't focus on momentum. We don't talk enough about momentum. I think momentum is everything. And if we keep momentum going, then it doesn't matter if we focus or not. We're going to win if we just keep going. Right? In my opinion, compounding does not care if we're doing one thing or multiple things because if we're getting positive signals from an idea, we're not going to be distracted by other ideas. The distraction is a signal that something isn't right with this idea.

• 16:31Jack Selby?

  But that would require a good idea in the first place. What would you say is more important for someone looking to become an entrepreneur or make a lot of money in business? Should they try to come up with the idea first or hone their skills first?

• 16:42Graham Stephan?

  Now, obviously, spring could be a great time to focus on your health as you're getting ready for the summer. Getting outside and prioritizing nutrition are incredibly important, but it can't feel impossible to fit into a busy schedule.

• 16:53Jack Selby?

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• 17:00Graham Stephan?

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• 17:11Jack Selby?

  The ready to drink is the most convenient option. It's a complete meal with 35 grams of protein, 27 essential vitamins and minerals. It's gluten free, contains no artificial sweeteners, colors, or flavors, and requires zero prep while still being filling.

• 17:24Graham Stephan?

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• 17:29Jack Selby?

  The Black Edition Powder works extremely Well, for days at home or when you want something more customizable, it has 40 grams of protein per serving, mixes super easily and can be blended with ingredients like fruit or milk, depending on your preference.

• 17:41Graham Stephan?

  Having both options really just helps keep the routine consistent. You got the powder for more flexible or customized meals and they're ready to drink for busier days.

• 17:49Jack Selby?

  It's just a really simple way to stay on track with daily protein and overall nutrition without needing to plan out every single meal. Seriously, guys, I absolutely love Huell. I'm not kidding. I drink one every single day. The reason is because, one, I want the protein and two, I don't keep track of all of my micronutrients. And there's basically everything in Huell. And so I'll drink it, I feel great, get some protein and I love it.

• 18:09Graham Stephan?

  So if you want to try it out for yourself, you can get 15% off at Huell by using our code Iced15 at huell.com/iced15. This offer is for new customers. Thank you again to Huell for partnering with us and supporting the show.

• 18:21Jack Selby?

  What would you say is more important for someone looking to become an entrepreneur or make a lot of money in business? Should they try to come up with the idea first or hone their skills first?

• 18:29Speaker 02

  I think they should try to find a customer first, a paying customer on any idea. Just steal an idea, honestly, like a burger restaurant. People try to think of a new idea. New ideas are more likely to fail than anything because it's new. I want an idea with precedent, right? I want a roadmap of someone that's gone before me and done that. And then I just want to copy that. So I think that's what people should focus on is taking another idea that meshes with their background. Maybe like their college major had something to do with it or their previous job or their passion or something. Some idea that they've seen out there in the market that looks interesting to them and they should try to find a customer there.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  And they'll learn so much more in the effort of finding a customer than they would in the effort of trying to research that idea forever.

• 19:18Graham Stephan?

  And at what point do you decide to cut the idea that maybe this is not working?

• 19:23Speaker 02

  That's an excellent question. So that answer for me is different than for others. For me, if two weeks have elapsed and I'm still thinking about it, I can go into bed, I'm on a walk and there's like, there's something, there's really something to that because I come across a ton of ideas on a daily basis. And so that idea has to compete with all kinds of others coming into my brain, right? So for me, two to three weeks is about the test that I give it. But for the average person,

• 19:50Speaker 02

  They have this thing called product market fit, which I'm sure you guys are familiar with. And a normal business, let's call it a business or a business idea, feels like pushing a boulder up a hill, right? It's exhausting, it's hard. We acquire two customers, we lose one. We acquire three, we lose two. That's normal. That's okay, right? But 5% of the time, you've got product market fit, where instead of pushing that boulder up a hill, you're sprinting down a hill. And the boulder represents demand, customers, right? Money. And they're chasing you. You can't even sleep because you're fulfilling orders, right? You just, you just find the sweet spot in the market. The pricing, the offer, it is just all aligns and you have product market fit, right? That is a beautiful thing.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  Like, that is when you should not have shiny object syndrome. And you won't. Like, just by default of the idea being so successful, you won't be looking around. You'll be figuring out how to fulfill these orders, right? It's then when you should not look around. But if it's the normal thing and you're pushing a boulder up a hill and you still have shiny object syndrome, it doesn't mean you should just chase the first idea. Cause that boulder, like you could get over the hill and you could find product market fit. Keep pushing it. But also listen to those signals. Because if something sounds like a good idea to us, it's for a reason. And so it, it might sound woo woo on the surface, but like, we need to get to the bottom of like, why that idea sounds interesting to us. And then maybe spend a little bit of time just kind of exploring it a little bit.

• 21:17Graham Stephan?

  You probably get pitched so many ideas. What are some of the common ideas that you hear that are just a waste of time? Like, a lot of times, I, like, the first thing that comes to mind for me is always like, drop shipping, or like, Amazon FBA, or like, things like this that are so saturated. It's just not worth anybody's time.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think that with the right distribution, the right marketing, any idea could work. Like, literally, any business idea could work.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  If I were to think of the dumbest idea, like, met like, a Hello Kitty themed mousetrap, right? Just objectively dumb. And if I were to tweet about that, I might get zero customers, right? If Elon Musk were to retweet me, I would get some customers. Because it's more distribution, that's it. It's not suddenly a good idea, right? So. Um, I think that people should spend less time on the ideation and more time on the distribution strategy, more time trying to find customers. And if they do that, then a bad idea can become a good idea.

• 22:25Graham Stephan?

  And how do you test that idea to make sure there's enough demand?

• 22:29Speaker 02

  Facebook ads, Facebook groups, Facebook Marketplace, Meta Ads, Instagram Ads, short form video, Facebook posts.

• 22:36Graham Stephan?

  And what are you doing? You're, you're running an ad to a landing page and then seeing if they just put their email address in?

• 22:42Speaker 02

  You don't even need to go that far.

• 22:43Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  You could just post your idea to Facebook Marketplace. It doesn't need to be a product idea. It could be a service idea. Post it to Facebook Marketplace, post another variation of it with a different price point or a different title and just see how many impressions each one gets. And then you got one signal. You're like only 5% of the way there. Then you just do it again. You change the price point, you change the picture, you change some variable, leave the other ones the same and just keep testing. And by the end of a week, you're gonna have a really good idea if that idea is worth anything or not.

• 23:14Graham Stephan?

  How difficult is it to be decent at Facebook ads?

• 23:17Speaker 02

  It's not that difficult to be okay at it. You watch a few YouTube videos, play around with it for a few hours and you're probably, you're where you need to be to post ads and start spending money and start seeing some signals that look promising or not.

• 23:32Graham Stephan?

  Most people seem to wanna do this for the money, but do you find that there's an underlying reason beyond the money that someone wants to take on a side hustle or try to get passive income? Seems like in a lot of these cases, they just want time.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they don't wanna be told what to do. They probably had a crappy boss. They, they just wanna own their time and they wanna be able to provide for their family. I mean, the American dream is ownership in all its forms, whether that's ownership of a house or of your time or of your idea or money, financial situation.

• 24:01Graham Stephan?

  What do you think of The Four Hour Work Week?

• 24:03Speaker 02

  That book changed my life.

• 24:05Graham Stephan?

  Do you think it's possible?

• 24:06Speaker 02

  Absolutely, 100%.

• 24:09Graham Stephan?

  Have you seen it in real life, someone working four hours a week and making that much money?

• 24:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. Like if I wanted to work four hours a week, I could and I would make really good money. But I, my work is my passion. Like I love working. You guys love working. It's fun to me. So I'll never retire.

• 24:26Jack Selby?

  Do you think though, that if you only worked four hours a week, that after maybe a year, someone else would take over that spot? Who is putting in the time and the effort?

• 24:35Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. Yeah. And I think the same thing about remote work versus in person. I think if two companies are selling the same product or service, one is in person, one is remote, the in-person company wins. So I look at that as the same principle.

• 24:48Jack Selby?

  So if in-person is so successful, why do some of the biggest companies not demand in-person work?

• 24:53Speaker 02

  I don't think they agree with me, honestly. I think that they like good is the enemy to great and they think they're, they're doing fine remote. So they're okay with that.

• 25:01Jack Selby?

  So you demand all of your companies to be in-person?

• 25:03Speaker 02

  Uh, no, I don't because I, I'm not trying to build a world beating company. Like I, I know my companies would do better if I were in-person, but I've got really good employees that were, are remote and they don't wanna move and I'd rather keep them. And I don't want to go into the office every day. Anyway, I work from home.

• 25:22Jack Selby?

  But you're saying if all of those employees were in the same place with you, then the businesses would be more successful?

• 25:27Speaker 02

  A hundred percent.

• 25:28Jack Selby?

  What's the biggest advantage that that gives you? Just being in-person?

• 25:32Speaker 02

  It's hard to quantify like those water cooler conversations or just being able to go right down the hall and talk to someone. Because if I needed like a file from you and we were in the same office.

• 25:44Speaker 00

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• 26:13Speaker 02

  And I just went down your, your, uh, into your office to ask for the file. We'd probably start talking about something else. I'm like, oh, what are you working on? What's out on your whiteboard? And we would just start talking and amazing, beautiful things come out of those conversations. I've seen it. I've, I've had businesses where I've gone into the office every day and it's incredibly fulfilling to do things together in person. And you, like, that is just my, a soapbox of mine. You cannot replicate.

• 26:37Jack Selby?

  I agree. It also lowers the bar for what makes something conversation worthy. So for example, if I have a problem that comes up, I'm not going to call Graham and bother him if he's not here at the, the studio, like, working.

• 26:48Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 26:48Jack Selby?

  Just to try to, you know, workshop the idea, come to a quicker conclusion, or maybe I won't even come to a conclusion at all. Just stave off the problem, push it off, push it off. But if Graham's there, then I'm like, hey, by the way, you know, what do you think about this? Just lowering the bar for what's worth bringing up. And then we solve the problem right then and there. At what point would you say you became rich?

• 27:06Speaker 02

  My late twenties.

• 27:07Jack Selby?

  And what caused that?

