Million Dollar Businesses with 0 Employees
One-Person Businesses Making Millions - December 27, 2021 (over 3 years ago) • 52:16
Transcript:
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Sam Parr | This is awesome! Ben texted me, or like slacked me, while we were doing this. He goes, "Steph's been spitting fire for the last 50 minutes, so this is badass!"
I'm about to see my first million. Got to the safe and the spilling up. Got to the bank. What's going on? What's up?
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Steph Smith | I'm good how are you | |
Sam Parr | I'm good. Alright, you're back. Sean is on a family vacation, and you are the sub. I think it's a good sub.
So, you sent me this document that we're going to go through. There's a ton of stuff on here. How is it? Is this like a list that you've been keeping for months, or did you just make this for this?
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Steph Smith | This is part of a list I've been keeping for months. I keep this list in my Evernote. Every time I see a new idea, whether it's from a newsletter or something you guys talk about on "My First Million" that I want to respond to, I just have a running list. So, this is probably like a quarter of that bigger list.
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Sam Parr | What is this? 15 pages? How many words?
Yeah, I just... what we have here is like 10,000 words.
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Steph Smith | we should share this I mean at least parts of it because we're not gonna get through all of this | |
Sam Parr | this is amazing I if I was you I wouldn't share this I would charge people for it this is good | |
Steph Smith | I mean, there are definitely things that I'm excluding from here. You know, you don't share the ones that you actually want to build.
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Sam Parr | you so you told me one time that you wanna become a billionaire | |
Steph Smith | I think I want to we'll see if that actually happens | |
Sam Parr | Well, I said, "Who cares if it happens or not?" But you said, "That's what you wanted."
So, what are you going to do to become that?
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Steph Smith | I mean, I feel like if I ever become a billionaire, we're going to talk—hopefully about Tyler Perry later. It has to come from building something on my own. I need to have equity in something. You don't become a billionaire from working for a company and buying ETFs.
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Sam Parr | Well, there are a few examples, but the likelihood of becoming a billionaire is slim to none. The likelihood of becoming a billionaire by being an early employee somewhere is much slimmer within that subset, but it's possible.
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Steph Smith | It's definitely possible. Should we talk about these "companies of one," which I feel like are kind of anti— not anti-billionaire, but a different approach to building?
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Sam Parr | Yes, and I actually don't think they're anti-billionaire. I think you can become a billionaire this way.
But just so people know, this is **Steph Smith**. Steph, you work at **The Hustle**. You basically helped me start trends, and you ran it for a while. You still kind of run it, but you also do a bunch of other different projects.
You have this **Gumroad** book called *Doing Content Right*, is that right?
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Steph Smith | yep | |
Sam Parr | and it made like a 150 g's in the 1st year or something like that right | |
Steph Smith | yep exactly | |
Sam Parr | And you are the... so we aren't like really partners anymore. But I felt like when you ran trends, I viewed it a little bit like a partnership.
So I've worked with you pretty closely for a while now. Now that we're just friends, is that all accurate? What am I missing?
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Steph Smith | I think so, yeah. I build stuff on the side for fun. I taught myself to code a couple of years ago, and now I also have a podcast. So if people like what they hear here, it's called "The Shit You Don't Learn in School." That's my little plug.
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Sam Parr | And you are very... you and I are similar in that there's kind of like Sean; there's this overlap of things that are very, very similar between us.
But there are things that are very different. What you're different about is that you sweat the details like crazy, and you're pretty technical.
In the sense of... I really think it's just that you're smarter than me; you could just figure things out.
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Steph Smith | like you that's true | |
Sam Parr | You can just figure certain things out. Your research is actually typically more in-depth and technical than my research, and I like that.
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Steph Smith | Thanks. I mean, I don't know if I actually saw the details. If anyone knows me closely, like if you'd ask Cal, he'd be like, "No, she's like a mess." So, I appreciate that I come off that way.
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Sam Parr | So, let's talk about **companies of one**. You have a list of about **7 to 10 companies** that are run by just one person and are shockingly big. Let's go through some of them and discuss them.
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Steph Smith | Yeah, so I think you called out two before, so I'm going to just call out those two quickly.
You mentioned **BuiltWith** before, which is the site that can basically tell what a site is built with. Is it built with WordPress, Squarespace, or what plugins is the site using? At the time when you found it, I think it was doing around **$14,000,000**.
Then you've also covered **Nomad List** and **Remote OK** by Peter Levels. Those two, I think together, are doing around **$1,000,000** a year. I believe both of them are completely solo founders; I know Peter certainly is, but there are a couple of others.
So, have you heard of **Ugmonk**?
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Sam Parr | Well, hold on. So, **BuiltWith**—so people know—**BuiltWith** is maybe one of the most impressive tools here, but not the only one.
**BuiltWith** is like a... I think they have a plugin as well, but it's a website you go to: builtwith.com. You enter in the URL, like hustle.co. Let's say you see something on our website that you like and you want to copy it. You're like, "How did they build that? What plugins do they use?" Whatever it is, you use **BuiltWith**.
They make money because they... what do they do? I think they sell people's data or something.
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Steph Smith | I'm not sure, actually. Let me look this up because I know they get a crazy amount of traffic. Look, they've got plans on their site. So, they've got a basic plan. I don't know what you get with it, but it's $295.
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Sam Parr | Oh, I know what you get. You basically sign up, and it tells you people's information. It crawls all these websites and informs you about the types of features they have on their website and what type of plugins they use.
I think you pay money, and it will say, "We have the emails or contact information of all types of people who use [blank] plugin." You sell a plugin that is complementary to that. Therefore, by paying money, you can now target them and advertise against them or things like that.
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Steph Smith | Yeah, they charge. So, their basic plan is **$3,000** a year, their pro plan is **$5,000**, and their team plan is **$10,000**.
