Sam interviews Billy, a venture partner at Slow Ventures (formerly of the Chernin Group), about the creator middle class — niche YouTubers and Instagram creators building $5M–$100M+ businesses from passion audiences. They walk through a dozen real creator businesses across woodworking, ranching, car detailing, firearms, paint, chess, and more, discussing what makes creators investable, how to find product-market fit from an audience, when to hire operators, and which niches are most promising for new creators.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Billy (venture partner at Slow Ventures, formerly Chernin Group)
What Makes a Creator Lovable [00:00:00]
Sam: I’m not saying like I’m above this.
Billy: No one’s above this. This is cool.
Sam: These guys just sold $7 million in multi-tools in like a week.
Billy: So, in order for a creator business to work, the creator needs to be loved. What makes a creator lovable? Like, what attributes do they have where you see it and you’re like, “That person has it and people will buy because of them.”
Finding creators that have real love from their communities is the whole thing, right? Because those are the most durable audiences. It makes them not cancelable. People feel like they are their buddies, their friends.
So I think what makes them loved is you feel like you’re watching a version of yourself doing it. You know, if you’re a woodworker and you watch Jonathan Katz Moses, you’re like, “Oh, this guy’s just like me and he’s teaching me. I’m learning.” It’s like a buddy who’s walking me into my favorite hobby, my favorite niche.
Sam: So they have to be relatable.
Billy: Relatable is a good way to put it. I think it often feels like your big sister or your big brother, too, where you’re like, “Okay, they’re teaching me.” You know, like you like motorcycles, right? They’re a pain in the ass to maintain, to deal with, to find the right routes. But I’ve got three or four guys I can call and say, “Hey, I’m going to the Pacific Northwest. Where do I go? What do I need to pack? Walk me through that trip you took.” And they give me the tools I need to get where I want to go. Those creators are the most interesting — they can build durable businesses.
Sam: And now you’re a partner at Slow. Is that right?
Billy: Yeah, I’m a venture partner at Slow. I’ve been here for about a year, and before that I was at the Chernin Group.
Sam: Man, Chernin — I’ve hung out with those guys a bit.
Billy: I saw your podcast with Kevin, which was great.
Sam: Yeah, we’ve had Kevin on. I’m friends with Doug DeMuro.
Billy: Doug — I found that. I found that.
Sam: That was you?
Billy: Yeah. Yeah.
Sam: Your guys’ insight back in like ‘14, ‘15, ‘16 — it seems so obvious now, but it was like: we’re going to take creators and make them into billion-dollar companies. Obviously we know Mr. Beast does that now. But what a lot of people don’t realize is that Chernin was early on this. And they’ve had so many successes in niche communities. There’s the meat guy — Meat Eater, that’s Steve Rinella — and then probably eight or nine more. We had Kevin on from Epic Gardening. You’ve built these really big businesses, and that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Particularly the creator middle class, because there are the Mr. Beasts of the world, but there are so many people making $10, $20, $50 million a year with like 800,000 or 400,000 followers in a very niche community — like meat smoking or something like that.
Billy: Right.
Doug DeMuro and Cars and Bids [00:02:30]
Sam: One of my favorite creators is Doug DeMuro. He does these car reviews and turned it into Cars and Bids, which I think is quite a large business.
Billy: I’ll tell you — since Doug started, he’s sold about $450 million worth of vehicles, and he takes a take rate off that.
Sam: Oh my god. So this guy Doug does these reviews where he’ll review an SUV or a $2 million Ferrari.
Billy: Anything that’s an enthusiast car.
Sam: Yes. And what’s interesting about Doug — I don’t know how he did it, but I have a feeling it was just him with a camcorder, like a traditional one, when he first started.
Billy: And he looks schlubby. He’s usually got a dirty t-shirt —
Sam: Often two t-shirts that fit horribly together. The undershirt is popping out. He’s usually wearing cargo shorts without a belt so they’re like falling down, and he wears high white socks.
Billy: He’s just a car nerd.
Sam: Yeah. But even amongst car nerds, many of them dress more affluent because they want to fit in. He does not care at all. And he gives these amazing reviews.
So that’s the relatable thing, but then on the other end you have someone like Emma Chamberlain, where young women aspire to be her because she’s cool and has character.
Billy: Is there something in there about a creator wanting to be aspirational versus quirky?
Sam: I think it depends on the audience. Doug’s audience loves him because he has the best information about every car. His videos are 8, 10, 12 minutes — top to front, everything you want to know about that car. Generally it’s: what do I want to drive, what do I think is cool, and sometimes it’s a purchase decision. Doug gives you everything you need to learn about that rig and he’s totally unassuming and fun.
For the enthusiast categories, I think those pop the hardest. Doug is driving a two-sided marketplace that has real scale — and it can scale without putting goo in bottles or getting distribution from stores or launching a physical location. He’s building a venture-scale business. And a lot of people who come to Cars and Bids now didn’t even know who Doug was. It’s built to the scale where they’re like, “Oh, this is a great place to transact. I didn’t even get here through the top of funnel from Doug.”
Jonathan Katz Moses and KM Tools [00:08:00]
Sam: Can I ask you about some of these middle-class creators? You mentioned one and I looked him up — this guy’s insane. Who’s Jonathan Katz Moses?
Billy: So Jonathan Katz Moses is a woodworker. He started a website called KM Tools — tips and tricks on the right tool for the right job. He was like, “Here’s this tool you can use with this buzz saw. Here’s this tool for that.” And then sold out, sold out, sold out, and kept developing his own tools.