• 27:08Speaker 02

  My second real business. So I had my iPhone repair business. I ran that for two years and then right at the end of year two, I merged with another company that basically took it over. And I still had a third ownership stake in it. The day after I merged, I started a business that started selling iPhone parts and recycling iPhone parts. It was called LCD Cycle and we, we did 28,000 our first month, 60,000 our second, 150,000 our third month. And we ended up doing over 2 million the first year and we doubled every year for five years.

• 27:42Jack Selby?

  Was that the easiest business you ever started?

• 27:44Speaker 02

  Hmm. That's a good question.

• 27:46Jack Selby?

  Cause to make close to $30,000 in the very first month of operations, like that's crazy.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:51Jack Selby?

  And you seem to be, you know, have your finger on the pulse of that market.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, when you say easy, it wasn't easy operationally, but it was the second, like, most successful business I had started in a short amount of time. Does that make sense?

• 28:05Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  It was like the, the second most successful business I had gotten from zero to a million in a short amount of time.

• 28:11Jack Selby?

  Hmm. And why would you say you became rich then?

• 28:13Speaker 02

  Because we had a lot of free cash flow. I was in my mid twenties and we were netting 700,000 to a million dollars a year. And I was distributing most of that to myself.

• 28:25Jack Selby?

  Did that make you happier?

• 28:26Speaker 02

  What made me happy was. Showing to my wife that I I could do it. It wasn't the money. My wife is incredibly supportive, incredibly patient. Anything I've ever wanted to do, she's like, I trust you, go for it, right? And even when things didn't go well, she never had like a snide comment, nothing, not even once. So being able to say, hey babe, like, look at the bank account. That made me happy because she's never asked for handbags or nice things or anything, right?

• 28:53Jack Selby?

  But did you get her one?

• 28:55Speaker 02

  She doesn't want, today she doesn't want.

• 28:56Jack Selby?

  But you didn't ball out at all? You're in your twenties, making a ton of money?

• 28:59Speaker 02

  We ball out by, we have a night, we got a really nice house that we still live in today. And we go on really nice trips with our family.

• 29:06Jack Selby?

  Okay.

• 29:06Speaker 02

  And we eat, we're foodies, so we eat really well. But we don't, we don't have like fancy cars and clothes and handbags or anything.

• 29:13Jack Selby?

  How did you become known as the Side Hustle King?

• 29:15Speaker 02

  Probably by starting eighty side hustles, eighty businesses.

• 29:18Jack Selby?

  Who gave you that name? Did you name yourself?

• 29:21Speaker 02

  No, I didn't. That was Ben Levy. He's friends with the, he's business partners with the My First Million guys. And I think he came up with that. And then they titled one of their videos with me as that, and then it kind of stuck. I actually just spent four grand last week on sidehustleking.com. I just wanted to own the domain. I don't know what I'll do with it, but.

• 29:39Jack Selby?

  But you wouldn't even consider what you do side hustles? You'd say they're more like businesses?

• 29:43Speaker 02

  I kind of like cringe at that, at that phrase because anything can scale. Any side hustle can become a full-time business, like anything. I will go to my grave in saying that. So, yeah, it's just, I don't know. It seems kind of like a negative connotation to me.

• 29:59Jack Selby?

  Are there any true side hustles?

• 30:01Speaker 02

  Like something that can't scale?

• 30:02Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  I don't think so. I mean, a lemonade stand can scale. Anything. Used golf balls can scale.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  Cause we have the internet, like we have unlimited distribution.

• 30:13Jack Selby?

  What did you crave so much to continue working in business and to get started in business in the first place? Like, what did you feel like you were missing in your life?

• 30:20Speaker 02

  We, I was poor. I was always poor and I hated it. My best friend, one of my best friends was wealthy. And I lived in a very middle-class area, right? Titusville, Florida, you can go look it up, it's very middle-class, if not lower-middle-class. I was below-middle-class. My close friend was, um, my close friend and my boss, my wrestling partner's dad. They were both business owners and they did very well. One lived on a river, one lived in a really nice house and. It was just this weird dichotomy for me to be poor. Like, I never had name brand shoes. My shoes came from Payless, hand me downs. I had these jeans that would get holes in them. My mom would cut them off, hem them and turn them into shorts. Like, I went back and looked at my school pictures as a kid.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  And you can just see in my picture, I was poor. And I just didn't like, I didn't like it. I didn't like not having money for a field trip, like $35 for a field trip or a yearbook. And so I just, I wanted to grab that myself and fix it myself.

• 31:20Jack Selby?

  But did you have an abundance or scarcity mentality around money? Cause it seems like you have an abundance mentality, like you can make money wherever.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:27Jack Selby?

  Money is everywhere.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  I think definitely abundance. I know I have abundance mentality now. Back then I didn't know what it was, but if I had to label it, it would be abundance. Because I saw what was possible in my friends.

• 31:38Jack Selby?

  Have you noticed that most of the successful entrepreneurs have an abundance mentality towards money or scarcity one?

• 31:43Speaker 02

  A thousand percent abundance.

• 31:44Jack Selby?

  So what do you think is so important about an abundance mentality for an entrepreneur? And also, if you have a scarcity mentality, what is the advantages that can come with that?

• 31:53Speaker 02

  I don't know if I can think of any. I mean, honestly.

• 31:57Jack Selby?

  Maybe being a little conservative on things. Tight with the budget. Maybe not over-expanding, not over-indulging. There's gotta be a few things.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  That's true. I don't know if I see that as scarcity though. Maybe that's just like being financially conservative. Like, I think you could have an abundance mentality and be frugal, right?

• 32:17Jack Selby?

  Yeah, probably.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  That was a two-part question though. The second part was.

• 32:21Jack Selby?

  Yeah, like, why do you think the abundance mentality is so important for people that are growing in business?

• 32:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think what people don't understand is that when a new entrant joins an industry, in most cases, not all cases, it grows the entire industry, right? The reason that some of the world's best venture capitalists passed on investing in Shopify, because back in the early 2000s, Shopify's total addressable market was like $10 billion, right? And so they said, okay, Shopify owns 50% of this market. It's a $5 billion outcome. Their valuation today is 500 million. Is 10x really worth it for us at a series C? And they passed. What they didn't know was that Shopify's market would become a trillion dollar market.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  And now they own 15% of it there, which is 50 times bigger than they thought the entire market was. So to me, that stat right there is the abundance mentality, right? When you join a market, it grows the market. I knew a woman who made a million dollars decorating porches with pumpkins, right? That's all she does. October hits and she's, she charges $700 to put fancy pumpkins on a porch. And I posted about her and it went mega viral.

• 33:34Graham Stephan?

  I think I might have seen that on Twitter.

• 33:35Speaker 02

  You probably did.

• 33:36Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  Everywhere.

• 33:37Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 33:37Speaker 02

  20 million views, right? And now, like, she was literally the only person decorating porches with pumpkins. Now there are hundreds and her business is thriving. Because now people know I can pay someone to make my porch look awesome. So that helped her. But most people I reach out to, I'm like, hey, let me profile you. Like, no, no, no, I don't, I don't want people to copy me. But they don't realize it, it doesn't work like that.

• 33:58Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, the Christmas lights is another huge opportunity. Like, we pay, I think it's like 800 bucks.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:04Graham Stephan?

  For them to put up the lights and then take them down. And they're doing the entire neighborhood.

• 34:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:09Graham Stephan?

  So you could imagine like 150 homes at $800 each.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:14Graham Stephan?

  It's a lot. It's a lot of money.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:16Graham Stephan?

  For a seasonal business.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  Your, to your example, Elon Musk, right? Very abundance mindset. And he wants Mercedes, Ford, Toyota to make electric cars. He wants his market share to shrink because he knows he'll sell net more cars if they own 40% of the EV market as opposed to 60% because they're that much more normalized. That's the abundance mindset.

• 34:38Graham Stephan?

  So what do you think of the term side hustle? It, it doesn't sound like anything of what you're doing is really a side hustle. It just seems like starting a small business and expanding that.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I think any business can be proved out as a side hustle. I don't think people should just outright quit their jobs to test something.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  There's probably an exception out there, but basically, anything can be proven without having to quit your job and go all in. So if someone hears side hustle and they think that's my escape hatch from the nine to five, like, that's what I need, a side hustle. And that's what they get from that term, then I love it. If it enables more entrepreneurs, then I love the term. But I just don't want it to be seen as like derogatory or demeaning.

• 35:22Graham Stephan?

  How many people are just better off, though, working harder at the job they currently have instead of doing side hustles or side businesses?

• 35:30Speaker 02

  Eighty to ninety percent of people, maybe. Yeah.

• 35:34Jack Selby?

  The worst part about losing your wallet is not even the cards. It's the next three hours of your life, calling banks, canceling everything, and trying to remember what was in it. And I've honestly been through that way too many times.

• 35:43Graham Stephan?

  No joke, since I've known Jack, he's probably lost his wallet at least about twenty or fifty times. And that's why we're partnering with Magback and their smart wallet.

• 35:52Jack Selby?

  Magback's smart wallet has Apple Find My built into it. So if you leave it somewhere, you open up your phone, tap it in Find My, and it plays a sound right where it is, and it will show you exactly where it is as well. So I was just at Coachella, and it would have been an absolute nightmare to lose my wallet. And knowing that I lose my things all the time, I had to make sure that I had my Magback smart wallet with me.

• 36:11Graham Stephan?

  It holds up to nine cards and cash, snaps magnetically to your phone, and is super slim. It's really nice because I hate when wallets are bulky and it just doesn't fit right in your pocket. But with Magback, you could carry a lot and you forget it's even there.

• 36:24Jack Selby?

  The Magback wallet also charges wirelessly. It's made of premium leather, doubles as a kickstand, and is compatible with QI wireless chargers, so you don't sacrifice any MagSafe capabilities.

• 36:34Graham Stephan?

  And in addition to wallets, Magback offers minimalistic phone cases, multi-chargers, wireless chargers, Tesla rim cases, and key tags.

• 36:42Jack Selby?

  Seriously, guys, if you're anything like me and you lose stuff all the time, I could not recommend this wallet more. Obviously, it doesn't stick like that, but it's very sticky, holds all the cards you need it to, super sleek. I genuinely recommend it. The link is down below in the description. Use our code for a discount. And honestly, this is just one of those things that, once you get it, you wonder how you live life without it.

• 37:01Graham Stephan?

