Latest / Home Service Millionaire with Mike Andes / The Business Ideas We Can’t Stop Thinking About

Transcript

The Business Ideas We Can’t Stop Thinking About · Home Service Millionaire with Mike Andes

• 0:00
  When I think about selling a business, I think, who does it massively benefit or who does it massively hurt?
• 0:04
  You have to hurt Google to get them to buy the company to shut it down.
• 0:07
  I don't ever have this nagging feeling of ideas anymore.
• 0:10
  It's more like I see problems that I'm like, man, we could totally fix that in that business.
• 0:14
  We could totally fix that.
• 0:16
  Boy, I know what it takes to actually do them.
• 0:17
  It's like, you know, you want to solve the problem?
• 0:19
  Like the fun part is only going to last like four months.
• 0:22
  And then I got to do the next 10 years.
• 0:24
  You walk over to this potato wall.
• 0:26
  There's one price.
• 0:27
  Let's just call it $9.99 a pound.
• 0:29
  You pay for the potato.
• 0:30
  Everything after that, completely free.
• 0:33
  I literally had it to the point.
• 0:34
  I had a lease.
• 0:34
  I had an LLC.
• 0:35
  I had a bank account.
• 0:37
  I had an employee.
• 0:37
  We were rocking and rolling.
• 0:39
  Then I pulled the plug.
• 0:40
  If I could create any business.
• 0:42
  and I could actually pull it off at a big scale, this is the one I'd wanna do because I think it's worth a ton of money.
• 0:48
  Tomorrow morning I'm gonna wake up thinking about your potato idea.
• 0:50
  Like, dang, I like your potato idea.
• 0:53
  If you start your potato idea, as long as you run it, I'll invest in it.
• 0:56
  That's right, that's right.
• 0:58
  Welcome back everyone to the podcast.
• 1:00
  Welcome, Jonathan.
• 1:00
  Hello, howdy.
• 1:02
  And today we're going to be doing a little bit of entrepreneurial therapy.
• 1:06
  And that is, if you ever feel like you have 100 ideas and you have all these brilliant,
• 1:11
  entrepreneurial business ventures that you could do and you didn't take action, we're going to sympathize with you today.
• 1:16
  We're going to share with you, both of us, two different things, two different businesses, ideas that we had, that we had varying degrees of how much we invested into it or got started on it or maybe didn't start it at all.
• 1:27
  Uh, we're gonna talk about why we thought it was a good idea, why we did not execute on the idea or why it failed.
• 1:33
  Uh, so we'll, we'll do two each.
• 1:36
  We'll try to limit it to two.
• 1:37
  Uh, I know Jonathan had to go through his pages and pages of 500 different business ideas.
• 1:41
  Uh, but go ahead and kick it off.
• 1:43
  You start with the first one and then I'll bounce it back to me.
• 1:47
  This was challenging.
• 1:48
  So when I saw this on the docket, I immediately thought a couple of things came to mind, but I was like, I don't know.
• 1:54
  I put these things out of my brain pretty fast.
• 1:56
  And then as soon as I started giving it just a little bit of thought, they just all started rushing in.
• 2:01
  So I had like- This is my tactic to distract you and get you off of your plan.
• 2:05
  He's like, oh, that's a great idea.
• 2:06
  We should take action.
• 2:07
  Well played.
• 2:08
  So anyway, I did narrow it down to two.
• 2:13
  Okay.
• 2:14
  The first one I'm going to do is field services related.
• 2:17
  The second one I'm going to do is not field services related.
• 2:19
  And the second one is more just like a passion thing that I want to do for pure fun.
• 2:23
  And so the first one here, I have thought about this idea for over a decade, which
• 2:31
  I like this idea.
• 2:32
  I'm just going to kind of set it up here.
• 2:35
  I have no idea if it would work.
• 2:36
  In fact, my theory is it won't work because I can't afford to pay for the distribution model, meaning get it out to the people.
• 2:44
  And I can't figure out exactly how to finance the thing.
• 2:46
  Not finance it as in finance it to build it, but how do you monetize it?
• 2:50
  What's the monetization?
• 2:51
  Data centers.
• 2:52
  Data centers.
• 2:52
  That's the move.
• 2:53
  Not data centers.
• 2:55
  And I'm not claiming any of these are good ideas.
• 2:57
  So my filter was...
• 3:01
  What do I not, what can I not stop thinking about?
• 3:04
  And this is truly one of those ideas for me that goes way back.
• 3:08
  The other thing I'll say about this idea of all my ideas, like two weeks ago, I think I said there was this frame.
• 3:14
  If you could do anything and you knew you wouldn't fail, or if you could create any life you want and you knew it would happen, it wouldn't fail.
• 3:21
  This is my example.
• 3:21
  If I could create any business and I could actually pull it off at a big scale, this is the one I'd wanna do because I think it's worth a ton of money.
• 3:30
  And oh, last thing, this is a total build to sell business.
• 3:35
  Okay.
• 3:35
  Not a build to hold.
• 3:36
  Okay.
• 3:37
  I'm not claiming it's a good idea.
• 3:38
  Money losing.
• 3:39
  You're going to hype it up and unload it to some investors.
• 3:42
  I got you.
• 3:43
  Well, when I think about selling a business, I think who does it massively benefit or who does it massively hurt?
• 3:48
  Yeah.
• 3:49
  So this business hurts Google.
• 3:51
  Is and it hurts.
• 3:53
  It already came out.
• 3:55
  It hurts LSA and Google Ads.
• 3:59
  Okay.
• 3:59
  All right.
• 3:59
  So again, not saying it's a great idea, but here's the here's the way I want you to think about it.
• 4:05
  So this is a direct attack on Angie's List, Dumbtack, all those companies.
• 4:11
  It's like the anti of that.