There's a cool little trick they have on their pricing page. If you go to it and hover over, they have technologies, keywords, and these little GIFs that are actually showing what you would get with the product. I've never actually seen that before, so that's a cute little hack. | |
Sam Parr | and it's built by basically one guy in australia alright so what are some of the other companies | |
Steph Smith | Okay, so I was going to call it "Ugg Monk." This one's not as big. I actually don't know exactly how much they're making, but it's a really simple e-commerce store. They started just selling really nice t-shirts, which sounds like, okay, there's enough t-shirt stores out there. But this guy, Jeff Sheldon, focused on just really high-quality shirts. Now, he's moved into almost like productivity stuff. Are you in the doc?
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Sam Parr | I'm looking at Ugmonk. When I go to Ugmonk, I see a pen holder and a to-do list. It's like cute, well-designed pen holders, which doesn't sound neat, but honestly, it looks pretty sick.
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Steph Smith | Yeah, it looks surprisingly sick. If you go to... let me see. If you click in the doc where it says "Look at this," that is his setup. He's like one of those builders who I think has built a little Twitter following as well. He just has this beautiful desk setup, which is like the perfect ad. | |
Sam Parr | oh I'm saying this it looks awesome | |
Steph Smith | I never thought I'd want to go and buy a $100 to-do list, but I think I'm going to buy one.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, I... it's just like cute, easy-to-use, mid-century modern stuff. Yeah, I'm on board. How much revenue does he do?
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Steph Smith | I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure he does several million a year. He gets over 200,000 page views a month, and he's been going at this for several years. I know he makes enough to have left his full-time job several years ago, and he's grown a lot since then. So, I'd probably say a couple million.
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Sam Parr | wow that's crazy alright that's a that's a good find it's just one guy he's the only employee | |
Steph Smith | I think so. I mean, he probably has some staff now that he's been growing, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't have a big team. | |
Sam Parr | alright what's next | |
Steph Smith | Alright, Card is actually one guy. He might have contractors, but Card (C-A-R-R-D) is built by this guy, AJ. I've built sites with Card. People probably recognize Card or they've almost certainly been on a site built by Card. It's doing $1,000,000 a year. I think he actually just raised money now, so I think he's kind of going for... | |
Sam Parr | did he really just raise money I would love to invest in this | |
Steph Smith | Yeah, he raised money earlier this year. He was big in the indie hacker community. Then, I think he posted on Indie Hackers this year, like, "Look, I'm gonna raise money. I'm gonna, you know, really go for it."
But it's kind of crazy—2,500,000 sites have been built on Card. Wow! And yeah, I think it has like a 1,000,000 AR.
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Sam Parr | So, it's a free platform for building simple, fully responsive one-page websites that can do anything. Yes, I actually think so. There was this company called... you remember "About Me"?
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Steph Smith | no what is that | |
Sam Parr | About.me. So, go to about.me. That's the URL. You don't remember that? I'm just a little bit older than you, which, like, a few years probably makes a difference.
Because about.me, when I was just getting started, was considered the preeminent builder in this space. They made it a one-page website where you could explain stuff about yourself. It was started by this guy named Tony Conrad, I believe his name is. He's this cool-looking dude who is also an investor now.
He sold it after only two years to AOL for like $40,000,000, and it was bootstrapped. You see about.me? You see how it's basically the same thing?
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Steph Smith | yeah it reminds me of you've heard of unsplash right | |
Sam Parr | I love unsplash | |
Steph Smith | So, sorry, I'm not thinking of Unsplash. I'm talking about **Unfold**. Unfold is this app that basically helps Instagrammers by allowing them to piece together pictures for their Instagram stories.
But they also started these one-pagers because all these Instagrammers are like, "Oh, I need my link in bio." Link in Bio is also a site like that, but Unfold was sold to Squarespace, I think, last year or something. I don't know for how much though.
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Sam Parr | Man, I think that these one-page website builders are actually really cool.
There's this other business I almost invested in; I think it's called Mediakits.com or .co. I believe it's just called Mediakit. All they did was build a really slick website builder where you could create your media kit and send it to people.
Whether you're The Hustle or just an Instagram person, you could have something like thehustle.co/mediakit or stepmith.com/mediakit, and your media kit would be on there. That might sound not that important, but it's kind of like DocSend.
So, if you don't know what DocSend is, it's basically PowerPoint in the cloud, but email gated. You have to enter your email, and then you get all types of information. You use it when you're creating a pitch deck and want to send it to investors, so you know who has it, who views it, and how long they've used it.
It's basically that. So anyway, I think that card is pretty badass. That actually might be one of the highest potential businesses you have here, I think.
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Steph Smith | Yeah, and I mean, he actually runs Card as a subscription business, so that's $1,000,000 ARR. I think it's probably way past that today.
I think you're going to like the next one though. Go to **next-episode.net**. I think it's actually **next-episode.net**. It's such an old site; I think the guy's been running it for 15 years. If you just open it up, you'll get a sense of how the UI hasn't caught up to where we are today. But it's amazing because this guy's been running it for 15 years. Guess how much traffic this thing gets?
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Sam Parr | I'm looking at it on SimilarWeb. This is crazy! So, what is this called? So, next-episode.net, what is this?
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Steph Smith | Yeah, it's a site where, basically, I would never think that a site like this would still exist, but people use it. It helps you track your TV shows and has a little bit of a community.
I've never used it, but you know, people watch "The Bachelor," they hang out on this site, and they find other people who watch "The Bachelor" and talk about it. It's kind of crazy how much traffic this site gets.
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Sam Parr | This is awesome! Here’s why I know this is a big business. If you go to SimilarWeb and look at their traffic, the estimated monthly traffic is **3,600,000 unique visitors** a month. That’s decent; it’s not the best, but it’s really good, particularly for one person.
If you go to the traffic source, it says that **80%** is coming from direct traffic, which basically means that there are a lot of people who are just typing in this URL and going there on a consistent basis. If you do that, you probably can have a huge business.
It looks like they have a premium option, which is only **$2 a month**. But how big is this?
