Episode of My First Million with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri.
Transcript
Note: This transcript was auto-generated from YouTube captions. It may contain errors and lacks speaker identification. A full Gemini audio transcript will replace this.
Kind: captions Language: en i feel like there’s a world where this like let’s be conservative i feel like there’s a like this is very clearly a 10 million a year thing that makes 2 million in profit i feel like i can rule the world i know i could be what i want to dude there’s like a picture in the background that is just getting my attention so much that crooked there’s like a crooked picture you see it yeah yeah there’s a whole subreddit called like uh i forget what it’s exactly called but it’s about like minor things that are just slightly off like what were they thinking it’s like mildly like there’s mildly interesting that’s probably mildly irritating or something like that no it’s called mildly infuriating did you did you just guess that well i know about mildly interesting so yeah uh anyway what’s going on justin um do you know you know what you’re getting into like do you know what we’re what we do yeah no i know a good bet all right good so you uh we’ll just do like a really quick intro but you uh you’ve done a bunch of stuff i’ve known you since 2013 i think right yeah i think actually a little earlier when you were doing the room we both had roommate businesses and he we just became friends he moved to sam you you moved to san francisco i ended up introducing him or no he met one of the girls a girl he dated for a long time in the elevator on his way up to our meeting who was my co-worker and so we just ran in like the circle of friends for years that’s pretty good so you get the number in the elevator or what was the elevators not it’s only a two floor you’re on the second floor right so that’s not too long it was a fast it was a fast close yeah how’d that happen tell me about it yeah do you want me to share this thing i’m happy yeah yeah i mean we met and this girl walked into an elevator and i was like just making a joke she was i think like maybe a tiny bit drunk and tried to hit a button but there were no buttons in the elevator it’s one of those fancy ones that like you walk into and the attendant sends you somewhere and so i just started sort of making fun of her for that and in the several story ride with like two other stops um i was like hey we should hang out and then we hung out at um at sam’s apartment list party and shane numbers and have been friends hence amazing uh okay and sam did you did you know that justin was going to go on to do great things at the time did you spot that early or no was he just another dude yeah well we were both schemin we were only 22 i think when we met that was a while ago and he um he had this roommate thing and i had a roommate thing and i think anyone who ever started that’s like there’s like three things that you start right when you graduate college and that like that’s like one of them and so they never work out well like they’re never that good so anyway by the way there’s three are like music discovery uh why is it so hard to find new music that we could solve that problem uh it’s roommate roommate discovery is another one and then food delivery it depends who you’re and then like or like college craigslist yeah exactly local local craigslist sometimes it’s to-do list or sometimes if it’s like your first time commuting you’re like if you’re i know this for engineers i’ve met like 10 engineers that all made the same thing first which was basically like a bus tracking software that tells them when the bus is coming because they’re just like you’re so tired of the unpredictable like is it seven minutes more or less and they’re like i need to make an app for this well so yeah we were both doing that and i knew i mean whatever we that was a stepping stone for both of us and then he started um you co-wrote a book with a guy or no you you sold a company or you joined a company somehow you were working with my friend terry and their whole business was buying and selling stuff and that was like pretty successful i believe and then you also started working on writing this book called traction with this duckduckgo guy gabe is his name right yep exactly and then it was and then he was doing udemy courses and i was like yeah i mean we’re all like schemers he had like airbnbs and i think you did you buy cars and rent them to uber people uh no my roommate was doing that i was looking at doing it but decided it was a miserable business so didn’t end up doing it and we were so we were always doing stuff we had you had a udemy course i probably was selling some type of information stuff and then he started this thing called kettle and fire which first of all like i thought it was so stupid on so many capacities or so many uh places so first i was like he was like i want to start like selling like this uh like hard good i’m like bro like we work in the internet why would you ever want to like start like a goods thing then he was like it’s gonna be food and i’m like your kid like why would you ever do that then he said it was bone broth and i was like bone broth people drink bone broth and then this was like before like this whole like i don’t even think the word d to c was a was a thing and so obvi i mean i thought it was the dumbest thing ever and i was wrong right like it’s been it’s been a smashing success and he started this kettle and fire thing and it’s quite big you’ve also started uh my neighbor sean is this guy named anthony i don’t know who did it first one of you guys like had this thing called uh perfect keto where you’re selling keto products and then you guys combine you so we we partnered up on it basically we i was like running kettle and fire and as i do sometimes looking for like another side hustle thing to start on the side uh and he had another business that was in the supplement space but the two of us were just like hey we should work on a small side project together make something that does 20 grand a month and like once we hit that threshold we’ll like blow it all on a ridiculous trip to japan and that was like the whole goal of the business uh pretty big right yeah i mean we we thought it would take like a year or two to get to 20 grand a month and we did it in the first like 45 days it was insane and then kettle and fire is like a big thing too you guys like i think you raised money or did you sell a portion of it yeah so kettle and fire we uh we raised money we bootstrapped for the first 18 months raised a tiny bit of money less than a million dollars ran in another like 16 months and then decided that the the opportunity was big enough that it made sense for us to raise so we raised 16 million dollars in 2018 about half of that went to secondary and the other half went to like actually putting money into the business so i’ve heard a number that either kettle and fire or perfecto or both did a hundred million in revenue i don’t know if that’s a cumulative lifetime number i don’t know if that’s an annual number is this a public number or is this what can you tell me about this because that was a big number i was yesterday and i’m a customer yeah like six of your bone broths uh you know sitting in my pantry right now yeah i really like it i love that there’s one flavor i really like and i feel like i never get it in any store and then i’m like all right let me try these other five and see if any of them can match that one i really love what’s the one that you’re super into uh i don’t know which one it’s it’s like the top it’s like i think it’s like one of the thai lime yeah i think it’s either the tom yum or one of the other ones like it’s like this like a thai curry type flavor and yeah yeah yeah that’s one of my favorites yeah and some of those by the way are nasty but some of them are really good and so i’m like it’s like you know those when you get a pack of cards you’re like looking for a hologram like a holographic charizard inside and then you get a squirtle that’s how i feel about kettle and fire i know this is not common but that’s just my personal experience with so far thanks man i’ll take that as a compliment okay but back back to the business side so uh i was a customer but i was shocked when i heard that 100 million number what is that yeah so that’s not cumulative uh you know we we stopped sort of disclosing revenue numbers recently but i can say in 2019 like the two businesses combined did north of 100. gotcha and it’s what is perfect keto so i know kettle and fire what’s perfect keto yeah so perfect keto is a line of supplements and food products for people interested in lowering their carb and sugar intake and so we we have like a clean label line of foods and supplements for people on a ketogenic diet or who just like want to eat fewer carbs and no sugars gotcha and are you keto and sean the guy who started it by or his partner is literally my next-door neighbor yeah but you also say everyone’s your neighbor so i never know what to believe and then i came to visit you and you drove me around you’re like that’s where this guy lives that’s where this person lives that’s where this person lives and now i now i believe you but if somebody’s listening literally like wait he said