  Seriously, don't wait until you lose your wallet to get this. Now is the time, while you still know where your wallet is. And I've used this on more occasions than I care to admit. So again, check out the link down below in the description. Get one for yourself. Enjoy. Thank you so much. Now let's get back to the episode.

• 37:17Jack Selby?

  At what point should you decide to quit your job to pursue your side hustle?

• 37:22Speaker 02

  If you can see the path to scale, right? If you're not making enough money yet to to replace your income, but you see what it would take. For instance, you're running Facebook ads. And let's say you have a pressure washing business and you're making $10,000 a month in your full time job and you're making $3,000 a month on the side in your pressure washing business. And you're tinkering with Facebook ads, you're tinkering and finally you're like, oh, I got it. I just need a 15 second video that leads to an instant form. That is the winning combo for my industry and my local market, right? I'm gonna let Facebook decide who to show it to, but it's gotta be a vertical video. It's gotta be an instant form. And I know that I close 30% of those leads and they cost $20 each to acquire, right?

• 38:07Speaker 02

  So they can see the path. And then they even test it. They're like, all right, I'm doing $50 a day budget. Let's do a hundred dollars a day. All right. Instead of costing me $50 to acquire a customer, it costs me 60, but my average job size is 700. I'm still very profitable. I can see the path to scale here, but it's kind of a chicken and egg situation. I don't want to increase my ad spend before I quit because I don't have time to do all these jobs or even quote all these jobs. But they know at this point, like if I quit, I can see the path to scale. I can replace my income with this one marketing channel.

• 38:39Graham Stephan?

  See, I've always felt that the ideal time to go all in on something else is when it's consistently making more than you could make from your day job. And once that becomes stable enough to rely on, then at that point, I think it might be worth it.

• 38:54Speaker 02

  That's certainly the better route, right? What I say is maybe more approachable to more people because I think it's a lot harder to get to that point to where your pressure washing business on the nights and weekends is making 11,000 a month and your job is making 10. I just think it's harder to get there. In a perfect world, that is superior.

• 39:13Graham Stephan?

  Yeah. So for someone who wants to start, where do you recommend they begin? Does it start with a good idea? How do they find that idea? How do they make that into a reality? How do they know that they know enough? Or know what they don't know?

• 39:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I think if someone is asking themselves that question, they probably already have some idea, right? A lot of times we get business ideas from things that we see in our job. Like we see a vendor that's just making a lot of money. They're like, huh. I know how to do what the vendor is doing. That's where we should start. Like, start with an idea that you already have. At that point, do whatever you can do to find a paying customer as soon as possible. Or free, an unpaid customer. Someone to say yes to your product or service, whether they pay you or not. Because that is going to be as hard as finding the next 20 customers. But it's going to give you so much more motivation and knowledge and skills than just endlessly researching that idea.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  So, don't try looking for ideas. If you're watching this, you're listening to this, you probably already have ideas. Start there and see whatever you can do to acquire a customer as fast as possible.

• 40:23Graham Stephan?

  If someone does not feel like they have any sort of advantage, what's the thing that they could leverage that gives them a one-up?

• 40:31Speaker 02

  Humility and gratitude. It sounds generic, but it's not. Having the humility to ask for help. Ask for a conversation. Tell me what you think of this idea, right? And then, if they think favorably of it, can I do that for you for free? Can I run your Facebook ads for free? Can I implement AI in your business for free? If it's not helpful, then they learned. If it is helpful, then they probably will turn that friend into a paying customer.

• 41:00Graham Stephan?

  See, that's, I like asking someone else, but oftentimes, I feel like a lot of people will just say, "Oh, that's a great idea." Because very few people want to be honest, be like, "That's kind of crap." Would it be better, though, just ask, "Perfect, if you like the idea, would you pay me for it?" Or how do you get honest feedback?

• 41:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, you answered your own question. If they're willing to pay for it, then they actually think it's a good idea. And there actually is a demand for it. Preferably, unless they're willing to waste money on you.

• 41:28Graham Stephan?

  Is there a popular piece of advice that you hear very often that's shared that you think is total garbage?

• 41:35Speaker 02

  Don't share your ideas because people will copy them. That's total garbage. We should share ideas with everyone. I, I.

• 41:41Jack Selby?

  What if we share an idea here on the podcast, though, and we have all these listeners? Is that a bad idea? Or do you think that's, that's fine?

• 41:48Speaker 02

  All I do is share ideas. That's all I do.

• 41:50Jack Selby?

  Cause Graham and I, we have an idea.

• 41:52Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, but let's just say you have a really good idea that you could implement that very few people have been doing. And if we share it to 200,000 people, statistically, a few of them will actually do that idea and do it really, really, really well. And it might, uh, you know, compete with us if we have a unique advantage.

• 42:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, let me give you some exceptions to the rule, right? So maybe it's like a unique product that needs to be patented. If you share that to 100,000 people, someone goes out there and it's a very specific idea for a specific product. Let's say it's in the, um, used car parts industry. And someone out there has been in the used car parts industry and they're also an idea guy and law of large numbers. And they, it just all overlaps and they're like, uh, I've also patented something. And for some weird reason, they have all the tools and skills and know-how to steal that idea. That would not be a good idea to share that in that case, right? That could be stolen. But that's so specific, it's not likely to actually be the case. I'm curious to hear what you guys have, cause in, in your case, you have an unfair advantage of an audience.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  So most likely your idea could be grown with your audience. And most likely the person that is capable and willing and has the money to copy that idea does not.

• 43:04Graham Stephan?

  You want to explain your idea?

• 43:05Jack Selby?

  Yeah. So the idea is, and this already exists, but I think we could do our own rendition of it. We could probably do it better. If you have a bunch of different credit cards that have benefits and bonuses, then you have one dashboard that has all of the deadlines. And it can send reminders to you, hey, by the way, make sure you spend this Ora Ring credit. Make sure that you spend your Cozy Earth credit, whatever it is. And then also there's like rotating categories for a lot of credit cards where you can get 10% back up to a certain amount of spend. And if you could do a small survey or put in some companies that you're already interested in, or your credit card can look at where you've spent money and you can like scrape that data. Instead of just giving someone 700 things that all have different expiration dates for a bunch of companies that you're unlikely to.

• 43:48Jack Selby?

  Spend money at as a user if it was a little bit more curated of a list of like, hey, you know, like, I know you spent money here. You can get 10% if you just want to check out then. And so it's kind of just like a lot of, a lot of data consolidating it. And I'm going kind of broad here. We don't want to get it exactly into like the nitty gritty specifics because that might be unwise. But as a general idea, it'd be credit card optimization for our very credit card.

• 44:10Graham Stephan?

  A hundred percent. And the MX page is so convoluted with hundreds of offers. No one looks through it. But if you have the data, AI should be able to sort, hey, you're most likely to shop at these places, get these rewards, or these rewards are the highest ROI based on your current spend, where you spend your money and where you're likely to get value. And then these ones expire. And at the end of the quarter, they're gone forever. Like I missed the Dell credit for the MX Platinum. I just forgot about it, but that's.

• 44:39Jack Selby?

  I didn't do Resy credit. That was a hundred bucks. I actually didn't even do a hotel credit one time, which was $300 with the MX Platinum. In fact, there was an old credit card I was going to go cancel. And I pop it open and I'm like, what kind of benefits do I even get from this card? There was no annual fee. I just didn't want the card anymore. I look and I see the rotating categories. One of the categories was Cozy Earth. They're a sponsor of this channel. This is not a sponsored segment, by the way. I genuinely just love their product. And so I see that I can spend $500 and get 10% back. And I also, with our discount code, sorry, guys, I swear.

• 45:12Graham Stephan?

  What is it? Code Iced?

• 45:13Jack Selby?

  Code Iced or whatever it is. You guys can check it out on the screen. I was like, well, I can stack this with the credit card thing and I can get like a pretty sizable discount. I was going to go cancel the card. This was something that I kind of wanted already and I got 10% stacked on top. And I saved a lot of money because of it. So either way, this is something that people do not realize. If they were just to get 5% back on 10% of their spend, like that could be a pretty large number.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:38Graham Stephan?

  Hey, everybody. This is Graham from the future and we did actually end up building this idea. So if you want to be a part of it and get early access and join the waitlist, we'll have the information right here on screen or down below in the description. Would love to have you a part of it. We're really excited. And you're the first to hear it right now. So with that said, thank you so much. We'll get back to the episode now.

• 45:59Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 46:28Speaker 02

  That's an amazing idea because I do credit card hacking. And I think what you should add to that idea is upload your bank statement and it could tell you what cards to buy, like what cards to add to your stack. And you could just use the affiliate links to put them on those cards. Because is there an affiliate link that's more profitable than credit card?

• 46:47Jack Selby?

  That's pretty good. I mean, any sort of like fintech company affiliate link, like SoFi affiliate link. I know they pay a lot.

• 46:51Speaker 02

  Hey, you're spending five grand a month on Facebook ads. MX was it MX Gold? It gives four, four points back per dollar. And then you send the link for MX Gold. And you could charge a monthly fee on top of that. I think that's, someone's going to do that. Like, that's a no brainer. I think ideas are more valuable than they ever have been. I think even with AI, ideas are incredibly valuable.

• 47:12Jack Selby?

  What would you say are the best AI tools that people should use? The lowest hanging fruit? If you're trying to build a business.

• 47:20Speaker 02

  You need to be vibe coding apps.

• 47:22Jack Selby?

  What is vibe coding?

• 47:24Speaker 02

  Using natural language, just like we're using today to build an app. Hey, build me a credit card dashboard where I can do travel hacking all in one place and see when my cards expire. So I don't pay the renewal fee on cards I'm not using, et cetera. One prompt to get one app. I mean, if you think about it, colleges are teaching students today what AI can already do better.

• 47:44Jack Selby?

  So how do you recommend being on the right side of that curve?

• 47:47Speaker 02

  Every new tool, every new update from the claws of the chat GPTs, the Geminis of the world, you have to play around with. You have to get to know, even if you don't like it. It's, it's a non-negotiable. It's like moving to America and refusing to learn English. That doesn't work. Like, if you want, if you want to move to America to get a better life, you have to learn English. If you want to have a better life in anywhere in the world, you have to learn AI, period.

• 48:07Jack Selby?

  What's one of the biggest mistakes the beginners make before they even start?

• 48:12Speaker 02

  With AI specifically?

• 48:13Graham Stephan?

