My 6-Step Process To Find +$1,000,000 Business Ideas (#479)

Sam Parr

And when you see a big company like 1-800-Flowers or Heineken, a company that has millions of customers, when they say one or two lines like that, it really gets me interested. Alright, we're live! Sean is not here, so I'm going to do a question and answer session. I tweeted out that I'm going to be doing this, and we have a bunch of questions. Jonathan's going to be reading the first ones. What are they? Where do you want to start?

Jonathan Barshop

Alright, this one is from Jimbo Slice at @jgilly3. He goes, "I would love to learn how to develop ideas for businesses to start and how to test said ideas."

Sam Parr

so basically because of this podcast I have to research cool companies but what a lot of people don't know is I've been doing research on companies before I worked on this podcast before I started this podcast and this is how I created the hustle we ended up selling the hustle for tens of 1,000,000,000 of dollars and this is how I created hampton which is gonna be a huge company I think and I've done a bunch of other little projects based off of this research model I'll do a quick plug basically if you go to ideationbootcamp.co everyone kept asking me about this process so I like made it into a course you can go and buy it if you want I'll just kinda give you a little preview now I've got this way of researching where I look for 5 or 6 different things and it's almost like the way that I compare it to a song so there's a song called you know like a guns and roses song like welcome to paradise is that what it's called sweet child of mine that's what I'm thinking sweet child of mine sweet child of mine has this amazing guitar solo in that song and the the band said that someone asked them how they write songs they're like well sometimes like which is sweet child of mine I heard this amazing guitar riff that / was tinkering with and I wrote lyrics around it and then we created the bridge and the hook and whatever other times I've got this really cool one liner this lyric we're gonna turn it into the song I do the same thing with business and so those little hooks that I look for are the first thing is demand so I'm constantly seeking out what problems people have the second thing is I'm constantly looking at how many people share that particular problem and I'm gonna give examples of all this the third thing I look at is who are the leaders in that space so what's succeeding and why the fourth thing I look at is of the leaders and the people in the space what shortcomings do they have next I look at which business models are most effective and then finally I look at what problems are being solved and I'm gonna give you an example of this and so I have all these tools that I use and so like here's here's an example so there's there's this company called 1 800 flowers and it's a phone service where you call and you order flowers and I was just like probably buying valentine's day flowers on their website one time and I noticed that their traffic I use this tool called similarweb I use that all the time it's a plugin it's free they have a paid version the free version's totally fine they have this plugin where it tells you a guesstimate of what the traffic is from a website and 1 800 flowers as predicted it had like pretty great traffic like it was like 5,000,000 people a month coming to the website and then in february it like peaked to be really really big that's easy to guess because it was valentine's day but basically it was that told me that wow a lot of people are using 1 800 flowers on a regular basis and it peaks in february and it also had a big jump in whenever mother's day is may or june and so I was like alright that's interesting I kind of knew that but let me read a little bit more about this and so I use another tool called annual reports.com and I love reading annual reports because it teaches me about the company so an annual report if a company is public they have to release this quarterly report where they talk about their earnings and all these interesting things about the company and a lot of time they appear boring but I'm reading them to find insight and I found this one insight that said we are noticing that the the succulent plant is a very particular plant we are noticing that amongst our millennial consumers it's the fastest growing trend I also did this with heineken the company heineken they in their annual report they said heineken 0 so which is like a non alcohol version they are it's our fastest growing segment it's still really small but it's fast growing and when you see a big company like 1 800 flowers or heineken so a company that has millions of customers when they say 1 or 2 lines like that that gets me really interested when they say something's fast growing I'm like oh I'm intrigued and so I'll read these reports just for looking for 1 or 2 lines that say that or I'll use I'll go to like every website I go to if it's like really weird looking and it grabs my attention I go to a similar web and I just look at what the traffic is because I'm looking for these one little tidbits that catch my attention and in this case for the 1800 flowers it they said succulents were were growing and so I'll look at you know what they say and and and then I try to find shortcomings so with 1 800 flowers they said that their shortcomings are they that most of their revenue comes from holidays and so they're trying to get revenue and business between the holidays to make their business more steady they also said that I believe this was a few years ago they said that most of their profit comes from not the flowers but from vases so that has the biggest margins and they also said that they're trying to think of ways to get people to buy more accessories like vases chocolates and things like that and then so that kind of like gave me this idea of like okay 1800 flowers is a big business because the revenue is huge and it gets tons of traffic I know that so that's like proving me that there's demand and a big audience I know that they're succeeding at least to some.