Sam: Let me tell you what I see when I go to his YouTube page because it’s pretty incredible. He just looks like a regular guy — just doing woodworking stuff. And what’s crazy is he only has 600,000 subscribers. Which I think almost anyone can get to if they dedicate four years to virtually any niche and spend 20 hours a week on it. And he’s only outputting like one video a month — not a lot of videos, and they look really highly produced.
Billy: They’re polished, but his quantity is not through the roof and the views aren’t either. But the cool thing is it’s evergreen content. What he published and how often he published is important for building his audience and getting to scale. And taking investment, he’ll be able to do more of that.
Sam: He raised money.
Billy: Yeah. We invested $2 million into Jonathan’s business at Slow.
Sam: And how big is it now?
Billy: The investment is very recent. He’s doing around $6 million in revenue now from strictly his tool site, and he’s grown substantially year-over-year.
Sam: And when you made the investment, what was your upside? What do you expect in five years? How big does this business get?
Billy: I mean, we play a little longer than five years because we’re early stage. We’d love to see Jonathan get to $100, $200 million in revenue in the next 10 years.
Sam: That’s crazy.
Billy: Yeah.
Sam: Is he going to enjoy his life while he’s doing that? Because it looked like he had a pretty good life before taking your money.
Billy: He loves it. He wants to build a massive business. We’re not reaching out to creators saying, “Hey, you look like you have a really nice lifestyle business making $10 million a year — do you want to go to $100 million?” He reached out to us. He’s like, “I want to build a business at scale.” He needs more inventory. He needs more product designers. He sells out all the time. He loves what he’s doing.
Sam: This is a great one. And when you’re doing research — if you’re this guy Jonathan, or someone listening who has a passion for something and they’re wondering if it has legs — is there like some math between how you decide how big it can get? Or do you just look at comparables?
Billy: That’s a good question. I think it’s a little bit of both. We say “team and theme.” Can we invest in Jonathan? Is he backable? Does he have the hunger? Is he a founder or just a content creator? Does he have the hunger to build something big?
It’s early stage — we’re betting on Jonathan right now. He made a funny quote: “You have no control. I could build ballet shoes if I wanted.” But we also have to look at the category and make sure we feel like it can get to scale.
Jonathan knows all the other woodworkers, all the tool companies, everyone in that space. We rely on them to identify the white space. It’s not for us to say, “Here’s the math to solve that problem.”
We’ve looked at woodworking — are there other businesses in his genre making tools at $50, $100, $200 million in revenue? We look at that and say, “This is good signal.”
Sam: Can I walk through that? Because I’m curious — if I’m a listener and I have a passion for something and I’m like, “Does this have legs?” or “Maybe it doesn’t quite have legs but if I change it a little bit the trajectory could be different” — so if you’re doing woodworking, where would you start to research to give yourself faith that this could be a $50 million a year company?
Billy: So the really interesting thing about backing creators in passion categories is they have real expertise in the area they’re in. Because Jonathan’s creating content in woodworking, he knows all the other woodworkers, all the tool companies, everybody in that space. We trust them to understand their own white space.
The creators we’re backing — and the ones I think have the best opportunity — are the ones who are so deep in a niche that they’ve been working in it for 5, 10 years. They identify the white space. It’s not for us to find it. We’re here to match capital with creators who are founders and want to build something scaled.
Doug DeMuro’s been in the car game both on the editorial side and creating content, meeting all the manufacturers. He knows there are four or five other auction platforms available, and he’s like, “This is the one we need to build, and this is why.”
Sam: But when you’re justifying that, surely you’re thinking: okay, the best case scenario with some degree of certainty is it’s going to be a billion-dollar company in 10 years. What I’m curious about is — let’s say I’m interested in architecture but also art history. I’m a 28-year-old, I hate my job, I want to build something sustainable. I’d imagine there’s some equation: size of the audience multiplied by gross profit per item multiplied by the quantity they’ll buy. Do you guys have anything like that?
Billy: I think it’s a little more creative than math. We can’t be experts in every niche category and say here’s how it’s going to pan out. I mean, look at Kevin from Epic Gardening — he’s in the seed business. Seeds don’t seem very expensive, but at scale it’s a massive business. We look for categories where they’re high spend, where people are passionate about them, and where the founder really understands the category and is telling us where the white space is — more than us saying here’s math to solve that problem.
Sam: Yeah, that’s funny. My last company was The Hustle, and Chernin came to me and they were like, “Maybe you can be one of these” — I don’t even think they had a word for it, but it was like: you be one of these creator-led businesses and we could invest in you. And I was like, yeah — I didn’t even have faith that it could become that. I definitely didn’t believe it.
Billy: Chernin was really interesting. At Chernin it was different because it was growth stage. Post-investment you can spend so much more time with the businesses. There was a willingness to roll up your sleeves and help build it out — a lot of work we put into those companies post-investment. At early stage we’re betting on the founder to figure it out.
Five Marys Ranch [00:18:30]
Sam: I think every man over 35 has a dream to do what this next creator is doing — owning a ranch and selling meat. What is Five Marys?
Billy: Five Marys is rad. It was started by a woman named Mary Heffernan — her husband Brian as well, but Mary’s the big driver of it and Brian would agree with that. She started as a restaurateur in the Bay Area and couldn’t find ethically sourced meats at the scale she wanted for her restaurants. So she started looking at ranches and ended up buying one. She’s super entrepreneurial, get-up-and-go badass. She found this ranch in the Mount Shasta area, near the California-Oregon border — a place called Fort Jones. She bought a ranch and started raising her own cattle. She now has 600 acres, 600 head of cattle. She’s got a butchery, she does shipping, she has an FDA-approved slaughterhouse. She’s built a very large-scale business from 400,000 followers on her Instagram channel.