his neighbor is neville then he said his neighbor is the guy who made the ice barrel thing that we talked about last time then he said his neighbor’s the student loan guy then he said it’s this other thing and student student loan hero guy and i are the same guy so they live like he lives like 20 houses down anthony literally lives direct like uh like 30 feet from me right uh yeah like literally right so the con i guess the context here is you knew justin lucy um and i’ve never met justin no i did not not lose well okay and um intimately and you’ve done two things i think that are really interesting one is the perfect keto stuff and carolyn fire basically building a brand that’s been pretty damn successful and then the other is you write content and i want to actually talk about some of the content stuff you write so you have the book traction that’s a good book but on your blog there’s one blog post that i remember it’s been sent to me several times so i know other people like it too so let’s start there if you’re cool with it which is you have this side hustle post on on your blog and i’m assuming this is probably one of your more popular blog posts is that right yeah definitely and you basically outline that you’ve done a bunch of side hustles and then you have like kind of like you break it down as like there’s these four types of side hustles so can you give us kind of like give us the side hustle bit uh here which is like and if you scroll all the way down to that sheet you’re on you’ll see your yeah which is basically like what are the side hustles you’ve done all right kind of how do you think about side hustles and then break people break those four down for people totally yeah so the reason that i got into this is uh when sam and i met you know the two of us were like we want to do this entrepreneurship thing but in in many ways it’s actually a lot easier and like emotionally uh bearable to start a company if you have just like income coming in that’s covering your expenses and so when i moved to san francisco you know this the city is super expensive and so i started like doing a bunch of side hustles just to try and make income that would give me the freedom to like spend my time trying to launch a company that would really create a lot of like equity value and sort of like life-changing um you know financial freedom and so when i what i did when i moved to sf i like started airbnb our place we at one point yeah this was 2013. we had like the number third like the third ranked airbnb in san francisco and so we were uh we were like renting out either our living room most nights or uh you know over summers we’d rent it out for like 15 18 grand a month and then we just and we were paying three grand a month for the spot so like that was incredible at the time and we’d just travel and then launched like udemy courses there was a period where i was buying motorcycles that were on craigslist in oakland and selling them in san francisco because there was like an arbitrage there so i was just doing a bunch of random random stuff and so when i wrote this article so many people that i’ve talked to were like you know i want to understand how to make side income and how to think about this stuff um and so i just kind of like broke down like the the different sorts in my mind like the four kinds of businesses that you can start as a side hustle um you know some of these that i’ve done actually ended up being more more real businesses but like do you want me to talk through the categories and kind of whatever you also had a good disclaimer which is like look first things first accept that what you’re doing is not meant to be the next facebook it’s not meant to be a startup it’s like you’re trying to make money you’re trying to get some profitable cash flow from a business quickly without a ton of like you know without waiting seven years for this thing to pay off so like first let’s call it what it is all right let’s call a spade a spade is i thought an important disclaimer and then you had these four four groups uh so let’s run through them and then sam you tell me if you’ve also done any in these categories yeah totally yeah i mean i think truly if you’re mark zuckerberg or like a collison brother like [ ] raise money do like the the massive thing that you’re working on i just think for most people entrepreneurship is a means to an end and that end is like a lifestyle that people are trying to create and so the more that you can like create that and the faster you get financial freedom i just think that’s a useful thing for more people to have in general um so the the four like kinds of side hustles that that i talked about in my blog post um the first one that i talk about is like buying an existing asset basically you can look at like what’s an existing asset that you could try and purchase leverage your skills connections resources whatever to upgrade that you know make it more cash flow positive make it do better whatever and then you get to capture the value created by upgrading that asset i did this with like sam i’m sure you guys could do this if you bought an email newsletter you know you know how to run that better buy it for a million bucks improve it you could probably sell it for you know three to five a couple years later yeah i was um my friend ramone bought something that i had a small part of and it was a software very small software app that when we bought it maybe it was doing 20 000 a month and all we did was we doubled the price of the product and it doubled the revenue amazing and you did that too didn’t you own a or you bought a thing called fomo right yeah yeah so a partner and i bought a shopify app called fomo uh it was doing 14k a month at the time we bought it uh you know we bought it uh we paid less than 400 i’ll say that less than 400 000. yeah which was like a super good multiple yeah you didn’t roll some equity down right so you get seller financing or what you do yeah so we had a really like the guy basically wanted out it was a single founder and we were like hey we know how to market we have connections we can like really help grow this thing and so we bought 85 percent of the business uh we bought it and then we were basically like we’re gonna buy this and pay you in monthly chunks for the next 20 months um and so every like month for 20 months we use the revenue that we were making from fomo to make our payment to him and like my partner and i basically came out of pocket zero dollars to acquire this asset we were obviously working on running it we like had to throw in i think it ended up being five grand each to pay the developers the first couple months but um but yeah i mean it was like an incredible acquisition how big is it now now it does about 95 grand a month sounds like a good deal to me yeah it’s a good deal i mean it’s good deal for everyone the guy like has gotten his time back he’s started other companies in the interim and like when we exit this thing he’ll make probably more than he would have made on the exit than you know had he continued to run this for the last three years and with no headache it’s like a nice thing so you’re talking about buy so category one buying an asset this can be uh a house that you airbnb it can be a internet company that you just you know you do what sam did you go in the code you push you know control f you find the price and then you change the number to double which is like sam’s genius or what you did was you know who i learned that from was terry you’re i don’t know if she was your boss or what but she taught me how to do it how to find the price point well she was like she was like look the whole thing is that engineer-led businesses typically are priced poorly and if you just double the price uh it works right and she was like double the price and then find out which emails uh urls are being used a bunch of times so for example if you have like 18 people using uber.com contact the hr department or whoever the procurement and like sell enterprise she kind of like taught me the stuff that uh justin’s old company was doing yeah exactly so i so i ended up i really like this buy an asset thing i think sometimes you have to have money other times you can sell our finance but we ended up doing this too with an apartment building in in vegas where we bought a 14 unit apartment building could put it all on airbnb uh basically like tripled the cash flow and then sold it 18 months later for you know 70 more than what we paid by the way in the blog post you had a couple examples i think are useful we don’t have to go too much into them but you were like uh you talked about this thing which is like okay if you know you have the skills to like improve the value of the asset so for airbnb you were like all right to get more airbnb bookings like you know first if it’s not on airbnb we should put it on airbnb if it is on ibb we can like boost the bookings by like these three things right uh put more and better photos up okay easy anybody could do that but most people haven’t optimized that second like instantly respond to every inquiry so that we get a fast response rate the algorithm likes that and then the last thing is like whatever like five star reviews at the end or something like that and so you’re like i can just take those three levers and i can apply