6 Million Dollar Business Ideas To Start Before 2024 | ft. Greg Isenberg

Greg Isenberg

And I'm really obsessed with these types of opportunities because it's easy to get press. You can see the headlines now.

Sam Parr

Idiot creates a water brand for dogs. I can see it now. Yeah, yeah, great headline.

Shaan Puri

Formerly respected individual Greg Eisenberg, yeah, disgraces himself.

Greg Isenberg

with good water

Sam Parr

alright we're live sean what do we got

Shaan Puri

What's up, Greg? Is here, friend of the house. What are the original friends of the house? You said something on an earlier pod that has always stuck with me. You were talking about, I think, names. You had your iPhone out and you were on the Notes app. You said, "I just got banger names for businesses that don't have a business yet with them." You were just spitting off names, and one of the formats was anything with the word "bueno" at the end. I can't tell you how many times I've used this when somebody's asking me about a name. They're like, "Yeah, we do medical imaging scans." I'm like, "Scan?" And they're like, "What?" They never pick it, but goddamn if it doesn't break the ice. Greg, welcome! Do you still have that note with all those names?

Greg Isenberg

I've got all the names. I've also got, I don't know, about 150 startup ideas in a notes file. But before I start, I gotta get something off my chest. I gotta be real.

Shaan Puri

with you alright what we got

Greg Isenberg

producer ari you stole my producer

Sam Parr

did we we don't know about this yeah you filled me in

Greg Isenberg

Yes, so all of a sudden you guys send me a text and you go, "What do you think about Ari as a producer? I see you work with him/her." And I go, "She's amazing! She's the best!" You know, there's nothing wrong, nothing wrong about her. And then all of a sudden, I'm getting a text from...

Greg Isenberg

Ari being like, "Dude, thank you so much! Thank you so much! I've just got the craziest job at my first billion."

Shaan Puri

If I ever call you for a reference check, just know it's Mister Stew, your girl, coming at you right there.

Sam Parr

I thought she worked on it in the past I thought I thought that was

Greg Isenberg

that's what

Shaan Puri

that's what I thought too

Sam Parr

I thought there was an end date

Greg Isenberg

it's okay

Sam Parr

is it it happened

Greg Isenberg

it happened

Sam Parr

is it okay

Greg Isenberg

it's not okay

Sam Parr

well sorry and thank you

Shaan Puri

Okay, moving on from that one, Greg. You people should know what you do. You have late checkout, which is badass. You have one of the best websites of any company. You make really amazing landing pages. So, you have late checkout, which is a combination of studio and agency. How do you describe it?

Greg Isenberg

holding company building businesses that have audiences and communities out of them

Shaan Puri

And you are kind of becoming this like "Greg the Community Guy." I feel like that was a phase of your life. Is that still the phase we're in? Are we... is this making "fetch" a thing? Or did it stick? Did "Greg the Community Guy" happen? What’s going on with that?

Greg Isenberg

I think so, man. I think so. I feel like if other people are calling you that, it's a thing. If you start calling yourself the community guy...

Greg Isenberg

and you're just

Greg Isenberg

you know so yeah it's it's definitely working

Shaan Puri

I feel like that's a mistake I've made many times: trying to call myself "the guy." Actually, today I was thinking about Gary Vee. I was also thinking about one of my favorite YouTubers, Cody Ko. I was like, "Why am I not Sean P?" What is Pouri doing for me? I gotta drop the rest of the last name. I just need to be Sean P. I really wrote a note to myself: **Go all in on Sean P.**

Sam Parr

no and that's stupid no

Shaan Puri

hey hey we're workshopping it still

Sam Parr

you've got a weird enough first name s h a a n I think you're good you're good

Greg Isenberg

the only reason why sam is saying that yeah

Shaan Puri

jealous

Greg Isenberg

he'd he that he's well no you know sam he's he wants to be sam pete

Greg Isenberg

exactly he wants to be sam pete come on

Sam Parr

No man, I'm happy. I've got a two-syllable first and last name. I'm good. I don't need a nickname. When it's that short, you're good.

Shaan Puri

sean bueno

Sam Parr

Dude, Greg. Late Checkout dot Studio, I hate your website! You're doing such a designer website. I can't click anything. I gotta scroll around a map in order to find what you do. What's going on, man?

Greg Isenberg

Yeah, I think, listen, there are two ways to create a website. One is to be conversion-centric, right? Like, convert as many people as possible. The other way is that you're building a brand, and this is unlike any other website on the internet. I think you'd be surprised how many $1,000,000 deals we've been able to close because people like our website.

Shaan Puri

You've done something that I think a lot of people were trying to do, but you've done it well. So, let's talk about this kind of personal holdco. You went the venture path. When I met you, you were raising money from all the big-name VCs. You were building a social network. We were both playing that game. It's not even a lottery ticket game. The analogy I gave is that somebody handed us a bottle, or we picked up a bottle and started running around trying to catch lightning. That was our stated game plan. It was like, "Ah yes, I shall create the next hit social network on demand," which is not how any of them were really built in the first place. So, you played the VC game, and you have backed off of it. Give us your kind of two-second philosophy on how your mindset changed going from Silicon Valley venture path to what you do now.

Greg Isenberg

There was a group of us, now in our thirties, who watched *The Social Network*, that movie. We all thought that we could become Mark Zuckerberg, if we're being honest with ourselves.