• 4:13
  And the way I think about the problem, I've always thought because when I think about marketing,
• 4:17
  I always think, well, how does the buyer want to buy?
• 4:21
  Nobody wants to go to Thumbtack and fill out a form and then get 90 people bombarding them with phone calls.
• 4:28
  And they hate nobody likes that.
• 4:30
  And so but how does everybody want to buy?
• 4:32
  And how does everybody actually try to buy?
• 4:35
  So whenever I need something,
• 4:37
  or Tiffany, my wife, needs something, we'd go to our neighbor, like Irina across the street.
• 4:41
  And Tiffany would say, hey, Irina, who would you recommend for pool service?
• 4:44
  Or who would you use to mow your lawn?
• 4:46
  Or who would you hire to fix your HVAC?
• 4:48
  So I've always wanted to create a business around this concept of creating a network of all your friends and all your people and what service companies they use.
• 4:52
  Again, I've always wanted to create a business around this concept of creating a network of all your friends and all your people and what service companies they use.
• 5:00
  I don't even know how to pull this off, but this is the idea I like because I consumer wants to go to somebody they trust and get the answer.
• 5:08
  And so I just want to ask our friends, who do you use?
• 5:11
  And I would like to know if five of my friends use that same company because that's exactly who I want to use.
• 5:16
  So I don't want to go to Thumbtack.
• 5:19
  I don't want to go to Angie's List.
• 5:20
  I don't want to go to Google.
• 5:21
  I don't believe anybody wants to go to those services.
• 5:24
  They go there because they can't find a referral from a friend.
• 5:27
  So the gist of the business has like three legs.
• 5:31
  There's more to it.
• 5:32
  I've only thought through it so far.
• 5:33
  But the most important leg is how do we find our service providers?
• 5:39
  from our friends and our trusted network and never go to Google, never go to Angie's List, Thumbtack, Yelp, any of them.
• 5:47
  We don't want to.
• 5:48
  That's all, we only go there because we have to.
• 5:50
  That's part one.
• 5:52
  The part two, and these parts don't matter as much.
• 5:56
  everybody hates firing their service provider.
• 5:59
  So this is like an extension that may not be necessary, but could you not only connect the homeowner with the perfect solution provider for them based on who your friends recommend and use, could you also let their current service provider go?
• 6:18
  So politically correct.
• 6:19
  Let's go.
• 6:19
  I am convinced that what happens at CityTurf is the month of August rolls around and somebody is like, I hate my lawn mowing company.
• 6:27
  I'm tired of my fertilization weed control company.
• 6:29
  The pest control company almost let my dog out again.
• 6:33
  I'm going to change.
• 6:34
  And they're like, well, you know what?
• 6:36
  It's almost the holidays.
• 6:37
  There's only a couple months left in the mowing season.
• 6:40
  I'll do that next year because nobody wants, they don't want to deal with it.
• 6:42
  And then when they do cancel, they lie to you about why they're canceling.
• 6:45
  And so I just want to do it for them.
• 6:49
  How does that come across nicer to the person that's getting canceled?
• 6:54
  Oh, this is where it gets.
• 6:55
  This is where my ideas always go from a simple idea to a big idea.
• 6:59
  This gets into managing the service relationship for them.
• 7:02
  Not concierge, not concierge, like a different, like where you have all their history, you know, like this is the other problem I theorize.
• 7:08
  I'm throwing a lot of stuff out there.
• 7:09
  I'm not saying this was a fully formed.
• 7:11
  I didn't try this.
• 7:12
  I didn't do it.
• 7:13
  I've kind of blocked out.
• 7:14
  I mean, I've thought about it a bit.
• 7:16
  It's that first part, the who would part, that I think is the most important.
• 7:20
  The other problem, so I have more think about problems first before I try to come up with solutions or before I try to come up with business models.
• 7:26
  The other problem I think people have is, at least this happens in my house, like you only use your plumber every few years.
• 7:33
  You only use the gas plumber.
• 7:35
  So like the plumber that deals with gas, like gas lighting on your house every five years.
• 7:40
  Like you've got all these people.
• 7:41
  And so every time it's like, wait, who do we use for that thing?
• 7:44
  We can never remember.
• 7:45
  Yeah.
• 7:46
  So it's like there's there's all these little problems that could get solved.
• 7:49
  Like, how do you refer somebody?
• 7:51
  How do you keep up with who all your vendors are that you use?
• 7:54
  How do you keep up with when you last use them?
• 7:56
  Because you're searching Gmail and email and text.
• 7:58
  You're trying to figure all this stuff out.
• 7:59
  You can't remember.
• 8:00
  Like, how do you bring all that together?
• 8:01
  So I don't know what the product is exactly, but I.
• 8:07
  I know there's a problem.
• 8:08
  I wish I could solve it because nobody likes to be bombarded.
• 8:12
  Nobody likes to use all those sites I talked about.
• 8:15
  Nobody likes to cancel their service provider.
• 8:17
  But the ultimate problem is the promise would be that a provider can't pay for placement.
• 8:24
  Like they can't, you know, and so if you can't charge...
• 8:28
  ABC long company or X, Y, Z, H, V, A, C company.
• 8:31
  How do you monetize this platform?
• 8:33
  Because I don't think you can get the consumer to pay for it.
• 8:35
  And then the other problem with any network effect business like this, and I've only described it, you know, this deep, but it's a network based business.
• 8:44
  And the problem with the network based business like this is that it costs a crazy amount of money to build these businesses.
• 8:50
  And so there's no
• 8:51
  There's no scenario where the workplace, too.
• 8:53
  Yeah, yeah.
• 8:54
  It's very, yeah, like, exactly.
• 8:56
  So if anything like this were to ever exist, I think it has to be built in a city.
• 9:02
  It has to be built in a specific area.
• 9:04
  There are little businesses that serve very specific local communities and take off over time.