Sam Parr

Because they're a publicly traded company and they're very profitable I know their shortcomings or the problems that they're trying to solve for are that they can't get people to buy stuff on a regular basis and they want people to buy more vases so what other problems are consumers not being not do consumers have that aren't being solved and where's 1 800 flowers failing well in my head I was like well if you could figure out a way to get people to buy regularly with different vases how can I do that and so I wrote this report for trends trends dotco and then someone eventually launched a company where they created this succulent plant that you like smack on the wall and it it's like has this like hydroponic system tonic system where like like watered itself and then there was another company that launched and they and they created the coolest it was a succulent plant and some of them launched these companies based off that report I wrote another company created this business where they had these like amazing pots and vases why or it had like artists on there so like frida kahlo was on 1 or they would create like really funny pots and plants like some of the pots were like state themed so like an oregon plant like had had like an oregon flag on the vase like things like that and that was their way of solving it and a bunch of these companies a few of them went on to raise 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 of dollars I think there's a bloomscape and I forget the other one but it basically came from this like research methodology of finding demand finding the audience looking at the leaders the shortcomings and it's this like cycle that I use and I try to find like one hook or one line for each of those things that get me interested so I use similarweb a ton to do that so I look at where someone's getting a lot of traffic or how much traffic's getting there's just another amazing thing called companies house it's a so basically if you're based in the uk and you're a company that does at least 10,000,000 in revenue you have to file your your financials and so if I find a cool company that uses the word ltd I guess that means like limited company if I find a company that does something like that has that on their website I immediately go to company's house so for example I found this amazing website that basically basically was reviewing vpns know what a vpn is it's like a a thing that hides like where you are when you're using the web and they had like 12,000,000 visitors to their site and I was like oh that's interesting and the company was called like something company name ltd so I go alright I'm gonna go straight to company's house and see what the revenue is the revenue was like 18,000,000 and their profit was like 16,000,000 and so that told me that a there's demand for people who want to get reviews for vpn that shocks me I didn't realize that market was that big b it shows me that that business model of affiliate so they made money through affiliate so they would write a review on a they would write a review on a vpn if someone bought it they got a little cutback that business model super fascinating so in my head I'm like oh wow what other tech products are have this big affiliate fees and can I create content for them that business model was really fascinating and c I learned that they were the leader in the space and so like that just like opened up my mind to like a different business model and a different niche and I didn't do anything with that but I thought to myself man I wonder if I could do this for payroll software I wonder how many people are having payroll software problems I bet you I can get a big affiliate fee with that I bet you I could rank on search for that and then I never end up doing it because I wasn't passionate about it but anyway I go through all these different examples and of like these different tools that I use to research on adiation boot camp it's adiation boot camp dotco but that's like a very scattered example of how I do that

Jonathan Barshop

Alright, this one is from Mike Taravella. He asks about the evolution of your health journey while being an entrepreneur. He goes: > "I've been lifting to get back in shape and just curious of lessons or future roadblocks to watch out for."

