Business Brainstorm: AG1 For Dogs, Sexy Sweaty Startups & Luxury Newsletters

Episode 517: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) are joined by Greg Isenberg to brainstorm 6 business ideas you can start with no funding. Want to see the best clips from MFM? Subscribe to our clips channel here. — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (7:00) Playing for style points (11:00) AG1 for Dogs (15:00) Daily Fabler (22:00) Sweaty Franchises (35:00) Entrepreneur Operating System (39:00) Luxury Newsletters (45:00) Veblen goods (48:00) Stripe Atlas for Trademarks (55:00) Greg’s Life Hacks — Links: • Late Checkout - https://www.latecheckout.studio/ • Boring Marketing - https://www.boringmarketing.com/ • Daily Stoic - https://dailystoic.com/ • Pink’s Windows - https://www.pinkswindows.com/franchising • EOS - https://www.eosworldwide.com/ • ResiBrands - https://resibrands.com/ • Playing Field - https://www.playingfield.com/ • Raya - https://www.rayatheapp.com/ • Superhuman - https://superhuman.com/ • Little Lifehacks Guaranteed to Improve your Life - https://tinyurl.com/2zhdz2uh — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com/ Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Try Shepherd Out - https://www.supportshepherd.com/ • Shaan's Personal Assistant System - http://shaanpuri.com/remoteassistant • Power Writing Course - https://maven.com/generalist/writing • Small Boy Newsletter - https://smallboy.co/ • Daily Newsletter - https://www.shaanpuri.com/ Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. — Other episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto • #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

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

• 0:00Greg Isenberg?

  And I'm really obsessed with these types of opportunities. Because it's easy to get press, like you can see the headlines now. Idiot creates water brand for dogs. I can see it now.

• 0:19Greg Isenberg?

  Great headline.

• 0:21Shaan Puri?

  Formerly respected individual Greg Isenberg. Disgraces himself with good water.

• 0:39Greg Isenberg?

  All right, we're live, son. What do we got?

• 0:42Shaan Puri?

  What's up? Greg is here, friend of the house. One of the original, one of the original friends of the house. You said something on an earlier pod that has always stuck with me. You were talking about, I think, names. You had a, you had your iPhone out and you were on the Notes app and you go, I just got banger names for, for businesses that don't have a business yet with them. And you were just spitting off names and one of the formats was, anything with the word bueno at the end. And I can't tell you how many times I've used this. When somebody's asking me about a name and they're like, yeah, we do, we do medical imaging scans. I'm like, scan bueno. And they're like, what? And they never pick it, but goddamn if it doesn't break the ice.

• 1:25Shaan Puri?

  Greg, welcome. And do you still have that notes, that note with all those names?

• 1:29Greg Isenberg?

  I've got all the names. I've also got, I don't know, 150 startup ideas in a notes file. But before I started, I gotta get something off my chest. I gotta be real with you.

• 1:39Shaan Puri?

  All right, what we got?

• 1:40Greg Isenberg?

  Producer Ari, you stole my producer. Did we? We don't know about this. Fill me in. Yes. So all of a sudden you guys send me a text and you go, what do you think about Ari? As a producer, I see you work with him, with her. And I go, she's amazing. She's the best. You know, she, there's nothing wrong, nothing wrong about her. And then all of a sudden, I'm getting a text from Ari being like, dude, thank you so much. Thank you so much. I just got the craziest job at my first billion.

• 2:16Shaan Puri?

  If I ever call you for a reference check, just know it's Mr. Steal Your Girl coming at you right there.

• 2:23Sam Parr?

  I thought she worked on it in the past. I thought, I thought that was over.

• 2:27Shaan Puri?

  That's what I thought, too.

• 2:28Sam Parr?

  I thought there was an end date.

• 2:30Greg Isenberg?

  It's okay.

• 2:30Sam Parr?

  Is it?

• 2:32Greg Isenberg?

  It happened. It happened.

• 2:33Sam Parr?

  Is it okay?

• 2:35Greg Isenberg?

  It's not okay.

• 2:39Sam Parr?

  Well, sorry and thank you.

• 2:43Shaan Puri?

  Okay, moving on from that one.

• 2:47Shaan Puri?

  Greg, you, uh, people should know what you do. You have Late Checkout, which is badass. You get one of the best websites, um, of any, like, I don't know, company. You make really amazing landing pages. Uh, so you have Late Checkout, which is combination, studio, agency. How do you describe it?

• 3:02Greg Isenberg?

  Holding company, building businesses that have audiences and communities part of them.

• 3:07Shaan Puri?

  And you are kind of becoming this like Greg the Community Guy. I feel like that was like a phase of your life. Is that still the phase we're in? Are we, are we, is this making fetch a thing? Or is, uh, did it stick? Did Greg the Community Guy happen? Or what, what's going on with that?

• 3:21Greg Isenberg?

  I think so, man. I think so. Um, I feel like if other people are calling you that, it's, it's a thing. If you start calling yourself Bug Community Guy, uh, and you're just, you know, so yeah, it's, it's definitely working.

• 3:34Shaan Puri?

  I feel like that's a mistake I've made many times, trying to call myself the guy. Even actually, uh, today I was thinking about, I was thinking about Gary Vee. I was thinking about one of my favorite YouTubers, Cody Co. And I was like, why am I not Sean P? What, what is Puri doing for me? I, I gotta drop the rest of the last name. I just need to be Sean P. And I really wrote a note to myself. I said, go all in on Sean P.

• 3:56Sam Parr?

  No, that's stupid. No.

• 3:59Shaan Puri?

  We're workshopping it.

• 4:01Sam Parr?

  You've got a weird enough first name, S H A A N. I think you're good. You're good.

• 4:06Greg Isenberg?

  The only reason why Sam is saying that.

• 4:08Shaan Puri?

  Jealous?

• 4:09Greg Isenberg?

  He, that he's, well, no, you know, Sam, he's, he wants to be Sam P. No, he wants to be Sam P. Come on.

• 4:15Sam Parr?

  No, man, I'm happy. I, I, I've got a two syllable first and last name. I'm good. I don't need a nickname. And when it's that short, you're good. Um.

• 4:23Shaan Puri?

  Sean Bueno?

• 4:26Sam Parr?

  Dude, great. Latecheckout.studio, I hate your website. You're doing, it's such a designer website. I can't click anything. I gotta like scroll around a map in order to find what you do. What's going on, man?

• 4:38Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, I think, yes, and there's two ways to create a website. One is to be conversion centric, right? Like convert as many people as possible. The other way is you're building a brand. And this is unlike any other website on the internet, I think. So you'd be surprised how many million dollar deals we've been able to close because people like our website.

• 5:02Shaan Puri?

  You've done something that I think a lot of people were trying to do, but you've done it well. So let's talk about this kind of personal hold co. Because you went the venture path. When I met you, you were raising money from all the big name VCs. You were building a social network. Like we were, we were both playing that like, it's not even a lottery ticket game. The analogy I give is somebody handed us a bottle or we picked up a bottle and started running around trying to catch lightning. And that was our like stated game plan. It was like, ah, yes, I shall create the next hit social network now on demand, which is not how any of them got really built in the first place. So you played the VC game. You have backed off of it. Give us your kind of two second philosophy on how your mindset changed

• 5:47Shaan Puri?

  going from Silicon Valley venture path to what you do now.