  Just with starting any sort of business, it could be AI.

• 48:16Speaker 02

  They think about what they learn in college, they try to be smart, they they overthink it, they need to just do it. They need to just go out and fail in small ways and make small mistakes. Because they're going to learn a lot faster during the execution of things than in the learning of things.

• 48:31Graham Stephan?

  And what qualities make the best business? Are there things that you look for?

• 48:35Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 48:38Speaker 02

  It comes down to high gross margin. It's very, very hard to overcome a business that does not have high gross profit margin. And then leadership, like you can't, you you put a good leader in a crappy business and you've got a good business. You can't sacrifice that.

• 48:54Graham Stephan?

  How do you find good leaders?

• 48:55Speaker 02

  I don't spend a lot of time in interviews and like going back and forth and doing reference checks. I just look at this like a numbers game. I just tell everyone it's a 30 day test and don't be offended if it doesn't work out. Because in my experience, other people probably have different experiences, but in my experience, there's no correlation between how much time I spend really digging into someone and the likelihood of them working out or not, because the fact of the matter is some people show really, really well. Some people interview really, really well. And oftentimes there's an inverse correlation of those people and how they turn out. They put their energy into showing well, but then they don't show up, they don't perform well.

• 49:36Graham Stephan?

  And what do you notice in the people who don't perform well? Like, are there any signs that you start to notice or like when they interview well, there's like a little tick? Or like, they shuffled this way, like?

• 49:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:49Graham Stephan?

  That's a red flag.

• 49:51Speaker 02

  I'm going to answer that a little differently. You will get your absolute best out of an employee the first week. And so if you're doubting or questioning a little bit that first week, almost certainly they're not going to work out. You need to be completely surprised. Holy crap, this person's even better than I thought they were. They're doing even more than I thought they would. But if that first week you're like, all right, this is good, but this is good. Okay, well, they're new and you just start like making excuses for them because you want them to work out because your pride's on the line. Right? You're the one that made that decision to hire them.

• 50:25Speaker 02

  It's almost certain that you'll end up firing them. So why not do it right then? And then just go on to the next person.

• 50:31Graham Stephan?

  What about beyond that? Are there things that you see that are red flags for you?

• 50:36Speaker 02

  Not being able to work well in ambiguity. I thrive in ambiguity. Most employees don't. They want to be told exactly what to do. And that's okay. In some of my relationships and roles outside of business, I have like a boss. My wife is kind of my boss. And when she tells me exactly what to do, go to Home Depot, buy this thing. I don't have to think. It's really nice, right? But if an employee in the interview process says they have, they can tolerate a high degree of ambiguity, and then in the first week, it's clear that they don't, that they're not taking the initiative to get creative and go to go find answers to their questions before coming to you, that's usually a tell that they're going to fail in other aspects as well.

• 51:19Graham Stephan?

  And how do you keep people motivated to keep operating at their top performance?

• 51:25Speaker 02

  Cash incentives. The Netflix approach. They don't have these complicated bonus structures with RSUs that vest. They just pay their people a lot of money and they directly tie them to the outcome of the projects that they're working on. In my experience, that is the best way, not sharing equity, not like dangling a carrot for weeks and months and years on ends, on end that may never pan out because most equity goes to zero by definition. Most equity goes to zero. But if they have a direct incentive, if their project is directly tied to more cash in their personal checking account, they're more likely to be successful. They need to see it then, not to just hope for some payout in the future.

• 52:06Graham Stephan?

  And where do you find people who work with you?

• 52:09Speaker 02

  The best people I hire come from personal references, friends of friends.

• 52:14Graham Stephan?

  And what about working with friends?

• 52:15Speaker 02

  It's high risk, high reward. Working with like a business partnership with a best friend, a 50 50 partnership where you're both there in person onsite every day, building the same thing. One of you doesn't have a side hustle or a job, you're all in. That can be the most magical, amazing thing ever. But the statistical chance of it working out is very slim because usually one of them has invested more money or more time, or one of them still has a job, or one of them's remote, the other one's onsite. All of those variables means that it's probably going to blow up at some point in the future.

• 52:49Jack Selby?

  What's the messiest situation you've seen from that?

• 52:52Speaker 02

  A $50 million business that I was building that went to zero overnight when my two business partners just pushed me out.

• 53:00Jack Selby?

  Why? How could they do that?

• 53:02Speaker 02

  They started a new entity. The agreement that we had signed did not allow them to do that, but they had this big deal on the table with some investors and they said, they went to the investors and said, hey, there's not really enough room on the cap table here. So we got this, Chris is going to do something else. And so they just tore up that agreement, started a new business and told the investors to join him there.

• 53:25Jack Selby?

  Did you pursue it at all?

• 53:27Speaker 02

  Like, did I come after them?

• 53:28Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 53:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it all blew up. Everything blew up, like the business we had, the business that they were starting, it all just went to zero.

• 53:38Jack Selby?

  So nobody won?

• 53:39Speaker 02

  Nobody.

• 53:39Jack Selby?

  So why couldn't you just remake that business?

• 53:41Speaker 02

  I didn't want to. It was a capital intensive business. It's not something that I would have started on my own anyway. I joined up with two guys from the ground floor. One of them raised the money. I was the operator and it's, it's not something that I wanted to do by myself.

• 53:57Jack Selby?

  Why did you go after them? To destroy it instead of just like, ah, whatever?

• 54:01Speaker 02

  Because I had invested 18 months of my full time focus, in person, not remote, tens of thousands of dollars. And the opportunity cost of everything I said no to over those 18 months was very high and we had not made a profit yet. And so this was the life changing deal for all of us. And I felt they had done, they had done wrongly.

• 54:26Jack Selby?

  Did they end up having to pay you anything for that? It was literally just.

• 54:30Speaker 02

  They paid their lawyers, I paid mine.

• 54:32Jack Selby?

  And then you just, it was like mutually assured destruction by the end of it.

• 54:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:36Graham Stephan?

  Where's that relationship today? Do you speak with them at all?

• 54:38Jack Selby?

  They're best friends, Graham.

• 54:40Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, we had him over for dinner last night.

• 54:43Speaker 02

  One of them, I don't speak, I don't hold anything against them anymore. One of them I don't talk to because we weren't really friends in the first place, but I hold nothing against them. And the other one, we're still friends, honestly. He, well, yeah, our families are still involved with together. We live five minutes apart. I would not go into business with him again. I'm not knowing what I know now, but I mean, if you don't forgive someone, it'll eat you alive.

• 55:07Jack Selby?

  What did you not see in these partners?

• 55:09Speaker 02

  I didn't vet them enough. I didn't know them well enough. I, I didn't do due diligence like I would with a spouse.

• 55:16Jack Selby?

  How would you have, would you have been able to find this out by doing more due diligence?

• 55:21Speaker 02

  I think so, yeah.

• 55:22Graham Stephan?

  What would you have seen?

• 55:25Speaker 02

  When you're in a relationship, any relationship, business or otherwise, you see red flags or yellow flags, right? Even if it's with a potential spouse and those flags do not turn into red flags unless it's in retrospect. Does that make sense? Because if you start dating someone and something they do is like a yellow flag, it's either just an imperfection or there's something seriously wrong there. And you won't know until it's all played out. So I chose to overlook red flag after red flag, things that he would say, stories about his past, and I overlooked them just like I would in, in a spouse, right? But in aggregate, it adds up and you start to see patterns.

• 56:07Speaker 02

  And because of the fact that I was already months down the line in this business relationship, I just continually chose to overlook them until it was too late.

• 56:15Graham Stephan?

  But what about in a spouse? What qualities do you look for or recommend for entrepreneurs?

• 56:21Speaker 02

  You need a spouse that.

• 56:24Speaker 02

  A has a reason to believe in you. They need something. You so that needs to start with you. You need to give them a reason to believe in you. But B, you need a spouse that just keeps believing you like is truly there for you and knows that you're capable of doing it and supports you wholeheartedly. I I have several friends that would make amazing entrepreneurs, but their spouse comes first and they should. And so they they're not and they will never be entrepreneurs because the spouse either doesn't believe in them or is just too nervous about the outcome. Maybe they're just risk averse, right? I'm not talking about a bad person here, just someone who's more risk averse than the husband.

• 57:01Jack Selby?

  Do you think that sometimes, though, if a spouse does that, it's them feeling insecure and not wanting their partner to do well because they're afraid that they might leave them?

• 57:12Speaker 02

  I think that could be the case. I wouldn't think that that's normally the case, but I think in some instances, yes.

• 57:20Jack Selby?

  If we punch out real quick to like the average viewer out there that tunes in because they want to start a business. I'm curious, what would you say after listening to this is the very first thing they should do after this podcast or this clip? Of course, finish the podcast and the clip.

• 57:34Speaker 02

  They have to go find a customer.

• 57:36Jack Selby?

  So they have an idea or let's even start ground zero. They have no ideas. They want to do the copy strategy. Okay, so they're they're going to find a successful business, someone they know, some, you know, neighbors, uncles, once removed, you know, dog owners, whatever it is. That person has a successful business. They want to copy it. They have an idea. Okay, and then the first thing they must do is come up with their own rendition of it? Or is it just the same?

• 57:59Speaker 02

  No, exact same as closely as possible.

• 58:01Jack Selby?

  Okay, so you're going to do the exact same as closely as possible and you're going to find a paying customer for that idea. And then what do you do? You know, let's knocking doors. Let's get hyper specific here. Are you putting out Facebook ads? How do you find that first paying customer friend?

• 58:16Speaker 02

  Can you give me like a hypothetical idea?

• 58:19Jack Selby?

  Sure. Let's say that the idea is a.

• 58:25Jack Selby?

  You know, someone that sells a retractable dog leash thing like those things, you know, you push the button and it like goes in, goes out and you want to be able to make your own and you kind of know how to do that.

• 58:36Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. So you probably heard that they're doing really well. I'm imagining, right? Like, not only is someone doing that, but they, you know, they just kind of let it slip that things are going really well.

• 58:46Jack Selby?

  Hmm.