Shaan Puri

I I mean I was I would have been happy with a winklevoss too but like yeah I wanted to be zuck yes

Greg Isenberg

We saw that movie, and it jazzed us up. There was a whole generation of us who moved to Silicon Valley to raise a bunch of money to build social apps. You know, we tried. We tried. The truth is, I remember meeting one of the world's best investors. He once told me that a third of our deals fail, a third of our deals we get our money back, and a third of our deals we make one times our investment, like Google times. So that got me thinking. What he's basically saying is that the best founders in the world—because he's only backing the best founders—two-thirds of them, basically the founders and their teams, don't see any money from acquisitions. That means a third of companies are basically seeing any profit. It's just so difficult to win in that game. And yeah, that's why I've been focusing more on profitable, cash-flowing businesses.

Hubspot

"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.

Sam Parr

Are you making more money now doing the cash flow thing versus when you sold your company?

Greg Isenberg

abs yes absolutely yeah

Sam Parr

do you like your life better

Shaan Puri

Yeah, do you have a goal? Like, a cash flow goal? You're like, "Okay, my goal is to get to $10,000,000 in cash flow," or whatever. Is that how you were thinking about it? Is that the game that you're currently playing?

Greg Isenberg

no the game I'm playing is I'm playing for style points baby

Greg Isenberg

What does that mean? Is there anything else to say? No, that explains everything. Next question, man.

Sam Parr

what is what's a style.

Shaan Puri

We were talking about when Sam was working at HubSpot. He was like, "I'm an artist, baby!" I gotta agree. I think that's what Greg's talking about when he mentions style points. The other part of style points is the lifestyle. In Silicon Valley, this idea of a "lifestyle business" is like a backhanded compliment. It's a way for people in Silicon Valley to pat you on the head and say, "That's cute. That's a cute business. Good for you! That's swell." But to me, I'm like, that's crazy! The goal of these businesses is to give myself and my team awesome lifestyles. What else are you trying to do if not that? I don't even understand. I feel like one of the kind of arbitrages right now, especially if you're from the tech industry, is that the whole tech industry is so brainwashed into thinking it's all about creating multibillion-dollar companies. A lot of people who would actually be super happy if they created a lifestyle business that gave them $2.5 million a year in cash flow won't ever go that path because it's seen as this lesser thing to do.

Sam Parr

We all have friends who do that, you know? I tease—or we tease them—on air, Andrew Wilkinson, for doing that. But you know what was funny? Did you guys see Chamath from All In? So, Chamath, for the listener, I would assume he's a billionaire. If he's not a billionaire, he's worth many hundreds of millions—very, very wealthy. The other day, he announced that he was starting a paid newsletter, and I think it was $100 a year. What's funny is there are two things that I found to be true. First, I've talked to someone who says they don't want to be public, and then they get on Twitter or they get on YouTube or something, and they taste that dopamine. They go, "Oh, this is nice! I'm going to do this again." They love it! Even though, you know, the people who are like, "Oh, I can't do it. I don't want to do it. I don't want to be the whole guy," they get in the public eye and they love it. The second thing I've noticed is that even people who have big companies—maybe venture-backed companies—and there's a very likely outcome where they're wildly wealthy, even making $50,000 or $100,000 a month, that can be addicting. I wonder what Chamath's play is with that, but he has a paid newsletter now.

Shaan Puri

Well, even worse, he's like, "Yeah, and we're going to have it be paid." So that's really cool because the revenue from that makes this whole thing sustainable. We can use it to hire more researchers and do better research. I was like, "Hey, why don't you take the 1% interest on your savings account that you have with JPMorgan right now and use that to pay for seven researchers?" It's fine, actually. Like, it's crazy to me that people say, "What's the point of money if you don't say 'fuck you'?" Like, what's the point of being a billionaire if you're going to do a paid newsletter? What is happening right now?

Sam Parr

Is it? I don't understand. It's addicting. So, my being is where a lot of people who would make fun of lifestyle businesses... Once, I mean, I was that person. I was like, "I wanna go big." Then I started tasting a monthly income that's good. I'm like, "Oh, this is awesome!"

Shaan Puri

I was texting Andrew Wilkinson, making fun of him too, because he was doing a paid Twitter subscriber thing. I was like, "Dog, you have a foundation. You're talking here, signing the Giving Pledge. What do you care about this $10K a month subscriber revenue that you now have to go tap dance for to perform and give them their value?" But it hits for him. There's something to it that, for that, it's like giving him that value. I couldn't believe it to the point where I told him, "The only explanation for this that makes any sense to me is you're using the Twitter paid features so that Elon is like, 'See, this guy's doing it,' and he starts retweeting you because you're promoting his thing that he's trying to make work. Then you end up becoming friends with Elon Musk." I said, "That's the only reasonable explanation for this."

Sam Parr

and he denied it he denied it

Greg Isenberg

I actually get Andrew doing his premium X thing a little bit more because he's having interaction with his fans. But the Chamath thing around putting up gated content makes absolutely no sense.

Shaan Puri

Did you have, Greg, any other ideas or niche businesses you wanted to get off your chest?

Greg Isenberg

let's just rapid fire

Shaan Puri

alright give us give us one

Greg Isenberg

This one's a happy idea. So, it's a crazy one, but a happy one. It's... listen to me now: **Athletic Greens for dogs!**

Shaan Puri

okay

Sam Parr

okay keep going

Shaan Puri

go on

Greg Isenberg

Athletic Greens came out of nowhere and started sponsoring all these podcasts and YouTubers. I don't know, what do you think their revenue is, Sam?