Sam Parr

so this is around fitness and health so let me give you guys some background so I was an exceptional high school athlete I was one of the best in the state of missouri where I'm from at the 200 meter and 400 meter - and then I went to a division 1 school where I was a scholarship athlete for 2 years and then I quit and I got into business and between the ages of 20 to about 28 I was fat I was pretty lumpy and I was pretty disgusting now is a good time to put the my before picture so if you're on listen to this on audio you can go ahead and see you can go to our youtube and see those pictures but I got pretty fat and I got disgusting and then about 3 or 4 years ago I said this is it I'm gonna get my act together and I'm gonna become a fitness model that's what I said it was a joke I'm not actually that but it was a joke and I did it I got pretty fit and so I basically created this rule general mathis he's this general in america he's got this great line that says figure out your flat ass rules and stick to them and the reason being and I saw this from ryan holiday who's inspiration to me he said the person who decides every day what choices they have to make for each decision that person will be exhausted and burnt out and so about when I was 29 28 years old I made the decision that I will never ever ever miss a workout and so at first I basically created programming for myself which means I created my own schedule my own lifts and like how much I should lift I did that on my own for a little while and then I hired a trainer his name is jesse o'brien at central athlete I think you can go to centralathlete.com you can see him I'm not affiliated I'm just a fan and he created all my training for me and I meet with him monthly and I do the workouts remotely but basically I don't miss a single workout and I have I work out 5 days a week and I so that's 5 days times 52 I think that's 260 workouts in the last 2 years 3 years I've probably have missed 5 to 10 a year and that's usually only because of sickness or like if someone dies and I have to take a flight to a funeral but basically 95% of the time I don't miss and so I believe big big big in big time into consistency so I don't miss the second thing that I do and by the way that like that I'm fairly extreme about it so for example I drive a ton so like when I go on I take tons of road trips when I take a road trip and I can't get my workout in the morning before I leave I pull over on the side of the road I tell jesse today's a travel day I'm gonna be driving and I bring bands with me and I pull over on a truck stop I got lots of pictures and videos of me sitting with my wife saying I'm at this particular truck stop I'm doing push ups burpees sprints things like that I will pull over on the side of the road for an hour and do it I do not miss workouts the second thing that I do is I set very specific goals so each quarter I have a new goal so those goals have included like I wanted to bench press £330 and I wanted to squat £430 and I I'll take a quarter sometimes 2 quarters to get there the next time I've had a goal of doing a combine and I wanted to score average for an nfl receiver which I think was like a 4540 a 34 inch vertical a 104 broad jump and then bench pressing £325 times 16 times I think whatever it was I pick goals every quarter and I stick to them because I I need to have a goal I don't always hit my goal sometimes I most of the time I do but I but I I always have a goal that I'm trying to do for me right now and I imagine for the rest of my life it's gonna all be centered around weightlifting because a I wanna live to like I'm a 130 and there seems to be a strong correlation between living long and having muscle like because I can just not break my hip when I fall because my bones will be stronger and I can get up when I get hurt and also b because I wanna look good naked I'm vain so that's why I do it so I lift a ton of weights and I have a coach that tells me what to do and I basically don't question them I also use mybodytutor no affiliation with them other than I've become friends with them and that helps me with my dieting so I spend roughly $300 a month on training and I think $250 a month on mybodytutor it's basically a nutritionist they call me once a week and they keep me on track and then finally I write down everything I eat and I write down every workout so I use an app where I track all of my workouts because I wanna know what I did the previous week so I can improve and then I track everything I eat because it's really easy for me to overeat and so tracking it helps me this person asked what future roadblocks will be everyone I don't have a kid yet I but we are pregnant everyone says that that will be a roadblock I'm in a very fortunate situation where I've been able to hire some help like a night nurse and things like that I have a feeling that it won't be a roadblock but I it will be more challenging but it's not gonna prevent me did I answer that question

Jonathan Barshop

Yeah, for sure. Alright, this one is from John Murphy at Ecom CEO. He asks, "When to embrace shiny object syndrome and when and how to keep it under control?"