• 58:47Speaker 02

  I would go to Alibaba or AliExpress and try to source something that looks very similar. And then I would go to the meta ads library where Facebook will show you exactly what ads are running on their platform. And I would try to find their ads. And how are they performing? Which ad has been running the longest on meta ads library? You can filter by how long an ad has been running. So let's say they have 12 ads running. One of them started in October, the rest started in January. I would go to the one in October. And then I would say, okay, they're using this product sourced from Alibaba. It costs about $4. They're selling it for $25. They're using this Facebook ad to sell them. I would then spend some time learning Facebook ads well enough to do that. If they had a video ad, I would use a video ad. If they had a title that, you know,

• 59:32Speaker 02

  referenced the affordability of the product, I would reference the affordability of the product. What I would not do is copy paste. I would not copy the transcript of the video. I would not copy the title exactly. I would not copy the colors, the branding, the logo. I would do, I would make it my own, but not so much to where I would like drastically change something strategic about it, like the price point or.

• 59:57Jack Selby?

  But that just kind of sounds like drop shipping, like you're able to just copy a drop shipping store.

• 1:00:02Speaker 02

  Well, in the case of that specific idea.

• 1:00:04Jack Selby?

  So let's, let's, let's hone in on something else, like some sort of service based job. Like you mentioned pressure washing, we could do that, mobile detailing, you know, mobile mechanic.

• 1:00:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:13Jack Selby?

  Let's say you want, a big one I'm seeing online right now is people become quote unquote, contractors and they find a bunch of subcontractors and then they take a spread between what they bid and what they end up paying their subcontractors. So let's, let's say something like that.

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, they call that drop servicing. Okay, right? Same principle. So let's say I had a friend that was doing drop servicing for gutter cleaning business. And. I can see on Thumbtack, which is a platform for getting home service leads, that he's listed there. And on Angie's List and on Home Advisor, he's listed there. I would go list there as well. I can see his price points are, let's say it's $150 an hour. I would be right in that ballpark. I can see that he's targeting 30 to 50 year old moms in certain neighborhoods. I would target similar neighborhoods, not his neighborhoods, but neighborhoods in my area that meet a very similar demographic. The distribution strategy and the pricing slash offer is everything.

• 1:01:12Speaker 02

  Aside from that, like the name of the business, the URL, it doesn't really matter as much.

• 1:01:16Graham Stephan?

  And how important is it that you enjoy what you're doing?

• 1:01:19Speaker 02

  It's very important that you do that long term because no one wants a miserable life. But if you focus on passion and enjoyment from the outset, you probably won't find anything that you like. So the Ikigai principle is a Venn diagram of find what you love, find what gives you energy, find what people will pay you for, and find what there's a demand for. Wherever that overlaps the most is where you should be. But if you don't love it yet, like feel free to sacrifice that one in the beginning.

• 1:01:49Graham Stephan?

  What's a business idea that sounds really boring but works really well?

• 1:01:53Speaker 02

  AI consulting is exploding right now. There are 800,000 management consultants in the United States right now. And I think in five to 10 years, there's going to be at least 800,000 AI consultants. Someone that just takes time on their own to learn these $30 a month tools and implements them into small to large businesses. That's kind of boring, but people pay a lot of money.

• 1:02:16Graham Stephan?

  So what does that look like to implement it into small to large businesses?

• 1:02:20Speaker 02

  So that would look like, let's just say practically speaking, my air conditioning goes out and the guy comes over, it's a one man shop. Most air conditioning business owners are one man shops. It's the owner. And we just start talking as he's fixing my unit. How long you been in business? 35 years. Awesome. Like, are you doing anything with AI? Uh, no, I heard about ChatGPT. Okay. Well, what happens when you get a lead? Well, someone calls my phone. Um, what happens if they call your phone at 9:00 PM? Well, I'm not answering 9:00 PM. I'm watching Netflix with my wife. Okay. Well, have you heard of AI voice agents? No, is that like a call center? No, it's like with a few clicks, you can have AI answer your phone.

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  80% of people don't know it's AI and it works 24/7. It costs almost nothing and they'll just take the person's information and say, "Hey, thank you so much. We'll, we'll call you at 9:30 AM tomorrow." You integrate it with your calendar and you don't lose a $3,000 job, but you don't have to answer the phone during Netflix either. And that will blow their minds that that technology is possible, that the delay on the phone is very, very short. It sounds real and people legitimately don't know it's AI. And if you tell them, they don't care because they just want their problem answered. And if AI can do that and they're not just getting a voicemail, they would prefer that to a voicemail.

• 1:03:40Jack Selby?

  This episode is in partnership with Airbnb. So Graham and I just wrapped up a trip. We were in Austin for a few days. We filmed episodes with Togi, Chris Camillo and Caleb Hammer. And honestly, every time we're on the road, we're staying at homes on Airbnb. It's just become the default.

• 1:03:52Graham Stephan?

  And here's the thing most people don't think about. When you're the one traveling, your place back home is just sitting there empty. And that's a real missed opportunity.

• 1:04:00Jack Selby?

  Whether you're gone for a long weekend or a few weeks, you can list your space on Airbnb and let it work for you while you're away.

• 1:04:06Graham Stephan?

  If you've ever thought about hosting, but weren't sure how to manage everything from the road, Airbnb now has the co-host network. You can connect with a vetted local co-host who has real hosting experience and can take care of the day to day for you.

• 1:04:18Jack Selby?

  A co-host can manage reservations, handle guest communication and even provide onsite support. So you don't have to think about it while you're traveling.

• 1:04:24Graham Stephan?

  So instead of your home sitting empty, you could be generating some extra cash, whether that helps you cover the next trip, your flights, or it just goes towards something that you've been putting off at home.

• 1:04:33Jack Selby?

  I actually listed a spare room in my house on Airbnb and I was genuinely so surprised how easy it was to set up, how seamless the entire process was, and it actually made me some pretty good money. I would actually recommend this to anyone out there that wants to make a little extra cash on the side. It's honestly phenomenal. If you're thinking about hosting but want some help getting started, find a co-host at Airbnb.com/host.

• 1:04:54Graham Stephan?

  Really quick, when Jack and I started the Ice Coffee Hour, we had to figure out everything ourselves, from the best cameras to use, the best editing equipment, how to grow on social media. Every day was a new challenge. That's why if you're building something yourself, you totally get it. And that's also why our sponsor Shopify makes so much sense.

• 1:05:11Jack Selby?

  Shopify is basically an all-in-one business partner. They power millions of businesses worldwide, from major brands like Mattel and Jimm Shark to entrepreneurs who are just getting started. And here's something crazy. If you think you haven't used Shopify, I am willing to bet you that you're wrong, because if you've shopped in the United States, there's a really good chance it was actually on a Shopify store, because they power about 10% of all American e-commerce.

• 1:05:31Graham Stephan?

  What's really great about Shopify is that they give you access to a complete design studio with hundreds of ready-to-use templates to build a beautiful online store that perfectly matches your brand. There's no coding needed, and their AI tools even help you write product descriptions and enhance your product photos.

• 1:05:47Jack Selby?

  Shopify also makes marketing extremely simple with easy-to-use email and social media campaigns help you connect with customers wherever they are. And on top of that, I kid you not, they manage everything from inventory to shipping and returns, so you can avoid all of the complicated stuff that you do not want to deal with.

• 1:06:01Graham Stephan?

  So start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing, "All you gotta do to get started is sign up today for a $1 a month trial period when you go to Shopify.com/ICH." Again, that is Shopify.com/ICH. Shopify.com/ICH.

• 1:06:21Jack Selby?

  The link is also down below in the description. Thank you so much to Shopify for sponsoring this episode.

• 1:06:26Graham Stephan?

  How do you manage all of these things? I imagine your time is pretty scarce if you have 10 companies right now that you're partnered in or running or some, what have you, an executive in. How do you divide up your time? Do you have an assistant?

• 1:06:40Speaker 02

  So I have two assistants, and I have a chief of staff that is kind of like the CEO for me, for all of my things. And he's awesome, and he just manages all kinds of initiatives. And then at every business, I have an operating partner that runs the business. And they'll meet with me, they'll talk to me periodically to talk strategy and whatnot, put out fires. But generally speaking, I just have a lot of equity partners in these businesses that do a really good job.

• 1:07:07Graham Stephan?

  At what point in your life was it worth it to hire an assistant?

• 1:07:10Speaker 02

  Not until a few years ago.

• 1:07:12Graham Stephan?

  And what made you decide that it was, that it made sense then?

• 1:07:15Speaker 02

  Because I was spending too much of my time on stupid things. Just low, low-value emails, things that didn't require much of my skills or expertise.

• 1:07:24Jack Selby?

  Just to free up your time to do other things.

• 1:07:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:26Graham Stephan?

  What's a common side hustle that you think is not worth it?

• 1:07:30Speaker 02

  Cutting lawns.

• 1:07:32Speaker 02

  If you're gonna go outside and push a lawnmower around, then do something that's much higher ticket. Something that's worth thousands of dollars, like tree trimming or pressure washing. But lawn mowing, I think is just, it's a waste of, it's forty dollars to mow a lawn. And you could spend the same time washing a window and get four hundred dollars.

• 1:07:50Graham Stephan?

  And what do you say to the people who say that they don't have the time?

• 1:07:53Speaker 02

  Everyone has the time. I have, I have four kids. I had all four of my kids in my twenties. I've run multiple businesses at a time since I was twenty one. I am active in my church. There's, there's always time. If they say I don't have time, I say, show me your screen time on your iPhone. Let's look at that real quick. Let's break it down.

• 1:08:13Graham Stephan?

  Is that where you think people are wasting the most of their time?

• 1:08:16Speaker 02

  Hundred percent. Everyone has time, period.

• 1:08:19Jack Selby?

  So then what's the limiting factor? Is it just like motivation? Is it energy? Is it hunger?

• 1:08:23Speaker 02

  They're not desperate enough. Like, they don't want it enough. If they want enough, they would do it.

• 1:08:28Graham Stephan?

  So is being broke a mindset problem?

• 1:08:31Speaker 02

  Mindset and skills are everything. They don't have the skills or they don't think they have the skills. They're not connecting the skills. Let's say with a, let's say they want to start a pressure washing business. And they enjoy it. They do it themselves and they enjoy it. But they're like, where do I even go? Where do I find a customer? And then an hour later, they're on Facebook Marketplace selling their old Xbox. Where do I go? It's like you, you have the skills. Use Facebook Marketplace, right? Or then they go on Instagram and they post a couple reels about their food or whatever. That skill, you can use that to sell pressure washing. They're not connecting the skills with the ideas. So we need to just sit down on paper and write down everything we do. We need to audit our time in a day.