• 9:10
  Like, maybe they started on Facebook, and then they develop into something.
• 9:13
  And it becomes a nice or maybe great income for a person.
• 9:17
  especially in a world of AI.
• 9:18
  But to build this as a national platform, I can't fathom how it would happen.
• 9:22
  But the last thing I'll say, I just can't stand the Yelp thumbtack model.
• 9:28
  And I don't think most people like it.
• 9:30
  And so I just, how do you fix it?
• 9:32
  And I think everybody's probably already thought about this problem and nobody else can figure out how to fix it either.
• 9:37
  Okay, so here's my problem with this.
• 9:39
  I feel like Google could get 99% of that if they just did one thing.
• 9:43
  And that is on reviews.
• 9:46
  It'd be really cool if it could tap into your contacts, which it already knows.
• 9:50
  And just tell you which of your friends or family have rated or reviewed a service.
• 9:56
  I agree, but Google will never do it.
• 9:57
  That's why you have to hurt Google to get them to buy the company to shut it down.
• 10:02
  That's right, that's right.
• 10:03
  Then why would they do it?
• 10:04
  Because if you think that the average, we'll just make up a number, the average lead on LSA costs 40 bucks or whatever, conversion, whichever direction you wanna go.
• 10:14
  If the average is 100, you know, I used to, you know, in a lot of markets, the average is $600 on AdWords now.
• 10:21
  It depends on the market.
• 10:22
  In our markets, you know, it could be 100, $150.
• 10:26
  they're never gonna mess up their model.
• 10:28
  That'd be, just think about that.
• 10:29
  If you created something that took away- But they could just make it where it's like, hey, do you want in your business, the ability for people that leave a review for their friends and family to see that they left a review.
• 10:42
  And then if you get a lead, they would charge me.
• 10:45
  Oh, I see what you're saying.
• 10:46
  So like when you go to a restaurant, for example- Oh yeah, like to show the ad, show the ad and then also show five of your friends use it.
• 10:52
  Yeah, Sally, Sally.
• 10:54
  Yes, they need to solve this.
• 10:55
  That's exactly what they should do.
• 10:56
  That's what we need to do.
• 10:58
  We just need to buy out Google.
• 10:59
  That's actually the plan.
• 11:00
  There you go, that'll happen.
• 11:01
  Yeah, so anyway, it's not an idea- I feel like that'd be super useful though, because like- That's actually very, I love that.
• 11:06
  I actually never thought of that, but it doesn't matter, because I can't monetize that or build it.
• 11:10
  So I never thought about that way, but I actually think that's a really, really cool idea.
• 11:15
  The ability to use their contacts, know who it is, and be like, oh, Sally, Billy, and Joe have all used this service, and here's what they say.
• 11:22
  I would read all those reviews.
• 11:24
  It would make their stuff so much more valuable.
• 11:26
  So much more valuable.
• 11:27
  Even for restaurants, anything.
• 11:30
  Yeah, that's such a good idea.
• 11:32
  maybe maybe when augusta doesn't work out you could get a job at google that's right product manager job let's go okay all right this so this one are you are you done in yours yeah yeah i think that's plenty okay
• 11:47
  These ones are actually pretty formed out.
• 11:49
  So I'll actually show you.
• 11:50
  I developed a little situation here.
• 11:52
  Oh, interesting.
• 11:53
  Both of these were created and thought of before AI.
• 11:56
  But today I took the liberty of taking my business plan, my logos, and I put them into AI and say, hey, give me something to work with here.
• 12:03
  So I have a presentation here once I can share screen.
• 12:06
  Oh, wow.
• 12:06
  You've gotten way better than me.
• 12:07
  Oh, yeah.
• 12:08
  I went out doing home services because home services, we could probably make home services work.
• 12:14
  You could probably make that work if you really tried because you have the duality of home services and tech.
• 12:21
  But here we go.
• 12:22
  This is the Fry Shop.
• 12:23
  So you got a little bit rustic.
• 12:24
  We got a little wood situation.
• 12:26
  Now, here's how it works.
• 12:28
  You walk over to this potato wall.
• 12:30
  And at the potato wall, you just choose whichever potato you want.
• 12:34
  All right.
• 12:35
  These are local.
• 12:37
  These are sweet potatoes, purple potatoes, Yukon gold, russet potatoes, et cetera.
• 12:40
  Okay.
• 12:41
  And then you walk up and you just weigh the potato.
• 12:44
  You pay by the pound.
• 12:45
  And then immediately they take your potato and then you can choose what kind of cut you want, like crinkle cut, curly fry, uh, what is it?
• 12:52
  Like Jojo, whatever you want to call it.
• 12:54
  Right.
• 12:54
  And then they- Jojo is a curly fry?
• 12:56
  Yeah.
• 12:57
  No, JoJo, I think is like usually the big ones, the wedge fries.
• 13:00
  There you go.
• 13:00
  That's what I was going for.
• 13:01
  And then you can choose what kind of oil you want for the frying, like beef tallow, avocado, canola oil, et cetera.
• 13:08
  So depending on how healthy you want to be.
• 13:10
  And then you've got this rotating sauce bar where this would be like the social media hype situation.
• 13:15
  People would rank them, like hype them up or like by the point system of which sauces are currently in the store.
• 13:22
  You could have this be like a influencer or a celebrity or a sports team that you like cycle through what kind of sauces.
• 13:31
  The sauces would be free.
• 13:32
  So like the whole shtick here is all you have to pay is a there's one price.
• 13:36
  Let's just call it $9.99 a pound that you pay for the potato.
• 13:40
  Everything after that, completely free.
• 13:43
  So that's the sauces.
• 13:44
  That's the fry shop.
• 13:46
  That is actually quite clever.
• 13:50
  I, uh, like everybody, there was a stat I heard years ago about vegetable consumption being up in the United States.