Sam Parr

this is a great question and this is something that I think holds back 90% of people from really big success so I constantly ask myself what can I do this week this month this year what can I accomplish in a certain time? That will make every other task not important and so there's this idea of like procrastination paul graham wrote this great article if you Google paul graham procrastination he talks about there's actually good procrastination there's bad procrastination the bad type is you're just not gonna you just don't start working but the good type is that it's like the idea of this crazy scientist who's a genius and he forgets to shower or he forgets to wear 2 matching socks and the idea being is you can actually ignore most things as long as you're getting the big things right and so I ask myself all the time what is that one thing that I want to accomplish most people they try to jump from thing to thing to thing because something's not working or because they feel pressured into doing something I actually think that you should do one thing for an extended. Of time the reason being is because every time I say yes to something I'm ultimately saying no to something else and that means I'm saying if I'm saying yes to a new project I'm saying no to either things like family time or I'm saying no to focusing on the thing that matters or I'm saying no to having like I'm basically giving worry or worry time and I'm giving space in my brain for something that isn't essential and so saying no is really important it's very uncomfortable but I think it's necessary I think most people do multiple things at one time because they are guilted into it because what they see online and I try to remind myself that I don't care about another person's opinion more than I care about my own opinion and also most people don't know what they're doing and so I'm not gonna put too much judgment on their opinion because they don't have any idea what they're doing I also try to remind myself that strong men they don't like give into fear and I think a lot of people have shiny object syndrome because they're fearful that their main thing's not going to work I try not to give into fear of course I'm human I do every once in a while but I try my hardest not to do it and so I think that when you're starting a business because it's a business podcast we'll talk about that I I have to ask myself will I wish that I have stuck with this in 10 years will I look back and say I wish I would have done this one thing and if the answer is consistently yes then I'm gonna stick to that one thing that said it's definitely an art to figure out what to say no to and when to bail on what's working but I've met a lot of successful people and I've noticed that the people that have huge outside outsized results and have massive massive wealth it typically comes from one thing and then once they get incredibly successful it appears as though they have a lot of things going on but those lot of things are like 5% of the 100% when it comes to net worth creation and so I have to remind myself on a regular basis that big results typically come from one thing and the people who appear to be be to be doing a lot of things they actually kind of are doing one thing 1 of my good friends andrew wilkinson he owns a private equity company or he owns a thing called tiny where they buy businesses and so he owns technically like 40 businesses but his one thing is buying companies or investing and so you have to remind my I have to remind myself that's his one thing and he's doing that well and that's what makes everything else work additionally he also had one agency metalab for I think 12 years and then he started investing into other companies and so you have to make your one thing work otherwise the rest of the stuff doesn't really work out and so I think more people should focus even though it's quite challenging and it doesn't appear as fun I think it's better results

Jonathan Barshop

Okay, this one is from Gabe Finema (@gabe_fin) on Twitter. He asks, "How to be interesting as a podcaster? You're essentially a professional entertainer. What are the key skills you've learned over the years that allow you to be entertaining to listen to and talk to?"