• 5:51Greg Isenberg?

  There was a group of us now in our 30s who watched The Social Network, that movie. And we all thought that we could become Mark Zuckerberg, if we're being honest with ourselves.

• 6:03Shaan Puri?

  I mean, I would have been happy with a Winklevoss too. But like, yeah, I wanted to be Zuck, yes.

• 6:07Greg Isenberg?

  We saw that movie. It jazzed us up. There was a whole generation of us who moved to Silicon Valley to go and raise a bunch of money to build social apps. And

• 6:19Greg Isenberg?

  You know, we tried. We tried. And the truth is, it's, it's, you know, I remember meeting one of the world's best investors. And he, he once told me that a third of our deals fail, a third of our deals, we get our money back. And a third of our deals, we make 1X to Google times. So that got me thinking that what he's basically saying is that the best founders in the world, because he's only backing the best founders, two thirds of them, basically the founders and their teams don't see any money from acquisitions. That means a third of companies are basically seeing any profit. It's just so difficult to win in that game.

• 7:02Greg Isenberg?

  And yeah, so that's why I've been focusing more on profitable cash flowing businesses.

• 7:06Sam Parr?

  Are you making more money now doing the cash flow thing versus when you sold your company?

• 7:12Greg Isenberg?

  Yes, absolutely.

• 7:14Sam Parr?

  Do you like your life better?

• 7:15Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah.

• 7:16Shaan Puri?

  And do you, do you have a goal like, like cash flow goal? You're like, okay, my goal is to get to 10 million in cash flow or whatever. Like, is that how you were thinking about it? Is that the game that you're currently playing?

• 7:27Greg Isenberg?

  No, the game I'm playing is I'm playing for style points, baby.

• 7:36Speaker 03

  What does that mean?

• 7:37Greg Isenberg?

  Is there anything else to say? That explains everything. Next question, man.

• 7:41Sam Parr?

  What is, what's a style point?

• 7:43Shaan Puri?

  We were talking about when Sam was working at HubSpot. He was like, I'm an artist, baby.

• 7:50Shaan Puri?

  I think that's what Greg's talking about when he talks about style points. The other part of style points is like the lifestyle. So in Silicon Valley, this idea of a lifestyle, lifestyle business is like a, it's a backhanded compliment. So it's, it's a way for people in Silicon Valley to pat you on the head and be like, that's cute. That's a cute business. Like, good for you. Good. That's, you know, that's swell. But like, to me, I'm like, that's crazy. Like, the point. Point of these businesses to give myself and my team awesome lifestyles like what else are you, what are you trying to do if not that? I didn't, I don't even understand. And so I feel like one of the kind of arbitrages right now is in, especially if you're from the tech industry, is the whole tech industry is so brainwashed that it's all about creating multi-billion

• 8:35Shaan Puri?

  dollar companies that a lot of people who would actually be super happy if they created a lifestyle business that gave them two and a half million dollars a year of cash flow, won't ever go that path because it's seen as kind of this like lesser, lesser thing to do.

• 8:49Sam Parr?

  Well, we all have friends who do that, you know, I tease or we tease them on air, Andrew Wilkinson for doing, for doing that. But you know, what was funny is you guys see Chamath from All In, he, so Chamath, for the listener, I, I would assume he's a billionaire. If he's not a billionaire, many, many hundreds of millions, very, very, very wealthy. The other day, he announced that he was starting a paid newsletter and I think it was a hundred dollars a year. And what's funny is there's two things that I've found to be true is I've talked to someone who says they don't want to be public and then they get on Twitter or they get on YouTube or something and they taste that, that dopamine and they go, ooh, this is nice. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this again. And they love them, even though like, you know, the people

• 9:33Sam Parr?

  who are like, oh, I can't do it. I don't want to do it. I don't want to be a whole guy. They get in public guy and they love it. The second thing I've noticed is even people who have big companies that are maybe venture backed companies and there's a very likely outcome where they're wildly wealthy, even making fifty thousand, a hundred thousand dollars a month, that can be addicting. I wonder what, what Chamath's plays with that, but he has a, he has a paid newsletter now.

• 9:54Shaan Puri?

  Well, even worse is like, yeah, we're gonna have it be paid. And so that's really cool because the revenue from that, it makes this whole thing sustainable. Like we can, we can use to hire more researchers and do better research. I was like, hey, why don't you take the point one percent interest on your savings account that you have in, with, with JP Morgan right now and use that to pay for seven researchers. It's fine, actually. Like it's crazy to me that, like, you know, the people say like, what's the point of fucking money if you don't say fuck you? Like, what's the point of being a billionaire? If you're gonna... Do a paid newsletter. What is, what is happening right now?

• 10:31Sam Parr?

  The point is, is it's addicting. And so my point being is where a lot of people who like would make fun of lifestyle businesses. Once, I mean, and I was that person. I was like, I want to go big. And then I started tasting like a monthly, monthly income. That's good. I'm like, oh, this is awesome.

• 10:45Shaan Puri?

  I was texting Andrew Wilkinson, making fun of him too, because he was doing a paid Twitter subscriber thing. And I was like, dog, you have a foundation. You're talking, you're signing the giving pledge. Like, what do you care about this like 10K a month?

• 11:02Shaan Puri?

  You know, subscriber revenue that you now have to go tap dance for to like perform and give them their value. But it hits for him. Like, there's something to it that for, for, that's like giving him that value. I was, I couldn't believe it to the point where I told him, I was like, the only explanation for this that makes any sense to me is you're using the Twitter paid features so that Elon is like, see, this guy's doing it. And he puts you, he starts retweeting you, because you're promoting his thing that he's trying to make work. And then you end up becoming friends with Elon Musk. I said, that's the only reasonable explanation for this.

• 11:35Sam Parr?

  And he denied it. He didn't.

• 11:37Greg Isenberg?

  I actually get Andrew doing his, his premium X thing a little bit more because like he's having interaction with his fans. But the Chama thing around like putting up gated content makes absolutely no sense.

• 11:53Shaan Puri?

  Did you have, Greg, did you have any other ideas or niche businesses you wanted to get off your chest?

• 11:58Greg Isenberg?

  Let's just rapid fire.

• 12:00Shaan Puri?

  All right, give us, give us one.

• 12:01Greg Isenberg?

  This one's a, is a happy idea. So it's a crazy one, but a happy one. It's, listen to me now. Athletic Greens for dogs.

• 12:13Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 12:13Sam Parr?

  Okay, keep going.

• 12:14Shaan Puri?

  Go on.

• 12:15Greg Isenberg?

  AG1 Athletic Greens came out of nowhere, started sponsoring all these podcasts, YouTubers.

• 12:23Greg Isenberg?

  And I don't know if they're, what do you think their revenue is, Sam?

• 12:28Sam Parr?

  600 million, 500 million. I think they kill it. But I'll do the homie move and say 100 million.

• 12:32Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, okay. More than 100 million. They're, they're really, really crushing it using that model now. Dogs are similar to humans in the sense that they drink water, they drink tap water. And the question is, what if dogs drank something that was better for them than plain old water? Okay, so here's the playbook. You find the Andrew Huberman for dogs. You sponsor every top dog creator and animals lover podcast. You give packets to restaurants and bowls that say this brand for their dogs. And then you profit. The name, we call it, the name we call it Good Water.