Sam: What was her original content like? What got the first 10,000 followers?
Billy: It was all her moving to this ranch and building it out. She tells stories about herself and her family. She’s got four daughters that are all badasses, all cowgirls. Obviously they didn’t start that way when they were little, but they’re now 13, 14, 15, 16 — they’re all ropers, they compete. It’s ranch life, caring about the food, caring about the people you work with, building a business. And also a very strong female entrepreneur vibe. She taught courses to other women building businesses.
Actually, the Ballerina Farms woman took her course and then launched Ballerina Farms, which is massive scale now.
Sam: That’s another similar one.
Billy: Yeah, Ballerina Farms has a little more controversy around it. The woman — whose name I’m blanking on right now — lives in Utah. Her husband and she bought a ranch and it’s very well shot, very beautiful, a little more composed than Mary’s content. Mary’s content is more like you’re literally watching her build a house. Her and her husband and her kids are going out and grabbing rocks from the land and putting them on the hearth. She’s feeding cows.
Sam: Was she successful before she bought the ranch?
Billy: She had like three or four restaurants in San Francisco. As you know with restaurants, they can be doing great but you can’t really retire off them until you get to real scale. I think of her as a proprietor. She had a good life, but it wasn’t what she wanted. So she went out to the farm and saw an opportunity to raise cattle, tell the story while doing it. It’s so deeply authentic.
Sam: It’s basically like — I heard a story from Guy Ritchie that always stuck with me. He basically said: I am a director and I want my life to be a movie. I’m the director of my own movie. And when I see what Mary’s doing, social media makes it so much more attainable to say I’m going to do something epic and bring people along the way, and that’s why it’s going to be epic — because they’re going to support me. How big of a company does she have? And it’s just selling beef?
Billy: She does a lot of things. Subscription boxes of beef. She’s done courses. She sells whiskey and cookbooks. And she doubled down recently on a tallow product line — because she processes her own meat, she has tons of tallow.
Sam: This lady’s awesome.
Billy: They do camps. A cowboy camp where people can come out and live it. It’s a heavy lift, seasonal, but she brings people in and teaches them ranch life — kind of like a dude ranch, except she’ll make you roll up your sleeves for sure.
Sam: How big is Five Marys Ranch?
Billy: As an investor I talk to all these folks, and I can’t always share what’s publicly disclosed. The way I’d frame it is it has the ability to achieve venture scale.
Sam: And I’d say the threshold of venture scale is probably $100 million in revenue.
Billy: It can do it.
Sam: Also, the coolest thing about Mary — the meat business is great and she’ll always do it, but this tallow line that she launched is something that can scale even more. I don’t know how much you’ve seen about what’s been going on with beef tallow — people using it for skin care. It’s very popular. And she makes it right there on her farm. They built a place to process it on the farm, and that’s another line of business.
And that brings me to a topic with all these creators — they have the opportunity to take lots of shots on goal. You get to a certain place with one business and then you say, “Okay, what else can I offer my audience that is totally organic to who I am and that they will buy?” Maybe that thing becomes the thing that is venture scale.
Sam: But I’m going to push back on two things and I want you to prove me wrong. One: focus. Nine times out of ten, lack of focus is what kills a company. It’s more often than not better to do one thing incredibly well than a bunch of things because it’s just hard to pull off. And number two: operations is very challenging, particularly for a ranch. There’s real capex. And who is operating her business? How do you find great operators, and also balance creating content? I do this podcast twice a week and have a company, and that’s probably a lot easier than running a ranch.
Billy: Running a ranch is very hard and she will tell you that. So when I think of focus, my answer is prioritization. She’s gotten the ranch to a place where she now decides if she wants to double down on another line of business. Then she needs to make sure she has enough operators in place so she has time to try and build out that next line of business — or bring in someone to help launch it. I agree with you. But look at someone like Jocko Willink.
Jocko Willink and Shots on Goal [00:27:00]
Sam: What I know about Jocko is he was a former SEAL, badass, looks like a G.I. Joe, and has a podcast. But I don’t know much about his products.
Billy: So that’s another example of how you get to scale by taking shots on goal and thinking about prioritization. Jocko has a massive podcast. He’s an ex-SEAL. He’s also taking pictures of his watch at 4am when he’s starting his workout. He’s a big jiu-jitsu guy and a very intentional father — talks about how to raise your kids not glued to screens, with intentionality.
Jocko speaks to a lot of people and he has a great course called Echelon, which he teaches to Fortune 500 CEOs. The general public can also apply and be part of it. I’m looking at the website — it’s corporate, and I imagine it’s six figures per engagement and he comes and talks, and then three of his team will drop in and help you with leadership issues in your business.
Sam: That’s right. I think it’s more scale than that though — he does big conferences with multiple Fortune 500 CEOs and he’s very well respected in that world.
Billy: Totally. He’s pretty prolific in leadership — talks a lot in his podcast and books about how to be a great leader, how to manage up and manage down. And then he launched a tactical apparel brand starting with boots and moving into clothes — American-made, workout/military-style.
Sam: Which I would have to imagine is one of the harder businesses to run. Returns, sizes, supply chain — that’s a very hard business.
Billy: Yeah. And so he took those shots on goal. He saw a place where he thought he could move his audience. Really interesting. Then he launched Jocko Fuel.