Hubspot

this question is I think particularly interesting for young men single men because when I was a single guy when I was 14 15 and 16 well basically until I was not single all I cared about was meeting girls and when I learned and I wasn't very good at it arguably was never great at it but I I improved the best thing for meeting a partner was to be an interesting person I imagine this works for women as well but I only know a man's perspective it works also for men is to be interesting I made a few points about how to be interesting at least what I think how to be interesting because I like figured this out I wasn't like good at this the first thing is that you have to find something that interests you and you have to turn it into a passion even if it's not popular the reason being is people like people who are passionate about stuff and who are really great at explaining why they're passionate about things and they don't need to be popular things so for a long time I'm I've I was really interested in denim that's like a hobby of mine I love jeans because jeans are part of american history and I would like buy like 500 or a $1,000 jeans just to store them and keep them and only wear them occasionally because they're historical and important to me I was really really really fascinated in that and I noticed that when I would meet a girl and I would say something like hey I'm going to this swap meet they have really cool denim just having something to do and like being passionate about it it attract she was more attracted to me because of it and then my male friends as well were like oh this sounds interesting you just got me interested in this topic I'll go with you and you could explain it to me and thus people were attracted to me this works for business for meeting someone whatever right now it's fitness I'm super fascinated in fitness and having like a goal and having something I care about I've noticed people are drawn to me the second one is when I can I consume a ton of information so I listen to podcasts I watch a lot of tv like documentaries I read a lot of books and I read wikipedia every night I love wikipedia and when I'm consuming information I consume it from the perspective of I try to find a hook so I'll hear like or I'll read something on wikipedia and I try to find a fascinating hook and I think in my brain how can I retell this that can capture people's attention and whenever I consume information that's what I do so for example I just watched the documentary on arnold schwartzenegger and he has this great line where he calls the shmi which basically means bullshit so like when he was talking about being the spokesperson for supplement brands or whatever or wining and dining people he goes I got the shmi I know how to like grab people's attention I'm just bullshit with them I got to get the gap and he told the story of the shmi and I remember hearing that line I go that's brilliant the shmi I'm gonna talk about that all the time I love the shmi and that was that one little line I took from that documentary and I'm gonna retell that story all the time I'm gonna talk all about the shmi and so whenever I consume information I'm just or a comedy show or anything I just look for like lines or hooks of a story that I'm gonna retell to people constantly I'm gonna steal it basically if that's it it's I consume information as if I have to write a book report at a at at another time the third thing is I ask people all the time and I ask them this in a very nonjudgmental way and a lot of people aren't used to being asked this but I basically ask them all the time whenever they I'll ask them about what they do for work or where they're from or whatever and they'll say something and they'll say an opinion and I always ask them why do you think that and I always try to ask that because it gets people to open up and when I ask them all about themselves there's this great book called how to win friends and influence people and dale carnegie wrote it in the 19 twenties and he says this tells a story about this kinda nobody young guy talking to this big shot executive and the nobody guy the young guy he asked the big shot executive all about himself and the executive spends 95% of the conversation talking all about himself the young guy spends 5% of the conversation at the end of the conversation the executive goes wow you're a great conversationalist and the truth is that that's because people love to talk about themselves and so oftentimes when I'm with new people I'll ask them questions like why do you think that or why do you do that or questions like that these open ended questions and that gives them an opportunity to talk about themselves and thus they think that I am more interesting because ultimately they find themselves probably more interesting than anyone else another thing is I I've tried really hard to learn how to tell stories my partner on this podcast sean purry he's one of the best storytellers I've seen I've tried to learn from him and I've tried to tell stories and I'll retell the same stories to different groups of people as if I'm a comedian and I like to see what hits and what doesn't and sometimes I'll alter the story while keeping the truth in there but I'll alter the story in the way I tell it in order to capture their attention the last two things are I am constantly trying to improve myself which is great because to be interesting you just make yourself better so I'm constantly trying to improve myself and I explain to people what I'm trying to do so for example if I'm trying to get fit if I'm trying to read a certain amount of books if I'm trying to build a business I'm always trying to improve myself and I talk about that with people not in an obnoxious way but I let them know and they find that interesting I've found most of the time and then finally I say my opinion and I usually research opinions that I have so for example it could be like political stuff it could be health stuff I it could be in business I try to come up with well thought out opinions and I'm very not afraid to say that opinion and even if it rubs people the wrong way I have found that when you explain your opinion and you stand firm on it it you people find you interesting because most people are vanilla and they don't have strong opinions and so that said I'm still open minded I think there's a phrase what's that phrase it's strong beliefs loosely held and so I'm I can be swayed for sure but I I have strong opinions and I try to let people know about them and then when I don't have an opinion or I haven't researched a topic I try my hardest to say I've not thought about that or I don't know and so that's how I think you'd be interesting when we have different podcast guests come on even if they're not in my world at all because I've like consumed so much information I'm pretty good at relating to them and that is just comes down to I just read a ton of wikipedia and when they talk I'll reference things in that field even if I don't know a ton about them and then I'll ask them why they think that because I read on wikipedia that this this and this is that true for you is does that is that one of the reasons why you think x y and z and they'll say no actually or yes actually and that's a great way to get them to talk more about it and it gets me involved in the conversation our software is the worst have you heard of hubspot see most crms are a cobbled together mess but hubspot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous I think I love our new crm our software is the best hubspot grow better

Jonathan Barshop

Alright, so I backchanneled a few questions. This one is from your buddy Neville Medora, at @nevillemedora on Twitter. He wanted to hear a bit about your loyalty to your dog, Sid. He had a quote to share that I thought was pretty great. He goes, "I remember Sam vividly saying, 'I hate when people give away their pets. When you sign up for a dog, you sign up for life.'" So, Neville wants to hear a bit about your relationship with Sid and if you could elaborate on that quote a bit.

Sam Parr

Yeah, so basically, I have this dog named Sid. I got him when I was 20 or 22 or something. He's 14 years old now, and I do crazy stuff with this dog. For example, I live half the year sometimes in New York, and sometimes I'll fly, sometimes I'll drive. But if I fly, I hire a driver for him. So I basically hire someone to drive him from Austin all the way up to New York. I typically don't travel overseas because of him. The reason being is I mentioned having rules. Another rule in my book is responsibility and loyalty. There are a few people in my life: my wife, my dog, my business partner Joe, Sean, one of these folks, and Jordan, the CEO of Hampton. I firmly believe that you never, ever, ever speak badly about them behind their back. You don't lie, you don't disrespect them publicly, and you don't question them publicly. I try my hardest not to do that, even a little bit. The reason being is I'm a firm believer in loyalty. So, I basically have zero loyalty to most people, and then there are like eight people in my life who I can write down and cite. I would do anything for them, and I expect them to do that for me. The second reason is responsibility. When I have a meeting on my calendar, I try my hardest never, ever, ever to be late. I try very hard to be early. I don't miss things. If I say I'm going to do something, I do it. I'm a big firm believer in doing what you say and following through. So, another rule is when you have a responsibility, you stick with it no matter what. When I got my dog, I said I'm going to raise him right, and I'm going to respect this bond that we have. I'm crazy about that. So that's a rule that I just don't break: loyalty and rules.