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Steph Smith | So, I don't know exactly how big it is, but he's been running it for 15 years. I know he's definitely... I found him on Hacker News, one of those posts that was like, "Hey, who's a solopreneur who's doing this thing on their own?" And he's like, "I've worked on this entirely on my own for the last 15 years."
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Sam Parr | So, what? This is a crazy good find! I can't wait. So, who... what's this person's name? Do you know?
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Steph Smith | let me send you | |
Sam Parr | here he is I found him nico nicolet | |
Steph Smith | yeah | |
Sam Parr | wow this is a good find how much revenue do you think he does on this | |
Steph Smith | I don't know about today, but I'm assuming that if he's getting that many page views—1,000,000—and he's been working on it for 15 years, I'd say maybe around 1,000,000 a year. What do you think?
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Sam Parr | yeah I would agree with that and it's probably mostly all profit | |
Steph Smith | Yeah, well, I mean, he's literally the only one who works on it and there's no problem. The posts on Hacker News, he's like, "Yeah, I started it for myself because I couldn't find such a tool back in the day."
Basically, he's avoided hiring other people because he doesn't want to scale through hiring.
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Sam Parr | alright what else we got | |
Steph Smith | There's a ton on here. There's one called **Hostify** by a guy named **Riley**, who basically scaled that to like **$1,000,000** a month in a year or two.
There are some good stories from back in the day where apparently **SurveyMonkey** was doing **$19,000,000** in revenue with 12 employees. So, not a one-person thing.
**Plenty of Fish** is another example where they were doing currently **$10,000,000**, and the guy was by himself. He might have even been part-time. So, that's kind of a crazy story from back in the day too.
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Sam Parr | how did how did how do you know this about surveymonkey | |
Steph Smith | So, it was posted... I think you posted about BuiltWith a while ago. Then, I went through all of the comments. You basically asked, "Can anyone tell me something more efficient than that?"
This guy named Tripp posted, "Yeah, SurveyMonkey was doing $19,000,000 with 12 employees." You asked him if this was documented.
Basically, someone else commented and said, "Yeah, Tripp's too modest to say this, but he actually invested in SurveyMonkey in 2009, so he probably knows the numbers."
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Sam Parr | wow this is amazing I've heard this I've heard rumors about surveymonkey doing this this is crazy this is so cool so did I tell you about how I told you about craigslist right so the hustle our very first office it was this apartment it basically it looked like a townhome like a like a typical san francisco townhome but it was zoned as business and on the bottom was this was a piano teacher in the middle it was like a 3 story townhome but they like divvied it up into apartments the bottom one was a piano teacher the middle one was this company called nugs.net and nugs.net sells it's like a marketplace where you can trade like fish and grateful dead like cds that you recorded at their concerts and above that was craigslist and craigslist moved out and we moved in and this was in 2016 I think and which means craigslist at the time the landlord told me he goes they were making around $300,000,000 in revenue and they worked out of this little office and this office was so small it was basically a 3 or 2 bedroom apartment and he was like there's basically like 14 people here and that was the the whole company and they were so cheap craig was so cheap that the rent the rent I was paying was like 500 and I split it with my friend cieva but so the rent for the whole place was probably only $2,000 so they're paying 2 or 3 grand in rent for this place when they were that big and they were so cheap that in the lease apparently it said like toilet paper is provided by landlord and every once in a while I think his name was ishmael he would forget to or emmanuel I mean I forget it was like this old jewish guy he would forget to put the toilet paper and replenish it and they wouldn't pay the rent they go until we get the toilet paper you're not getting the rent and they and additionally craig worked out his I I used craig's room because it had a kitchen table in one of the bedrooms that he used as his desk it was like this ugly kitchen table that was like his desk but it was really heavy and they couldn't move it and they just left it there and that was my desk for a long time it was this like weird kitchen table and that was out of the craigslist office and that's how scrappy they were | |
Steph Smith | Dude, I love that! So, I mentioned Peter Levels before; he's a friend of mine from Bali. He once tweeted about this, so I don't feel bad sharing it.
He used to walk around with one of those bags you get at a grocery store—the plastic bags that are like a dollar. You'd think that some guy making like $1,000,000 a year in profit would upgrade his lifestyle. But he would carry his laptop around in one of those bags, and that's it.
You'd see him walking around in flip-flops and a T-shirt, and you'd be like, "Dude, respect!" Because you make a lot of money, and everyone knows that because you have that open page. But he's just walking around with a grocery store bag as his laptop holder.
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Sam Parr | That's stupid. That's very stupid. A real laptop, O'Bara. What are some other smaller ones?
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Steph Smith | Alright, so I want to call out a couple of these. These are actually some people I know from Bali, so it's kind of cool when you live in a place like Canggu because you're just running into people like this.
One of them is this thing called **Bannerbear**. If you click on the link where it says **Bannerbear**, that's their open page. A lot of these people also create these cool open pages, like the ones from **Nomad List**.
But I wanted to show you this one because if you scroll down, if you're on the page, do you see the **moto meter**? I can't even say it!
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Sam Parr | Yeah, what is this? So, I'm looking at basically pictures of motorcycles. Yeah, of like nice Triumph motorcycles.
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Steph Smith | So basically, he's got his revenue, and you can see his MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue). It's pretty impressive; he's at around an ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) of $300,000. I think he only started this sometime in 2020, but he kind of rethought the open page. He was like, "You know what? I don't want to just show my revenue; I want to show people what I want to spend this on."
He loves motorcycles and has different goals. For example, if he hits a certain MRR, he unlocks a new motorcycle. I thought that was just a kind of cool little thing.
You can see, just like Peter, he shows all of his data. You have the number of trials per month, his churn, obviously the modem meter, and his GitHub commit activity. I think that's pretty cool because, years ago, there were some people showing their open revenue, but now people are kind of rethinking what they can share.
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Sam Parr | what the hell is bannerbear this is so cool looking what does it do | |
Steph Smith | So basically, I think it's like an API for generating images. Do you know how we could have used this at Trends? Honestly, do you remember when we would run events and we'd have to go on Fiverr? It wasn't very expensive, but it took some time. You're like, "Oh man, we should just have an image template for all of our events." It would have a certain background and a certain theme.