Sam Parr

600,000,000 500,000,000 I think they kill it but I'll do the homey move and say a 100,000,000

Greg Isenberg

Yeah, okay, more than 100 million. They're really, really crushing it using that model. Now, dogs are similar to humans in the sense that they drink water, they drink tap water. The question is, what if dogs drank something that was better for them than plain old water? Okay, hmm... so here's the playbook: you find the Andrew Huberman for dogs. You sponsor every top dog creator in the "Animals Loved" podcast. You give packets to restaurants and bowls that say this brand for their dogs, and then you profit. The name? We call it "Good Water," and our slogan is, "Good dogs deserve good water." Now, we have to figure out what we can put in the water so that it actually is better than water itself. But this is a good example of how to create a category of one. How do you build something where no one else is playing? I'm really obsessed with these types of opportunities because it's easy to get press. You can see the headlines now.

Sam Parr

Idiot creates water bread for dogs. I can see it now: great headline.

Shaan Puri

Formerly respected individual Greg Eisenberg, yeah, disgraces himself. What a good one.

Greg Isenberg

Yeah, go, go, Ben. There, Sean P says it's really better than water. I swear.

Sam Parr

Is Gatorade for dogs the next great thing? Yeah, like this is some stupid shit, Greg. We're getting a good water boiling. Bad idea. This sounds...

Greg Isenberg

like something misfits

Sam Parr

or what's that called what's that what's that company called that yeah miss ship

Shaan Puri

I gotta tell you, when Craig Clemens came on the pod one time many years ago, he was like, "Guys, what ideas you got?" He said, "VR for dogs." This is a guy who's made like 10 hit products, so he's not just some one-hit wonder. He's had 10 great ideas. On our pod, he comes on and says "VR for dogs," and both you and I were like, we didn't know him that well to roast him like we just did Greg, but we were like, "Tell us more." We were not in on it, but then I swear, every time I leave the house and my dog's sitting there just staring at a wall, I'm like, "I bet your ass I'd strap on a pair of Oculus for dog goggles if it actually kept my dog entertained." So I think he was right on, right in spirit.

Sam Parr

Great! I want to talk to you about some of these ideas because the first one you mentioned is Ryan Holiday, who's been on the podcast. He's my buddy, and I'm a huge fan of his. You seem like you're in a spicy mood!

Greg Isenberg

no I'm always in a spicy mood I just wanna put that out there

Shaan Puri

for the right the record is set

Greg Isenberg

For the record, the record is set. Okay, yeah, let's talk about the first idea. Ryan Holiday is an incredible, incredible guy. He's built such a huge brand around **stoicism**. Stoicism was basically dead unless you were studying philosophy at Columbia. You might have come across people like Seneca or Aristotle, and maybe you'd see quotes here and there, but it was essentially forgotten. What he did is he introduced stoicism, the great name by the way, **Daily Stoic**, to millions of Gen Z and millennials. So, I think there's an opportunity to do exactly what Ryan Holiday did, but in the fable space. Do you remember Aesop? Aesop's Fables? No?

Sam Parr

what is that

Greg Isenberg

Okay, so Aesop is just one of the most well-known storytellers of all time. He created stories like "The Tortoise and the Hare" and "The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing." These are basically little stories that use animals to convey the moral of the story. There's a lot of great content in there, just like Seneca had a lot of great insights. I think that if you got the handle of the Daily Fabler and started telling these incredible stories and quotes from it, you could build an audience really quickly. This is similar to how Ryan Holiday operates. For those who don't know, Ryan Holiday monetized his work through courses and books. However, my favorite part of how he monetizes is that he literally sells a coin he calls a medallion. He has this medallion called "Memento Mori."

Sam Parr

Hey, I have one. Okay, why did you get one? Because he gave it to me, and I thought it was awesome. But I do think it's cool. I carried it around with me for years. I thought it was cool. I forget what its meaning is. Is it like "you're gonna die" or "live the day" or something like that?

Greg Isenberg

Yeah, basically it means "seize the day," right? Like, you're gonna die. And if you know you're gonna die and you're facing mortality, then...

Shaan Puri

it's greek for yolo

Greg Isenberg

Yeah, it's Greek for "YOLO." Memento mori is Greek for "YOLO." So that's a... and people pay $30 for this. I'm sure that he's making a million dollars selling coins to his audiences via Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. It's the same model but for fables.

Shaan Puri

He told us this on the podcast, and it blew my mind. He came on and he was like, "Yeah, I sell this coin." It's like, you know, it cost me whatever. I don't know what it was, but let's call it a dollar just to be generous. Assume this coin costs a dollar. He partnered with this mint in the U.S. They mint the coin, he sends it, and he's like, "Yeah, you know, I've sold shirts before." I think he worked at American Apparel; he was the head of marketing there. He said, "You know, apparel sucks. Merch sucks. Shirts, T-shirts suck because there are so many sizes and colors and whatever." He's like, "There's one SKU; it's one coin."

Sam Parr

there's no returns

Shaan Puri

I sell it in a 2-pack. It ships in an envelope because it's the lightest weight thing, so shipping is easy. Making it is easy, and selling it is easy because it's a single SKU product. He's like, "It was the low headache way to have a merch store for stoicism," and I was like, this guy's a genius. I remember, I don't know if he told us or I was doing some math when I was thinking about it, but I'm pretty sure he's made over $20,000,000 just selling this coin.

Sam Parr

I think on the pod he said he's sold tens of 1,000 of coins

Shaan Puri

yeah then if you do the math it's like whatever I think that you know $25 $20 a coin or something like that

Sam Parr

Yeah, I mean, he told us, and he's killing it. But what did you say here? You said it's harder to be Seneca than it is Sahil Bloom. It's harder to be Aristotle than Alex Hormozi.