Jonathan Barshop

Love it. Alright, this one is from Garrett. His handle's @ggsiii and he asks: > "Finding someone to build a company with or finding your first hire" So basically, he's just asking how you hire people.

Sam Parr

I'm not like a religious person but there's this thing from the bible I went to catholic school my whole life there's this like a line from the bible where like jesus is trying to like get disciples and he tells one of his disciples peter and paul he goes like I think they're fishermen and he goes come join me and you are going to be fishers of men and I love that line that's an example by the way of being interesting you just find like interesting lines and you you know you retell them that's a beautiful line and the way that I'm able to hire good ceos and hire great people I mean if you look at the hustle I don't know how many people we had when we sold the company maybe 40 so we probably have hired 60 or 70 people a lot of them are really successful now like we hired them when they were like 23 and a lot of them maybe like 15 or 20 of them have went on to start successful companies help grow other successful companies have a name for themselves and the reason they did that is I wanted to be a collector of people fishers of men that's a weird line I call it collector of people so I I worked really hard at collecting people and so when I find someone that's interesting to me I try to make a mental note of who they are and how I can use them and the line that I tell them and this is a line that I believe which is like hey do you wanna hang out like let's say I meet someone I'll follow-up with them or I cold email someone and I'll say hey look the best case scenario here is that somehow we work together and we create magic the worst case scenario is that you have a new friend in the industry and we'll just help one another but our world is small and I have a feeling that it's gonna be nice that we're gonna be on the same team in some capacity whether just as friends or literally at the same company so take this phone call and that's what I believe and so for years so like for example for years I would host events or create excuses to meet people so for example I had this thing called the anti mba it was my book club I started it in san francisco in 2012 and basically the way it worked is I would pick 1 book per month we would read a quarter of the book each month and then and then I we would meet up and talk about the book and I would bring experts on that book's topic to come in and lead the conversation so it's kinda like an mba but it was free and I organized it hence the anti mba a bunch of my great great great friends sean and perry we we came in each other's orbit via this book club cieva who kosinski who's got a really successful pe firm now came he was one of my first members I posted ads on craigslist for this book club that's how it got popular by the way I posted an ad on meetup.com and on craigslist and I would host this book club like 1 I think I did it for 2 years straight every week and that is how I developed a network and then from there I hosted a conference called hustlecon and the whole idea was I'm not sure what I'm gonna do next after selling my previous company but I'm gonna host this event called hustlecon and in doing so I imagine I'm gonna meet a handful of people who will inspire me or partner with me in order to create my next thing and so I'm constantly I I do it less now now I I jokingly have this rule called no new friends because I have a pretty good network now but basically I just collected people and anytime I saw someone who was intriguing I did a really good job of getting to know them and then just filing them away in this bank or I would check-in with them once in a while and get to know them and remind them who I was occasionally and then when I had like an opportunity like I'm starting a new company I would think oh I talked to this one person this one time I left a impression on them I hope I could just holler at them and so I do a really good job of collecting people and doing outreach yeah I mean that's kinda like how it works it's a lot easier now that when you're popular and you have a podcast it's way easier to do that but when I was younger and didn't have a network I hosted book clubs conferences meetups and I was basically wanting to be the center of attention not necessarily center of attention but the center of a social circle and I was the connector and that's how I would collect people and I when I see now when I see people on linkedin or twitter and they write something cool I dm them and all I say was like saw this post this was awesome and that's all I'll say and then when I reach out to them again if I ever have a reason to it kinda feels like they know me a little bit at least and so I'm a collector of people

Jonathan Barshop

Okay, this question is from Grant Wilkinson at @GrantFWilkinson: "If you're open to sharing about the behind-the-scenes of running a great community..." There's some good stuff there. So I think Grant's referring to your community building over at Hampton.