So, he's made it possible to generate images based on certain inputs. You don't have to hire a designer to do that; you can auto-generate images. Some people use this for social media, right? You have a certain theme that aligns with your brand, and you're just adjusting all of your blog posts to use Bannerbear instead of going and hiring a designer to create an image for each one.
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Sam Parr | This guy's site is beautiful. He reminds me of... how do you say that? Peter Lovell's guy? Is it Peter? Yep, he reminds me of that. This guy looks like an artist.
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Steph Smith | Yeah, I mean, I think what's cool about all of these folks is that they do the whole stack. I guess you have to as a company, but they do the marketing, they do the design, and they do the development.
What's cool is that, because they're not necessarily experts, quote unquote, in these spaces, they're just kind of hacking it together. I find they're actually a lot more creative. They're not constrained by the marketing degree that they had before.
So, Peter is another example. He pretty consistently does some pretty cool things in marketing. For example, recently, instead of paying $10,000 for ads, he said, "I'm just giving $10,000 away to someone who retweets this." It got like 11,000 retweets, which obviously is much more than he would have spent on ads. | |
Sam Parr | This website banner, Bear It, was launched in October of 2019. So, let's round up to be 2020. If we say it started in January of 2020, that means it's what, 2 years old?
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Steph Smith | yep | |
Sam Parr | It's growing pretty well. Does it say his growth rate? I mean, this could be a really good business.
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Steph Smith | Yeah, and it's just him. I think he might have hired a part-time customer service person, but yeah, it's going really well. | |
Sam Parr | wow this is amazing how big do you think this could get | |
Steph Smith | I think pretty big because it's actually, you know, one of those niche problems that you're like, "What? You're going to create a product that auto-generates images? Who needs that?"
But then you actually think, like, "Wow, every company that has a blog has to generate all these images en masse." Every company that runs something on social media...
I think the reason it's working is that even though it seems like a niche problem, it's a problem that most companies have.
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Sam Parr | wow alright you wanna do you wanna pick a couple more | |
Steph Smith | we can just call out one more which is have you heard of headline | |
Sam Parr | no what's that how do you find how do you find all this stuff by the way | |
Steph Smith | Well, like I said, I combed through some of the threads that you posted before.
Headline, Bannerbear, Nomad List—these are all people who were nomadic. I think the indie hacker community and the nomad community overlap because they're both kind of rebellious in a way. They're like, "I don't need to live in one place," or "I don't need to raise venture capital."
So, I think there's an overlap there. Most of these guys are people that I used to co-work with in Volley.
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Sam Parr | wow okay so what's headline | |
Steph Smith | so headline is that's a | |
Sam Parr | great name | |
Steph Smith | Super simple app, but Danny, the guy who built it, created it in like a couple of months. Within a year, he sold it for 7 figures.
All it was, is it was using AI to generate kind of like landing page headlines or copy. If you look at the landing page, it kind of looks like a much more complex product, but it's actually pretty simple.
If you've heard of Copy.ai, I think there are similar elements to it. Oh.
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Sam Parr | Hey, look on the website of Headline. They use my name. They're writing a... wait.
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Steph Smith | really I just noticed that you must have seen this before maybe you should have | |
Sam Parr | Seen this? This guy is using my name. I've never... that's so funny. Is he trying to tell me to use this?
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Steph Smith | I don't know. Because I also don't know, like I said, he sold this. So I don't know if he put that there or if the new founders put it there.
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Sam Parr | you're wait you're see you're seeing my face and name on this website | |
Steph Smith | right yeah totally | |
Sam Parr | god that's so funny why is my face on here whatever that's cool | |
Steph Smith | Yeah, well, this is just a super simple one where it's like, I love it. It's a perfect example of just being scrappy and building something. He exited for 7 figures within, I think, 8 months, which is pretty crazy.
I think one theme is that these people find a niche problem that isn't—or at least seems—niche. They solve it. It has to be an existing problem that people want solved.
I think the thing that a lot of people do wrong when they're trying to start their own little startup is they look for things that don't really exist. But these are perfect examples where it's like, "Oh, of course people need sites to house their work." Of course people need nice t-shirts and productivity stuff. Of course people need landing page copy.
So I think that's the one learning for me.
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Sam Parr | how did this guy build this | |
Steph Smith | He built it in the open on Twitter. He just coded it and kept giving updates. Then, I think he launched it on Product Hunt, which is a pretty classic launch strategy.
But I think it kind of blew up after Product Hunt and then he sold it.
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Sam Parr | but it's just built on top of that gpd 3 thing | |
Steph Smith | yep | |
Sam Parr | Wow, alright, that's amazing! I cannot believe that. Good find! Do you want to try something else?
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Steph Smith | Yeah, let's talk about just a couple of these.
Another thing that I did, which kind of overlaps with what we talked about, is looking at sites that have a surprising amount of traffic. You know, sites that make you think, "Wait, really? There's no way!" Then you look it up and you're like, "Wow, I guess like 20 million people a month actually look this up."
So one of them I want to show you is called **Glitchin' Deals**. Have you heard of glitching?
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Sam Parr | no what's that mean | |
Steph Smith | Okay, so you know how, of course, e-commerce is popping off? A lot of companies have e-commerce sites, but not all of them have fully functioning e-commerce sites. Sometimes they glitch, right?
For example, an airline might show a flight for $20 that's really meant to be $200. Sometimes, there'll be something that's a dollar when it's really supposed to be $100. It's just a decimal place error, and this happens all the time.
Apparently, according to the law, if you advertise something for a certain amount, you have to sell it for that amount. So, there are all these sites that basically look for glitches.
I found this out because I was at my partner's family home for Christmas last year. I remember his aunt being like, "Hey, do you want a podcast mic?" I was like, "Sure, I don't know, why do you?" She said, "I've got 30! I just don't have to give them away." I was like, "What do you mean you have 30?" I guess she found a glitch in one of these groups, and yeah, she just got 30 podcast mics that she got for free.