Sam: What’s that — protein?
Billy: It’s like a pre-workout, post-workout, during-workout energy drink kind of grouping.
Sam: Dude, that probably crushes it.
Billy: Crushes. He probably makes $100 million a year in revenue off that. And then Chris Pratt joined in because Chris Pratt is very military-friendly and likes Jocko. And that thing is in Walmart, in GNC’s. Walmart really likes to support those military founders. It’s a product people like, and people really trust him the way they trust Huberman — because he’s such a specimen and he talks about working out and training. He has total permission to be in that space.
So you could say okay, the focus thing — well, one of them is not working as well — but you try something, you launch it, it does fine. What do you do with the fine thing? You say, “This thing is doing fine. Let me make sure somebody’s running it.” And he’s a prolific content creator, so I’m sure he has partners and operators running those businesses. Being a leadership guy and being in the military, his network is vast when it comes to getting great operators. He’s a proper entrepreneur.
How to Find Operators as a Creator [00:32:30]
Sam: You know what’s funny — I guess I am a creator, which I don’t have anything wrong with as a title, but I didn’t seek it out. I previously started a business and I was mildly okay at running a company. I’m pretty good at hiring, but I was mildly okay at doing the work myself. And I’d say I’m mildly okay at being a creator. But finding operators is still hard for me. If you’re listening and you have 20 or 30,000 followers and you’re thinking something is here — when do you get help and how?
Billy: I think that is one of the telltale signs of whether they’re a founder — can they hire, and can they attract people to hire? If you’re a creator who does general comedy or general entertainment and you decide you want to start a coffee brand or put goo in a bottle, I think attracting an operator is going to be very hard. They’re going to say, “Is this person really going to put the time in? Are they really behind it? Is their audience really going to move when they say move?” You have to have a real value proposition for an operator to want to come on board.
So if you have sound principles in what you want to build and why, you can find a good operator. Part of the test of what we invest in is: can this creator-founder attract talent to run their businesses?
Where do you go to find them? You have to decide what your special sauce is and where you need support. You’ve talked many times about the places where you need support — be very clear about that, and attract talent that covers the 180 degrees you’re missing.
Also, you can date before you marry. Work on some projects with them first. Say, “Hey, I want to try this out.” Make sure you’re putting enough capital in so you have money to pay an operator and that you have a plan. We look for folks that can attract that kind of talent.
Sam: Can I ask you about one or two more of these interesting creators? I love hearing about them. And then after that I want to ask you: if you’re starting from scratch, which niches or categories do you like?
Larry / Ammo NYC and the Detail Geek [00:36:00]
Billy: Okay, so there are a couple of creators that are really interesting in the auto care space. There’s a great guy named Larry. He has a company called Ammo NYC. Larry does detailing of celebrity cars.
Sam: Wow.
Billy: Larry has 2.3 million subscribers on YouTube and all he’s doing is cleaning cars and making videos about it.
Sam: He details cars.
Billy: Yeah. I’m looking at his videos — there’s a $4 million Aston Martin that he cleans, but then there’s also a car that’s been in a barn for years and that’s going to take a week.
Billy: So Larry has a robust business cleaning celebrity cars that are either going to auction or part of a badass collection being taken to a car show. He really gets in there, understands the cars, has built products with his own mixtures, his own brushes and towels — everything all-day DTC. He uses the top of funnel — the car content, which is basically car porn for enthusiasts — and any car enthusiast with a proper collection knows Larry and uses his products.
Sam: Dude, I would watch these videos on silent. Like this would just play in the background of my living room on Apple TV for eight hours.
Billy: Larry’s awesome. Check out this other guy, Detail Geek. This is the other side of Larry.
Sam: Oh my god. This guy has almost four million subscribers. What does he do — more low-end stuff?
Billy: He’s somewhere in the Dakotas or the Midwest. He doesn’t know exactly.
Sam: Somewhere where they drive lots of pickup trucks that get dirty.
Billy: That’s right. It looks like the cars have been on a four-week hunting trip in the mud, where he’s getting out shotgun shells. He does these 20-minute long videos that get insane views. And he too launched his own products called Detail Geek. Really interesting guy. I’ve tried to talk to him many times. I talked to him once. He’s very happy with his lifestyle business. He does not want to engage with people who invest in these things and help scale them. He’s like, “I like my family. I like my life. I make good money. Bob’s your uncle.” He doesn’t need it.
Larry’s a little bit more in the sexy world. But the Detail Geek does not care.
Sam: This guy’s awesome. That company definitely does more than $10 million in revenue, I would think.
Billy: Here’s what I’ll say. All of these middle-class creators have the ability to be venture-style businesses with the right founder and the right hires. Direct-to-consumer brands like Casper or Warby Parker were built in a brand boardroom — somebody had a new product they thought the audience wanted, went and built the brand, built the audience, spent a bunch of money building consumers. These middle-class creator brands have gotten to a place where they’re like: I already have the audience, I know product-market fit, I’m ready to go. The right fuel to the fire determines whether they get to venture scale or not.
Sam: When they’re starting, is it usually just them with an iPhone editing it themselves? How big have you seen them get in that scrappy, hustler mode?
Billy: Great example — Mary. She just shoots everything on her iPhone. She’s on Instagram, everything goes on her reels. That’s it. So the answer is yes, you can absolutely get started without a big setup. It obviously depends on the genre you’re in. Mary’s telling a story about her life. She’s relatable. You want to know where your meat comes from — it’s Mary, it comes from there. It’s not highly produced or beautiful. It’s just Mary doing her thing. And Mary’s rad and her kids are rad and her husband’s rad and you can tell that right away.