Greg Isenberg

Yeah, so there's a bunch of tailwinds with this business. First of all, creating content is way more difficult than curating content and distilling content. I want people to know that because there are a ton of businesses that you can create where you don't need to come up with any original ideas. You can just curate amazing ideas that other people will have.

Sam Parr

hey you're talking to 2 of the guys that did that

Shaan Puri

the the hustle did that milk road did that

Greg Isenberg

Exactly. It's way easier to get your own podcast producer than to steal your podcast producer. You know what I'm saying?

Shaan Puri

Oh, also, my newsletter, **The 5 Tweet Tuesday**, is the highest-rated newsletter I've ever made. It has a high open rate and I get the most feedback on it. It's also the easiest thing because I'm just curating five of the most interesting tweets, versus trying to create my own original blog post every Tuesday.

Greg Isenberg

So, yeah, it is easier to be Sahel Bloom than Seneca. It is also easier to be Alex or Mozy than Aristotle because they can just take other people's concepts and curate them. This **daily fable** idea has that tailwind with it, and it has a few more tailwinds. One is that almost 50% of Gen Z is either unaffiliated with any religion or does not believe in God. However, they seek out meaning; it's just human nature to seek out some greater purpose in life. That's why they're filling their time with *Daily Stoic* and could fill their time with something like *The Daily Fable*. This is what I call the **unbundling of religion**.

Sam Parr

what is this pink pink's thing

Greg Isenberg

Pink's is someone I work with, a partner of mine, Jordan. He's rolling around Austin and sees this pink truck outside a house. Outside this pink truck are these men, you know, with mustaches and mullets, wearing these pink shirts tucked in. He's thinking to himself, "Is this a porno shoot? What is going on over here?" Then he sees the logo: Pink's Window Cleaning. He finds out that it's a new window cleaning service based in Austin, and it's actually a franchise business. If you go to their website, pinkswindows.com, they basically have this boring business of window washing, but they've jazzed it up. They even have a merch store where they've apparently sold thousands and thousands of hats. Oh my god, John, look!

Shaan Puri

I was at dinner the other night, and Barsha was wearing this hat. I looked at it and said, "What's this? Just something cool? I know you're doing something cool. What is this?" Barsha is one of those guys who knows the indie bands, the cool restaurants to eat at, and all the cool stuff. So, I was like, "Why else would he be wearing a window washing hat? This makes no sense." He replied, "It's this brand called Pinks. They're really cool." I asked, "They're cool window washing? How do you even know? Compared to what? I could tell you one window washing brand, let alone the coolest one." He said, "Yeah." I continued, "So you bought the hat?" He replied, "I bought the hat. Style points, baby!" That was the end of that story. I went back home and ordered a Pinks hat because I thought, "If it's cool, then I will be the follower and try to do it too."

Greg Isenberg

So, this is part of a bigger trend. I think this is kind of like the "Dollar Shave Clubification" of boring businesses. I believe a lot of younger people are going to be buying some of these businesses. You know, boomers are retiring... you know the story there. But I think what they're going to do is make it feel like an indie band. You remember the Dollar Shave Club video, right? It was funny. Yeah, it took something boring—razors, shaving, Gillette—and made it super cool and fun. And that's what Pink's is doing.

Shaan Puri

That's actually super smart because that kicked off a huge wave of D2C brands. Like, Sam always jokes, "What’s your joke about D2C brands? How do you know a D2C brand when you see one?"

Sam Parr

Well, because they like... it's always lowercase. It's the same font. They always use millennial pink.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. So, the Dollar Shave Club kicked off this wave of DTC (Direct-to-Consumer) brands, like Casper, Away luggage, and then, you know, just one after another. There are hundreds of them now. The idea was basically to take a boring category, do best-in-class branding around it, put a significant amount of money or creative effort into the branding, and then sell that kind of commodity product online. What you're saying is that people are now going to do that for these sweaty startup businesses. Instead of the boring brands—if you look at self-storage or U-Haul—these are some of the worst-looking brands you'll ever see. Maybe instead of the lowercase block letter font with the soft palette, you know, that millennial pink, it could be this vintage retro indie band look that becomes the go-to for window washing, trash haul removal, HVAC, and all this stuff. Is that what you're saying? Because I think that's actually kind of brilliant.

Greg Isenberg

Yeah, I'm gonna call my shot here and say that **Pinks** is the beginning of this whole new generation. Over the next 5 to 10 years, you're gonna see Pinks for: - X - Lawn care - Pest control - Car wash - Catering - Pet grooming - Snow removal I think it doesn't necessarily need to be like nostalgia plus design, but it could also just be different, interesting, and unexpected.

Sam Parr

So, the brand behind Pink's is called Resi Brands. It looks like they own three or four things. They own one called Garage Up, which is about making your garage look cool and clean. Then there's Pink's, and there's that one painter. If you Google it, you can find that the guy who owns it is named Steven Montgomery. He's young, with sleeve tattoos. He looks maybe 30; he looks like a kid. It's pretty fascinating. This is a really interesting find. Do you know what their revenue is for Resi Brands? Is it going well?

Greg Isenberg

Yeah, so first of all, he is young. I think he graduated college like 5 or 6 years ago. Resi Brand started recently, and within the last couple of years, their painting brand— that one painter— is the fastest growing painting company in the United States. So this is a model that's starting to work. If I'm like a PE fund, this is what I'm doing. I'm basically acquiring boring businesses, hiring an agency like Late Checkout, and I'm building brands, not boring businesses.