• 13:18Greg Isenberg?

  And our slogan, we do, good dogs deserve good water. Now, we have to figure out what we can put in the water so that it actually is better than water itself. But this is a good example of how do you create a category of one? How do you build something where you're building something where no one else is playing? And I'm really obsessed with these types of opportunities. Because it's easy to get press, like you can see the headlines now.

• 13:58Sam Parr?

  Idiot creates water brand for dogs. I can see it now.

• 14:07Sam Parr?

  Great headline.

• 14:08Speaker 04

  Formerly respected individual Greg Isenberg disgraces himself with good water.

• 14:18Speaker 03

  Co-Benner Sean P. says, it's really better than water, I swear.

• 14:24Sam Parr?

  Is Gatorade for dogs the next great thing? Yeah, like.

• 14:31Sam Parr?

  This is some stupid shit, Gray. We're getting good water, but like, bad idea. This, it sounds like something, uh, misfits, or what's that called? What's that, what's that company called?

• 14:38Shaan Puri?

  Mischief.

• 14:39Sam Parr?

  Mischief.

• 14:40Shaan Puri?

  I gotta tell you, when Craig Clemens came on the pod one time, many years ago, and he was like, "Guys," uh, we're like, "What ideas you got?" He's like, "VR for dogs." And this is a guy who's made like 10 hit products. So he's not like some one-hit wonder. He's got 10, he's had 10 great ideas. And on our pod, he comes on and says, "VR for dogs." And both of me and you were like, we didn't know him that well to be like, roast him like we just did Craig, but we were like, "Tell us more." Um, but you know, we were not in on it. But then I swear, every time I leave the, because he was like, "Look," he's like, "I would pay anything if my dog could be entertained when they're alone, like, or just, you know, I just don't want them to be bored." And now, I swear, every time I leave the house, and my dog's sitting there just gonna stare at a wall, and I'm like, "Bet your ass I'd strap on some, a pair of, a pair of, uh, you know,

• 15:24Shaan Puri?

  Oculus for dog goggles if, if it actually kept my dog entertained." So I think he was right on, right in, in spirit.

• 15:33Sam Parr?

  Gray, I want to talk to you about some of these ideas because you, the first one, you talk about Ryan Holiday, who's been on the pod, he's my buddy, I'm a huge fan of, and you seem like you're in a spicy mood.

• 15:45Greg Isenberg?

  Really, I'm always in a spicy mood. Uh, I just want to put that out there.

• 15:50Shaan Puri?

  For the right, the record is set.

• 15:52Greg Isenberg?

  For the record. The record is set, okay? Uh, yeah, let's talk about the first idea. So Ryan Holiday, uh, incredible, incredible guy. Like, he's built such a huge brand around Stoicism. Stoicism was basically dead unless, you know, you were studying philosophy at Columbia. Uh, these people like Seneca, Aristotle, uh, maybe you'd see quotes here and there, but it was basically dead. And what he did is he introduced Stoicism, the great name, by the way, Daily Stoic, to millions of Gen Z and millennials. Um, so I think that there's an opportunity to do exactly what Ryan Holiday did,

• 16:36Greg Isenberg?

  uh, but in the fable space. So do you remember Aesop, Aesop Fables?

• 16:42Sam Parr?

  No, what is that?

• 16:44Greg Isenberg?

  Okay, so Aesop is just one of the most well-known storytellers of all time of humanity. He did like the tortoise and the hare or the wolf in sheep's clothing. So it's basically these little stories that use animals to tell the moral of the story. And it's got a lot of great stuff in there, just like Seneca had a lot of great stuff in there.

• 17:19Greg Isenberg?

  So I think that if you got the handle The Daily Fabler and you started telling these incredible stories and quotes from it,

• 17:32Greg Isenberg?

  you can build an audience really quickly through that.

• 17:36Greg Isenberg?

  And similar to how Ryan Holiday, you know, Ryan Holiday, for those who don't know monetized via courses, but he also monetized via his book, but he also, my favorite part of how he monetizes is he literally sells, it's a coin, he calls it a medallion. So he's got this medallion called Memento Mori.

• 17:55Sam Parr?

  Hey, I have one.

• 17:57Greg Isenberg?

  Okay, why did you get one?

• 17:58Sam Parr?

  Because he gave it to me and I thought it was awesome. But I do think it's cool. I carried it around with me for years. I thought it was cool. I forget, what is, it means like you're gonna die or like live the day or something like that?

• 18:10Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, basically means like seize the day, right? Like you're gonna die and if you know you're gonna die and you're facing mortality, then.

• 18:19Sam Parr?

  It's Greek for YOLO.

• 18:20Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, it's Greek for YOLO. Memento Mori is Greek for YOLO. So that's a, and people pay $30 for this and I'm sure that he's making millions of dollars selling coins to his audiences via Twitter, TikTok and Instagram and YouTube.

• 18:39Sam Parr?

  It's the same model, but for fables.

• 18:42Shaan Puri?

  He told us this on the pod and it blew my mind. He came on and he was like, yeah. Um, I sell this coin. It's like, you know, cost me whatever. I don't know what it was, but like, you know, let's call it a dollar. Just be generous. Assume this coin costs a dollar. He partnered with this mint in the U. S. They mint the coin. He sends it and he's like, yeah, you know, I've sold shirts before. I think he worked at American Apparel. He was like the head of marketing at American Apparel. He's like, you know, apparel sucks, merch sucks, shirts, t-shirts suck because there's so many sizes and colors and whatever. He's like, there's one SKU. It's one coin.

• 19:16Sam Parr?

  There's no returns.

• 19:16Shaan Puri?

  I sell it in a two pack. I sell it in a two pack. It ships in an envelope because it's the lightest weight thing. So like shipping is easy. Making it is easy. Selling it is easy because it's a, it's a, uh, you know, it's a single SKU product. He's like, it was the low headache way to have a merch store for Stoicism. And I was like, this guy's genius. And I, I remember, I don't know if he told us or I was doing some math when I was thinking about it. I'm pretty sure he's made over $20 million just selling this coin.

• 19:44Sam Parr?

  I think on the pod, he said he sold tens of thousands of coins.

• 19:48Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. And if you do the math, it's like, whatever. I think that, you know, 25, $20 a coin or something like that.

• 19:53Sam Parr?

  Yeah. I mean, he told us and, and he's killing it. Um, but what did you say here? You said, uh, it's harder to be Seneca than it is Sahil Bloom. It's harder to be Aristotle than Alex Hermosy.

• 20:04Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah. So there's a bunch of tailwinds with this business. So first of all, creating content is way more difficult than curating content and distilling content. And I want people to, to know that because there's a ton of businesses that you can create where you don't need to come up with any original ideas. You can just curate amazing ideas that other people will have. Hey, you're talking to two of the guys that did that.

• 20:30Shaan Puri?

  The hustle did that. Milk Road did that.

• 20:32Greg Isenberg?

  Exactly. It's way easier to get your own podcast producer than to steal your podcast producer. You know what I'm saying?

• 20:40Shaan Puri?