• 13:57
  Oh, really?
• 13:58
  Like, yeah, exactly.
• 13:59
  That was my reaction.
• 14:00
  And then when I looked at the study, because potatoes were, uh, eating a potatoes was up in the United States because of French rice.
• 14:08
  It's like, those are not vegetables.
• 14:10
  Everybody likes French rice.
• 14:11
  Like that's a, it's so fascinating.
• 14:13
  Everybody, and they'll,
• 14:15
  I like that idea.
• 14:16
  I like that idea a ton.
• 14:17
  There's this one company called New York's, uh, New York fries, New York fries, something like that.
• 14:22
  They, they are similar to the fries only.
• 14:24
  They're usually in malls, uh, and they're high end kind of like luxury looking.
• 14:29
  But I think the reason this idea came about was this idea of when people take possession of something and they feel it's theirs.
• 14:37
  So this, this, this feeling,
• 14:39
  comes a lot of times when it comes to food of like, I love, I love it.
• 14:43
  I mean, I'm sorry I interrupted you.
• 14:44
  I like this idea a lot.
• 14:48
  Keep going.
• 14:49
  Sorry.
• 14:50
  My first million, we could just continue, just keep going on and on with all our ideas.
• 14:53
  Yeah.
• 14:54
  But I think it's this notion, I've had it in other aspects of business, where it's like, how can I give them, like, they own this.
• 15:00
  Like, when I take the potato, they're not going to make the potato.
• 15:03
  It's not any healthier.
• 15:04
  But it'll feel healthier because it's fried right in front of them.
• 15:07
  It's cut in front of them.
• 15:08
  And they took it from that to this, and it feels healthier.
• 15:15
  i really like this you know what's funny is i i almost got a froyo uh store way back in the day it's a franchise and it was right after about anytime fitness i'm like this franchise thing is great i'm gonna buy other uh c tcby there you go okay uh and i was gonna buy the froyo and i think that's where that this got formed it's like the reason the froyo thing works is first off it's the
• 15:38
  the milk product is where they make all their money the toppings where they lose money but there's this sense of like i own this thing i built it i made it and uh that's where half the joy i like that and again it's french fries like everybody eats french fries like most people would probably be perfectly happy with french fries and a coke
• 15:56
  They don't need the hamburger.
• 15:57
  They just want something to snack on.
• 15:59
  You could do breakfast French fries.
• 16:01
  100% Waffle fries.
• 16:03
  You could also, like the thing is, there's not any waste because potatoes are just sitting there.
• 16:07
  You got oil and you got sauces.
• 16:09
  There's no food waste and very little prep.
• 16:12
  You know, I've been to a number of countries where
• 16:16
  I'll give you several come to mind, but I was in Queenstown, New Zealand, very bottom of, like one of the most epic places in the world, very bottom of New Zealand, South Island, is considered the adventure capital of the world.
• 16:28
  It's not a big place.
• 16:30
  And there's this ginormous line, just massive line for a hamburger place.
• 16:35
  And you just stand at the window and you order your hamburger and you stand around outside or walk away with it.
• 16:41
  It was based on social media.
• 16:43
  Everybody.
• 16:44
  And then in South Korea, that stuff's everywhere.
• 16:46
  Japan.
• 16:48
  That social media thing where people go to these places, they get their picture.
• 16:52
  They're all going because of Instagram.
• 16:54
  This is that perfect thing right there.
• 16:56
  Seeing your potato like go through the crinkle cut thing.
• 16:58
  That would be a great social media moment.
• 17:01
  Too many cool things to try in life.
• 17:05
  All right, you go with your second one.
• 17:08
  I really feel like mine are a letdown after that one.
• 17:10
  I like that one a lot.
• 17:12
  I don't know.
• 17:13
  You were taking on Google.
• 17:14
  I feel like my Fry Shop isn't really comparable.
• 17:17
  If I put money into something, I'm betting on your Fry Shop.
• 17:20
  My Google idea was my dream.
• 17:22
  That's why I prefaced it with, if I knew I couldn't fail, because I just don't know that you could pull that out.
• 17:27
  I can't figure out how you'd make that idea work.
• 17:29
  I just know what I want to fix.
• 17:31
  All right, so this next one, I'm going to do a two-parter.
• 17:33
  This is a very dumb idea, but I have to tell you,
• 17:37
  that it made me and John, who is my business partner, service autopilot, waste a whole lot of time dreaming about how stupid this idea was and how much we wanted to do it just for the pure fun.
• 17:49
  But then it gets into a real idea that I've had for a long time, but they're kind of connected.
• 17:54
  Okay.
• 17:55
  So this idea is...
• 17:57
  I've wanted to create businesses that are built around personas, like completely fictitious, made up human beings that don't exist for.
• 18:07
  And you'll understand in a moment where you can really push on an emotional button like a trigger and you'll get strong opinions and strong emotions because those businesses really like you.
• 18:18
  If you can repel a group of people or really attract a group of people.
• 18:22
  that really agree with you.
• 18:23
  Like they're into that cause, they're into that belief.
• 18:26
  Like that's really powerful.
• 18:27
  Like the idea that you're not trying to make everybody happy.
• 18:29
  It's like, I'm perfectly happy with this 50% of people not liking me, not liking this business, not believing in this thing, not wanting to be part of this club.
• 18:37
  But this 50%, they want to be in this club.
• 18:39
  It's like, those are powerful.
• 18:40
  And then when you create powerful personas and stories around that, those businesses work really good.
• 18:45
  And then when you can create fun and interesting stuff, they work really good.
• 18:48
  So this first part's...
• 18:51
  I mean, I actually own- Sounds like a political super pack.
• 18:55
  Could be.
• 18:56
  No, it's not.
• 18:56
  Personas, it's divisive, we want 50-50.
• 19:00
  So your last idea felt good.