Shaan Puri

he's like I'm joining hampton yep then I hardly check out find some talent on

Greg Isenberg

shepherd exactly

Shaan Puri

bada bing bada boom up there

Sam Parr

We... I was... I used to be close with Brian, the guy who started 1-800-GOT-JUNK. He was telling me all about franchises. So, 1-800-GOT-JUNK was its own thing. He started with just one truck and grew it. I think now he owns 100% of it. It does like $200 million to $300 million in revenue—really valuable business. But he was telling me that they took off when they did franchises. That's when they really started kicking ass. However, dealing and working with franchise owners, he said—or I don't know if he said it or CEO Cameron did—it's very, very, very hard. I think it's sort of like the agency business where you're like, "Oh, it looks so simple. You just do this, you do that." But doing it every single day is a huge challenge. It's almost like working in the restaurant industry. You know, your server won't show up because they're hungover, or you have to deal with fights every once in a while. I think it has a similar type of headache.

Greg Isenberg

you know what

Sam Parr

I mean

Greg Isenberg

It's probably hard to manage... I want to be clear on this: Pink's actually started as one location in Austin, and now they're allowing you to franchise your own Pink's. If you want to bring one to New York or wherever, they basically charge a 2% marketing fee, a 7% royalty fee, and a franchise fee of at least $49,000. I think it's $49,000 to $100,000. They actually share some of their revenue numbers. For one of their Austin locations, they've got 7 employees, they're doing $742,000 in revenue, and they're making a 36% profit on that, which amounts to $268,000. So, it's a pretty good business. And yeah, you're right that it's a pain to manage some of those employees, but there's something here.

Shaan Puri

Although I gotta say the disclaimer: we don't know if this is a great business. It's not advice. Also, you know, franchise headquarters tend to share the numbers of the best performing franchises, not the average or the median. We talked about a business that has a franchise, and I was like, "Oh, this is a cool idea. I think this thing could..." You know, just looking at the traffic, it looked like it might have... Here's a guess at how much it was making. Then their franchise calendar got booked out; the meetings got booked out for like four months after the pod came out. So, definitely can't say I personally endorse this. Maybe Greg does, but I personally do not. It's not my first million sponsored.

Greg Isenberg

Okay, so what I was going to say about Pink's is that I didn't know anything about franchises until, like any internet entrepreneur, I went down the Pink's rabbit hole. I didn't realize that franchises are regulated by a franchise board. That's also just an interesting thing to know about. If you want to do a franchise, you have to go to these portals and apply. There’s only certain information that they can disclose, so I found that quite interesting. Then, the other interesting thing that got me thinking about Pink's and franchises is that I started considering what a franchise model looks like for the internet. So, what is a franchise? A franchise is basically a set of... it's a business model, a brand, and support for an entrepreneur. How could we bring that, or is there an opportunity to bring that, to the internet?

Shaan Puri

I had the same thought when you were talking earlier about your agency and how scaling agencies is hard. Maybe I don't know why, but franchising was on my mind. I was like, "I wonder why." If I were me, and I have a big audience, I have a large ability to create a brand and get customers. The painful part is the operations. What most people do is they partner with somebody to run the operations, but they're going to run into the scaling headaches and bottlenecks along the way. I was thinking, "What if I franchised it?" This means you could become one of my operators or a partner in the business. I'm going to hand you customers automatically. You don't have to know how to do internet marketing or build your own brand. You just have to fulfill the demand that I generate. Let's just say it was, I don't know, design or web development or something. You could just have a three-person team that's going to produce high-quality work and do as much work as you're able to generate. But we don't have to create a 100-person agency headquarters that has managers and managers to ensure the quality of work. Then we wouldn't have to increase prices because of these layers of management. Maybe there's another way. I don't know if that fully makes sense, but it was a thought that came to mind earlier when you were talking about scaling agencies.

Greg Isenberg

Maybe what we're saying is that the next generation of creator-led agencies actually looks more like franchises than they do what they are now.

Shaan Puri

Right, because normally a franchise... the reason you franchise is because you can't geographically expand. So, like, why did Chipotle initially franchise out? It was because this concept works. We can physically only launch so many locations ourselves with the capital we have and the time we have. We can't be in Alabama right now, but there should be some Chipotles in Alabama. So, they find a franchisee there. With the internet, you don't have the geography problem. That's why I think most internet companies never franchise. However, I do think that for things that are like services... you know, a service is rendered. I think that's kind of similar in that you run into servicing bottlenecks.

Greg Isenberg

So, where I disagree with you on the geography thing is that I think it's not that we don't have a geography problem on the internet. It's just that geography is defined differently. In the real world, geography is defined at the corner of 25th and 5th Avenue, whereas on the internet, you have an audience. You have people coming into your store every day. It's just a different definition of geography. I think that if someone could figure out—and this is for the audience—if someone could figure out how we could take the benefits of a franchise model, we could really make progress. The reason is, if you go to Chipotle in New York City or you go to Chipotle in San Francisco, the burrito tastes the same. The problem with creator-led agencies is that the type of product is very different as those businesses are scaling, unless the operators have been doing this for many years. So, I think there's something here.