  Also, my newsletter, the Five Tweet Tuesday, it's the highest rated newsletter I've ever made. It's high open rate, get the most feedback on it. And it's also the easiest thing because I'm just curating five of the most interesting tweets versus try to create my own original blog post every Tuesday.

• 20:55Greg Isenberg?

  So yeah, so yeah, it is easier to be Sahil Bloom than Sedeka. And it is easier to be Alex Ramosi than Aristotle, because they could just take other people's concepts and curate it. So this, this daily fable idea has that tailwind with it. And it's got a few more tailwinds to it. One is that, another one is that Gen Z basically doesn't believe in God. Almost 50% of Gen Z is either unaffiliated with any religion or does not believe in God. But they seek out, it's just human nature to seek out some greater meaning and purpose in life.

• 21:40Greg Isenberg?

  So that's why they're filling their time with Daily Stoic and could fill their time with, you know, something like the Daily Fable. And this is what I call like the unbundling of religion.

• 21:51Shaan Puri?

  What is this pink, pinks thing?

• 21:53Greg Isenberg?

  Pinks, so pinks, someone I work with, a partner of mine, Jordan, he, you know, he's rolling around Austin and he sees this pink truck outside a house. And outside this pink truck is these men, you know, with mustaches and mullets with these pink shirts tucked in, you know, he's thinking to himself, is this a porno shoot? Like, what is the, what is going on over here?

• 22:28Greg Isenberg?

  And then he sees this logo, Pinks, Pinks Window Cleaning. And he, he finds out that it's a, it's a new window cleaning service based in Austin.

• 22:42Greg Isenberg?

  And it's actually a franchise business. And if you go to their website, thinkswindos.com, they they basically, you know, they've got this boring business, window washing, and they they jazzed it up. And they they even have like a merch store where they've apparently sold thousands and thousands of hats. Oh, my God.

• 23:04Shaan Puri?

  Look, I was at dinner the other night and Bar Shop is wearing this hat. And I look at it, I go, I think I even said, I go, what's this? Just something cool. What is this? I know you're doing something cool. What is this? Because he's Bar Shop, one of these guys that like, he knows the indie bands. He knows the cool restaurant to eat at. He knows cool shit. And and so he's like, because I'm like, why? Why else would he be wearing a window washing hat? This makes no sense. And he's like, ah, it's this brand called Pink's. They're really cool. I'm like, they're cool? Window washing? How do you even like, compared to what? I couldn't tell you one window washing brand, let alone the coolest one. And he's like, yeah, I'm like, so you bought the hat? He's like, I bought the hat. Style points, baby.

• 23:49Shaan Puri?

  And that was the that was the end of that story. And I went back home and I ordered a Pink's hat because I was like, if it's cool, then I will be the follower and and try to do it, too.

• 23:57Greg Isenberg?

  So this is a part of a bigger trend, which is that I think this is kind of like the Dollar Shave Club-ification of boring businesses. So I think a lot of people, younger people are going to be buying some of these businesses. You know, boomers are retiring. You know, the story there. But I think what they're going to do is they're going to make it feel like an indie band. You know, you remember the Dollar Shave Club video, right? It was funny. Yeah, it it it took something boring, razors, shaving, Gillette.

• 24:34Greg Isenberg?

  And made it like super cool and fun and and that's what Pink's is doing.

• 24:40Shaan Puri?

  That's actually super smart because that actually kicked off like a huge wave of D to C brands like Sam always jokes with Sam, what's your joke about D to C brands? How do you, how do you know a D to C brand when you see one?

• 24:51Greg Isenberg?

  Well, because they like, uh, it's always lowercase. It's the same, uh, it's the same font. It's, uh, they always use millennial pink.

• 24:58Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. And so you, and so it kicked, Dollar Shave Club kicked off this wave of D to C brands from Casper, Away luggage, and then, you know, like just one after another. And, you know, there's hundreds of them at this point.

• 25:13Shaan Puri?

  Which was basically like, take boring category, uh, do best in class, like kind of branding around it, but put a shit ton of money into like, or creative effort into the branding. And then sell that kind of commodity product online. And what you're saying is people are now going to do that for these, these, uh, sweaty startup businesses. So instead of doing the boring stuff. Like if you go look at self-storage or U-Haul, like these are some of the worst looking brands you'll ever see. And maybe instead of the sop, the lowercase, you know, block letter font with the soft, you know, the, that, that millennial pink. Maybe it's this like vintage retro indie band, uh, look that's going to become the like, the go-to thing for window washing, trash haul removal.

• 25:59Shaan Puri?

  You know, HVAC, all this stuff. Is that what you're saying? Cause I think that's actually kind of brilliant.

• 26:03Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, I'm going to call my shot here and say that Pink's is the beginning of this whole new generation. Over the next five to 10 years. You're going to see Pink's for X. Uh, you're going to see Pink's for, uh, lawn care, pest control, car wash, catering, pet grooming.

• 26:23Greg Isenberg?

  Snow removal. And I think it'll.

• 26:27Greg Isenberg?

  It doesn't necessarily need to be like nostalgia plus design, but it could also be just, it's just different, interesting and unexpected.

• 26:36Sam Parr?

  So the guy, it looks like the brand behind Pink's is called Resy Brands. It looks like they own three or four things. They own one called Garage Up, which is like making your garage look cool and clean. Then there's Pink's, then there's that one painter. And then if you Google it, you can find the guy who owns it is this guy named Steven Montgomery, and he's young, he's young with like sleeve tattoos. He looks maybe 30, he looks like a kid. It's pretty fascinating. This is a really interesting find. Do you know what their revenue is for Resy Brands? Is it, is it going well?

• 27:07Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, so first of all, he is young. I think he graduated college like five or six years ago. Resy Brands started recently and within the last couple of years, and their painting brand, that one painter, is the fastest growing painting company in the United States. So this is a model that's starting to work. And if I'm like a PE fund, like this is what I'm doing. I'm basically acquiring boring businesses. I'm hiring an agency like Late Checkout and I'm, I'm building brands, not boring businesses.

• 27:47Shaan Puri?

  He's like, I'm joining Hampton, then I hardly check out, find some talent on Shepherd.

• 27:53Sam Parr?

  Exactly.

• 27:54Shaan Puri?

  Bada bing bada boom, I'm there.

• 27:56Sam Parr?

  We, I was, I was, I used to be close with Brian, the guy who started 1-800-GOT-JUNK. And he was telling me all about franchises. And so 1-800-GOT-JUNK was his own thing. He started with just one trunk or one, one truck and grew it. And I think now he owns 100% of it. It does like 200 or 300 million dollars in revenue, really valuable business. But he was telling me that they took off when they did franchises, franchises. That's when they really started kicking ass. But dealing and working with franchise owners, he said, or I don't know if he said it or a CEO Cameron, he was like, it's very, very, very hard. And I think it's sort of like the agency business where you're like, oh, looks. So simple. You just do this, you do that. But doing it every single day, I think is a huge challenge.

• 28:41Sam Parr?

  It's almost like working in the restaurant industry. You know, your server won't show up because they're hungover or you gotta deal with fights every once in a while. I think it has a similar, a similar type of headache.