• 19:01
  So this one's kind of silly, but I owned forever a domain called Automated Affection.
• 19:06
  So automated affection.com.
• 19:09
  Just what we need, AI.
• 19:10
  Let's go.
• 19:11
  Yeah.
• 19:11
  Well, this probably goes back to like 2013.
• 19:15
  So John and I were planning to build an automation system.
• 19:18
  Why Autopilot got called Autopilot.
• 19:20
  From minute one, we were going to build an automation system.
• 19:23
  It just took us a long time to get there.
• 19:24
  We had to build all the basics.
• 19:26
  So when we think about all the stuff you could automate, we would always joke about...
• 19:31
  this like we should be building this for your personal life.
• 19:35
  So I had this friend who was a CEO of an important company.
• 19:38
  And he did all kinds of stuff for his wife.
• 19:40
  She's always getting flowers.
• 19:42
  He's always remembering things for her, her birthday.
• 19:45
  It's like she's getting gifts.
• 19:47
  And they were good friends.
• 19:49
  And Tiffany would always comment about how he always does stuff for his wife.
• 19:54
  And it was just like, he doesn't do it.
• 19:56
  He does none of those things.
• 19:58
  He has an assistant.
• 19:59
  She literally remembers everything.
• 20:01
  She buys everything.
• 20:02
  She buys the jewelry.
• 20:03
  She does everything.
• 20:06
  But it's so John and I would always joke like we wanted to create an automation system.
• 20:11
  This is going to get to a real idea in a moment, but we want to create an automation system that would basically remember your wife's birthday, your friend's birthday.
• 20:20
  It would text them.
• 20:22
  It would automatically periodically throughout the day.
• 20:24
  Just text your wife and say, hey, how's your day going, babe?
• 20:27
  It would remember to send gifts and cards.
• 20:30
  Yeah.
• 20:31
  And then, and so that was the gist that we wanted to create an automation system would manage all this stuff for you or text you and be like, oh yeah, I need to text her.
• 20:37
  And then you write your text and you would send it on.
• 20:39
  Classic tech pro thing.
• 20:41
  It's like, yeah, my whole personal life just completely automated.
• 20:46
  Automated, yeah.
• 20:47
  It was called automated affection.
• 20:49
  And so we would make, so we would just like, this was so dumb, we wasted time.
• 20:54
  But we would, John and I would just like literally sit in his office and laugh about all these crazy avatars we could make.
• 21:00
  Like some complete loser of a guy who could never get a date, you know, and now because of automated affection, he's got all the girls lined up.
• 21:08
  Everybody wants to date him.
• 21:10
  You know, it's like you could just create all these personas.
• 21:12
  Okay.
• 21:12
  So that sort of sets up a real business.
• 21:14
  Yeah.
• 21:15
  I love this persona thing, like the transformational example, or really hitting on a problem, like triggering an emotion.
• 21:23
  So this one has been done.
• 21:26
  But I have always thought, man, I could do this one in a very interesting way.
• 21:31
  And I would be going after the survival, safety, and prepper industry around e-commerce and training and a whole bunch of other stuff.
• 21:39
  You could build mastermind groups around it.
• 21:41
  And again, the reason it works is because I'm not saying that, like, it's – I want to be careful how I say this.
• 21:50
  I'm not saying I don't believe in some amount of prepper or safety or survival or any of that.
• 21:55
  That's not what I'm saying.
• 21:56
  But what I am –
• 21:58
  I am saying you can really get people worked up and overworked up in those spaces.
• 22:03
  And so I think you can create amazing personas around problems.
• 22:08
  And a lot of people do this.
• 22:10
  I would point to, again, controversial Tucker Carlson.
• 22:13
  I believe Tucker Carlson has 100.
• 22:15
  This is my theory.
• 22:16
  He has created a persona to go after a very specific group.
• 22:21
  I have seen this since I was 10 years old.
• 22:24
  There's a group of radio stations and beliefs that sell gold.
• 22:30
  Tucker Carlson is now following the exact same play that book that's been ran for 40 years, which you go after a very specific persona.
• 22:37
  You create content for that very specific persona.
• 22:40
  And then these are the things you sell to them.
• 22:42
  He's now selling gold as an example.
• 22:44
  And so you can just see this playbook.
• 22:46
  It's been played over.
• 22:47
  I love these kinds of businesses.
• 22:49
  Now they kind of turn me off.
• 22:51
  I'd want to do it, but I love this idea of anything where you can invent, invent big personalities, easy to stir emotion.
• 22:59
  Like the prepper community hits on the idea of EMP attacks, war, civil unrest, end of days.
• 23:06
  And so I've just thought you could create incredible content.
• 23:11
  And you could write incredible content for this and create incredible videos.
• 23:15
  You could create incredible personalities and you could just kill it in this market.
• 23:21
  It'd really be a media.
• 23:22
  It'd be a media play.
• 23:23
  It'd be a media business.
• 23:24
  And then you'd plug in sponsorships, products, ancillary things around those ideas.
• 23:30
  And people do it.
• 23:31
  That's why I gave the Tucker Carlson example.
• 23:34
  People do it.
• 23:35
  But this idea goes back a decade for me to my automated affection times.
• 23:38
  That's why I told that story.
• 23:40
  It's like the same time, like, ooh, the better idea is this.
• 23:43
  It's like this whole survival thing.
• 23:45
  So this goes way back.
• 23:47
  And there's been a bunch of guys that have done stuff around this.
• 23:51
  but most of them never go far enough with it.
• 23:53
  I just think it can be done so incredibly well.
• 23:55
  And so this is my bucket of what would just be fun.
• 23:58
  I'd probably get tired of doing it eventually, but what would just be fun to do it?
• 24:03
  I wouldn't want my name on it or my face on it.
• 24:05
  I wouldn't want to be invisible.