• 1:09:12Speaker 02

  I spent this time scrolling reels, this time scrolling TikToks, this time working, this time going to the bathroom, this time listing up Facebook Marketplace. And then we need to, after a week, we need to look back at everything we've done and see if we can tie our business idea to one of those things. Something that we already do or already know how to do.

• 1:09:29Jack Selby?

  Is there a way that you can improve hunger?

• 1:09:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, like how can you develop that?

• 1:09:34Jack Selby?

  Yeah, because some people want something.

• 1:09:38Jack Selby?

  Thirty-five percent. And let's say it takes eighty percent hunger to actually cross that line to to take action and make something happen. But if you're at thirty-five percent, you're still just constantly at like low-grade dissatisfaction with your life. Cause you have this like kinda thing, just always talking to you in the back of your brain saying, hey, you could do more. But also you're like, well, you know, I don't really want to try that hard to do more. And it's like, you're dissatisfied, you're not happy necessarily, you could be happier. How if if they wanted to want it more, which I imagine, I know it's a weird thing to say, a lot of people probably feel that way. How can you do that?

• 1:10:13Speaker 02

  The pain of what people think about you needs to be lesser than the pain of being broke.

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  Because I do think that's the number one thing. What do people think about me when I do this thing? They need to care less about that than they care about being broke or vice versa, however it goes. But I think in a situation like that, I think most people are at that stage where they wanna do something, but their job is just good enough. The worst situation we can be in is when our job is just good enough to to cover our bills.

• 1:10:47Speaker 02

  If they were to get a fifty percent cut, then that could be the best thing that ever happened to them. Or if they were to be fired, that could be the best thing that ever happened to them. Or if they could get a three hundred percent promotion, that could be the best thing that ever happened to them. But like you said, to be in that like just enough paycheck to paycheck, that's the worst. Cause it's just enough for us to get by and for us to not be hungry enough. So I don't want to go on the record and suggest that everyone quits their job. But sometimes when the boats are burned for us, we talk about the metaphor of burning your boats, not looking back, no plan B. When that choice is taken from us, it can be the best thing that ever happens to us.

• 1:11:29Jack Selby?

  How much do you think though, that's the situation that they're in versus that's just who they are as a person?

• 1:11:37Speaker 02

  Like even if they were to get fired in that case.

• 1:11:39Jack Selby?

  They would just seek out the same thing.

• 1:11:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, how do you fix human nature?

• 1:11:44Jack Selby?

  How much of that do you think people are just born like that?

• 1:11:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I don't think I was born like that. I think that my mission gave that to me. I think if you were to work in a call center doing outbound miserable cold calls for some diet pill. I think that could develop the same skill. I think if we really want a tactical answer to give people, they need to go do sales. And it just know you're not gonna like it. Like, the person that really likes sales is just a freak. They exist, of course, and they're very wealthy. But it's not normal. Go do sales outbound.

• 1:12:17Jack Selby?

  What I always attributed to when I was like 18 and I was super, super, super hungry. Like, I really wanted to pursue business, be an entrepreneur, make some money. I always thought that I had a high capacity. I'm like, okay, like, I know if I put my mind to something, then I can achieve a good amount. But the reality of my life was not exhibiting that. And so I was like, okay, like, I'm either delusional or I just haven't hit my stride yet. And so that was enough motivation for me to be like, okay, like, I need to hit this capacity. Even though at the time, when I first reached out to Graham, when I was trying all these different side businesses, there were a few random ones that I tried dropshipping. You can name it. I've tried every single one of them. I was kind of in a place where I was relatively comfortable.

• 1:13:00Jack Selby?

  Like, I was, like, the outer layer of my life would suggest I was living well. Like, I was living at my parents. I was going to community college, getting great grades. I was working at a restaurant, you know, making enough money to get by and buy some things I wanted because I had no rent. So like, my life by most means was was pretty good. It was just the fact that there was like a big difference between where I thought I should be and where, you know, I thought that I was at.

• 1:13:26Speaker 02

  Why did you think you had that capacity? Why did you have that confidence in yourself?

• 1:13:30Jack Selby?

  If you, I mean, this is kind of a, maybe a poor answer to the question, but I think if you have a high capacity, you kind of know you do.

• 1:13:37Speaker 02

  Did you grow up around people with money or?

• 1:13:40Jack Selby?

  Sort of. Like, I would say that when I grew up, I thought, actually, that we were like, like a low, middle income, just because we never went on any trips. We lived super, super below our means. Like, I had, you know, six cars by the time I was like 22 because it just kept breaking down. We had to sell them. So I thought we were low, middle, but like, turns out we're like, you know, upper, middle class, I would say. By the time I moved out, we also grew up in a really old home, like a 60-year-old home. So I would, there were some distant relatives that were successful. And I was like, okay, I want to be like them. You know, I want to be like the successful people in the family.

• 1:14:13Speaker 02

  You saw it was possible.

• 1:14:14Jack Selby?

  I saw it was possible. Yeah, like, my, my uncle had a really nice car. And I was like, okay, like. It's always the uncle. Yeah, I want to, I want to get this nice car. You know, because, you know, my parents were driving old cars or, you know, the car that, you know, first car I got was, you know, blown out speakers and. Just horrible cars.

• 1:14:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:33Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think people need to spend more time around people with money. We're spending time around people that are like us. And so we're going to end up like people like us, people that we spend time with. But you and I both, like, middle class, lower middle class, we saw wealth. We saw that it was possible.

• 1:14:50Graham Stephan?

  Do you worry that your kids, though, are going to grow up in an environment where they don't need to be as hungry as you did?

• 1:14:55Speaker 02

  I worry about it every day. And I don't know what to do about it. Do I go, you know, move to Compton? So they can appreciate it?

• 1:15:03Jack Selby?

  The answer is yes.

• 1:15:05Speaker 02

  Like, seriously, what, what do you do about it? It's something we think about regularly. We do service opportunities, like around Christmas, we go like, you know, homeless shelters. Like, I try to get them engaged and like do things for other people.

• 1:15:18Graham Stephan?

  It seems like the only thing that I've noticed that works consistently from everyone that we've had on the podcast with kids is that they integrate the kids in their business and they have the kids work.

• 1:15:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:28Graham Stephan?

  Especially anything sales related, but that, but in the business itself.

• 1:15:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:32Graham Stephan?

  So not so much chores, but it's like, hey, you're coming to work with me today and you're going to talk to these customers and you're going to get a sale.

• 1:15:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:38Graham Stephan?

  And then tying that to some sort of reward that they get.

• 1:15:42Speaker 02

  My kids all do little businesses. We have a farmer's market nearby. They'll sell smores, they'll sell cookies, they'll sell, my daughter sells custom hats. So, and then they do chores at home, like hard chores. But I'm not really good lately about bringing them to work with me because I work on a MacBook. You know, like, if I had like a physical, hands-on thing, it'd be easier. And I did when they were younger, but it wasn't.

• 1:16:05Jack Selby?

  How old were they?

• 1:16:06Speaker 02

  Between nine and 15.

• 1:16:07Graham Stephan?

  See, but the 15-year-old could come and listen in on the podcast.

• 1:16:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:11Graham Stephan?

  And then you could say, hey, 15-year-old, come up here, you're going to be talking about what it's like to grow up with me as a father.

• 1:16:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, that is true.

• 1:16:17Graham Stephan?

  And then have him or her start practicing, speaking.

• 1:16:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. That's a good point. Because I see, I see the lack of confidence in some of my kids sometimes and I wish I could just give it to them.

• 1:16:30Graham Stephan?

  How much do you make from coming on a podcast like this? Is there any sort of like trickle-down effect that you could attribute?

• 1:16:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, it depends. It depends on the podcast. Um, I've never.

• 1:16:43Speaker 02

  It certainly brings like more followers and subscribers, newsletter subscribers. My newsletter subscribers are worth like six to eight dollars each.

• 1:16:51Graham Stephan?

  That's a lot.

• 1:16:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, if I got 500 subscribers from it, it'd be thousands of dollars. But it's more of just like a halo effect.

• 1:16:58Graham Stephan?

  And what's the benefit you hope to get from that halo effect of just more eyeballs on you?

• 1:17:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I get asked that a lot, like, what's your goal? Like, what are you working towards? And I just want progress, like, I just want growth, whatever that looks like. I, I don't set, I'm not good at setting goals.

• 1:17:15Graham Stephan?

  How do you measure growth, though? Is it just like money in, money out?

• 1:17:17Speaker 02

  Just like number of newsletter subscribers, number of followers, number of YouTube subscribers, and financial, yeah, like more profit one year than the year before. I'm, I'm just not good at setting goals.

• 1:17:28Graham Stephan?

  Will there ever be a time where you're like, okay, like, I'm pretty comfortable with where I'm at?

• 1:17:32Speaker 02

  I think at a certain point, within five years, I'm just gonna get off the internet entirely.

• 1:17:36Graham Stephan?

  And what will dictate, you know, that, what, where is that line?

• 1:17:40Speaker 02

  I don't know. I don't know where that is. It's just something I think about every day, chasing metrics and refreshing YouTube Studio and all that. You guys know.

• 1:17:48Graham Stephan?

  Are you happy with it?

• 1:17:50Speaker 02

  I, I enjoy making content. I look at every video like a new business, right? A new initiative. I do enjoy it, but it comes with a trade off. There, there are no solutions, only trade offs.

• 1:18:01Graham Stephan?

  See, I relate to that, but the only thing I relate to the most is I can't turn my mind off. It's constantly going. And so the only way I could zone out, honestly, is either watching a movie I'm really into, at a movie theater, because otherwise I have my phone and I get distracted, or getting a massage. Oddly enough, it's only two times I could actually zone out and just be present.

• 1:18:26Speaker 02

  Same.

• 1:18:27Graham Stephan?

  Otherwise, it's all like, what's the next video? And I just posted this morning, but the first thing through my mind is how is it performing? And then what's the next one? How do I follow this up?

• 1:18:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. But I mean, that's, that's also life. Like, that's the, growth and progress is everything. Like, we're, we're meant to work, we're built to work. There's no retirement.

• 1:18:44Graham Stephan?

  So what would you say is the question that a viewer needs to ask themselves right now to make progress?

• 1:18:52Speaker 02

  Am I willing to go and?