• 28:51Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, it's probably hard to manage. And, and yeah, I want to be clear on this. Pink's is actually now, it started as one location in Austin. And now they're, you could franchise your own Pink's. Like if you want to bring one to New York or wherever. So they basically charge 2% marketing fee, a 7% royalty fee and a franchise fee of at least $49,000. I think it's 49,000 to 100,000.

• 29:17Greg Isenberg?

  And they actually share some of their revenue numbers. So for their, one of their Austin locations, they've got seven employees. They're doing 742,000 in revenue and they're making 36% profit on that. So $268,000. So it's a pretty good business.

• 29:36Greg Isenberg?

  And yeah, you're right that it's a pain to manage some of those employees. But there's something here.

• 29:44Shaan Puri?

  Although I gotta say the disclaimer, we don't know if this is a great business. It's not advice. And also, you know, franchise like headquarters tend to share the numbers of like the best performing thing. Not like, you know, the average or the medium. Because we talked about a business that has a franchise. I was like, oh, this is a cool idea. I think this thing, you know, just looking at the traffic, it looked like it might have, you know, here's a guess at what I'm watching. It was making, and then their franchise calendar got booked out. Like the meetings got booked out for like four months after the pod came out. So definitely can't say, I personally don't endorse this. Maybe Greg is, but I personally do not. It's not my first million sponsored.

• 30:26Greg Isenberg?

  Okay, so what I was gonna say on Pink's is I went, I didn't know anything about franchises until, like any internet entrepreneur, I didn't know anything about franchises until going down the Pink's rabbit hole. And I didn't realize that franchises first are regulated by a franchise board. So that, that's also just an interesting thing to know about. If you want to do a franchise, you have to go to these portals. You have to apply. There's only certain.

• 30:58Greg Isenberg?

  Information that they can disclose. So I found that quite interesting. And then the other thing, interesting thing that got me thinking about pinks and franchises is I started thinking about like, what is franchise model? What does that look like for the internet? So what is a franchise? A franchise is basically a set of, it's a business model in a box and a brand in a box and support in a box for an entrepreneur.

• 31:29Greg Isenberg?

  How could we bring that, or is there an opportunity to bring that to the internet?

• 31:34Shaan Puri?

  I had the same thought when you were talking earlier about your agency, about how scaling agencies is hard. And maybe, I don't know why, but franchising was on my mind and I was like, I wonder why, like if I was like, if I'm me and I have a big audience, I have a large ability to create a brand and get customers. The painful part is the operations. What most people do is they partner with somebody, they run the operations, but they're going to run into the scaling headaches and bottlenecks along the way. And I was like, what if I franchised it? Meaning I could, you could spin up, you could become one of my operators or a partner in the business. I'm going to hand you customers like automatically, you don't have to know how to do internet marketing. You don't have to build your own brand. You just have to fulfill the demand that I generate.

• 32:16Shaan Puri?

  And we kind of like, let's just say it was, I don't know, design or web development or something. I don't know. I don't know what, what category makes sense. But like, you could just have a three person team that's going to bang out high quality work and do as much work as you're able to generate. But like, we don't have to create a hundred person agency headquarters. That's going to like, have managers of managers and ensure the quality of work and then have to like, increase prices because of we all these layers of management. Like, maybe there's another way, maybe there's a way to do it. I don't know if that fully makes sense, but it was a thought that came to mind earlier when you were talking about scaling.

• 32:51Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, maybe, maybe what we're saying is the next generation of creator led agencies actually look more like franchises.

• 32:59Greg Isenberg?

  Then they do what they are now.

• 33:01Shaan Puri?

  Right, because nor- normally a franchise, the reason you franchise is because you can't geographically expand. So like, why does Chipotle, why did Chipotle initially franchise out? It's because this concept works, we can physically only launch so many locations ourselves with the capital we have and the like time we have. We can't be in Alabama right now, but there should be some Chipotles in Alabama, so they find a franchisee there. With the internet, you don't have the geography problem. So that's why I think most internet companies never franchise. However, I do think that for things that are like service, like, um, you know, a service is rendered. I think that's kind of similar in that you run into servicing bottlenecks.

• 33:39Greg Isenberg?

  Where I disagree with you on the geography thing is, I think it's, it's not that we don't have a geography problem on, on the internet. It's just that geography is defined differently. Geography is defined in the real world, like, you know, at the corner of 25th and 5th Avenue. Versus on the internet, like, you have an audience, you have people coming into your store every day. It's just a different definition of geography. So I think that if someone could figure out, and this is for the audience, if someone could figure out, and us honestly,

• 34:15Greg Isenberg?

  if we can figure out how we could take the benefits of, uh, a franchise model and figure out how we can, uh, you know, the reason, okay, if you go to Chipotle in New York City or go to Chipotle in San Francisco, the burrito tastes the same. The problem with the creator, like, going back to creator-led agencies is that the, the, the type of, uh, product is very different as those businesses are scaling, uh, unless the operators are, you know, have been doing this for many years. So I think there's something here.

• 34:49Shaan Puri?

  There's another version of this that is kind of on the internet. Uh, are you guys familiar with EOS?

• 34:55Greg Isenberg?

  No.

• 34:56Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so, uh, EOS is basically a operating system for an entrepreneur. So basically, uh, we've all felt it, you're a CEO, you're running your business and you're making it up as you go. So it's not, not just like, what's that analogy, like, oh, we're building the plane as we're flying it. It's like, no, we're literally like, trying to figure out what is a, like, what, what shape will fly while we're flying it. And so, um, you're making up how to run your company, but you don't need to. There are best practices for how to run a company that will apply to like, you know, 80, 90% of businesses. And so what EOS did was this guy wrote this book. I don't know the full backstory, but the guy wrote a book called traction. And in traction, he's talking about how to run a, like how he runs his business. It's like, oh, we come up with our

• 35:36Shaan Puri?

  annual plan and we use this scorecard. Here's a scorecard template. You can go download that for free. And like, it's basically this like, here's a blueprint, a model for how to run your company. I've never used it.

• 35:46Sam Parr?

  I used it. I know a lot of people use it and it's like you have rocks and like each person's responsible for three rocks and it's like this whole like strategic thing.

• 35:55Shaan Puri?

  Okay. Or is this somewhat similar to it, which is like a goal setting system? So EOS is actually like kind of a monstrous business from what I understand. And the way they work is kind of through this franchise model. So what they do is they have these implementers. So EOS basically takes the lead and then they're like, cool. You're interested in implementing EOS and it's, it's really expensive. It's like, like Sam, when you did it, what'd you do for Hampton or for Hustle?

• 36:20Sam Parr?

  For the hustle, I just read the book and then I just implemented it and I showed people I do. I couldn't afford to do the normal thing, but I, it's many tens of thousands of dollars for like a two day workshop.

• 36:28Shaan Puri?

  25 or 50K or something like that. So it's quite expensive for most people to like swallow that. Or it's just like, I don't know. You have to have a lot of conviction that that's going to really help you in order to pay this. But these, there are a bunch of people out there that are just simply EOS implementers. They're not, they're not like, they're not part of the company, but they are basically like these kind of freelance people that will do this. I don't know the exact structure, so I'm talking a little, little, you know, off the, off the top here. So, so I might get some things wrong here. From what I understand, you have traction, which is the book that generates a lot of leads. People who are interested in implementing this, they go to the website, they say, great, I want to do this, to book a call. And then they either, you sort of like, you know, buy the system or buy the system with the implementation fee or whatever.