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Sam Parr | wait free it was free | |
Steph Smith | In that case, it was free. Most of the time, it's just like a crazy wild deal that the company didn't mean to have. | |
Sam Parr | So, like, I need to buy... I'm trying to up my game and get that garage fridge. You know what I'm talking about? That garage fridge.
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Steph Smith | like it's | |
Sam Parr | It's like it's to store all my meat. So, I found a $25 garage fridge. I need that freezer. Yeah, and that's how you know you've made it when you get a garage fridge. They have one for $50, but it looks kind of complicated to use, though.
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Steph Smith | Yeah, so I have to say I've never actually glitched myself. I think it's one of those rabbit holes, like the same way people go and try to enter sweepstakes. I think it's a similar phenomenon.
But there's a ton of people doing it. This glitch and deal site gets 4,000,000 page views a month, but it's only been around for a year. It's not... how do...
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Sam Parr | they find the deals 2020 | |
Steph Smith | I think they must scrape them, or they have at least... I think it's actually a separate glitch site. But they have a Facebook group, and this Facebook group has **342,000 members**. Guess how many people post a day in this Facebook group?
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Sam Parr | how many | |
Steph Smith | 250 + post a day | |
Sam Parr | that's crazy | |
Steph Smith | when I checked it had 262 posts and it was like it was like 11 am so | |
Sam Parr | I'm not that surprised because when we do giveaways for The Hustle, we'll do a T-shirt giveaway. These websites are like a circular network; they all copy each other. It's basically midwestern stay-at-home moms, mostly, and they love giveaways.
One time, we were giving away stickers, and I saw one of them post this on a forum: "Hey, there's this newsletter called The Hustle. You just gotta share your referral link, dude! They'll send you stickers. I just got mine!" There were hundreds of people commenting on it, talking about different strategies that allow them to get more referrals through The Hustle so they can get their T-shirt or their stickers or whatever.
People in this demographic, it's mostly women I've noticed, and it's mostly stay-at-home mom types. They love this stuff. They love these deals. They love free things. | |
Steph Smith | They love it. It's like a challenge for them. I remember asking his aunt, "Why did you do this? You don't need 30 podcast mics." She said, "I just wanted to win, almost."
I think it's so interesting that so many people are doing this. Like you're saying, it's a crazy amount of people who probably don't need this stuff but are like, "I'm so stoked that I got a gas grill on clearance," even though they...
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Sam Parr | Don't need this gas grill. We were giving away stickers that said "The Hustle."
It's like these ladies, they don't care about business or tech. They just didn't care about our brand, but they just wanted it because it was available to get, and they felt good.
Yeah, it was crazy to me. What else we got?
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Steph Smith | Okay, so let's go to **Nugget Comfort**. If you want to click on that, it was actually something shared in the transcript a while ago.
I don't even know how to explain what these are. They're basically like cool children's pillows, but they're children's pillows that you can make into different shapes and forts. It was just crazy to think.
So, Nugget was, I think, started relatively recently. I'd say in the last year or so. I think they had some mailing list for a prior product before that, but they made over **$4,000,000** in sales in a month with **$0** ad spend.
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Sam Parr | nugget comfort was doing is doing over 4,000,000 a month | |
Steph Smith | yes | |
Sam Parr | What if you go to... So here's how I know that they're at least pretty big. You go to their website, and it looks like they're based in North Carolina. You go to their website and you click on "Careers," and you see who they're hiring for. They're hiring a senior accountant, so you know that.
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Steph Smith | they're they're you | |
Sam Parr | Counting... counting the money, counting that bread. They need a bunch of different warehouse operators. They need a production associate, which means that production associate is going to report to someone.
So, you know that there's a huge, pretty meaningfully sized team here. This company is only a year old. Who started it?
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Steph Smith | I'm not sure who started it let me pull up this facebook post so | |
Sam Parr | It's basically called **Nugget Comfort**. It looks like pillow cushions, but you can build with them. It's almost like a combination of Legos meets pillows.
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Steph Smith | Yeah, exactly. I don't actually know who the founder is. This was shared in the Facebook group. It looks like it might be someone called Hannah Fussell, a former elementary school teacher.
So, actually, Nugget was launched with a previous product that I think was not geared towards young kids. I guess they had some Kickstarter at the beginning, and then ultimately, I think COVID hit, and they had to reposition. Somehow, they came up with this children's product, which I think is just so interesting because I feel like there are certain industries, like pets or children, where people have just an endless budget to spend on.
So, these pillows, I think they're like $200 or something. | |
Sam Parr | It's only **$300**; it's not a lot of money. Yeah, and they call it a "pillow couch." This is amazing! This company, this is one of the wilder things. This is brilliant! I totally understand it. What a cute, cool thing! This is amazing.
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Steph Smith | Alright, let's move on to **Public Domain Review**. We'll do one more. This one relates to something you guys have talked about before: how certain intellectual property (IP) is not in the public domain, and then it moves into the public domain after a period of time.
So, this is a site that basically tracks all of that stuff. I think I originally found this because apparently, **Winnie the Pooh** is going into the public domain in January. I found some article about that, and it was on the Public Domain Review. So, I think it's **publicdomainreview.org**.
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Sam Parr | What's gonna happen? What's gonna happen when that happens? What type of opportunities are gonna be there? And what businesses do you think are gonna pop up?
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Steph Smith | So, I think, just for background for people listening, there are tons of different books, or like the Bible for example, that are in the public domain. People can buy and sell them.
You guys talked about cool millennial Bibles. *Winnie the Pooh* is a book that was written ages ago and then, in 2022, it went into the public domain.
I believe there are several different things that are not patents... what's it called when something is not in the public domain?
Yeah, so there are several different copyrights. You need to look into exactly what this covers versus what else exists. But you could, for example, potentially take a *Winnie the Pooh* book, make it modern, and then resell that to new customers.