Larry started with a small setup and now he’s got a three-bay garage in Connecticut, all lit, and he’s got a guy who shoots with him.
Sam: Just two guys with almost 3 million subscribers, basically.
Billy: Yeah. He’s got more people in the business, but it’s like two or three guys in a beautiful studio-slash-detail spot. It’s all well lit. He’s very intentional about the look and feel. And that makes sense for high-end cars and wealthy collectors watching this video — you want it to look beautiful because Larry cares about showing one side of the car before versus after. You need equipment and light. You can’t just shoot it in the front driveway.
Tonster Paints [00:42:30]
Billy: There’s one more really funny story I think you’d love. There’s this guy named Tonster.
Sam: His name is — who’s Tonster?
Billy: Tony — I don’t want to butcher his last name.
Sam: He better be some Italian guy with the name Tonster.
Billy: He’s like a little bit of that. He’s an interesting cat and he’s done a great job. So he starts making TikToks while he’s working at Sherwin-Williams, as like an entry-level job blending paints. Just kind of talking about paint blends and posting TikToks casually. He starts to blow up and then he gets fired from Sherwin-Williams because he was using their office for TikTok.
Sam: Oh, they blew that one.
Billy: Which is like — duh, right? So he launched his own paint brand called Tonster Paints. And it’s like running a clown car into a bank, except he’s not a clown. He’s really smart. If you look at his TikTok, he’s got north of a million followers.
Sam: On TikTok he’s got 2.3 million and on YouTube he’s got a million. And I’m almost positive all the videos are just a camera on a paint can where he sticks the drills in there and mixes it. That’s all it is.
Billy: That’s right. And that’s where it’s kind of back to your story — you can just start and if you hit the right audience you can really build it out. Is that a venture-scale business? Is he going to have his own Sherwin-Williams, get to $100 million a year? He could. It depends on execution at that point.
I think the ones that have a better shot to get to venture scale are the ones who’ve been building audience trust for years, are known for that specific niche, have a really strong community, and are creators who are entrepreneurs.
Sam: How long are they typically creating content before they launch a product?
Billy: They could do it on their first one or after four or five years. Jonathan Katz Moses launched a product very soon after — his story was a lot about launching the product — but he did a lot of videos on woodworking tips first and people were following him for a while. I don’t think there’s a hard rule. You really have to be a trusted voice of authority in your niche. People really trust Jocko, really trust Attia, really trust Huberman, really trust Mary.
Sam: But I’ll push back a little on that. Jocko was a veteran, so he knows about being tough — that’s kind of his thing. Peter Attia is a doctor, so he knows about health. But this guy worked at Sherwin-Williams. I agree that’s not like you need a PhD. I bet I could spend one year learning how to clean cars and make at least interesting enough content. Then after a little while longer, formulate a product. You don’t need eight years of schooling to do this.
Billy: Totally. I agree with your point exactly — Tonster is interesting because he hasn’t spent years and years building that kind of trust. So back to your architecture idea or your art history idea — somebody who has built five or six years of trust and authenticity with an audience and scaled it has more permission. You feel better about their understanding of both the industry and product-market fit feedback from their audience, what their lane is, what they can sell.
You feel better about investing in somebody who’s been in it a long time versus somebody who’s been creating content for a couple of years. Tonster — we’ll see. I think he’s great and smart and he’s going to do something. But Larry’s been doing this for 10 years. Getting to the scale that Chemical Guys did — they took an $800 million check, had shops and locations, scaled into auto specialty shops and Home Depot and everywhere — that comes from years of being involved in the industry, really understanding the white space and your audience. The ones building trust and understanding the community have an opportunity to scale in a way that somebody just getting started can’t guarantee.
Advice for Aspiring Creators [00:51:00]
Sam: So — you can use me as an example — I’ve sort of thought it might be interesting to do YouTube or Instagram a little bit more, get into this creator space. What are the lessons I should learn from these people? What’s the repeatable process? What are the best practices? I know part of it is just art — if you have an it factor, it can work. But surely there’s some kind of workout plan where if I lift this much weight and eat this much protein, I’m going to be in the 90th percentile after two years. What’s the lift weights and eat lots of protein checklist version of this?
Billy: That’s a good question. A couple of things come to mind. For you personally — I think you double down on the stuff that’s really interesting to you and that you want to talk about. You build an audience around your journey. You’re doing a lot of that now, which is like business building. You’re interested in entrepreneurs, in what’s going on in the business world.
So for example — you like motorcycles. You are sober. You have a family and you’re interested in intentionally raising your kids and being a husband. I would think through the things that are your passion hobbies, the ones that bring you the most joy, and I would double down on creating for those things — with the mindset that you need to pretty soon be thinking about building an audience, establishing yourself as a voice of authority in something that has a bottom of the funnel.
Sam: Bottom of the funnel meaning a product I could eventually sell.
Billy: Yes. Kevin sells raised farm beds and seeds. Doug sells cars. Jonathan the woodworker sells tools. The detailer sells chemicals. Tonster sells paint. Mary sells meat. On and on.
Sam: Do you think it’s safe to say any content niche can come up with a product or service that can sell? Or should you think first: what could I sell, and then which content falls within that category that I’d be willing to dedicate 10 years to?
Billy: I think it’s a good question. You don’t want to — you know, it’s really hard to sell products if you’re just funny.