Shaan Puri

There's another version of this that is kind of on the internet. Are you guys familiar with EOS? No? Okay, so EOS is basically an operating system for entrepreneurs. We've all felt it: you're a CEO, you're running your business, and you're making it up as you go. It's not just like that analogy, "Oh, we're building the plane as we're flying it." It's like, no, we're literally trying to figure out what shape will fly while we're flying it. So, you're making up how to run your company, but you don't need to. There are best practices for how to run a company that will apply to like 80-90% of businesses. What EOS did was, the guy wrote a book called *Traction*. I don't know the full backstory, but in *Traction*, he's talking about how he runs his business. It's like, "Oh, we come up with our annual plan, and we use the scorecard. Here's the scorecard template; you can go download that for free." It's basically just like, "Here's a blueprint, a model for how to run your company." I've never used it.

Sam Parr

I used it. I know a lot of people use it. It's like you have rocks, and each person is responsible for three rocks. It's like this whole strategic thing.

Shaan Puri

OKRs is somewhat similar to it, which is like a goal-setting system. EOS is actually kind of a monstrous business from what I understand, and the way they work is through this franchise model. What they do is they have these implementers. EOS basically takes the lead and then they're like, "Cool, you're interested in implementing EOS." It's really expensive. Like Sam, when you did it, what did you do for Hampton or for Hustle?

Sam Parr

For the hustle, I just read the book and then I implemented it. I showed people how to do it. I couldn't afford to do the normal thing, but it's many tens of thousands of dollars for like a two-day work.

Shaan Puri

like 25 or 50 k or something like that so yeah it's like quite expensive for most people to like swallow that or it's just like I don't know you have to have a lot of conviction that that's gonna really help you in order to pay this but these there are a bunch of people out there that are just simply eos implementers they're not as they're not like they're not part of the company but they are basically like these kind of freelance people that will do this I don't know the exact structure so I'm talking a little little you know off the off the top here so so I might get some things wrong here from what I understand you have traction which is the book that generates a lot of leads people who are interested in implementing this they go to the website they say great I wanna do this they book a call and then they either you sort of like you know buy the system or buy the system with the implementation fee or whatever and then they're paying a person who's like kinda their coach to help them implement this system and then whatever and I actually know a bunch of people that have done this I'm not you what I've noticed is it's kind of more beginning entrepreneurs it's like the best operators I know typically weren't the ones who were telling me they used eos but that's just an observation I don't I don't know if that's if that's fair or not but it is quite heavy it's like a lot it's like a full on system it's like a full revamp of how you what meetings do you run every week and how you do them and all this stuff I've had this craving to do a lightweight version of eos because I have a system that works for me I've used it for like 15 years I've like fine tuned it along the way and I'm like and every time I meet an entrepreneur and they have some bottleneck they're hitting I'm like okay well let's trace down to the root cause of this like what's getting you into this pickle and then usually it's that there's something in their process that's causing them to run into this issue and if you fix the process you'll fix the issue and I don't know if it's a perfect process but like it's lightweight which I think is more for someone like me like I'm not gonna go hire eos and pay these guys you know $30,000 and spend 6 months revamping my company probably like I don't really want to do that but if there was a lightweight version I would do it and I think the the only thing that stops me from implementing that is I don't wanna have a giant consulting company that I'm running to do that whereas if there was this franchise model and people could basically come train like come to my workshop seminar and do like a 4 week certification process to learn exactly how to do it and then they could go do it on their own and make their own money doing it that would be fun I would I would do something like that I think that's how eos works

Sam Parr

Yeah, and I wouldn't be surprised if that thing makes like **$30,000,000** a year and **$15,000,000** a year in profit. The people who are into it, they're obsessed with it. Greg, what's this... what's this called? Playing field? I don't know how you found that. That's fascinating because I go to the website and you can't even sign up.

Greg Isenberg

So, Nathan Barry from ConvertKit told me about this one. Basically, it's Tom Brady's manager. He's got this newsletter; it's the most expensive newsletter in the world.

Shaan Puri

you had my attention and now you have my interest so

Greg Isenberg

His company is called **Playing Field** and his newsletter is called **The Brief**. It's invitation-only, and I think there's a maximum of about 1,000 subscribers. In order to get on the list, you actually have to be an NFL owner or you have to be a really badass top player. This is part of a bigger trend, which I think is luxury newsletters. Or even a bigger macro trend, which is that there are all these mega ultra-luxury rich experiences popping up for the top 1%. Be it like **Soho House**, private Disney tours, or **Aman**, that hotel that charges like $5,000 a month.

Sam Parr

5 k 5 k a night

Greg Isenberg

K, $5K a night. And you're seeing that in the market, like reflected. Hermes has a bigger market cap than Nike, you know? So I think the same thing is happening with newsletters. I think there's an opportunity to basically do the opposite of what everyone is trying to do. What everyone is trying to do is build a newsletter to get to the Hustle level or to get to a Milk Road level. But what if you tried to do the complete opposite? What if you created a newsletter for the top 1% that was very, very niche-focused, and you just treated it like a nightclub? My favorite quote is from Andy Warhol. I think he said, "Studio 54 is a dictatorship at the door but a democracy on the dance floor." I think there's a way to bring that Studio 54 mentality to building luxury newsletters in a bunch of different spaces.

Sam Parr

how much do you think they charge for this

Greg Isenberg

I mean we gotta buy an nfl team to find out

Greg Isenberg

so how much does an how much do the jets cost

Shaan Puri

Dude, this idea of style points... I mean, wow! This is incredible. What a hilarious and incredible idea that actually makes sense when you think about it. There was a guy; there was a big article in something like, you know, Forbes or whatever. It was about this guy, and he's got this... you know that Raya was like the dating app for hot celebrities or whatever? This guy created like the Raya of experiences or something.