• 1:18:56Speaker 00

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• 1:19:25Speaker 02

  Get rejected enough times so I can achieve my goals. Am I willing to do what it takes to embarrass myself and to experience failure in order to achieve my goals? Or am I not there yet?

• 1:19:38Jack Selby?

  And they need to be honest with themselves and answer it truthfully. And then hopefully come to a positive conclusion.

• 1:19:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:19:46Jack Selby?

  So we've drafted up a list of businesses and we want you to assign them in a tier list, if you wouldn't mind.

• 1:19:53Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:19:54Jack Selby?

  So right here, we have a tier list of a bunch of different business ideas. If you can just rank them from S all the way down to the bottom. So if someone has an idea and they're watching right now, you can see, is it a good idea? Is it a bad idea? Should I pursue it? Should I not?

• 1:20:08Speaker 02

  All right. First one is AI implementation. That, we're going to start with an S tier because it's very approachable. Anyone with, you don't even need any money because you can use free trials for all of these AI tools.

• 1:20:20Jack Selby?

  Cool.

• 1:20:21Speaker 02

  Everyone knows business owners. So 10% of all adults are a business owner. So you can say, hey, I learned how to ViCo this app. I use Zapier to learn how to connect these two tools. Do you mind if I try it with you for free? That can scale. You can charge thousands of dollars upfront and then hundreds of dollars up ongoing every month for each and every customer you acquire.

• 1:20:40Jack Selby?

  Cool.

• 1:20:40Speaker 02

  So it just becomes a numbers game. That is one of my favorite ideas right now. ATMs, second. I'm going to put that as a B tier. So. I love ideas that are approachable because I want to remove friction to the most amount of people to starting the business. ATMs you have to purchase. There's not really a way around that. You could buy them on a credit card. You could borrow money to do it, but they do cost thousands of dollars. I think the trends for us becoming a more cashless society are going up. I think it's going to take a lot longer than we think. I think we're going to be giving out hundred dollar bills in a decade. I don't think it's going away overnight. But generally speaking, I like to start businesses that ride a tidal wave. I just want to have an easier time. AI implementation, that is a tidal wave. We would all agree.

• 1:21:24Speaker 02

  ATMs are not riding a tidal wave right now. This business is highly depend on the location. I'm actually going to move it down to a C. Okay. Mind. It's highly dependent on a location. So if we want to learn what type of location will do best with an ATM, we're probably going to need to try like five locations, which would require either a lot of time to move that ATM around or a lot of money to buy five $3,000 ATMs. But that said, if you can get this to scale, that can be a quite passive, passive income business, right? Which you know, I don't just throw that term around. Car detailing, that's going to be, that's going to be A tier. Because it's so approachable, it can scale. It's not easy to scale.

• 1:22:09Speaker 02

  I hate the question, can it scale? Right? I hear that a lot, but can that scale? Everything can scale. The right question is, how hard is that to scale? Right? And how much money will it take to scale it? This is harder to scale, but it's very easy to start. You go to O'Reilly, you could buy a bucket of stuff. You could start car detailing. You can make a hundred dollars an hour on your first day. Next one, content creation. That's going to be D. It's going to be D tier. There is survivorship bias, right? The only people we see in our feed are successful content creators because that's who the algorithm shows us. So it seems much more approachable than it actually is. Now, I truly believe that like you can crack the algorithm. You can figure out how to do short form video.

• 1:22:51Speaker 02

  I think short form video is one of the greatest, greatest, most innovative things ever invented. You could definitely argue it's harmful. I'm not saying it's not. But it's, it's just brilliant how it works, right? But it is very, very hard to, to crack the code as a content creator because you need quality and consistency over a long period of time and very few people are willing to do that. And once you do that, the chance of you actually making money on that is very small. So.

• 1:23:19Speaker 02

  That's a D. Couch flipping. I'm gonna call that.

• 1:23:24Speaker 02

  Oh, man. I really like couch flipping. So what I don't like about it is there is some level of friction here because you need a trailer, either to buy one or rent one, and you need a hitch. You need a car with a hitch or a truck with a hitch. So there's some friction there, but this is a business that could be 100% ran on Facebook Marketplace. You find your couches to buy on Facebook Marketplace, you find them to sell on Facebook Marketplace, and it's a very good business and it can scale. Day trading, oh, man.

• 1:23:55Speaker 02

  That's gotta be F. Back to survivorship bias. The only people we see out in public that are successful at day trading are the people selling courses on day trading. And therefore their incentives are not aligned with the buyer of that course, right? The chance of someone being successful in day trading is very low, and the chance of them losing money is very, very high. It's an asymmetric bet in the wrong direction. Dog walking.

• 1:24:24Speaker 02

  I'm gonna say C tier because it's harder to acquire customers in the dog walking business. I like that it's recurring, but it's hard to acquire customers and it's, it might be one of the hardest to scale out of all of these. Yeah, because how many dogs can you walk at once? And then how profitable can you be if you hire someone out to walk those dogs for you?

• 1:24:48Speaker 02

  I like to look for businesses that have a binary outcome, the simple business, right? Like my tree trimming business is very simple. We show up, we cut the tree, we get a five star review, we get paid. Whereas a house cleaning business, you show up, are they home? Is the, does the door code work? Did they leave a hair on the toilet seat? There's a thousand things that could go wrong. The cleaner doesn't show up, the cleaner arrives drunk. Like, it's just a very hard business. And I've done, I've had a cleaning business as well.

• 1:25:16Graham Stephan?

  And they've arrived drunk?

• 1:25:17Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, because they're all subcontractors. They're 1099. So I've seen it all. So dog walking is not my favorite because there's, there's a lot of things that could go wrong. Yeah, and it's just, the upside is not very high.

• 1:25:32Graham Stephan?

  Okay.

• 1:25:33Speaker 02

  DoorDash Uber Eats, I'm gonna call that a B. I'll be a first B tier. Um, I love how approachable it is, but it's a lot more wear and tear on the vehicle than people would think. People, certainly more than they would like to think. It's a very, it's, it's a low ceiling, right? It's hard to make six figures a year of profit, like true profit when considering all of your costs in DoorDash or Uber Eats. I think the bigger opportunity in that business is to buy and rent out cars to people that drive and deliver food.

• 1:26:05Graham Stephan?

  Turo?

• 1:26:06Speaker 02

  Kind of, but there's a whole business, the whole industry is called, is called Cars for DoorDash. Like that's the name of the industry.

• 1:26:13Graham Stephan?

  Really?

• 1:26:14Speaker 02

  Because DoorDash is the only ridesharing company that does not care what the cars look like. They don't need to care. You're just delivering food. You're not taking anyone on rides. So their, their liability requirements are lower and the car like year and you know, cosmetic requirements are lower. So there's a whole industry of people that go buy $5,000 Hondas and rent them out for $400 a week to people that drive for DoorDash. And so they make their money back in three to six months and it's pure profit after that. Not saying it's easy.

• 1:26:44Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:45Speaker 02

  There's liabilities, there's, you're working with people that speak different languages. There's a lot of crazy things that happen in that industry, but I like that side of it better than me going out and delivering food for DoorDash.

• 1:26:56Graham Stephan?

  Interesting.

• 1:26:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. Facebook Marketplace, um, I'm gonna put this as S tier, believe it or not. Because that could be so many different things. I love just clearing my cache in a browser, opening Facebook Marketplace and seeing what it shows me.

• 1:27:16Graham Stephan?

  That's what I like doing too. I probably spend an hour a day on Facebook Marketplace, just browsing and looking.

• 1:27:21Speaker 02

  It's so interesting.

• 1:27:22Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:22Speaker 02

  You'll see like a converted school bus, like it's just a great playground to generate business ideas.

• 1:27:27Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:28Speaker 02

  Garage sales.

• 1:27:31Speaker 02

  I'm gonna put at now, do you mean like flipping items?

• 1:27:37Jack Selby?

  Yeah, Gary Vee garage sale hunting.

• 1:27:40Speaker 02

  I'm gonna put that at C because it's just like, I don't like businesses that I can't just like, grab a hold of and scale it if I wanted to. There are only so many garage sales. You don't know what they will have. Whereas with like Facebook Marketplace, I could buy as many things as I wanted. I could scale that with just a few more clicks and a few more dollars. But with garage sales, it's wholly dependent on, there's a lot of luck involved. Am I gonna find like a first edition Charizard here? Or is it gonna be just a bunch of crappy mirrors and dressers? I just don't like that about it. It's harder to scale and there's, there's less upside. But I do like the fact that anyone could go do it with a hundred bucks. I do like how approachable it is. I kinda wanna put, I'm gonna move it to B. I'm talking myself into it a little bit.

• 1:28:25Speaker 02

  I do love Gary Vee too. So online tutoring, um, I'm gonna put that at an A tier because there are so many marketplaces that will find customers for you. Upwork, um, you can just post your services and, and tutor people and you can make thirty to three hundred dollars an hour. It's also great for a local area. If you can just find one parent to, um, so this is an online, but let's just call it tutoring. If you can find one parent to pay you to tutor their kid, you, and you don't totally screw it up, you'll probably have ten parents within a year. So I really like that business because it doesn't cost anything. And I think there's a lot of demand for that. That's not going anywhere.

• 1:29:09Speaker 02

  OnlyFans, um, that's gonna be an easy F for me because of the fact that I am a very Christian and I think is pretty damaging and pretty terrible. And I personally would not start anything in like an illicit category, be it gambling, vaping, anything. Panhandling, okay, so you know what? This might surprise people, but I'm gonna put that at B, at a B. Now, let me, let me clarify, are you, is this just like begging for money?

• 1:29:41Jack Selby?

  Yes.

• 1:29:44Graham Stephan?

  I've seen these YouTube videos where people are reportedly making sixty to a hundred thousand dollars a year.

• 1:29:48Jack Selby?

  Hmm.

• 1:29:49Graham Stephan?

  And they're adding up with hidden cameras, like how much they're making in donations. And then they confront the people afterwards of like, hey, you know, you've made X amount this this year so far.

• 1:29:59Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:00Graham Stephan?

  But you're not reporting any of it and you're, you know, driving.

• 1:30:02Jack Selby?

  Stopping into a Ferrari.

• 1:30:03Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:03Jack Selby?

  Interesting.

• 1:30:04Graham Stephan?