it to any property now that isn’t optimized for airbnb so if they think it’s worth a hundred i already know it’s worth 120 because i know i can just do that playbook again on uh on on any property yeah exactly and that’s like that actually leads to the sort of like the second bucket of side hustles that i talk about which is basically look at what is a marketplace with existing demand where you don’t have to go out and find the customer you just provide the supply side stuff like buying you know putting a property on airbnb all i have to do is understand how does the property like or how does airbnb uh dictate where i rank you know and what does it want from me as a supplier and then my [ ] is gonna get booked up uh like i don’t actually have to go find every individual customer that’s traveling to san francisco that can rent our apartment because like airbnb is doing that for me and you did that with like uh was you used to have a thing it was called uh sql for programmers or what was it called yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so basically exactly so so i’ve done this on a couple platforms like amazon is a big one like a bunch of people are starting fba businesses but i sort of think that focusing on up-and-coming platforms where the supply side isn’t crazy competitive is actually a really good place to start where you could like when i when i was um when i launched my first udemy course you know i filmed it literally over five days in my bedroom in san francisco no like good quality no good editing it was just it candidly like was not an amazing course from a like student experience standpoint but the content was good uh but udemy was such an early platform that i put it up there and just by being literally the first guy to talk about here’s how to learn sql as a marketer that course sold i think like 60 grand over the next couple years um and to this day i still get like a thousand dollars a month from that course from udemy which is absurd um and you know that was all because like here’s an emerging platform they want people creating stuff on the supply side how do i create a course or whatever uh that just like can reach people who are already looking for something on a platform um and focus on that and i don’t know if you did this for that but uh there’s ways to basically figure out what are people searching for so there’s like tools like ahrefs or whatever you can figure out what what google searches are are people doing and in what volume but uh even on individual platforms there’s ways to figure it out like i know i looked at this business to buy and it was this girl selling a waist trainer you know what a waste trainer is yeah it’s basically do you know what this thing is it’s like i had no idea what this was before um so it’s basically like you know like okay i’m gonna here’s the here’s the mansplain to there’s three dudes talking about way strainers all right so you know like if you watch like pirates of the caribbean or some any movie or show that’s like based in kind of like olden times girls wear that like corset it’s like this super tight thing that you’re like you squeeze into this and then you wear your dress on top so your finger gets like your stomach gets squeezed out and your boobs get squeezed out like spanx or something it’s like old-school spanx and so uh what waste trainers are are that it’s basically like a cinch you wear around your stomach constantly and it makes you look good in the moment but also the idea is that it trains your your muscles or your body to like to to tighten up um because you kind of have to keep it flexed in a way for it to not like kind of be uncomfortable i guess i don’t know what the theory is but that’s my guess and like the kardashians kind of like you know talk about the stuff and it kind of got a little more popular so this girl who was building this business i was like cool so like what do you spend every month in marketing she’s like oh like we don’t spend anything in marketing like so how do you how are you growing so fast she’s like oh i just saw that on youtube nobody was owning the keyword for waste trainers and like how to size one how to wear one do they work so she just created like the youtube channel to be the answer to every search question about waste trainers on youtube and you can go if you go search wasters right now on youtube you’ll find all her videos amazing and so all her sales just come just from that and she was doing a few million dollars a year of a revenue a million dollars of profit per year just through that one channel alone amazing yeah good for her but yeah i i think exactly what you’re talking about it’s like find where people are searching for something and there’s no supply there and that’s a really good place to focus like when i launched sql for marketers there was literally almost nothing under the like marketing like the technical marketing or like the data analytics data driven marketing section for udemy and so it’s like cool if i put that up there that seems like it’ll it’ll resonate and do well uh which ended up being correct and what are the third and fourth ones yeah so the the third one is uh basically like launch a unique product in an area where you can buy customers via paid acquisition and again i think all of this is like super important to remember that you’re not building facebook you’re just like if you look at google adwords or waste trainers as you’re saying and there’s a gap there you can figure out how to make a product and your goal is not like make a hundred million dollar business but make one that does a million dollars a year like there are almost infinite niches on the internet where you can just make a product buy some rough keywords and just sell through in a category that you know where you’re like the first to market or the first to do a really good job what’s an exam market that’s what’s an example in that category that you’ve seen either from yourself or a friend or someone you’ve seen recently that’s doing that that model yeah so there there’s a company actually that is doing um that’s like vests for dogs but the vests are spiky so that coyotes don’t attack your dog so you can turn the dog into a pool yeah exactly like you could put this vest on a dog and then it won’t get eaten by coyotes because it’s got like spikes all over it um so i mean what an incredible niche product uh you know that’s definitely not gonna like go public but that could be an incredible business uh and so that stuff like that i mean honestly that’s what um that’s what kettle and fire was going to be when we first launched it i had no idea that bone broth would be such a compelling category and and the trend would take off like it has like our plan was basically we looked at we looked at google searches and we were like i think we can build a like 20 to 40 grand a month business so when you say we looked at google searches what does that mean in practical terms most people have never done that so what what what yeah fair so we we use like google adwords keyword tool just to say like which is that’s like discontinued now yeah i know now you’d have to use uh a refs or some hdm rush or something um but at the time we used a tool that was basically like there’s 2 000 people a month looking for like buy bone broth online and so if we can be the supplier that will sell you bone broth online like you know assuming we convert like even 10 of those people 200 orders 50 a month like you know that that’s a pretty material uh side hustle and so that was like the reason that we launched kettlebell yeah google is like you know it’s like a magic lamp and on one side you have all the aladdin’s out there making wishes and then you just get to be the genie so it’s like there are these tools that tell you here’s the wishes people are entering into this magic box they’re just hoping for something and if you notice that exactly that’s more people than i would have expected saying this thing or asking this question or wanting this thing and you go search for it and you’re like wow these results suck uh okay how do i just become the top result for that and so you thought you thought kettle and fire would do that so give me a sense of how long did it take for you to get from idea like seeing that keyword and being like oh maybe we could do this to actually making like i don’t know a thousand dollars a month how long was that process for you yeah so the process took about a year most of it was because i’d never done a physical product before and so it was like just bumbling around in the dark like trying to find someone that could make this stuff had a bunch of false starts but it took us basically 12 months to uh to go from like hey i think this is an opportunity to actually having product in box but once we had product in box you know we did over 20 grand our first month that we were live so and you um you are you the ceo of cattle and fire i am yeah you’ve got like three we’re gonna talk about this other thing that you’re thinking about doing how are you balancing all this time it’s a good question uh i i honestly i’ve never had a good answer for this i just like balancing it well uh okay i mean some of these things like perfect keto like i don’t have a day-to-day role in it anymore you know so i like co-founded it but i’ve completely