• 37:10Shaan Puri?

  And then they're paying a person who's like kind of their coach to help them implement this system and then whatever. And I actually know a bunch of people that have done this. I'm not, what I've noticed is it's kind of more beginning entrepreneurs. It's like the best operators I know typically weren't the ones who were telling me they used EOS, but that's just an observation. I don't, I don't know if that's, if that's fair or not. But it is quite heavy. It's like a lot. It's like a full on system. It's like a full revamp of how you, what meetings do you run every week and how you do them and all this stuff? I've had this craving to do a lightweight version of EOS because I have a system that works for me. I've used it for like 15 years. I've like fine tuned it along the way and I'm like, and every time I meet an entrepreneur and they have some bottleneck they're hitting,

• 37:51Shaan Puri?

  I'm like, okay, well, let's trace down to the root cause of this. Like, what's getting you into this pickle? And usually it's that there's something in their process that's causing them to run into this issue. And if you fix the process, you'll fix the issue. And I don't know if it's a perfect process, but like it's lightweight, which I think is more for someone like me. Like, I'm not going to go hire EOS and pay these guys, you know, $30,000 and spend six months revamping my company, probably. Like, I don't really want to do that. But if there was a lightweight version, I would do it. And I think the only thing that stops me from implementing that is I don't want to have a giant consulting company that I'm running to do that. Whereas if there was this franchise model and people could basically come train, like, come to my workshop seminar and do like a four week

• 38:36Shaan Puri?

  certification process to learn exactly how to do it, and then they could go do it on their own and make their own money doing it, that would be fun. I would do something like that. I think that's how EOS works.

• 38:46Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and I wouldn't be surprised if that thing makes like $30 million a year and like $15 million a year in profit. The people who are into it, they're obsessed with it. Greg, what's this, what's this, this, what's called playing field? I don't know how you found that. That's fascinating because I go to the website and you can't even sign up.

• 39:04Greg Isenberg?

  So Nathan Barry from ConvertKit told me about this one. Basically, it's Tom Brady's manager. He's got this newsletter. It's the most expensive newsletter in the world.

• 39:18Shaan Puri?

  You had my attention and now you have my interest.

• 39:21Greg Isenberg?

  So his company is called Playing Field and his newsletter is called The Brief. It's invitation only. I think there's a maximum of about 1,000 subscribers. In order to get on the list, you actually have to be an NFL owner, or you have to be just like a really badass top player. And this is like a part of a bigger trend, which I think is like luxury newsletters. So, or even a bigger macro trend, which is, you know, there's all these mega ultra luxury.

• 39:57Greg Isenberg?

  Rich experiences popping up for the top 1%, be it like So House or private Disney tours or Aman, that hotel that charges like 5K a month. 5K, 5K a night. 5K a night, 5K a night. And you're seeing that in the market, like reflected, like Hermes has a bigger market cap than Nike, you know? So I think the same thing is happening with newsletters. And I think there's an opportunity to basically do, to what everyone is trying not to do. What everyone is trying to do is build a newsletter to get to the hustle level or to get to a milk road level. But what if you tried to do the complete opposite?

• 40:38Greg Isenberg?

  What if you created a newsletter for the top 1% that was very, very niche focused? And you just treated it like a nightclub. My favorite, my favorite quote is Andy Warhol, I think he said, "Studio 54 is a dictatorship at the door, but a democracy on the dance floor."

• 41:04Greg Isenberg?

  And I think there's a way to bring that Studio 54 mentality to building luxury newsletters in a bunch of different spaces. How much do you think they charge for this?

• 41:18Greg Isenberg?

  I mean, we gotta buy an NFL team to find out.

• 41:22Greg Isenberg?

  So how much does the Jets cost?

• 41:25Shaan Puri?

  This, this idea, style points. I mean, wow.

• 41:31Shaan Puri?

  This is incredible. What a, what a hilarious and incredible idea that actually makes sense when you think about it. There was a guy, it was a big article in some, something like, you know, Forbes or whatever. And it was about this guy. And he's got this, like, you know that Raya was like the dating app for like hot celebrities or whatever? This guy created like the, the Raya of like experiences or something.

• 41:58Greg Isenberg?

  Oh, I saw this. Is the guy a partner with Justin Timberlake?

• 42:01Shaan Puri?

  Myria, I guess.

• 42:02Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah.

• 42:04Shaan Puri?

  This guy's specialty is getting like super VIP experiences that like one of a kind of experiences that you can't, um, you can't like, you can't buy or you can't find anywhere else.

• 42:17Sam Parr?

  Yeah, basically Andrew Wilk, Andrew Wilkinson told me about it. If I remember correctly, Andrew Wilkinson either went to the Grammys or the Oscars, one of those like things. He sent me this picture of him in a tuxedo on the red carpet. And I was like, what the hell? And he goes, yeah, I was part of this community or this service called, I forget what it was called, but the guy started with Justin Timberlake or something like that, went through Y C. And it's about getting experiences that you can't normally get, but you can buy your way into if you know, the right people.

• 42:42Shaan Puri?

  Right, right. Okay. I'm going to read you some of the quotes from this, uh, this thing. So here's what it says. It goes, um, you know, somebody will call him and they'll say, um, like he could basically get you treated like you're an American diplomat and like you needed to be like handled, uh, like he could do that for you. And so he's like, oh, um, you know, you need this epic party in Mexico with private chefs. Just, you just tell me what you need. You don't have to worry about the rest. It's going to happen. And so what he'll do is he'll create like, okay, um, you're not just going to the Beyonce concert. You're going to get to go into the dressing room and you're going to get to hang out afterwards, or she's going to call your kid on stage and get to sing with them, like something that he's like one of one style, um, style experiences. So here's what it says. Mirror only accepts ultra high

• 43:27Shaan Puri?

  net worth, uh, people defined as people worth over 30 million. This, he says, this isn't the 1%, it's the point 003%. Um, you must be willing to spend an average of 1 million a year on lifestyle alone. So, um, just on these experiences, you're willing to spend a million bucks in order to get in. Um, let me see if it has, he's focusing on the needs of the top 10,000 people in the world, and we're going to do for them what nobody else can do. And so he's like, he's like, almost like a fixer, like in, uh, you know, uh,

• 43:59Sam Parr?

  The wolf.

• 44:00Shaan Puri?

  Fiction. He's like, he's like the wolf. He's like the one you call in when you need, you just need that special something.

• 44:05Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah. So that's, that's for like physical experiences. Um, but I think what you're starting to see also is this trend around, uh, apps and software newsletters, uh, as a status symbol.

• 44:19Sam Parr?

  What's another example of that?

• 44:20Greg Isenberg?

  Raya was a great example of that. Um, But I think superhuman is another good example. So superhuman is that email software that a lot of VCs use and it's kind of, it's like 30 bucks a month or something. And it's kind of a flex that you can say sent from superhuman, sent from superhuman. It's like Gmail is probably better than superhuman. Let's be real. But having sent from superhuman adds this like layer of, oh, I take my,

• 44:54Greg Isenberg?