Sam Parr

oh I saw this is the guy you partnered with justin timberlink

Shaan Puri

Miria, I guess... Yeah, this guy's specialty is getting like super VIP experiences. That's like one-of-a-kind experiences that you can't... you can't buy or you can't find anywhere else.

Sam Parr

Yeah, basically, Andrew Wilkinson told me about it, if I remember correctly. Andrew Wilkinson either went to the Grammys or the Oscars—one of those big events. He sent me this picture of him in a tuxedo on the red carpet, and I was like, "What the hell?" He goes, "Yeah, I was part of this community or this service called... I forget what it was called, but the guy started with Justin Timberlake or something like that, went through Y Combinator, and it's about getting experiences that you can't normally get, but you can buy your way into if you know the right people."

Shaan Puri

Right, right. Okay, I'm going to read you some of the quotes from this thing. So here’s what it says: "You know, somebody will call him and they'll say, like, he could basically get you treated like you were an American diplomat. You needed to be handled like that. He could do that for you." And so he's like, "Oh, you know, you need this epic party in Mexico with a private chef? Just tell me what you need. You don't have to worry about the rest; it's going to happen." What he'll do is create experiences like, "Okay, you're not just going to the Beyoncé concert. You're going to get to go into the dressing room and hang out afterwards. Or she's going to call your kid on stage and they get to sing with her." It's something that he's like, "one of one" style experiences. So here’s what it says: "Mira only accepts ultra high net worth people, defined as people worth over $30,000,000." He says, "This isn't the 1%; it's the 0.003%. You must be willing to spend an average of $1,000,000 a year on lifestyle alone." So just on these experiences, you're willing to spend $1,000,000 in order to get in. Let me see if it has... He's focusing on the needs of the top 10,000 people in the world, and we're going to do for them what nobody else can do. So he's like, he's almost like a fixer, like in... you know.

Sam Parr

the wolf

Shaan Puri

Fiction. He's like the wolf. He's like the one you call in when you need that special something.

Greg Isenberg

Yeah, so that's for physical experiences. But I think what you're starting to see is this trend around apps and software newsletters as a status symbol. What's another example of that? Raya was a great example, but I think Superhuman is another good example. Superhuman is that email software that a lot of VCs use. It's kind of like $30 a month or something. It's kind of a flex that you can say "Sent from Superhuman." Let's be real, Gmail is probably better than Superhuman, but having "Sent from Superhuman" adds this layer of, "Oh, I take my job really seriously. I'm a part of the 1%." So, I think there's an opportunity for people to not only create a playing field for X, but also Superhuman for X and other software for X.

Shaan Puri

Well, like the easiest example of this on the internet is NFTs, right? NFTs were exactly this. So, like, just to your point about Hermès having a higher market cap than Nike. When NFTs were out there, they were basically luxury art. I forgot who said this, but someone mentioned, "Art is just money you could hang on your wall." I thought that was great. Well, you know, NFTs were basically money you could hang on your profile. That's why people would spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on an ape or a punk because it meant something. When these were happening, my buddy Vishal told me, "Oh yeah, these are Veblen goods." I was like, "What's a Veblen good?" I've never heard of that. Do you guys know what this is?

Sam Parr

no what's that word I don't even know what that word means

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so basically, a **Veblen good** is something where the demand increases as the price increases. Most goods follow the traditional supply and demand curve, which states that as the price decreases, the demand will increase for that item. A Veblen good works the exact opposite way: as the price decreases, the demand also decreases. This is why NFT projects can get huge overnight. If the price runs up, it puts that product in more demand. But if the price starts to crash, the NFT's value crashes with the price, and the demand crashes with it. Once you understand that there's a set of luxury goods like this, it explains a whole class of products. You know, the first time I heard about a **Birkin bag**, I was like, "Oh, so it's got like an elevator inside? What's the deal? Why is this so expensive? Why do people care?" Well, they care because you can't just buy it. I asked, "Well, you can't buy it? What do you mean? Why don't they sell it? They should sell more of these!" And they're like, "No, no, no. You have to earn the right to buy the Birkin bag." I had a cousin who flew to Paris to go to the store to try to buy a Birkin bag. I was like, "You made a vacation out of this?" And she's like, "Yeah, I've been working my way up. I had to buy all these other luxury bags just to be invited to possibly buy a Birkin."

Sam Parr

Holy shit, dude! These bags are... I'm looking at a used one on some website. It's a quarter of a million dollars, and then there are other used ones for $30,000. So, it's like the cheap end is **$30,000** for these bags.

Shaan Puri

I think it's like 50 k if you just buy it from the story ish

Sam Parr

holy shit

Shaan Puri

And you know, it's a status symbol because even among luxury buyers, you can't buy everything. You could have all the money you want; you could walk into Louis Vuitton and buy everything. However, you can't buy a Birkin. Why? Because a Birkin is elevated above that. I'm like, wow, there's no end to the status game that gets played when it comes to this stuff. It makes you think, you know, remember when the iPhone came out? That guy made an app that cost $1,000, and it was called the "I'm Rich" app or something like that. It was just a red light or something that would turn on, and that meant you bought the "I'm Rich" app for $1,000. It did nothing else besides that, and it got so popular that Apple then started to take it off the store because it was like, "This is not what we want." But the fact that that worked tells you something about the psychology of people—that they would do that to signal their status.