• 24:07
  So that's my second one.
• 24:08
  Okay, so we're going to the midterms.
• 24:11
  What would be the pitch for the next couple of weeks?
• 24:14
  Oh, it's end of days.
• 24:16
  Yeah, no matter who gets to it.
• 24:18
  You target everyone on the right about what happens if the left gets in.
• 24:21
  And you target everyone on the right about what happens if the left gets in.
• 24:24
  Yeah.
• 24:25
  And what happens if there's no change?
• 24:27
  Like you can hit this from like four different angles and it's all fear based.
• 24:29
  That's fear is the easiest emotion to sell to.
• 24:33
  And yeah, that means that's what everybody's already playing this playbook in some way.
• 24:36
  But I always thought, man, apply it to selling the stuff and the teaching that sells the problem.
• 24:40
  And again, people are doing stuff like this.
• 24:41
  But yeah, now is the exact time you sell all this stuff.
• 24:44
  This is the time you raise money.
• 24:46
  This is the time you do everything around elections.
• 24:49
  This is right up there with sports betting in terms of morality.
• 24:53
  That's the problem.
• 24:54
  Praying on people's emotions.
• 24:55
  This is the problem I have with this idea is I just don't like to peddle stuff I don't believe in.
• 25:02
  Not that I don't believe in some prepper stuff.
• 25:04
  I think that's not what I mean.
• 25:05
  I don't like peddling fear.
• 25:07
  That's the way to word it.
• 25:08
  I can't stand that.
• 25:09
  Last week, John was like, cut off all news apps, remove next week.
• 25:12
  He's like, all right, everyone, download them again.
• 25:14
  Exactly.
• 25:14
  Download this app.
• 25:15
  World's going to end.
• 25:16
  I think there's going to be an EMP attack any minute.
• 25:19
  That's right.
• 25:21
  Okay, so you'd have to do the content arm first.
• 25:24
  You'd probably have to get these personalities that would probably highlight each of these fears instinctually.
• 25:29
  And you'd have to be very trendy.
• 25:32
  You would have to follow the trends and probably cut areas of the content that were just underperforming.
• 25:37
  And you're following the news constantly.
• 25:39
  What's in the news?
• 25:40
  AI right now, like data centers.
• 25:42
  They're sucking all our water.
• 25:44
  That's exactly where my brain went.
• 25:45
  Yeah, they're raising your electricity rates.
• 25:47
  Electricity grid's probably gonna fail.
• 25:49
  You better practice.
• 25:50
  Here's how to dig your own well.
• 25:51
  Here's how you dig your own well.
• 25:52
  Exactly, exactly.
• 25:53
  You need this life straw.
• 25:54
  Hey, you know, you need not 90 days worth of food.
• 25:58
  You need at least 100 days of food or a year of food.
• 26:00
  Wait, not a year of food, because if your kid tells your neighbors that you guys have food, you better have food for the neighbors or they're going to shoot you.
• 26:07
  Like, you could go down.
• 26:08
  I mean, you could do ammo.
• 26:10
  Now you got guns and ammo.
• 26:12
  Then you could come to our gun training course.
• 26:13
  Yeah.
• 26:14
  Heck, you could send your kid to our six-month training and we'll turn him into a sniper.
• 26:19
  Like, you could do anything.
• 26:22
  So I just think it'd be fun.
• 26:24
  Playing people's emotions.
• 26:25
  I love it.
• 26:26
  All right.
• 26:27
  I'm going to be the solve to your problem that you create with that business.
• 26:31
  All right.
• 26:32
  Let's hear it.
• 26:33
  Okay, so this one, this is crazy.
• 26:35
  So first off, this is my worst of the two ideas, but it is the furthest I ever went on an idea without actually starting it.
• 26:43
  So this is 2020.
• 26:46
  And up in Washington, we were boxed in, we were masked up and not seeing people for two years.
• 26:52
  So keep that in mind.
• 26:54
  So this idea came into B.
• 26:56
  So this is a real logo.
• 26:57
  This logo is real.
• 26:59
  i i signed a lease can you see it are you you scroll down a bit yeah oh there we go now i see it yeah okay cool so uh this is a real idea a real logo i made the logo uh i signed a lease on this of on a building and uh back in here 2021. okay yeah so basically it's just you know reset mind and body so
• 27:23
  kind of modern look, got the orange, which I did carry through to homework, so let's go.
• 27:28
  We got a sauna, we have a cold plunge suite, we have a float therapy, we have red light room, private meditation room, a yoga and stretching studio.
• 27:37
  You know, just everything you need.
• 27:39
  Oh, I did use Sweathouse in the AI inspiration here.
• 27:42
  Okay.
• 27:43
  Because that's where I go now here in Dallas, which has the cold plunge and the sauna, but nothing else.
• 27:48
  You know, you don't have the red light therapy, you don't have the float therapy, private meditation room, yoga.
• 27:53
  So that was the idea.
• 27:55
  It's supposed to be 24 seven, and that's where it fell apart, is as soon as you do anything 24 seven, the amount of regulation just goes through the roof.
• 28:04
  And I got this idea because of Anytime Fitness.
• 28:06
  I was like, it's 24-7.
• 28:07
  People can use the gym.
• 28:09
  Super convenient.
• 28:10
  Great franchise model.
• 28:11
  It's doing good in the world.
• 28:13
  It's solving all the problems that your last business idea creates.
• 28:16
  And so I got a lease.
• 28:20
  And it was a building that was about...
• 28:23
  2,100 square feet.
• 28:25
  And my build-out, the cost went from like $70,000 to $100,000 to $150,000 to $200,000.
• 28:29
  And I was like, alright, we gotta cut this.
• 28:33
  This is right when Augusta was getting started.
• 28:36
  But I ended up getting the lease transferred over to Pizza Hut.
• 28:40
  So...
• 28:41
  Oh, really?