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Sam Parr | Think so? For example, on this website, **publicdomainreview.org**, they've got a store where you can buy prints to put on the wall. It's like, yes, really sick art.
So you're saying now they can use **Winnie the Pooh** in that art, or they can resell old **Winnie the Pooh** art or something like that?
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Steph Smith | Yeah, and what I'd be interested to find out is specifically about merchandise. I don't know exactly if it's just the book IP or if it actually has to do with just like the IP overall.
But the crazy thing about a lot of these big franchises—Pokémon, Hello Kitty, Winnie the Pooh—they've all done over $80 billion in sales in merchandise alone. So, a lot of people think, "Okay, if you're talking about Pokémon, they made a lot of money off the show." It's like, no, they actually didn't make that much off the show; they made a ton of money off the merchandise.
The same thing is true for Mickey Mouse or Star Wars. That's where all the money is made.
So, what I'd be interested to know, and I don't know the answer to this, is whether these things moving into the public domain means that I can then go sell a Winnie the Pooh shirt. I'm not sure. | |
Sam Parr | do first of all how long does the copyright last is it 76 years I think | |
Steph Smith | you are gonna know this better | |
Sam Parr | Than I do. I believe it's 76 years, but it's pretty messed up actually when you think about it.
So, let's just say that a family invented a person, invented Winnie the Pooh. They die and leave it to their family. So, you're telling me after, I think it's 76 years, or it's the death of the creator plus 76 years, I think?
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Steph Smith | Yeah, it's... from what I see now, it's the death of the creator plus at least 50 years. But it can be extended to 70.
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Sam Parr | Is it 70? I remember it because there was a law created that did that. It's kind of messed up, actually, when you think about it. That is going to expire. Why would that expire? Like, why?
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Steph Smith | I guess it depends. I mean, you see the same thing with drugs, right? You don't want someone to be able to capitalize on something forever. I think it probably has to do with the public benefiting from something being in a free market over time.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, because... bullshit. If I bought a piece of property and a piece of land, wouldn't that be weird if, like, on the third generation, you could take back that land?
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Steph Smith | I guess so. I wonder, like, how they determine what things have these expiring copyrights versus what things don't exist.
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Sam Parr | I think that's interesting I would like to learn more about that but sorry go ahead about public domain review dot dot org | |
Steph Smith | Well, it's just another one of those sites where you're like, "Wow, that's an interesting site." You can kind of browse and see what is moving into the public domain.
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Sam Parr | it's a beautiful site it's very fun to read | |
Steph Smith | Yeah, it also gets... I mean, not a crazy amount of traffic, but **500,000 page views a month**. So, I wonder... actually, I didn't notice they are selling art or different collections. I was wondering how they were monetizing, but it must be through that.
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Sam Parr | this is awesome I love this website you wanna do one more | |
Steph Smith | Sure! Do you see one that you want to do in here?
I mean, one of the ones that we can talk about, which is just a super fun little thing, is this website: **foodtimeline.org**. There's not much of a business opportunity here, but I just think it's a fun thing to browse.
Basically, someone has gone down the internet rabbit hole and found the first citations of when a food existed. It starts with things like water and ice, and then you get wheat and other items. There are hundreds of different data points here.
Of course, it moves to 2013, where you see things like test tube burgers. I just think this is an awesome resource. Again, I don't know what the business opportunity is here, but if you have extra time, you can create really nifty things like this online.
This page alone gets over **150,000 page views a month**, I think. So, I don't know, I just thought it was a cool internet find.
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Sam Parr | This is awesome! Broccolini was only invented in 1993.
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Steph Smith | It's kind of crazy to look and see, like, "Wait a minute." I guess it makes sense because it's fermented, but like, kimchi was invented in the 7th century. Then, you scroll down and you're like, "Yeah, what?" We didn't have, I don't know, like, yeah, like you said, broccolini until 1993. Or what's another crazy thing on here?
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Sam Parr | High fructose corn syrup was introduced in 1967. I would have thought that was far sooner. Buffalo wings only date back to 1964. How intriguing!
This is a really, really cool website. I think that the reason why I find this cool is because of Lynn Oliver. She launched it in 1999. The reason why this is cool is because I respect her.
Lynn Oliver was born in 1958 and died in 2015. She was a librarian and food historian, and the sole author of the Food Timeline website.
There's a Wikipedia page about her. I just love that there's someone who's quirky enough to dedicate time to do this. I admire people like that—those who are passionate enough to put all their energy into something like this. | |
Steph Smith | Exactly! I just think this is the coolest thing ever. Whoever actually created this, thank you for doing that. I have one related business opportunity.
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Sam Parr | Listen to this: According to Wikipedia, the site's domain supposedly supports expiration in 2025. However, as of September 2020, the Huwiz database shows that it's set to lapse in April 2022 because she died. So, she died, and now it's set to go out in April 2022. There you go. Speaking of copyrights...
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Steph Smith | There you go.
I guess food-related opportunity. Have you ever looked up the healthiest fast food or the healthiest cheese? | |
Sam Parr | Totally! Do you remember that book? You're not American, so I don't know if they have this in Canada, but it was called "Eat This, Not That."
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Steph Smith | yes I have another book | |
Sam Parr | But, like, book series... I would use it to figure out, like, what's a good option. If I want to eat a burger, what's the healthiest burger at a fast food place?
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Steph Smith | So, you're not the only one. I discovered this because I think one day I was looking up something ridiculous, like "healthiest cheese." A ton of people are searching this every single month.
I think some of these numbers are old, but something like "healthiest cereal," which we all know is not good for you, has 50,000 searches per month. "Healthiest bread" has 30,000 searches a month, and "healthiest cheese" has 20,000.
There's also a ton of search volume for things like "healthiest meal at Taco Bell" or something like that, which I just love because it shows, again, this problem where people want to eat healthy but are realistically, in some cases, unable to.
It also reminds me of something that Peter Levels said with his Nomad List site, which is basically, "Your listicle is my opportunity." So, whenever I go...