  Living in a really nice house and like all this sort of stuff, but they like dressed down.

• 1:30:08Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:08Graham Stephan?

  To panhandle.

• 1:30:09Jack Selby?

  Yeah, I saw the one where the person was panhandling as someone who is in a wheelchair wheelchair.

• 1:30:15Graham Stephan?

  Oh, geez.

• 1:30:15Jack Selby?

  Or something.

• 1:30:15Graham Stephan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:30:16Jack Selby?

  And then they like got out and just walked away.

• 1:30:18Speaker 02

  Okay, so if it weren't for the ethical concerns, this would be an S or an A for me because of the skills that it can build. Cause we've talked a lot about humility today and doing hard things and getting rejected over and over. And that sounds a lot like serving a mission, right? I never asked for money, but I was asking for time, which is like money of strangers. And it's very awkward. It's just awkward. And so I love the skills that this build, that this builds, but I don't suggest that people do it unethically or lie about who they are. But if it's like, hey, can you give me ten dollars so I can go start a business? I would give that person ten dollars and I applaud that.

• 1:30:55Graham Stephan?

  Don't do that, Graham.

• 1:30:59Speaker 02

  Print on demand, I'm gonna put it C. I think that there's a world where people can make really good money at this, but I look at it like content creation. It's, there's a lot of luck involved and you need, you need to be fairly sophisticated at testing thousands, if not tens of thousands of patterns and designs and logos. I know a guy that does this very well on Etsy and he uses AI tools just to every morning he'll scrape everything that's selling a lot of on Etsy. Let's say it's a mug with like a cute slogan on it about a puppy. He would just copy that and he would just start selling them on his own Etsy page. So there's a world where you can be successful at this, but I think it's very much, it's kind of like the MLM world

• 1:31:42Speaker 02

  where one percent of people are successful and ninety nine percent of people are still just like struggling trying to make it. So I don't like that about it.

• 1:31:49Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:50Speaker 02

  Real estate agent? I'm gonna put that at an A tier. Because of the fact that you will acquire so many different skills in the pursuit of this. You have, like legally, you have to learn about real estate. You've got to learn how contracts are structured. My wife is a commercial real estate agent. She used to be a residential real estate agent. I've been in this space a lot. I think it's an asymmetric bet. You're spending tens of hours and fifteen hundred bucks to become licensed. Once you're licensed, there's tons of brokerages that would love to have you under them because it really costs them nothing. And depending on what market you're in, you can make tens of thousands of dollars for five to fifteen hours of work. This also is like a power law game.

• 1:32:33Speaker 02

  You know, five percent of agents sell ninety-five percent of homes. But I think it's very formulaic to get in that five percent.

• 1:32:41Graham Stephan?

  Yep.

• 1:32:42Speaker 02

  It's just, it's, it's, you can get there. Whereas with something like print on demand, it's not formulaic. It's, there's a lot of luck and virality and, and sophisticated skills involved. But that can scale, like it's great money. It's a great thing that you can do on the side, but you could also make it entirely replace your income. Shorts editing.

• 1:33:07Speaker 02

  I like this a lot, actually. I, I'm gonna make that an A tier. Because, so there's a lot of, you know, AI tools that will edit shorts for you. We probably know about a lot of them where you just upload a long form video.

• 1:33:19Graham Stephan?

  Opus Clips.

• 1:33:20Speaker 02

  Opus, yes. And I've used Opus.

• 1:33:22Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, they're great.

• 1:33:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is great. But with like, with a lot of things, AI, in AI, it's not gonna be better than a human for years, in my opinion. And because of the fact that short form algorithms are so good, I think there's a lot of demand for good shorts editors. And if you're in a more developed country and you don't want to learn these skills yourself, you can go to Upwork. You can find people in the Philippines or anywhere overseas that will do them very cheaply. And you can just subcontract out the work. So you could be a shorts editor without actually having the skills. So I really like that business. Solar sales, I'm going to put that as A because it's sales and it's door to door and it's hard and it's high ticket and you can make hundreds of thousands of dollars

• 1:34:08Speaker 02

  in three months of knocking doors and you'll learn resilience, you'll learn rejection, you'll learn sales. I think it's an excellent business.

• 1:34:16Graham Stephan?

  Cool.

• 1:34:17Speaker 02

  That's not going anywhere. I'm so glad I didn't read these ahead of time. Somali daycare fraud.

• 1:34:25Graham Stephan?

  Remove the word fraud.

• 1:34:26Speaker 02

  Hmm. So you know what? Remove the word fraud.

• 1:34:31Speaker 00

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• 1:35:02Speaker 05

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• 1:35:31Graham Stephan?

  Daycare.

• 1:35:32Speaker 02

  And.

• 1:35:33Graham Stephan?

  In Minnesota specifically.

• 1:35:34Speaker 02

  Call it daycare and I'm going to put it as a C.

• 1:35:36Graham Stephan?

  Okay.

• 1:35:37Speaker 02

  Because of the fact that you could, like you could grow virally, organically, just by like, um, like the pendulum, right? Right now, the pendulum right here is every daycare in Minnesota is a fraud and going the opposite direction and having like all kinds of proof that you're not a fraud. You do like profiles on the kids and you show like the watercolors on the websites. Like you could, there are so many viral opportunities to grow that business where you would have so much more demand than you could ever. Take care of, therefore you could charge much more than any other competitor. So.

• 1:36:13Graham Stephan?

  And you get money from the government, which is great.

• 1:36:15Speaker 02

  I guess you could, couldn't you? Like, would the government be willing to pay money to someone who's legitimate, though? That's the question.

• 1:36:21Graham Stephan?

  No, I don't know. There's other ancillary businesses you could run off at too, like, you know, transportation.

• 1:36:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, there you go. There you go. So I'm gonna make that a B, actually. If you remove the word fraud, okay? We're not talking about fraud here, but there's a very, very short window of time where you could make a lot of money being a legitimate daycare in Minnesota right now. And you don't, shoot, maybe you've just have a lead gen service for daycares. We're vetted daycares, right? You go out, you knock on their doors and you do what Nick did. And you find out, like, independently verified daycares, and then you just become a lead gen service.

• 1:36:54Graham Stephan?

  That would be a great short, having someone go up to the daycare and be like, yeah, come on in.

• 1:36:59Speaker 02

  Surely you've heard about.

• 1:37:00Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:37:02Speaker 02

  I like that a lot. Uber Lyft, so I just gotta put that in the same tier as DoorDash and Uber Eats. Because I see, I think you could make, I'll go, I'll go one up. Because I, I do think you could scale that a little better. Maybe the, the cars for DoorDash idea is kind of more in that category. Where you could just have a fleet service.

• 1:37:28Speaker 02

  And you could, you could just have a fleet of cars, or like, I would even put Turo in there. I think you can be successful in Turo if you have a very unique offering, but if you have like a Camry, it's very, very hard.

• 1:37:41Speaker 02

  Vending machines, so I'm gonna put this as a B. Because it's above ATMs, because you can buy vending machines cheaper than ATMs in a lot of cases. And it's easier to find a place to put a vending machine than it is to find a place to put an ATM. I think there's more demand for Doritos and Gatorades than for getting cash on the spot.

• 1:38:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just like a little more than ATMs because it's more approachable. You don't have the liability of large sums of money of cash.

• 1:38:14Speaker 02

  But it's like, it's a power law game. You, if you place 20 machines, 15 of them will make 100 or 200 bucks a month, and five will make 800 to 1200 a month. It's just a hard time finding where to put those five. Window washing. I'm gonna put this as. As an A because like solar sails, it teaches you great skills. You can be in business for 20 bucks and you learn people skills. You learn rejection and you can make six figures a year doing it.

• 1:38:49Jack Selby?

  Chris, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. As someone who has a very well balanced life, being a successful entrepreneur, a business owner, what you do is you problem solve. I'm sure you've problem solved many different aspects of your life. If you're to give a piece of well rounded advice to the viewer right now, what would it be?

• 1:39:07Speaker 02

  It would be to just do things. Don't focus on the outcome. Just do things that are unconventional, if for nothing else for this story, or for doing something that was unconventional. We just laid my grandmother to rest and she was a great example of just doing things. At one time at a funeral, they asked her to say the closing prayer and she wanted to pay tribute to my cousin more than that. And so for weeks she practiced singing the song and before she said the prayer, she just started singing into the microphone. Everyone's like, what, what is grandma doing? She's going off the rails, but she didn't care. She just did it. And one time we were in New York driving and we got up to these toll booths and she didn't have any cash. We had no way of getting in this toll booth. This was like in the late 90s.

• 1:39:50Speaker 02

  And she got out and she started knocking on windows of the cars in front of us in line, asking for cash. And she didn't think any of it. She wasn't embarrassed and she just did it. She just made it happen. She always just made it happen. And there's a phrase out there. I don't know if Sam Altman started or what, but it's you can just do things. And people should just do things. Like if they have a question about like, what if this, what if I tried like, just do it? Just test it. Just try it. Assuming that the risk isn't too great, you will just have a much more rich and rewarding life. And you'll have stories, you'll be interesting, like good things will happen to you. You will be, you will have a lot of surface area for luck. If you just go out there and chase your curiosities.

• 1:40:31Graham Stephan?

  I love that. That's great. Thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. We'll link to all of your information down below in the description. Thank you.

• 1:40:39Jack Selby?

  Thank you guys for watching. As always, we would not be here without you. So we deeply, deeply, deeply appreciate every single one of you. Isn't that right, buddy?

• 1:40:47Graham Stephan?

  Especially if you like and subscribe.

• 1:40:50Jack Selby?

  Especially if you like and subscribe and comment and follow us on Instagram and do all, do everything basically, become a member. Thank you guys for watching.

• 1:40:58Graham Stephan?

  Thank you.

• 1:40:58Jack Selby?

  Till next time. Thank you for coming on.

• 1:40:59Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:41:01Graham Stephan?

  Hey, by the way, if you enjoyed this episode and you want early access to our next episodes, as well as bonus content that's uncensored without any ads, feel free to join as a channel member. And next week's episode is absolutely crazy. It's with Nico the Watch Guy. It's seriously one of my favorite podcasts that we have filmed in a very long time. So if you want early access to that, feel free to join as a channel member. It helps us out tremendously. Hope you enjoy it. Thanks so much, and until next time.

• 1:41:36Speaker 06

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