Sam: Dude, those people — the funny New York or LA actor-comedian crowd I know who makes content — they’re broke. They don’t sell anything.
Billy: That’s right. I think you can build a big audience that doesn’t transact and you should be careful about that. If you’re in a niche passion category you love, you will eventually figure out the white space and build a product or service that works there. But if you’re building content, you have to keep in mind: what’s the bottom of the funnel? What am I moving people to?
But you also can’t just have a large scaled audience and immediately move product — you have to learn how to do it. The people we’ve been talking about have learned how to move product, build product, manage supply chain, hire people, do subscriptions, keep their audience from churning, keep things in stock. You’re an entrepreneur. You’ve got to know how to build a business.
And there are two kinds of businesses. There’s lifestyle businesses where you make half a million, a million, $2 million a year. The problem is once you stop, your revenue goes away.
Sam: You’re just a freelancer.
Billy: Exactly. You’ve built something you can’t exit. And for some people that’s okay — it’s not better or worse. But if you’re going to spend five years building your audience, build them into something you can transact into — add value to them with cool new tools, great ethically sourced meat, cool color tones for your bedroom, anything that adds value.
Platform and Medium — Does It Matter? [00:57:30]
Sam: Is there a medium or platform that matters? We’ve talked about TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube — all video. One thing I predicted a few years ago was there hasn’t been a billion-dollar Twitter creator, but I think there will be. Do you think it has to be video and audio?
Billy: Video and audio are the examples I’ve seen where people have been able to build lifestyle-plus-slash-venture-scale businesses. Audio is a great way to connect with your audience consistently and really own the relationship. You can build a cadence of trust. It’s a very intimate platform — if you love something, you listen to it weekly.
Video is the same way, and building an ecosystem around video-first platforms has more signal for me.
Best Niches to Explore [00:59:30]
Sam: I was going to ask you what niches someone should exploit. You kind of gave me the energy that it was hard to answer, but I’m going to tease you up on it.
Billy: Push me.
Sam: I’m sure you have a list of creators that have 1,000 to 5,000 followers where you’re like, “Oh, they’ve got something here.” Who’s on that list? Is there a category like that?
Billy: I’ll preface this by saying a lot of the companies we talked about here are very dude-focused, and I’m learning and getting better at other categories. But one is everyday carry — I think that’s a really interesting category.
Sam: Everyday carry being handguns, or does that include knives, mace, everything?
Billy: Knives. Obviously we’ve seen what’s happened with Ridge Wallet, but a creator who owns that — what you keep in your pocket every day. Knives, wallet, watch, keychain, pens, writing tablets. There are some creators doing it. There’s a really cool scaled company called Blade HQ that sells knives out of Utah — they started creating content because they couldn’t advertise online since they were selling what the internet considers weapons. The everyday carry creator space is popping up but some haven’t reached scale yet.
Sam: You know what — I completely agree, and I think there could be a Hodinkee for fountain pens or a Hodinkee for fancy pens.
Billy: I was actually on the board of Hodinkee. We invested in Tourneau.
Sam: And I don’t know anything about the company but if I had to guess, maybe they just grew too fast or something like that.
Billy: You could correct me if I’m wrong, but I think there should be a Hodinkee for fountain pens. I agree. And when we see those, we’re like — whoa. Chess creators — really interesting, people who play chess passionately. Fountain pens, anything everyday carry is great.
I also think Second Amendment creators — people who do product reviews on different guns, different ammo, different holsters, teaching about tactics and safety — have massive audiences and some have built scaled businesses. That’s an interesting category.
Sam: There’s a guy named — I’ve never said this word out loud, I just read it and don’t want to get it wrong — Hickok45. I thought maybe that meant he’s in Oklahoma and he’s a redneck born in 1945.
Billy: And he’s this old man —
Sam: You would only understand this if you live in the South or the Midwest like I’m from. We all had grandfathers like this — they wore overalls or Wrangler jeans and a flannel shirt and they were pretty nice and stoic and you liked being around them. Well, that’s what this guy is, except his passion is every type of gun on Earth. He’ll do a machine gun and say like, “Oh, this is a cute little machine gun. Let’s see what it’s about.” Or he’ll try like a Revolutionary War cannon, or the type of gun from the Civil War where they put the ball and powder in and load it up. And this guy — have you seen him? He’s got 8 million subscribers on YouTube.
Billy: No, I haven’t seen him.
Sam: Oh my god. He’s like —
Billy: Look at T-Rex Arms.
Sam: He’s the Bob Ross of guns. That’s the best way to put it.
Billy: That’s awesome. Yeah, check out T-Rex Arms. It was started by some brothers — one of them named Lucas Botkin. He’s since broken off from T-Rex Arms, but it’s tactical Second Amendment content creators, massive firearms accessory business. Does some advertising, but there are lots of restrictions on that. Sells their own tactical gear, has a total cult-like loyalty, and is running a really scaled business. The crazy thing is Lucas and the brothers have split, and Lucas is now starting his own thing. I’m interested to see what Lucas builds on his own and if T-Rex continues to grow. But that’s a properly scaled business.
Sam: All right. Everyday carry. What else?
Billy: I mentioned chess. That’s interesting — people are really passionate about it. We’ve seen some really cool scaled businesses come out of chess.
Sam: What’s a chess business that’s scaled?
Billy: Chess.com.
Sam: I mean, that’s a multi-billion dollar company.
Billy: That’s right. And jiu-jitsu.
Sam: Yeah, we know that.
Billy: That’s a really great category. Have you seen Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Fanatics?