stepped away uh one of the things that at kettle and fire that i think i’m proud of that we’ve done really well is like we have a phenomenal team and so to that to that extent i get to work on stuff that only i can do uniquely well like writing long 15 page posts about how beef is actually like not bad for the environment and [ ] like this that i’m kind of interested in but a lot of the day to day is handled by like the team that we’ve built over the last you know five five plus years so i really like am in control of my time in general partner with a guy like anthony or whoever you’re partnering with and you aren’t doing how many of these things do you have right now where you have your hands in roughly right now like five probably okay and so but there’s one that’s your day job right yeah okay so for the other four when you make these structures with people so a guy like anthony or it doesn’t have to be him but the representative that represents him are you taking a draw from that business at all or are you just only going to pay yourself if it sells yeah so at this point i’m pretty focused on like creating equity value and so you know for an example like a company i incubated uh shirley wines it’s like a non-alcoholic wine company we launched earlier this year i recruited i like basically had the idea tested it validated it lined up supply chain hired in the operator um the operator and ceo he’s taking a salary and like i probably won’t get a dollar out of that business uh for until we eventually sell that business or whatever happens with it like i put in a bunch of my own money to capitalize it and get it up and running but i’m just like i’m not gonna suck money out of that thing until uh you know until we have a good outcome so then really the only thing you are not the only thing i mean the thing you’re bringing the table is you are bringing a little bit of cash and also you’re bringing some expertise in your guide yeah totally but it also like incubated the whole idea that in that one yeah yeah i mean i think it’s basically trying to create a a compelling opportunity for someone where you know someone can go instead of going if someone wants to be a founder ceo today their options are like jump take no salary for 12 to 18 months hope they can figure out an idea and raise money and do all that kind of stuff or like build a side hustle which is again like a totally different skill set that we’re kind of talking about and so with this one specifically like i incubated the idea had everything lined up validated that it was big brought investors and basically was like hey man if you want to be a founder and ceo you can just walk into this role you take zero health care zero salary risk uh and you’re you’re good like you’re a founder you have a ton of upside you’re this operating ceo we have investors lined up it’s a big opportunity like it sort of works for both parties uh you know when you um are you do you regret or are you thankful that you raised money for kettle and fire oh definitely thankful i mean really with yeah for sure i mean with with kettle and fire in particular like the business had grown to a really meaningful amount and i still had like most of my net worth wrapped up in that and so i think getting some secondary was like personally really meaningful um and it also meant that like i felt more okay pushing for a bigger outcome it also meant like i think i will probably raise for most things that i do going forward or invest my own money just because the caliber of the team that we were able to hire around us like what we were doing on a shoestring budget versus what we could do after was just night and day like we have an amazing team but amazing people are expensive and so it’s definitely like made my life 100 times easier and more enjoyable getting to spend other people’s money to increase the value of my equity by hiring amazing people it’s like that seems like a no-brainer to me in a lot of ways uh yeah when you explain that way it does but if i was one of your investors and i and you’re doing all this other stuff i’d be like what the [ ] dude only do this thing i just gave you money yeah yeah i mean look it’s it’s something that i had to work through with our investors for sure i was very upfront with it with them about it was like look this is my main focus um you know which was very true and it was definitely something to manage around i also think though that it’s one of those things where as long as the business is going well no one’s going to complain you know what i mean but certainly if things went sideways then it’s then it’s like okay this is an easy area to point for it’s like elon can run tesla and spacex and everyone’s like wow he’s amazing and those businesses are amazing and then jack does the same thing with twitter and square and if twitter misses its earnings it’s like off with his head how dare he you know yeah he’s a part-time ceo what the hell were we thinking and uh and so it’s you know people are pretty they do uh what’s called resulting pretty hard in in that case uh and you also did yeah yeah yeah you also did a pretty fun experiment i i don’t know if this was a side hustle or what would you call this where me and sam were both guinea pigs in your uh your continuous glucose monitoring trial so you basically tweeted out yeah i was sending them like i was sending them like shirtless pics of myself like every week yeah typically that would include one photo just him in his boxer’s photo and there’s just a little p-spot to show his body fat and so you were doing this thing where you were like hey i need like 20 people or i don’t know how many maybe it’s 40 people that you ended up using yeah 50 people you were like hey uh we’re gonna do this experiment and what you did was you sent us all a levels uh glucose monitor and then um continuous glucose monitor that we just you know punctured into our arm basically now okay that’s measuring and then you put us all in like a whatsapp group and you’re like hey here’s the idea and it was like financial incentive i think it was like you would pay us out every day that we stayed in range and if we missed it like you kept our money or something uh what was that experiment and what’d you learn out of it man it was awesome that that experiment was uh kind of like many things in my life i just had the idea tweeted it immediately and got such a strong response from people we had like a wait list yeah totally uh where i was like okay now i gotta figure this out um you know sam was texting me every day being like this is sweet like i’m i’m gonna get all my [ ] money back like you’re very into it i loved it i was into it yeah it was super yes awesome but yeah so learned a ton man i mean one of the craziest things i think was just how well that incentive of like 25 a day really worked for people to keep them keep them honest like you go through you know pay 950 bucks for 30 days every day that you stay under a barrier i like give you 25 bucks back and just that tiny little behavior like incentive where that brownie or whatever is not four dollars but it’s 29 dollars like that uh i think that little incentive goes a really long way and it’s somewhat competitive and all this and so we have had with literally no marketing you know we’ve we’ve filled up 50 person cohorts every month since launching that in february uh live yeah yeah people can still sign up it’s wearablechallenge.com we’ve had one person go through it seven times they’ve lost about 50 pounds it’s like unbelievable who to see the results of this who’s who’s running that yeah so one of the guys in the first cohort aaron got so excited about the i was like hey do you want to run with this and so he uh he’s been running it it’s amazing and is that a business to you or what is not really i mean we’re kind of thinking about like how to make it a business but uh but it’s actually a perfect example of a side hustle like i will probably make you know somewhere between 20 and 30 grand this year from doing right uh yeah when i fall maybe more if sam joins and blows a bunch of his glucose levels when i saw that i was like hey this is fun and uh it’s kind of like on brand for you because of the stuff talk about in your businesses but then i was also like oh this is a great business because everybody wants the outcome everybody wants to eat right lose weight and the biggest hack is not knowledge but accountability and i liked that you were coming at it from an accountability point of view and i actually think like you know the company levels could do something like this or there’s going to be a company that does this right whatever weight watchers is as a business model like i haven’t studied it i’m assuming you have given what you do and what this business is but could this not be like weight watchers 2.0 i think it could be i mean it just it would need someone to like run at it really full time but i do think that there’s something here i mean there’s a couple companies stick and like one other that i’m forgetting where you can sort of like bet money on um on different outcomes and you know i think that that sort of works i actually think the really powerful part of this is like it’s a cohort it’s a challenge for a set period of time and you lose money only for that set period right uh and so like i