Sam Parr

so I've got this new company it's about a year old it's joinhampton.com it's the url it's called hampton basically what it is is it's for ceos who have at least a1000000 in revenue and you apply and then we interview and you get in we put you in a group of 8 founders who have similar size and types of businesses you meet monthly and then we host all these events retreats and then we have digital community where you can hang out and talk to all the other members of which we have 100 of them soon 1,000 I I got pretty great at making community because of the events that I hosted I kind of understood like what motivated people and then I created trends when we ran the hustle which was like a digital community as well and there's a few interesting things about community to make them great the first is you have to create fomo so a little bit of fear of missing out and once they're in your community they feel excited that they're finally in and so we create fomo not even on purpose we interview everyone and we turn down most people so that helps so there needs to be a barrier to entry for building a good community I think there also has to be a way to create intimacy and so there's lots of tactical ways that you could do that where you have multiple communities within a community and like you can only join one channel and not the other channels and the reason you do that is because I think that around like 250 500 people things get a little bit wonky in terms of not being able to know everyone and so you wanna do you need to do a good job of making things intimate the way you do that is to keep it small another way that you do that is you set norms and standards behind introductions and so at hampton we do a really good job of saying look at hampton we want you to brag about who you are because with most most of the times when you run a company it's not cool when you're talking to people that say like oh I run this company we do this much revenue this much profit this many employees it's not that cool it's all tacky in this community we set lots of like strange norms of which one of them is it's okay to brag and it's cool to brag because now I can learn if you actually know what you're talking about and I can ask you advice I can actually learn about your business so I can apply some of it and so it's fun to learn that stuff and so we set different norms and we do a really good job of making people introduce themselves a lot of times particularly in trends my one of the first communities that I built I would seed it by having 10 20 30 people who I knew were impressive and I just said you don't have to pay anything but you're joining this community also on this date I need you to post this comment or this post and so it looks like this particular person was contributing in reality I wrote it for them this is a a thing that I stole from reddit when reddit dotcom first launched the founder steve huffman created like 30 different usernames and he just posted lots of different fake comments and it looked like a lot of stuff is happening creating community is hard I think it's one of those things that everyone wants but few people know how to do it's really challenging I think it's more art than science though

Jonathan Barshop

This question is... I'm gonna totally butcher this name, but **Sarong Birad** [@sarongbirad on Twitter] asks, "How is it going with Viral Cuts? Share some tips for someone looking to start a productized service from scratch."

Sam Parr

so viral cuts is a company that I'm part of I don't have anything to do with the day to day but basically if you want footed like if you have a podcast like this or if you have a bunch of video footage they chop it up and they post it on your social for you so you get like clips the founder his name's hunter he used to have an agency and he he was like you know it's cool agencies are great but when your agency is really broad and you will do lots of services for lots of different clients and it's hard to focus on something it's hard to operationalize something your margins kinda get crushed a little bit and it's just a lot more challenging and so his whole thing was we're just gonna do clips and then eventually now they're doing more stuff under a different company like they're doing they're helping people write books or write twitter threads I mean they're helping people do a bunch of different stuff they're helping people grow their youtube but those are all different companies but viral cuts he was like I'm just gonna productize this one service and so he did a really good job of hiring like 20 people and he taught them how to make the the the clips and then he like created a very strict process on how to get the footage from people how to chop it up how to deliver them and it was like very very very very operationalized from day 1 and it's going great I don't remember exactly what we're allowed to say about how big it is but it got to 7 figures in revenue in like 60 days most of which came because at first I tweeted it that cody sanchez another partner involved she started sharing and so now it's like well into the 7 figures it's going great you have to deal with a lot of headaches because it's a people business but and we're not sure how churn will be but it's going really well so far the hardest part about these businesses is operationalizing the the service so making it so it's like a conveyor belt so your workers know exactly what to do and have very strict deadlines and then the second hardest part is getting customers viral cuts solve that problem by talking to me and cody and we just tweeted it out and within a very short amount of time they had 7 figures in revenue so it's going really well alright so that was my rapid fire q and a this is what happens when sean's not here we do a little rapid fire q and a hopefully you guys enjoyed it if you are listening on itunes spotify whatever if you go to our youtube you'll see some of the links to some of these examples and some of these topics that we talked about and if you like this let me know in the comments talk soon