Sam: I lived in Texas, man. I feel like everyone did that.
Billy: Look up the BJJ Fanatics website. This is a two-sided marketplace started by a jiu-jitsu champion and a guy who did continuing education. Jiu-jitsu instructors can upload their videos, and people can sort through — I want to learn a rear naked choke, I want to learn how to sprawl better. They can pick coaches, and the site can help ID coaches they might be interested in. It’s total Web 1.0.
Sam: This is great.
Billy: And I can’t say how much they’re doing, but it’s a good business.
Sam: What about you being the creator?
Billy: No, man. This is the hardest thing I do. Seeing myself on the internet is my least favorite thing. I’m very excited to talk to you, but I will never watch this because I just cannot watch myself.
Sam: No one watches themselves. Like I’ve never seen MFM in my life. And you have to have tough skin. The Mormon family I mentioned — they have a whole subreddit dedicated to mocking them. And I met them and these people were the nicest people in the world, the most loving family. Took us in and I felt like I barely knew them and I was their cousin. And people mock them like crazy. And then on our pod someone will say, you know, you look fatter or skinnier than I thought, you look older or younger. We get mocked constantly.
Billy: Yeah. It’s a very hard thing to do. Building an audience around things you’re really passionate about and yeah — I love the idea of getting involved in a creator business, but right now I really love the thesis we have at Slow: matching capital to creators who are entrepreneurs, who really want to build things at scale.
Dream Creator Picks [01:09:00]
Sam: Let’s say someone said, “All right, you have to quit Slow right now and join a creator company.” You get three picks of creators you’d want to join and get a little stake in. Are there three you think are going to the moon? We have this thing called Sarah’s List — named after my wife because she joined Airbnb at a time where she could still have a comfy gig but her stock could still 10x. If there were a Billy List for creators, what would the top three or four be?
Billy: Oh my god. I love what Kevin and Doug are doing at Epic Gardening and Cars and Bids. Those are both humans I like and would want to work with — which is the most important thing. I’d need to love them as a human and love the category. And those are categories I can really get behind.
Sam: I just sold my car on Cars and Bids.
Billy: Oh, you did? What car?
Sam: 2020 AMG E63 station wagon.
Billy: Nice. Were you happy with the price?
Sam: Yeah, I got what I wanted. I hit my reserve.
Billy: Good. I only own old cars, so now that Doug is selling old cars as well I can sell my Scout if I’m ready to move on. But that’s great — it can be a really good buying experience for everybody.
Okay. You should follow Sarah Maclister. Sarah Maclister has a company called Go Clean Co. Right now Sarah is the queen of clean. People have been following her since the pandemic and she’s been building — she’s got a couple million subscribers on Instagram, I think 2.4 — and I think she’s got a real shot to build a really awesome business. She’s really cool.
Sam: Wait, does she own housework.com?
Billy: That’s it, yeah. So she has people who love her. They dress up as her for Halloween. She is a badass and she’s really cool. I really like that business.
Sam: Does she sell anything yet or is it just — it looks like she doesn’t even have her own product yet.
Billy: She mostly makes revenue through affiliate links and brand deals at the moment.
Sam: Oh, this lady. That’s a good one.
Billy: I think she’s great.
Sam: The queen of clean. That’s a good one. I don’t know if that’s what anybody calls her, but I just said that, dude. If this lady comes out with a laundry detergent, that’s going to be the greatest thing ever.
Billy: Forget it.
Sam: I really like her.
Billy: I also really like this creator named Gohar Khan. When he was 13 or 14 — maybe even younger — he started making Minecraft YouTube videos and built this massive audience. Then he kind of put it down, focused on school, got into MIT. And when he was at MIT during COVID he started making videos about going to an Ivy, going to MIT.
Sam: I think he has — you tell me, I don’t have it in front of me — six million YouTube subscribers?
Billy: Yeah, more. Oh my god, I’m looking at his numbers.
Sam: How old is he? Is he still in his teens?
Billy: No, no. He’s post-college. And he’s launched this thing called Next Admit, which helps students write college entrance essays.
Sam: Just teaches them how to use ChatGPT.
Billy: No — teaches them how not to. He has people who’ve gotten into Ivies read through essays. He reads through them himself, at like $80 a pop or something. He also gives you a lot of information about how to think about the big story you’re going to tell when you want to get into college — the thing you did in high school. And now he’s starting SAT prep courses. He knows his audience — that young first-generation kid who wants to get into an Ivy. Not bums like you and I were in high school.
He has a real opportunity to build a really scaled service business that understands what kids are thinking and what they want when they’re trying to get into Ivies and colleges. I like him a lot. I think he’s really interesting.
Sam’s Creator Picks [01:14:00]
Sam: You want me to reciprocate? I’ll give you my two.
Billy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Please.
Sam: I should have made you go first so I could think while you were talking. The first one — he’s got a harder path to build a business because clothes are harder — but it’s called the Iron Snail. I started following this guy a while ago. His background is film school. And Shaan and I talked about this on a previous podcast — creators nowadays, when YouTube was just getting started, it was all about being authentic, which meant kind of scrappy and thrown together. Now they’re way more well produced.
So this guy tells you both the history of clothing — like why Jamaicans are obsessed with Clark shoes, there’s apparently some real history behind that — and then he’ll do like “here’s the highest quality, lowest price clothing, ranked.” He’ll say why the Japanese make the best jeans on earth. He does these really interesting breakdowns. And you know what’s funny — the reason why he’s going to win is because you could be a woman. This is mostly men’s clothes. You could be a woman and not give a damn about clothing or history, and you’d still watch his videos because they’re so well produced and he’s so funny. He’s hilarious. And he is currently in the process of launching his own clothing line, which he’s documenting.