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Sam Parr | made up that phrase | |
Steph Smith | Yes, I've been thinking about it for ages. Basically, whenever I search for something, all of the results on that page are listicles.
For example, you look up "healthiest cheese" and you get to a site with a long article listing five types of cheese. You're like, "Oh my god, this should be easier!"
There are so many sites that have found things with a lot of search volume and made it easier. Like, that's what Nomad List does. He's like, "You know what? There are all these variables, and you can play with them yourself. I'm going to collect this data."
So instead of getting a bunch of listicles when you look up "hot places in June to go traveling," he's giving you that information so you can access it yourself. He's basically refining the information.
You've seen tons of other people do this. I think that was basically Rich Barton's strategy when he built things on Expedia. | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, kinda. But listen, I will help someone do this, or if they want to partner with me, I'll do this.
So here's what I'm gonna do. I bet you I can make a fair bit of money, like $10,000 total, but have a business that makes single-digit thousands of dollars. You could do this in 30 days.
Here's what I would do. So, Steph, have you heard about this contest? I forget what it's called, actually, but people are taking our clips and turning them into TikTok videos. They're posting them on TikTok and getting tons of views.
The hashtag **#MFMClips** has, in a matter of like... I think we only launched it 7 days ago, but I forget. It's less than 10 days. In that short amount of time, that hashtag has around **10,000,000 views**, meaning kids have made videos that have 10,000,000 views on TikTok. It's crazy!
There's a couple of videos; I think there's one video that has like **1,300,000 views**, and then there's a whole bunch of other videos that have about or over **1,000,000**. For sure, **100 of 1,000**. These guys are killing it!
So the way that they did it, they created a handle called like **MFM Clips** or **The Hustles Pod** or **Hustlers Die**. They just made these things from scratch, and in literally 7 days, a couple of them have **1,000,000 views**.
What I would do is create a TikTok page that says, "Craving a chicken sandwich? Don't eat the Popeye's ones; eat this because it has this gram of fat. They use these types of chemicals instead. Eat the Chick-fil-A one because it has this."
Or like, "Craving a cereal? Don't eat this; eat this. Why?" And then you'd be like, "You want more? Go to this website."
You create a wirecutter-style website that does this, and you for sure can make really good revenue, like **$1,000**. We're talking off of affiliate websites, and then eventually do brand advertising deals, without a doubt.
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Steph Smith | I would | |
Sam Parr | Bet that would get popular if you had the right face. You need like a hip TikToker, a young-looking person to do this. It would absolutely crush.
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Steph Smith | Totally! I mean, I feel like just the TikTok side of things is going to trend no matter what. There’s so much search volume for this stuff that you can build up a sustainable business over time.
If people are actually going to go build this, I want someone to do that. Go to Ahrefs, go to the Keywords Explorer, and enter "healthiest food." Then, if you go to matching terms, it will basically give you this list of terms that are similar.
You can see "healthiest food," which we already talked about, but also terms like "healthiest taco," "healthiest breads," "healthiest breakfast," "healthiest restaurant," "healthiest Starbucks," and "healthiest Mexican food." You just go down the line, and there are hundreds of terms already just sitting there for you.
What’s crazy is I was actually pretty surprised to see that the keyword difficulty for a lot of these was not very high. I would have thought that if someone told me there’s search volume for this stuff, I would have thought, "Oh, someone’s already tackled this."
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Sam Parr | No, no, no, no, no difficulty. I just Googled "healthiest cereal" and I'm like, "Pure Wow ranks number 1." I could outrank Pure Wow.
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Steph Smith | Exactly! It's like Thrillist or Healthline. You're like, "Someone should go and create a site just for this," and it'll rank surprisingly quickly if you can target the right keywords. | |
Sam Parr | This is just fantastic! The website "Eat This" (eatthis.com) kind of does that. It's owned by Galvanized Media.
So, what I do is I go to these websites and scroll all the way down to see who owns the copyright. Galvanized Media is a website that owns a ton of different stuff. They own "Eat This, Not That," "Travelicious," "CelebWell," and a bunch of other sites.
I would bet you I could figure out how much money these guys make, but I would imagine it's in the $20 to $30 million range if I had to guess, based on the website. It's probably a really good business. Wow!
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Steph Smith | And I mean, you can start with the healthiest stuff and then obviously expand past that. But that's actually like a surprisingly... well, I mean, I guess not surprisingly. I think that's a big niche, not so niche niche.
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Sam Parr | Wow, okay, let's wrap up with two more things.
So, you had something in here about chess and this guy Magnus. You're like this chess nerd, you're a chess prodigy. You go to chess.com and you play there. You're known for being a chess person. You had some amazing stats about this guy. Can you tell me about this?
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Steph Smith | Well, so if people don't follow chess, Magnus is the number one chess player in the world.
But the cool thing about Magnus, I read this the other day, is that unlike many athletes—if you want to call chess a sport—he's actually managed to already kind of build a little business empire.
What a lot of celebrities or athletes do is focus on getting paid at the time, but then they really struggle to build up any sort of equity in a product or a brand that they're building. As most people know, the way that you actually accrue wealth is through equity.
We'll talk about that with Tyler Perry; he's managed to create something.
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Sam Parr | this guy magnus how old is he | |
Steph Smith | he's not very old | |
Sam Parr | let me look at my what it looks like | |
Steph Smith | he was like a gm by the time he was like 14 or something wow | |
Sam Parr | And he's like, kind of good looking or like, he's cool looking. He looks like he's kind of charismatic. There's a story here. It's not like he's just good at chess; he seems like an interesting person in himself.
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Steph Smith | Yeah, he's 31, so he's not old at all. There are videos of him when he was about 12, and they're filming him at, I think, the World Championships and stuff. He was really talented from a young age.
Now, at only 31, he's built up a little empire. Not only does he still compete in chess, but I think he also streams on Twitch and does all that stuff sometimes. He also built his own little company called **Magnus Chess**. If you go to, let's see what the URL is, **magnuschesscarlson.com**.