  I take my job really seriously. Like I'm a part of the 1%. So I think there's an opportunity for people to not only create playing fields for X, but also superhuman for X and other software for X.

• 45:11Shaan Puri?

  Well, like the easiest one of this on the internet is NFTs, right? NFTs were exactly this. So like just to your point of Hermes having a higher market cap than Nike. Well, when, you know, when NFTs were, were out, they were basically luxury art. I forgot. Somebody said this thing, you know, art is just money you could hang on your wall. I was like, that's great. Well, you know, NFTs were basically money you could hang on your profile. And that's why, you know, people would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on an ape or a punk because it meant something. And when these were happening, my buddy Vishal, he told me, he's like, oh yeah, these are Veblen goods. And I was like, what's a Veblen good? I've never heard of that. You guys know what this is?

• 45:57Greg Isenberg?

  No, what's that word? I don't even know what that word means.

• 45:59Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So basically a Veblen good is something where the demand increases as the price increases. So most goods, if they follow the traditional supply, demand curve, which is that as a price decreases, the demand will increase for that item. A Veblen good works the exact opposite way. As the price decreases, the demand also decreases. This is why NFT projects can get huge overnight because if the price runs up, it puts that product in more demand. But if the price starts to crash, then NFT value is crashing with the price. The demand crashes with the. With the price. And so, once you understand that there's a set of luxury goods like this, then it explains a whole class. Like, you know, the first time I heard about a Birkin bag,

• 46:43Shaan Puri?

  I was like, oh, so it's got like an elevator inside. What's the deal? Why is this so expensive? Why do people care? It's like, well, they care because you can't buy it. I'm like, well, you can't buy it? What do you mean? Why don't they sell it? They should sell more of these. And they're like, no, no, you, you have to be, you have to earn the right to buy the Birkin bag. And it's like, I had a cousin who flew to Paris to like, go to the store to try to buy a Birkin bag. And I'm like, this, you made a vacation out of this? And she's like, yeah, like I'm, I've been working my way up. I had to buy all these other luxury bags just to be invited to possibly buy a Birkin.

• 47:16Sam Parr?

  Holy shit, dude. These bags are, I'm looking at a used one on some website. It's a quarter of a million. And then there's other used ones for 30,000. So it's like, the cheap end is $30,000 for these bags?

• 47:26Shaan Puri?

  I think it's like 50K if you just buy it from the store-ish.

• 47:29Sam Parr?

  Holy shit.

• 47:30Shaan Puri?

  And, you know, and so it's, it's a status symbol because even amongst luxury buyers, you can't buy, like, you could buy all, you can have all the money you want. You can walk into Louis Vuitton, you can buy everything. You know what you can't buy? A Birkin. Why? Because a Birkin is even elevated above that. And I'm like, wow, there's no end to the status game that gets played when it comes to this stuff. And it makes you think like, you know, remember when the iPhone came out and that guy made like, the app that cost a thousand dollars and it was called the I'm Rich app or something like that? It was just, it was like a red light or something would turn on and it, that means you bought the I'm Rich app for a thousand dollars. It did nothing else besides that. And it got so popular, Apple then started to take it,

• 48:11Shaan Puri?

  it took it off the store because it was like, this is not what we want. But the fact that that worked tells you something about the psychology of people that they would, they would do that to signal, you know, their status.

• 48:22Sam Parr?

  Man, this is amazing. I, I've heard that word, but I've never actually seen these bags. This is wild to me.

• 48:29Sam Parr?

  This is, this is, this is insane. Wow. All right. What do we want to do now? We got to wrap up in a minute.

• 48:35Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Give us one more, one more, Greg.

• 48:36Sam Parr?

  Stripe Atlas for trademarks. So.

• 48:41Greg Isenberg?

  We recently filed a trademark. We bought the domain boringmarketing.com and it's dope. And the business started scaling and we're like, oh shit, we need a trademark here. And I don't know if you guys have filed for trademarks, but the process is insane. It's a pain in the butt. It's a pain in the butt. It's actually quite expensive and you even have to finish your work on going on these like Craigslist-y looking sites and it's pretty brutal.

• 49:14Shaan Puri?

  Well, let's explain it. What happens? You typically what you do is you hire a lawyer. So that's, you know, already started off on the wrong foot. Then they're like, great, can't just file this. Kind of do a search first. You want this light search for 300 bucks or you want the comprehensive search, which might actually find the thing for $800. You're like, I guess I'll do the search. Cause if you don't do that, I'm like, what if I don't do the search? Like, well, we could file it and you know, that'll cost you money, but then you don't know if you get it or not. I'm like, cool. For like, how long? Like, oh, like a year, maybe a year and a half. I'm like, but then I have to operate my company, right? Like, so what happens if I don't get it? Like, oh, you might need to change your company's name. Like, all right, I guess I'll do the search. Then you hire them for the search and then they're like, great, now we can file. Hey, which class do you want to file in?

• 49:58Shaan Puri?

  And you're like, you're on USPTO, the Craigslist looking site you're talking about. And you're trying to figure out what the hell's going on. And finally you file it and then nothing happens. And then nothing ever happens, basically. Like a year later, you'll get a letter you got to approve. And then you're like, was that even necessary? And then you're like, this is, this is just a crazy process overall.

• 50:17Greg Isenberg?

  Exactly. So, and then, so it's very similar to what happened with Stripe Atlas. So for those of, those of people that don't know what Stripe Atlas is, it's 500 bucks and you can basically.

• 50:35Greg Isenberg?

  You know, form a legal entity, issue stock to founders filing an 83 election, which is super painful in the United States. They basically took something that was really painful and expensive and made it easy and cheap. And the smartest thing about that for Stripe, which is obviously a payments company, is once you've set up all those things, when you, they basically send you a Stripe link and Stripe makes money when you sell stuff. So you're all ready to go and it basically onboards you to Stripe, which is brilliant. There is the same opportunity to do that for trademarks. So like the name I would use if I was doing this would be Mr. Trademark. The slogan would be something like putting you out of your misery.

• 51:20Greg Isenberg?

  And I think that either something like this gets bought by a Stripe. So I think there's an opportunity there, but I actually think that you probably would would try to hold out for something like that and allow yourself to onboard to other different services. And I think you can expand this beyond just trademarks to patents as well.

• 51:43Greg Isenberg?

  I have some thoughts on patents and trademarks. Like, I don't know if patents and trademarks are just astrology for entrepreneurs.

• 51:51Greg Isenberg?

  But, you know, because I've, I've actually, I've had a, I've, you know, I've been at companies where we've had patents. For example, StumbleUpon, which was basically this, they acquired my company and I was on the management team there. And I find out, like, one of the reasons I sold the business was because I was like, these guys have the patent on like recommendation engine.

• 52:16Sam Parr?

  It's like, which is mostly nonsense, right?

• 52:19Greg Isenberg?

  Dude, it was like, they were like, we have the patent on this. This alone is worth, you know, 500 a billion dollars. Because basically they had the patent on if you upvote something or downvote something and there's a recommendation engine at the core of it. That is their patent, AKA TikTok.

• 52:36Sam Parr?

  I, I, I think that's worked, that's worked a couple of times though on the internet. Uh, I believe Reid Hoffman and Mark, Marcus Pink, Mark or Marcus Pinkus, the guy who started Zynga. I think they had some, what, what, what, I guess I'm wrong. What's his name?