Billy: Clothing is like the hardest thing ever. So it’s going to be a hard business.
Sam: And the second one is Project Air. Look up Project Air. It’s this young guy named James in the UK. It originally started with him building model airplanes. So what started as a model plane turned into an RC plane, which then turned into: I’m going to build the world’s fastest RC jet, or the world’s largest RC jet, or I’m going to set the land speed record for an RC car. And he’s even done things like: I’m going to send a rocket up and have it land right back down, just like SpaceX, except I’m going to do it in my garage. It became like hacker engineering — the stuff he does is actually incredibly challenging math. He’s a proper engineer. He’s got one video where he built an RC battleship and had them fight and sink each other.
Billy: What do you think his bottom of the funnel is?
Sam: Selling RC kits. It’s very similar to Mark Rober and Crunch Labs. And if I had to guess, a large percentage of fathers like me want their kids to get into this stuff. Like, I think it’s cool, but I don’t want to go buy an RC car and take it to a school — I’m going to look weird. But if I get my kid into it, I can still have fun doing this. You know what I mean?
Billy: How old is your little one again?
Sam: We’ve got a ways to go.
Billy: You’ve got a ways to go. But you’ll bring them along in the plan.
Sam: Yeah. I’ll be like, “Dude, my kid’s just a prop, basically.” So I can go to a schoolyard with a really fast RC car.
Billy: Awesome.
Sam: So I think there’s a bottom of the funnel there — build model kits.
Billy: I’ll check him out. Rober has done it, right? That business has exploded. Those guys have done a great job with those subscription kits.
Remy RC and the Tyler Perry Connection [01:18:00]
Sam: And there’s this one guy, his name’s Remy — R-E-M-I. Type in “Remy RC plane.” So this guy, RAMI RC, has a million followers. Tell me what the first video you see says.
Billy: World’s biggest RC. 29 million views on this one. Building an Airbus.
Sam: This guy is building remote control airplanes the size of an Olympic pool. It’s basically a real plane, is what he’s building. And there’s a really weird part about this story — they never truly call it out, but you’re going to see him on an airstrip, see him take off from this house, and you’re like: is Remy just a rich guy? What is going on? It’s Tyler Perry’s house. Tyler Perry’s hobby is he loves RC planes. And so he’s this guy’s patron. This guy Remy — I don’t know if he lives there or just spends time there — but Tyler Perry is always the one flying the plane, so these guys will like build the jets and hand it to this guy they barely talk about or mention. They don’t want to wreck it — these jets probably cost $100,000.
Billy: He just puts him in a pram and takes him to the park.
Sam: I don’t know what he does. But Tyler Perry has this massive hangar at his house. Except I bet he has a hangar with real planes — he’s that wealthy. Tyler cameos, basically. You can see it. I know Tyler’s paying for it because Tyler is always the one flying the jet. And I guess they do call it out — “Flying Planes with Tyler Perry” — but they barely talk about it. The fact that it’s just this guy, I think from Dubai.
Billy: That’s the internet, bro. That’s the internet.
Sam: So cool. This guy has a million followers and I think that’s another interesting case. Those are my picks.
Billy: Yeah, that’s good.
Hacksmith — $7M Kickstarter in a Week [01:21:30]
Sam: This isn’t a pick per se, but you should check out Hacksmith. Have you seen Hacksmith?
Billy: What’s Hacksmith?
Sam: Dude, these guys just dropped something called the Smith Blade.
Billy: Seven — they just did $7 million on Kickstarter in like a week. It says 13 days to go. I think they dropped it this time last week. $7 million.
Sam: And it’s just a box cutter.
Billy: No, it’s a multi-tool. Like a Swiss Army knife — it’s got five different kinds of knives on it. Plus a toothpick, tweezers, a couple different blade edges. And this one is built with the intention of having everything you’d want in a tool. These guys also sell lightsabers. You’ve got to check out their YouTube page.
Sam: Oh my god. And they have 15 million subscribers.
Billy: Yeah. They sell lightsabers and all kinds of stuff.
Sam: What’s a lightsaber? Is that just a flashlight?
Billy: A lightsaber. Have you seen Star Wars?
Sam: Well, I know what it is, but I don’t know how to make one.
Billy: So you haven’t seen Star Wars. You just know about Star Wars.
Sam: I know what it is, but I don’t know how. Is it a flame?
Billy: It’s a little — it’s a mini lightsaber, bro. Check it out. I mean, they call them sabers.
Sam: What comes out of the metal part? A piece of plastic?
Billy: Light.
Sam: But that’s just a flashlight.
Billy: These are badass flashlights, you could call them that. They’re $150 Canadian or $350 or $500. They’re legit.
Sam: Dude, I just bought a $500 laser pointer the other day because apparently if I shine it on a piece of paper, it’ll light it on fire. So I’m not saying like I’m above this.
Billy: No one’s above this. This is cool.
Sam: I’m into it. No one’s above it. These guys just sold $7 million in multi-tools in like a week.
Billy: I hope our wives are still willing to have sex with us by the end of this episode.
Sam: Billy, man, you’re cool. I’m really thankful you came on and hopefully we’ll stay friends, but you’re the man.
Billy: Yeah, man. Thanks for having me on. I love what you’re doing. Happy hunting.
Sam: Thank you. That’s the pod.