would love to expand this and we’re sort of have some ideas in the in the hopper about like what expanding it might look but it’s definitely not my like full-time thing at all have you heard of stick shawn that’s actually an interesting company to buy i haven’t been there in years but when i used to go there it was even when i went there like years ago it was considered like old so it’s stick it’s spelled stick but i think there’s two k’s at the end right yep and it’s like a physical place no it’s a web stick.com but two k’s at the end and uh is the website still all old and janky looking yeah okay so it was like old back then when or in 2013 or 14 when i used to use it and what you do is you enlist a friend uh to be the referee and then you create i believe an anti-charity where you uh select something that you hate and then you upload money to it and then if you fail at your challenge your friend clicks a button and it automatically goes to that place that you hate and i i think you can you there’s a varieties of the tim ferriss but talked about this i think in four hour work week and i think it got popular from that yeah yeah it it did you think this company makes money justin i would imagine so i don’t know how much but it could be it would it could be an interesting thing to buy i mean it’s actually not that hard to replicate but like if they already get traffic it could be an interesting it would be an interesting this would be an interesting thing to buy and uh revamp and make a little bit better because i think they get a lot of traffic when i um when we owned toodledo there was this one guy an author uh i think he wrote a book uh getting things done what’s called uh yeah and he mentioned toodle-doo this app that me and uh ramon bought um and most of our customers came to us because they read about toodle-do like it just mentioned them in like a sentence or something in the book and that’s where most of the customers came from and just because tim ferriss mentioned stick i bet that’s where the the vast majority of their customers come from for sure yeah that’s funny there was a thing called jim pact too i don’t know if you guys have seen that i don’t know if it made it it was like it came out five years ago or something like that but it was you would basically pledge that you’re gonna go to the gym with some some frequency and other people would too and it basically i think what they were doing was like in your case you’re the house you’re like the bank it’s like i give you the money then you pay me back and in this case it was like it would match you with somebody else and uh if you ever didn’t do your thing your money would go to that person uh if they did it and you didn’t go your money would go to them and if you both went your money would be safe and um and so you’re like making a pact that you would go to the gym for you know some amount of frequency but i do think there is something to this like kind of financial incentive accountability you know betting betting on yourself betting on your habit uh model that i think it’s pretty cool yeah i totally agree i mean we’re actually looking now at like could you apply this to run little you know health boot camps in like la or austin or something like that where you have 30 people 50 people opt in will handle your meals we’ll you know we’ll give you levels like we’ll do all this sort of stuff and a more like premium offering that um where it’s like hey you’re almost guaranteed to lose weight or get in better shape at the end of this month that would for sure work that’s a little bit better than my weight loss idea which is called kidnap where you just go and you take a person and you bring them to the desert uh in like vegas and you just kidnap with two peas at the end yeah kidnap sf or we’ll call it hostage and we just bring you to like a farm and we just like it’s like look you only 1500 calories a day do whatever you want all day but like this is it i love that um can i imagine the refund rates would be high on that well you know it’ll be guaranteed success um so i want to get to some of these ideas but i first want to ask you about duckduckgo so you’re friends with that guy gabe right the guy who started it or owns it and are you bullish on that business because you’re one of the few people i know that has insight onto it and i’m bit i look at their traffic monthly like because they give out these monthly updates uh that does that is that business like uh like kind of like an under the radar thing do you think this is gonna take over the world because that’s kind of how i feel yeah i mean i i think it’s it’s crushing like i think that you always see like there’s always like a counterpoint to some massive trend or massive amount of success like you have like amazon taking over the world but then you have shopify which is crushing it and i think that duckduckgo is like the counterpoint to uh to like google and you know privacy eroding across the board all this sort of stuff like i do think there’s an opportunity to be a big tech company but with privates like privacy is a core value rather than uh you know selling ads to everyone and so i think duckduckgo really has that the opportunity to like be that company and they have a lot of tailwinds that are working in their favor at this point um it’s also crazy like gabe he’s been working on that company for like 12 years five of those years yeah i feel like it might be actually um but like for a large chunk of that time he was just a solo founder building a search engine to compete with google it’s like wow so they do north of 100 million in revenue i believe yeah i i believe do you i mean how like i don’t know if you i don’t know if you knew him during those early years but did you know him at the beginning or now not not the very very beginning but i knew him when it was like him and one other person working on duckduck and so i’m guessing at that point it wasn’t it wasn’t a case where tim and one other person and man it’s crushing it it’s him and one other person and it’s sort of crawling forward um yeah what were those kind like what were your conversations like what was the outlook i mean i find it fascinating when people work on these businesses that don’t take off right away and they stick with it and then they need to either like the world just changes or they figure something out or just compound slow slowly but then all of a sudden it starts to take off like what was that like they’re the flat part and then what do you think caused it to grow yeah i think that he was he was just getting like small bits of positive feedback from communities like hacker news community was like duckduckgo is amazing for like stack overflow searches or you know x y and z very specific niche sorts of searches and then as you got good feedback from those groups it’s like okay let’s invest in product to make this a little better a little better and i think that after you know let’s call it 12 14 years he’s been working on this the product has gotten a lot better but also the like sort of trend line of where big tech is going has it’s just gotten like way more way more invasive and way more like privacy is way more of a concern for people today especially as you’re seeing a lot of the censorship stuff and you know some of this that’s that’s happening in the big tech world right now i think that duckduckgo is like one of the few companies that for over a decade now has been like privacy is one of our like core things and they’ve built an incredibly complex product uh to compete with google that’s just not easy to spin up overnight you know it’s not a side hustle it’s not like the type of thing you or i can build with a couple hours a week uh over you know a weekend can we talk about can we go through some of these ideas you want to start with airbnb camping because i uh you were texting me about this i uh and i want to learn about it i just looked at a house the other day by the way uh down the street from my house to buy for airbnb i’ll have to send you the numbers i don’t know if it it seems like a lot of work for not a lot of output we’ll see yeah i think that’s probably true for a lot of airbnb right now i think the thing that is compelling to me is like we talked earlier about new platform stuff like hip camp and some of these other like camping platforms are exploding and again i think if you could like leverage capital build up the supply side and provide you know water toiletries like all the basics um in locations that people actually want to camp at you could build a pretty material business and it again it like may not be a 10 billion dollar business but i think it would be a really solid side hustle and cash flow asset and it would require a lot less um a lot less like management and work than airbnb because at the end of the day you’re [ ] camping like sorry you know it’s not like the the stove burner doesn’t work or the ac is off it’s like a lot of [Laughter] when you were doing this what numbers were you bottling out yeah so i was mainly modeling it from like a noi basis which is net operating income which is like a term that’s used a lot in real estate but basically i think that you could get like 30 to 40 percent cash on cash returns by following this strategy that sounds like the greatest thing ever why why haven’t you