• 52:50Shaan Puri?

  No, we're gonna go with that.

• 52:52Speaker 03

  Marcus Pecus is a-

• 52:53Sam Parr?

  Marcus Pecus, whatever.

• 52:55Shaan Puri?

  Because would be such an outrage.

• 52:58Sam Parr?

  I don't know, he's a, he's an outrageous guy. Didn't he own, didn't they own the patent that I believe, if memory serves correct, I believe they owned a patent on the algorithm for social media. And I think they sold it to Facebook or maybe even they gave it for, to Facebook in exchange for shares. Did you guys not read that story?

• 53:18Shaan Puri?

  No, I don't know that story, but when we bought the Bebo brand back, we got these patents with it and they had a patent for the, for the whiteboard feature, meaning like you could go on someone's profile page. I don't know if you remember this, like you could go on someone's profile page and doodle, like just draw on a, like a Microsoft Paint looking whiteboard there. We had the patent for that and I was like, cool. But Facebook has that feature, at the time, Facebook had something called the wall. That was the same thing, like they had, they used to have that feature too. And you used to be able to, and MySpace had graffiti and like, it was the same feature. And they were like, yeah, these don't mean anything. And I was like, nothing, like, isn't patent like iron clad? They're like, yeah, just like not on the internet. And, uh, that's been my experience with, I don't know if that's actually true or not, but it seems like trademarks kind of mean something because

• 54:04Shaan Puri?

  if you don't own your trademark and somebody does, they can basically tell you you're, you, you can't keep operating under that name, which is painful. And when you sell a company, they like for you to have everything buttoned up, like, yes, I'm incorporated. I paid my taxes, I have my trademarks, I'm free and clear to be bought.

• 54:20Shaan Puri?

  But I don't think patents do anything on the internet, what I understand.

• 54:23Sam Parr?

  Well, okay, so in 2000, yeah, so Pinkus and Reid Hoffman, they own this patent called the Six Degrees Patent. Facebook, I believe, bought it from them for $700,000.

• 54:35Sam Parr?

  But, uh, yeah, there's an article called, uh, Who Owns Facebook's Most Important Patent? So apparently it was a thing.

• 54:41Speaker 03

  Cool.

• 54:42Sam Parr?

  Greg, uh, so you're gonna come on next time. Are you gonna have goodwater.com? Or no, you're a good, you're a .io type of guy.

• 54:49Speaker 03

  Well, shots fired. Shots fired.

• 54:51Sam Parr?

  Yeah, well, you're, what's your agency now? It's, um, it's

• 54:55Shaan Puri?

  There's two wars happening right now, and that was a hate crime you just committed. You called him a .io guy.

• 55:00Speaker 03

  All, all I know is that just, I'm wearing glasses and, you know, if, but, oh, here we go. It's, uh, sampe.io just joined the chat.

• 55:15Sam Parr?

  What, what's your, uh, where do, where do people connect? It's a, it's a, is it public school or?

• 55:19Speaker 03

  Latecheckout.studio.

• 55:20Sam Parr?

  Latecheckout.studio. See, I know you're not a .com type of guy. You have latecheckout.substack.com, right? Uh, I like your newsletter. What else, uh, what else do you wanna pimp? You, you're, you're always tweeting cool shit. You always tweet stuff with the first line being like, "The future of blank is blank," uh, which I dig.

• 55:39Shaan Puri?

  Greg, back in the day, wrote a series of blog posts called, like, Tiny Little Life Hacks or something. What's the name of that post, Greg? It was like 10 years ago.

• 55:46Speaker 03

  Little Life Hacks Guaranteed to Improve Your Life. But this is before, like, Threadboy.

• 55:51Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. You were ahead of your time. Uh, now, today, these are, you know, you see these all the time. But back then, these were great. And I actually implemented many of these little ones that you, you did like a three-part series. It was so good that people called you back for an encore and a second encore on top of that. So go read that series. If you wanna love Greg, like, if people read that, they'll fall in love with you. I guarantee you.

• 56:14Sam Parr?

  Well, your first one is Dress Formal When You Go on Flights. Do you do that?

• 56:18Speaker 03

  It, it worked back in the day. It actually worked.

• 56:21Sam Parr?

  You know, this is, this is years ago. Yeah. What else, what else on that list?

• 56:24Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, read off the checklist.

• 56:26Sam Parr?

  When you're out with people breaking bread, put your phone on airplane mode. Yeah, that's a good one. Uh, pour people's drinks before yours. People appreciate that. So Sierva, my bud Sierva, he did that to me this weekend and uh, I, I was, I was wooed. He, he wooed me.

• 56:42Greg Isenberg?

  And I saw a picture of you and Sierva today and it looks like you guys are dating. So like, that obviously worked.

• 56:48Sam Parr?

  I'm leaning into his arms. Uh, it definitely worked. Um, scheduled 30 meetings, not one hour meetings. You get through just as much. Yeah, I, I totally believe that.

• 56:57Greg Isenberg?

  But here's the thing, here's the thing. This is all obvious now. So I'm good at saying that, like, I looked like an idiot back then. Like, all these ideas might sound like stupid ideas right now. Good water, Stripe Atlas thing.

• 57:12Sam Parr?

  I'm just joking. I think good wa- water, you could definitely make that work.

• 57:15Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, I'm, I'm the, I'm the guy who looks stupid in the moment, but looks good in five years.

• 57:20Shaan Puri?

  A cursed life.

• 57:23Sam Parr?

  Well, one, number three is to send postcards to friends. So I'll, I'll be on the lookout for a postcard.

• 57:29Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you had one that was like, um, go to this little website and they have a bunch of unique gifts. And it's like, just show up, not on a gift giving occasion, but when you go meet someone, just bring one of these for them. Like, uh, you know, people obviously remember it. These are sound, this is like, you know, how to win friends and influence people, but it's real. And like, especially in Silicon Valley, like the social, like IQ is like so low. But if you did any of these things, like, you know, you know, if somebody's listening to this in Texas, they're like, yeah, you pour the other person's water first or you show up with a gift. But like, you know.

• 58:01Greg Isenberg?

  I mean, I almost sold my last company because I met someone, I gave them a tiny Buddha and they remembered me. Like they made an offer to buy my business. So it, it does work.

• 58:12Sam Parr?

  It, it's one of those things where you're like, of course I should do this, but you don't actually do it. And then you read it and I'm like, all right, fine. I'll start, I'll start sending gifts.

• 58:20Shaan Puri?

  That's the perfect way to explain it. All of these are things that you're like, yeah, I know, I know those, those aren't new. And then if you just said, okay, cool. Let's look at this question differently. How many of these do you do regularly? And now all of a sudden, instead of knowing 10 out of 10, you do one out of 10 regularly, like. That gap is why I like that blog post.

• 58:36Sam Parr?

  Greg, dude, we appreciate you coming on.

• 58:39Sam Parr?

  You're full of ideas. You were supposed to be solo with Sean. Sorry I crashed your party today, but things change. But I appreciate you doing this and coming with us. This is a blast. I was smiling the whole time. Good. That's a win. All right. Appreciate it. That's the pot.