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Sam Parr | okay | |
Steph Smith | Or, sorry, it's **playmagnus.com** to get redirected. He has this **+ membership**. I don't know exactly what you get from it, but it's **$14 a month**.
Here are some of the stats: basically, his company, **Play Magnus**, is already a publicly traded company. It has **250 employees**, **4,000,000 registered users**, and a market cap, because it's public, of **$115,000,000** already.
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Sam Parr | how much revenue does this make | |
Steph Smith | so I don't know how much it makes currently but I mean let's look it up it's a publicly traded company | |
Sam Parr | And it's publicly traded in France, I think. Or is it not? I actually don't know where it's publicly traded.
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Steph Smith | so it's definitely in your yeah it's in france f r a I think it's it's in euros | |
Sam Parr | wow this is amazing who would have thought does he own this | |
Steph Smith | He owns a stake in it. So, he owns, you know, not a ton, but he still owns... I think, oh actually, never mind, he owns **85%** of the business.
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Sam Parr | Holy crap, that's amazing! Yeah, so this guy's... this is amazing. Do you know what the sales are?
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Steph Smith | So, it looks like revenue last quarter was **$5,000,000**. It's doing around **$20,000,000** and has actually grown a lot recently.
It only started looking like this in **2019**. In **2020**, it had total revenue of **$8,000,000**. But, you know, last quarter it was **$5,000,000**, so it's trending towards **$20,000,000**.
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Sam Parr | Wow, and that's recurring revenue. So that's a subscription. Yep, this is amazing! He owns 85% of this, so he basically has a net worth of around $120 million just off of this. | |
Steph Smith | Yeah, so it looks like I'm getting a little confused. There's something called **Magnus Chess** and then there's something called **Play Magnus**.
So actually, I think he owns only 9% of **Play Magnus**, but then he owns something else, which I think is like a streaming platform called **Magnus Chess**. Either way, he owns a substantial amount of one of them, **Magnus Chess**, and he's worth several million.
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Sam Parr | Wow, so we actually covered Chess.com. I think it might be mostly bootstrapped, and it gets something like... have you seen what the monthly uniques of Chess.com are? Have you looked?
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Steph Smith | at that super high yes I have | |
Sam Parr | Chess.com currently has around **150 million** monthly unique users. I've heard rumors that it's a **multibillion-dollar** company.
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Steph Smith | I mean, people pay a lot for it because they've actually built in some pretty cool features.
So, Lichess is a competitor. Some people like Lichess because it's more indie, but Chess.com has a lot to offer. If you go on there, you can play, and then after your game, it'll basically say, "Here are all your blunders, your mistakes, and this is exactly where you went wrong."
It's interesting because those are the things people used to pay coaches for. When I was little playing chess, a coach would come over once a week, and he'd sit down with me. I'd go to tournaments, and at tournaments, you'd write down your moves. Then we'd study them after, and he'd say, "See that move? Do you see how, like, eight moves later, that really hurt you?"
But Chess.com has that basically built into the software, where they're like, "See? That's where you went wrong."
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Sam Parr | This is crazy! This is awesome. Ben texted me, or like slacked me, while we were doing this. He goes, "Steph's been spitting fire for the last 50 minutes, so this is badass. You definitely have to come on again."
There's like way more notes here. If I was you, selfishly, I wanna say don't share this and we'll do another one in the next week or the week after. Ben, what do you think? What do you rate this?
I was getting flack the other day for giving you guys too many A's, so I guess they leave. But this one really was like an A+.
Steph, I know you've got your course and it's doing well, but you should do another course on how you do research on people. I do kinda wanna screenshot this doc.
Ben, that's what people say to us. They tell me and Sean that you're saying, "She's even better. She's better. She's better than you."
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Steph Smith | I don't know, it depends. I think you and Sean are like A+ entertainers. I gotta work on that, and I know it's something I need to improve. You guys are so good at making a conversation flow with all your funny bits. So, I think, yeah, I mean I could share how I...
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Sam Parr | do my | |
Steph Smith | research on | |
Sam Parr | Give me some credit, Ben. We do this 2 or 3 times a week. Steph's doing this, yeah, once every month. It's true, you do it twice a week, but it's just... it does feel a little unequal because this document that Steph has is just chock full of really amazing ideas. Yeah, this is a big deal.
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Steph Smith | I'm down to come on anytime. I was a little nervous to come back on. Every time I come on, like, you know, the first time it was sometime in 2020. You guys had maybe like 5,000 listens an episode, and then it's gone up so much since then.
Every time I'm like, "Dude, you guys just had Hasan Minhaj, you've had Gary Vee," and I'm like, I'm just this trends analyst. I still feel that way. So, yeah, if people like it, I'm happy to come on anytime. But if not, we can also just open source this research.
I don't think I included anything here that I am going to build myself. I was actually previously going to build the "healthiest X" thing, and then I just realized that's been on my to-do list for 2 years, so it's probably never going to happen.
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Sam Parr | I'm gonna ask sarah I'm gonna go to the other room right now and tell my wife sarah I'm like hey | |
Steph Smith | Do this. She should. I mean, seriously, the reason I had it on my list is because a lot of the ideas that I've shared in the past, I'm like, "Yeah, those are cool ideas," but can you really do it? Can you do it with not that much money? And is it pretty likely to succeed? Right? Those are the variables, and this one checks those boxes.
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Sam Parr | Dude, that's awesome! Thank you. This is badass.
We're gonna wrap up. Steph, what's your handle on Twitter?
**@stephsmithio** | |
Steph Smith | Or, Steph Smith here. I'm just going to plug my podcast again because I'm trying to grow it just like Ben is. It's called "The Shit You Don't Learn in School."
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Sam Parr | Alright, sick. Thank you. And that was you doing it with Calvin, your boyfriend and your fiancé.
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Steph Smith | yeah | |
Sam Parr | good dude alright thank you talk soon | |
Steph Smith | thanks guys |