done it because i am getting higher returns from my time elsewhere you know so whatever is this i would love to find someone to run somebody who’s listening to this is like oh i’m the perfect guy for this i i i love camping i know i have camper i have a camper myself i’m in an area that’s like a high demand thing for hip camp or auto camp or um yeah great you be the operator we’ll put up the cash we’ll buy the rvs for you and you run the thing and let’s split it so uh email me sean seanpury.com and then i’ll loop in these guys and we will uh we will fund your we’ll fund a a small rental business of of campers if anybody’s in the location that does this because that’s a great that’s a great idea you’re absolutely right they’re basically tons of demand and they’re supply constrained and so if you just build out more supply you’re gonna get bookings and you’re gonna get great returns off something yeah exactly and it’s one of those things that’s like that can scale really nicely these platforms are here to stay like there’s a lot of venture dollars going into making these more of a thing i think that you could crush it on these platforms is it something i want to do full-time at this point in my career no but do i think someone younger who like cares about camping more than i do could really do well here like absolutely right um okay great that’s a great idea what else you got uh alcohol baby let’s talk about that yeah so near to my heart as a as a as a non-alcoholic beer drinker yeah so you know a couple uh earlier this year launched a company that i talked about shirley highshirtley.com s-u-r-e-l-y um but we’re basically like we saw so much interest going into the non-alcohor space bud light bought three spots of the super bowl one was the seltzer spot the other was for bud light the other was for bud zero which is like the non elk thing is so interesting and like there’s so much attention going towards it and we saw like a ton of really good non-elk beers with some really good like non-alex spirits options and nothing in the wine category and so we decided to build the first clean label really high quality non-alcoholic wine brand and wine company uh hired like real wine making talent and the like and we launched earlier this year and it’s going uh going super well so how much did you uh by the way i want to brag i’ve been talking about this [ ] for like four years now have a nice shawn i don’t know if that’s a brag or really it’s a it’s a knock on you you had the inside he took the action he well i don’t know i don’t that’s true that’s true i mean yeah uh i’m just talking [ ] so i think you were going to kind of ask him something like how much did you put in to start this basically how much of your money did you did you have to cede into making a venture like this happen yeah so i put in close to 100k to make this happen um and some portion of that was a loan that that i got out uh just as like revenue started to come in but yeah it was about 100k has been up not a lot that’s great no yeah it’s not a crazy thing that’s a weekend for sam thank you um i feel i feel like um i feel like uh like it okay so if you’re telling me you could start this with a hundred grand and how many hours a week are you working on uh to get it spun up i mean it was much more like hiring the right contractors and people so it was five ten maybe okay i feel like there’s a world where this like let’s be conservative i feel like there’s a like this is very clearly a 10 million a year thing that makes 2 million in profit right like like it could definitely be way bigger but i feel like that’s a relatively light i’d be disappointed forward and hit that mark right that’s kind of what you’re saying yeah yeah that would happen expectations at least yeah so right like and let’s give me let’s give it six years to do that let’s go let’s grow slow uh i feel like that’s like a it’s pretty sure fire away you’re going to get that would you you agree uh yeah i certainly do and so if that was the case right a dc brand like that can sell for like 1x revenue let’s say so you could turn 100k investment and let’s call it even 20 hours a week for for a year to spin it up to you you turned 100k into basically you know 10 million bucks worth of of total equity value in term in terms of the company in that case i don’t even think it’ll take six years i think that’s two two years yeah i’m being like ultra yeah i agree um but yeah i mean that’s the basic thing where are the other opportunities in the space that you when you’re researching yeah i mean i there’s a ton right like i think that we’re at this generational shift where people you know 10 years ago everyone was like let’s go out maybe this is just me getting older i don’t know but all of my friends were like let’s go out to the bars and get really drunk now all my friends are like let’s have one glass of wine and then like have a great long dinner and or try you know or not drink it all right and instead young people i don’t young people i don’t think drink yeah it’s it’s becoming much more common shockingly that’s what i’m saying like the gen z is like like uh it’s not as common like when the second i could drive have you heard sam’s gen z analysis that he does is his trends analysis on gen z he’s like they don’t have sex they don’t drink it they’re depressed but they’re really cool looking what do you see what do you call them yeah they’re really cool they got they got nice teeth they always wear vans and they like they always have like proper fittings what color do they like what do i say like red or millennials you can have like a really sweeping generalization for that it’s like the truth like they all have like sick ass haircuts um it’s true they all got like amazing i mean cut right now he’s looking he’s looking gen z dude the young people i’m saying they they don’t they don’t have they don’t have a lot of sex not nearly as much as before and they just even with all that teeth and hair they can’t they’re not having sex what’s going on dude i don’t know well testosterone is down 50 over the last like 40 years that’s right yeah maybe that’s it it’s like this is something there’s something going on here and they also don’t like alcohol like it’s a health thing or i don’t know what it is but they don’t drink yeah i mean i i honestly think one of the reasons i’m bullish on the non-ox space is like we’re getting to the point where they’re just better drugs like if people want to you know alter their state of consciousness i’m seeing a lot more friends that are like opting into cannabis or ketamine or some of the you know psychedelics or some of these other things that don’t give you the hangover don’t give you the 30 extra pounds over a year of heavy drinking like i just think people are opting for for different sorts of compounds different heights to give them the experience they want yeah exactly i tried that recess drink you guys tried that the yeah kind of like carbonated drink great branding amazing branding i would say drink tastes like [ ] and didn’t do anything so i was like well i’m out on that one but i love the idea of it i kind of wish it if we just if they just put lacroix in that can i’d feel amazing i’d be like yeah this is the best this is the future uh but instead you know they tried their own thing um what are some businesses you’re like you mentioned testosterone we invested in this testosterone replacement company because we were like that same which one uh it’s called peak or they’re just rebranding to hone but basically it’s at home direct consumer you know testing for your t levels and then when you get tested and it’s if it’s low you’re they’ll there’s like a telemedicine doctor who will be like hey by the way if you want this to go up you know like there are some solutions that we can offer you basically they have their own you’ve not heard of that justin i’ve heard of trt i didn’t i didn’t heard of like peak or home it’s basically right trt i’m ready to throw six letters yeah you don’t believe in it it’s real yeah yeah maybe that’s not a well said thing but i tend to think that some of these things you know your testosterone levels are low it’s like okay the reason that they’re low is some inputs from your environment are not healthy and so rather than trying to fix the symptom like you should try and fix the environment but what are the biggest inputs you can change to to boost testosterone from your opinion i i think diet sleep uh in like inflammation and then also trying to cut out like endocrine disrupting hormones uh which are i think like a horrifying thing that not a lot of people are talking about what does that talk about so different uh plastics compounds like you’ve heard of like bpa-free and all these sorts of things um the whole class of something called phthalates which is p h t p t h l a t e s um that effectively have like a really strong negative impact on one’s testosterone ones like endocrine and hormonal systems and they’re that are in like everything they’re so avoiding like or they’re from something else uh yeah a lot of plastics yeah um so these are like synthetic materials that are just in like water plastics food packaging uh creams that you use like they’re all they’re they’re everywhere so what’s something you do lifestyle wise that i’d be like dude why are you doing