• 28:42
  Yeah.
• 28:43
  So when you say Augusta getting started, we're talking like original franchise Augusta, like way back in so long time ago.
• 28:50
  Well, we franchised in the very end of 2019.
• 28:52
  So I think when this was happening, there was maybe 30 locations.
• 28:57
  And I was just,
• 28:58
  I don't know.
• 28:59
  I enjoy this sort of thing, like the health, the wellness stuff.
• 29:01
  And I had done the Anytime Fitness thing.
• 29:03
  It was going really well.
• 29:04
  Had franchised, obviously, at Augusta.
• 29:06
  I'm like, this other thing would be great for the winter months.
• 29:10
  But very quickly realized it was a distraction.
• 29:12
  And the 24-7 aspect of having those therapies is extremely high liability.
• 29:17
  And I didn't want to staff it for 24-7.
• 29:20
  So I like those businesses.
• 29:23
  I've looked at multiple...
• 29:26
  Two serious investments in the longevity performance space for retail.
• 29:34
  I like that element, but I also like bringing in the other performance modalities and doctors and things like that.
• 29:41
  Yeah.
• 29:41
  I've spent a lot of time on that one.
• 29:43
  And I ultimately decided that I needed to just stay in home services and not get distracted because I look at these investments that involve millions and millions of dollars and there are other players involved.
• 29:53
  But every time I look at them, I conclude that I would, I feel like I'd have to get involved to deploy that amount of money because I just don't feel like they're going to do it right from a growing and marketing standpoint.
• 30:04
  But boy, I like that space.
• 30:06
  I like it a lot.
• 30:07
  The margins.
• 30:08
  You can charge $200, $300 a month, and it just comes down to a marketing play.
• 30:13
  Can you market it correctly?
• 30:15
  Yeah.
• 30:16
  Yeah.
• 30:16
  But like Sweat House is great.
• 30:17
  They're in the local area.
• 30:18
  They're about $200 a month for unlimited.
• 30:21
  And it's obviously goes down by the session.
• 30:23
  But my thought was like making it more sticky by having more of it leaning into the mind, mindfulness aspect, not just the therapy part of like cold plunge sauna that that can kind of be like, hey, I do it once or twice a week.
• 30:35
  Okay, can I get them in more often and pitch more of like, hey, you do those therapies, but then you also go into a meditation room, you do yoga, etc.
• 30:43
  Yeah.
• 30:45
  But, you know, I think that's the worst of my two ideas.
• 30:47
  I like the potato idea.
• 30:49
  I mean, I'm going to be thinking about that.
• 30:54
  They tell you, there's a saying, like, if you wake up the next morning and you're still thinking about a movie, that was probably a pretty good movie.
• 30:59
  Tomorrow morning I'm going to wake up thinking about the potato idea.
• 31:02
  Like, dang, I like your potato idea.
• 31:03
  We're going to have waffle fries for breakfast.
• 31:08
  if you start your potato idea as long as you run it i'll invest in it that's right that's right i love it okay so those are those are two really bad ideas yeah
• 31:18
  there another one where you actually almost took like you started taking actions and then like because like mine was reset mind and body which was like i literally had it to the point i had a lease i had a llc i had a bank account i had an employee like we were rocking and rolling then i pulled the plug was there any other ideas that you actually started and they're like it usually goes back to the distraction thing you pull the plug on it last minute realizing how much energy it takes but was there anything you went that far or you never got to that stage it died on the trello board
• 31:45
  Oh, not that I can remember.
• 31:46
  I don't think I've ever gone to like LLC and all that.
• 31:50
  I shut down.
• 31:52
  Yeah, no, no, not.
• 31:54
  Like way back in the day.
• 31:55
  No, because I didn't.
• 31:56
  I went really far when I was young and almost bought a CD warehouse.
• 32:00
  Yeah.
• 32:01
  You probably don't even know what that is.
• 32:05
  Like CD?
• 32:05
  Yeah, there used to be these, like I'm like high school, like graduating high school.
• 32:10
  Okay.
• 32:11
  So there used to be these places called CD Warehouse where you could go trade in your CDs.
• 32:15
  Yeah.
• 32:16
  Updating myself here.
• 32:17
  Feel it.
• 32:17
  I can just feel it.
• 32:19
  You could go trade in your CDs and you could buy used CDs.
• 32:22
  And when I was in high school, I liked those places.
• 32:25
  You could go look through all the CDs and you could listen.
• 32:29
  You could walk over to a CD player that was hanging on the wall and listen to them right there and see if you liked it.
• 32:33
  And you could buy them or you could trade in your CDs.
• 32:36
  And it was what I was trying to figure out.
• 32:38
  I just wanted to be in business for myself.
• 32:39
  I had my lawn care business and I wanted to do something else.
• 32:42
  And I went way down that road to almost writing the check.
• 32:46
  But I didn't really do what you said.
• 32:48
  And then I started a vending business instead and bought 10 vending machines.
• 32:53
  And so... How long did you do the vending thing?
• 32:54
  It was like a year and a half?
• 32:55
  A year?
• 32:56
  I did vending from probably...
• 32:58
  Graduated high school when I was 18.
• 33:01
  No, no.
• 33:01
  Probably 19 to...
• 33:03
  I had my...
• 33:04
  I had a cargo van for my vending business when I took my first software job and that was at 20.
• 33:08
  So I probably did it for...
• 33:10
  I probably started it and then about a year in, I took a job.
• 33:13
  And so I kept doing it on the side and I was still mowing some lawns on Saturdays.
• 33:17
  I'd got rid of everything else.
• 33:19
  And then I'd say about...
• 33:21
  Six months into my software job, I decided I'm not going to do this.
• 33:25
  Software was what I was going to school for.
• 33:27
  It's what I wanted to do, and I decided it was distracting.