that um like i went to my friend’s house one time and he instead of using toothpaste he was he dipped his toothbrush in like this powder and started brushing his teeth i hey man what the [ ] is that because he’s always like three steps ahead in health and like products and so any at first i used to judge him and now i’m like oh am i killing myself by using toothpaste should i be using this powder [ ] and you know what are those what would yours be can i guess justin can i get yeah i guess um do you use a microwave no no i didn’t think okay um yeah but like you go out of your way to not use a microwave right yeah yeah okay do you um you definitely only have glass tupperware correct yeah for sure um what else is there uh um do you uh i i’ve got a few more i i’ve got a few more i can peg you but you’re telling me i got this like 19 step home water filtration thing installed at my house that’s like the metal one it’s like 25 feet tall and in this outside it’s insane it’s outdoors uh the plumbers yeah yeah they they’re at every step so there’s one other sink there’s one outside that like filtered all the home water the guys came in to install it they’re like we have never seen anyone install something like this um but yeah so i have that set up that i just recently got the tupperware stuff uh pretty diet cautious in general um are you super ripped i can’t see your neck up here are you like okay no he’s lean yeah you’re lean you’re like ten percent body fat right i’ll send you a p-spot photo yeah i need it i need to pee well i’ve seen you without a shirt like you’re not like uh like huge but you’re like you look like a like a soccer player right who’s more fit you’re a justin uh it depends on what we’re talking about who is do you aspire more for your body or for his body go uh i would pref right now i prefer to be leaner and skinnier so i’m trying to lose fat and look a little bit more like his body all right great all right so you have the insane water filtration system and what is that by the way what’s the name of it uh it is called the radiant life i think but there’s another one john do you saw the people i i do i have a song do you like a definite song in my backyard is it infrared or is it uh no it’s the uh yeah it’s like the the hot stone one and like red lights on your toes or something in the morning what do you what do you do anything with any kind of light uv anything no i try to get outside i mean it this is one of those things that i think is like there’s some people that i think over optimize where they’re like oh i need more light exposure so i’m going to stay inside and like shine red light on my stuff and i’m like just outside do you only use zero drop shoes no what is that i did for a while i just didn’t really what is a zero drop shoe basically shoes with no heel yeah most shoes have some type of uh like yeah but like a lot of people believe that that ruins your achilles and hurts your calves um and a bunch and ruins your posture um do you um uh do you only eat meat from salt and thyme i try to when i can it’s the best meat in austin for sure where do you get your meat from uh so i now i eat most of my meat is from salt and time or stuff that i’ve hunted or a friend has hunted i love it this is awesome okay great did we miss any other ones any other good uh like sort of self i don’t what do we even call these uh well look i i think what we’re teasing but there is truth in this like guys who are on the cutting edge and things that we joke and laugh at i believe that’s going to be normal uh you know like totally like i remember like years ago i i got into this hobby uh about raw denim which is like a at the time it was like super nerdy and everyone made fun of me and it didn’t get entirely mainstream but a little bit mainstream it got quite uh popular um and and that was um that’s kind of like what we’re talking about here so like i remember years ago people were talking about ayahuasca and i was like what the [ ] is that and now like i know so many people that are doing this stuff so totally uh oh and dan said you use non-stick pans you definitely you don’t use non-stick pans for sure i could tell yeah i use a ceramic set or cast iron yeah that that’s an easy one but anyway go ahead what was the answer were you gonna are there any other things that we can learn from how you live yeah i mean i i think that like cutting out things that are causes of or the obvious ones it’s like don’t microwave stuff in plastic try and like buy stuff that is overly not overly processed and packaged uh and i think actually like avoiding vegetable oils is a tremendous tremendous thing that like you said about raw denim or ayahuasca um you know five years from now 10 years from now a lot of people are going to be way more conscious about vegetable oils and the damage that they specifically like compound called linoleic acid in there um that the damage that does to like your inflammation what will they use instead olive oil or peanut oil or yeah i mean hopefully olive oil avocado oil animal fats lard ghee butter stuff like that coconut oil do you want to talk about uh you wanna talk about one or two more of these sean or what uh yeah let’s do let’s do you pick you pick the topic let’s do one more topic oh i know i was going to ask you really quick all these things that you’re doing there’s like no microwave all this stuff do you actually feel a difference or um is it is it like these all long term or is there any short term pleasure and that i can get out of these like do you feel different yeah so i the way that i think about this is like from a baseline standpoint uh you know if you if you have a pretty high baseline like imagine you’re super it’s going to be really hard for you to notice if you’re a bodybuilder if you’re putting on like one percent you know two pounds of muscle or something if you already if you’re already like weighing 225 um i think that i have a pretty high like health baseline and so a lot of these things are more preventative and not oh my god i feel amazing uh you know whereas i felt like [ ] the other day but for i think the average person like if your baseline is relatively low you want to lose like or average you want to lose weight you’re not sleeping well um you know your stress hormones are all over the place a lot of these interventions like you’ll feel a material difference after like 20 or 30 days i think there’s a world to build like a wire cutter version of this so for example like you’re saying a lot of stuff and my friend my best friend jack is into all this stuff and and when i stay at his house and i visit him and so that’s how i like i see how he lives and jack’s really honest and i’ll say he takes all these supplements i go do any of these do anything and he goes no like i don’t feel any different um and like a guy like you i imagine you actually care about longevity and also you just like to tinker and you like trying gadgets you know i like training gadgets as well i just want to like see the latest and greatest it’s fun to experiment i would love but but the issue is is that someone like you like or not you but some of the folks in your world like they can get a little woo-woo and i’m like i don’t know if they’re like talking about [ ] crystals or if this is actually gonna make a difference in my life it’s really hard to know like uh if like this actually truly is meaningful i wish and i went to peter peter atiya’s blog about this as well to learn about fitness and he talks about so much stuff about fitness and diet and i’m like just give me the if you just do this life will be a little bit better and you’re 80 there yeah i think there’s a big opportunity for that i think that one of the problems is like if you’re an influencer you’re going to get way more attention and interest from people when you talk about butthole sunning than you are about like eat a healthy diet you know what i mean like yeah totally like i think that’s the point what’s that mean same thing you’ve never seen this article the same it went like super viral basically i’ll send you a bunch of naked people we’re going out like they’re tanning but then they raise their legs above their heads so that the sun goes directly into their butt and they’re like you know never felt better you know the sun’s energy right into your fourth eye do we want to go over one more thing or two more things what do you want to do it’s your call well we can’t end on butthole somebody’s yeah i guess i guess that will probably leave for bad taste so i’ve got an interesting you you have something interesting and i want to so i’ve got a friend named nick you know nick ray i bet and nick um he he jokes about it but he’s being serious he matches with girls on tinder or whatever app he uses and he calls them for a pre-screening for a date he’s like let’s just talk to each other because he’s nick’s uh he just wants to get down to business like do we want to date or not and he calls them and one of the questions he asks sean right away is what’s your credit history or uh like do you have debt um and odd here justin has he goes i think i could create a dating app that based off your credit card history um but this wasn’t just to be clear it’s not your credit rating he’s talking about not like i only want a very rich credit worthy people it’s more like if i know what you’re going to be rich or whatever what he’s saying is i want to look at your purchase history the stuff you buy if you shop at whole foods if you go to the gym if you don’t you go to the bar you ring up a bill that’ll tell us how compatible we are that was your idea yeah exactly and are you dating right now are you single uh i am recently engaged personally and if you matched you and your fiancee’s bills up before you got engaged would would you have been a good match great fit great fit yeah for sure i think that like where you spend your resources tells a lot about someone that a hinge profile doesn’t and so i suspect if like you were to say hey we are matching the two of you up because you spend an absurd amount of your income at this like weird butcher shop in austin or at whole foods like we’re probably going to get along you know or at least have a higher odds of doing that from a lifestyle compatibility standpoint than than hinge does you know sam what do you think all right let’s do yeah i mean i mean i i think no this would work i think this is one of those things that people say i think we’re gonna give that one a no but i enjoy that you said it yeah like i think my opinion is like when it comes to dating um you really just like you want to optimize for getting laid quickly i think like regardless if that’s what people admit or not but like they just want to get to like date one so they can get in bed uh for step two and i think that really people like they say they like so um uh when we had our roommate matching app i don’t know if you could actually vouch for if you saw this on your end people said they wanted this they wanted that they wanted this and then they would meet someone and they’re like nah [ ] it like i’ll just do it uh right like and so i think the same with dating you say you want to do this you want to do that but then if i show you like a person who you just think is attractive even though you had all these rules uh you’re gonna say ah all right whatever let’s just do it yeah yeah no i think that’s probably true i think this probably would be better as a like matchmaking service than a broad-based dating app right and and then we’ll let’s let’s wrap up with the one that we’ve actually talked about before about this automation officer yeah let’s do it um basically i think with the rise of no code tools virtual assistants all like i think the average company and we do this at my company could just be 30 more productive like we we have basically one virtual assistant hire for every two people that we have that are on the team and we give them like a training that’s like here’s how to use virtual assistants get all of the repetitive off your plate and i just wish i could hire someone to do that as a service where like he or she sits in product meetings or marketing or logistics team [ ] and it’s just like we’re gonna automate these five pieces and just continually does that across the company where did you learn that from who that’s so so interesting to give va’s to every two people yeah uh i just started doing it when we started the company i think that’s pretty amazing right how did you learn the how to how to manage a va what you can use them for what you can where did you learn that part obviously but like what was the spark yeah when i when i left um when i left the company i was working with terry at we got acquired and then i was kind of like starting to do my own stuff on the side and was like okay i want to try and scale myself uh to do more stuff on the side so like originally hired va is to help with responding to airbnb requests and then view me requests and then like slowly got them more integrated into my life i love it and did you take a course or something like where did you this training that you have for for your employees is that modeled off something or what uh no we we basically like we have some internal documents that myself and other people on the team have written up around how to leverage virtual assistants and we just do that you should uh publish this yeah i feel like that’s i think you’re kind of like this you’re not dismissing this but you’re kind of like brushing over this i feel like that’s actually one of the more interesting things that i’ve learned today i think that’s actually pretty amazing i’ve had a lot of people ask me for this and i actually suck at using va’s and don’t really use them but i know i should uh and could do more and this is one of if i kind of like pinged the audience i was like all right if i could teach you anything that you think like what do you think i could teach you that i know that that you want to know and surprisingly this was like number five on that list and so i plan to eventually a learn it myself and better so that i can like offer this others but i was very surprised to see that on the top list of things people wanted to learn that they felt like they were just curious about and they felt that there was value there but they didn’t know how to unlock it that’s interesting yeah i mean maybe this is something that i should publish at some point and i don’t know how much do you what what how much budget do you allocate is it like two grand a month per two people we yeah we probably about that like call it like 10-ish grand across like the whole company so you what do you guys have you have 20 people we have 33. dude that’s pretty sick how you’ve kept it like relatively small for i yeah i have no intel i would imagine your revenue is in the 60 million range if i had to um and that’s pretty a lean mean team for how value how much value that is definitely and i think the va piece is a big part of it like we just have a very efficient team that’s pretty focused on getting stuff done that they uniquely can do and the va’s are super helpful with the rest well dude this is sick man i i can’t see sean’s face i can’t see where he’s going yeah my camera overheats uh this is a recurring problem i moved it all i moved my whole setup inside for this but then i also got two babies inside so i thought all right do i want to risk babies crying or my camera over here guaranteed camera overheat and i chose the camera justin do you want to promote yourself where do you want where do you want people to go to i a lot of people are gonna listen to this so uh what your.com your twitter where are you gonna what are you gonna pin yeah so probably my twitter i’m at jw mares uh or you know my website justinmers.com i have a monthly newsletter that i send out where i talk about various things i think about health business and whatever else is kind of on my mind um that seems like people like i think sam you like it too right yeah i’m looking at your stuff now i’m a subscriber i get your it’s not a sub stack it’s just a blog right uh yeah but i have a monthly newsletter that is on substance but yeah that’s right i i get your emails in my uh thing or in my email and i i message you about it i’m like oh i just saw your airbnb thing i’m because i actually want to do that i think that’s sick i think that’d be a great way to finance uh like a a pretty large bit of land i think that’s fun i went go i went shooting i went to this place out in texas where you shoot guns and then afterwards you go and ride atvs and it was like i was in heaven i was like this is just the most fun i could possibly have i have to go and buy a place so i can do this all the time it’s awesome uh what are you gonna say sean uh i was gonna say justin i gotta give you the compliment i’ll give your blog is that your your content is so good it made me question i was like is this guy really like a good entrepreneur or is this like because like usually like there’s some people who are truly great at putting out content and truly great at doing actually like walking the walk and doing the doing the business side have actually done it themselves they’re not just like studying others and writing content but often what you’ll find is that people are good at one i know a bunch of amazing business people who don’t want to or suck at creating content and i know some great content people that i’m like once i meet them i’m like oh you’ve this is what this is your business you’ve never done a business outside of this content business and uh so then when i found out that you were good at both i was like okay you know props to you for both but that’s how good the content was that it made me made me do the research and say is this is this guy legit or what i appreciate that i’m definitely not good at like the content business side of things or posting frequently but i i like really enjoy putting it out gonna do yeah you’ve been doing it for years i’m looking at your site now i’m reading your 2020 review i just clicked off central athlete because you talked about central athlete i mean it seems like you’ve been doing this for years so i mean that’s consistent definitely i like it but in small doses not as a full-time thing all right great we should wrap it up um dude thanks for coming on this was fun yeah you’re like a perfect fit for like the type of audience that we have they’re going to love i think the content that you uh the ideas and stuff you shared so that was great thank you thanks for having me on guys this is fun i could be what i want to never 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