• 33:30
  So that one only ever became the 10 machines, and then I eventually let them kind of just run for some number of years, and then I just took them all out and put them in my garage and just focused on other stuff.
• 33:41
  So that might be a kind of example of going a little distance, but not a LLC formed, and then I never did it.
• 33:50
  Yeah.
• 33:50
  I feel like now with the business is kind of more established.
• 33:54
  I don't ever have this nagging feeling of ideas anymore.
• 33:57
  It's more like I see problems that I'm like, man, we could, we could totally fix that in that business.
• 34:01
  We could totally fix that.
• 34:03
  Like today I went to a, uh, Regis, the office, uh, co-working space.
• 34:09
  I walk in and I'm like, hey, I want to get a private office here.
• 34:13
  And she's like, oh, look, you need email.
• 34:15
  I'm like, I'm like right here.
• 34:18
  You have my credit card on file.
• 34:19
  Like cannot, can I just like, I didn't say this out loud.
• 34:22
  This is all in my head.
• 34:24
  And those are the type of things that drive me crazy is like seeing the inefficiencies in big businesses.
• 34:29
  Then I went to a dealership.
• 34:30
  I wanted some information on leasing and my goodness.
• 34:35
  He left us three times for 10 to 15 minutes each time to go get more information.
• 34:40
  Huh?
• 34:41
  And we're just to get one sheet of like, here's how much the leases cost.
• 34:45
  It was, it was insane.
• 34:46
  And so anyways, that's what drives me crazy.
• 34:48
  Now with like knowing we have software homework, like with homeworks and then the franchise and then the media, I'm usually more focused on like ideas and starting things, but there's always this inclination of like, man, this is, there's such a huge problem here.
• 34:59
  Like, why is no one fixing this?
• 35:01
  I agree with you.
• 35:02
  That's exactly what I do.
• 35:03
  I go see all these businesses.
• 35:05
  It's exactly everything you said.
• 35:07
  The problem I also have is, boy, I know what it takes to actually do them.
• 35:12
  It's like, you know, you wanna solve the problem, but like, oh, well then I'm gonna have to spend, like the fun part is only gonna last like four months, and then I gotta do the next 10 years.
• 35:21
  Yeah.
• 35:21
  There's like, we were at Dodge Ram, and I was like, well, I guess Tesla did this.
• 35:25
  So unless I'm gonna create the next Tesla, because they have it where,
• 35:28
  I think it's like 15 clicks or whatever.
• 35:30
  You can order a car online.
• 35:32
  And here I am sitting in this dealership for an hour talking to this guy.
• 35:35
  Can't even get a number from this guy after an hour.
• 35:39
  So those are the things that now drive me crazy.
• 35:41
  Not so much starting new ideas.
• 35:44
  So what is your example of something you almost did?
• 35:48
  It's the reset.
• 35:48
  Reset is the closest I've ever actually pulled the trigger.
• 35:51
  The most reasonable idea, the most reasonable thing I could have probably done on People Still Asked Me Today would be doing what we do with Augusta Leads, but doing it publicly.
• 35:59
  Like basically allowing people outside of Augusta to do their Facebook and their Google and all the marketing side.
• 36:05
  And I've never wanted to do agency work and I'm not going to.
• 36:08
  It was already like, I really didn't even want to do it for Augusta.
• 36:11
  Cause it's just like, it's this treadmill of like, you can, can you do it lower?
• 36:14
  Like, can you do it better?
• 36:15
  What about this?
• 36:15
  Like I saw this, I saw this TikTok about how we should be doing our, our SEO.
• 36:19
  It's like, okay, whatever.
• 36:21
  Like you can never really make people happy and they don't know how much effort and work goes into the backend.
• 36:26
  So I've always, I know it's probably, it could be a decent business, but.
• 36:31
  I think it could be a decent business.
• 36:32
  I've been approached on that one as well several times, and I share the same feeling.
• 36:38
  You also see these SEO companies and these marketing companies, and this can be overcome.
• 36:44
  At first, everybody loves you when you're little and you only have a few customers.
• 36:47
  They get tons of attention.
• 36:48
  Things go great.
• 36:50
  Massive change.
• 36:51
  And then it stabilizes, and they're like, hey, nothing's getting better.
• 36:55
  You're always having to...
• 36:56
  re-justify what you're doing.
• 36:58
  Yeah.
• 36:58
  And you're the number one, there's no higher than that.
• 37:02
  So it's just like, you could just, a lot of these reputations can go really good.
• 37:06
  And then they get a lot of clients and then they collapse.
• 37:08
  It's just a lot of reasons I don't love the business.
• 37:12
  All right, well, that's all of our entrepreneurial distractions, the things we almost did.
• 37:17
  So if you ever have these ideas, you go off on a tangent.
• 37:19
  Don't feel bad.
• 37:20
  You too can compete with Google one day.
• 37:22
  You too can have the fry shop.
• 37:24
  You can steal these ideas.
• 37:25
  I would love that.
• 37:26
  Just take these ideas, run with it, send us a picture.
• 37:29
  We'll take our commission check.
• 37:30
  My vote for all these ideas is the Fry Shop.
• 37:33
  The Fry Shop.
• 37:33
  Okay, the Fry Shop is the winner.
• 37:34
  All right, down in the comments.
• 37:35
  If you disagree with the Fry Shop and you think the other ideas would have a better place, let us know in the comments.
• 37:41
  I would need the right young, for me, which is my business, I need the right young people to do the right social media marketing to make that thing happen.
• 37:50
  hey we could do a collab we could really do a great collab between your media company that is peddling fear and anxiety i can have reset mind and body then they go and get their potato chips you're selling comfort like in a world that's just gonna all end who cares just that's right if you want to throw in the towel go get some chips potato chips if you you know if you want to actually fix it you go to reset mind and body so i love it all right i like that one all right