Sam Parr

Man, this is amazing! I've heard that word, but I've never actually seen these bags. This is wild to me. This is... this is insane. Wow! Alright, what do we want to do now? We gotta wrap up in a minute, yeah?

Shaan Puri

give us one more one more greg

Greg Isenberg

Stripe Atlas for trademarks. So, we recently filed a trademark. We bought the domain **boringmarketing.com** and it's dope. The business started scaling and we're like, "Oh shit, we need a trademark here." I don't know if you guys have filed for trademarks, but the process is insane.

Sam Parr

it's it's a pain in the butt

Greg Isenberg

It's a pain in the butt. It's actually quite expensive, and you even have to finish your work by going on these Craigslist-like sites. It's pretty brutal.

Shaan Puri

Well, let’s explain what happens. Typically, what you do is hire a lawyer. So, you know, you already start off on the wrong foot. Then they say, "Great! Can't just file this. Kind of do a search first." You want this light search for $300, or you want the comprehensive search, which might actually find the thing for $800. You're like, "I guess I'll do the search," because they're like, "If you don't do the search..." I'm like, "What if I don't do the search?" They say, "Well, we could file it, and that'll cost you money, but then you don't know if you get it or not." I'm like, "Cool, for like how long?" They're like, "Oh, like a year, maybe a year and a half." But then I have to operate my company, right? So, what happens if I don't get it? They say, "Well, you might need to change your company's name." I'm like, "Alright, I guess I'll do the search then." Then you hire them for the search, and they're like, "Great! Now we could file. Hey, which class do you want to file in?" You're on USPTO, the Craigslist-looking site you're talking about, and you're trying to figure out what the hell's going on. Finally, you file it, and then nothing happens. Basically, like a year later, you'll get a letter saying you got approved, and then you're like, "Was that even necessary?" This is just a crazy process overall.

Greg Isenberg

Exactly. So, it's very similar to what happened with Stripe Atlas. For those who don't know, Stripe Atlas is $500, and you can basically form a legal entity, issue stock to founders, and file an 83(b) election, which is super painful in the United States. They took something that was really painful and expensive and made it easy and cheap. The smartest thing about that for Stripe, which is obviously a payments company, is that once you've set up all those things, they basically send you a Stripe link. Stripe makes money when you sell stuff, so you're all ready to go. It essentially onboards you to Stripe, which is brilliant. There is the same opportunity to do that for trademarks. The name I would use if I were doing this would be "Mister Trademark," and the slogan could be something like "Putting You Out of Your Misery." I think that either something like this gets bought by Stripe, so I see an opportunity there. However, I actually think you would probably try to hold out for something like that and allow yourself to onboard to other different services. I believe you could expand this beyond trademarks to patents as well. I have some thoughts on patents and trademarks. I don't know if patents and trademarks are just astrology for entrepreneurs, but I've been at companies where we've had patents. For example, at StumbleUpon, which was acquired by my company, I was on the management team there. I found out that one of the reasons I sold the business was because I was like...

Greg Isenberg

These guys have the patent on a recommendation engine.

Sam Parr

which is mostly nonsense right

Greg Isenberg

dude it was like they were like we have the patent on this this alone is worth

Greg Isenberg

You know, $500 to $1,000,000,000 because basically they had the patent on if you upvote something or downvote something and there's a recommendation engine at the core of it. That is their patent, a.k.a. TikTok.

Sam Parr

I think that's worked a couple of times though on the internet. I believe Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus, the guy who started Zynga, had some... what? What did I get his name wrong? What did you say?

Shaan Puri

pincus no we're gonna go with that

Greg Isenberg

yeah marcus pincus is a

Sam Parr

marcus pincus whatever

Shaan Puri

pekis would be such an outrageous name

Sam Parr

I don't know

Greg Isenberg

he's a

Sam Parr

He's an outrageous guy. Didn't he own... didn't they own the patent that, if memory serves correct, I believe they owned a patent on the algorithm for social media? I think they sold it to Facebook, or maybe they even gave it to Facebook in exchange for shares. Did you guys not read that story?

Shaan Puri

No, I don't know that story. But when we bought the Bebo brand back, we got these patents with it. They had a patent for the whiteboard feature, meaning you could go on someone's profile page. I don't know if you remember this, but you could doodle—just draw on a Microsoft Paint-looking whiteboard. We had the patent for that, and I was like, "Cool." But Facebook had that feature at the time. Facebook had something called "the wall" that was the same thing; they used to have that feature too. MySpace had graffiti, and it was the same feature. They were like, "Yeah, these don't mean anything." I was like, "Nothing? Is it patent like ironclad?" They were like, "Yeah, just not on the internet." That's been my experience. I don't know if that's actually true or not, but it seems like trademarks kind of mean something. If you don't own your trademark and somebody does, they can basically tell you you can't keep operating under that name, which is painful. When you sell a company, they like for you to have everything buttoned up—like, "Yes, I'm incorporated, I paid my taxes, I have my trademarks, I'm free and clear to be bought." But I don't think patents do anything on the internet, from what I understand.

Sam Parr

Well, okay, so in 2000... Yeah, so Pincus and Reid Hoffman, they own this patent called the "6 degrees patent." Facebook, I believe, bought it from them for $700,000. But yeah, there's an article called "Who Owns Facebook's Most Important Patent?" So apparently it was a thing. Cool, Greg. So you're gonna come on next time. Are you gonna have goodwater.com, or no? You're a... you're a .io type of guy?

Greg Isenberg

well shots fired shots fired

Sam Parr

you're a well you're what's your agency now it's it's there's

Shaan Puri

There are two wars happening right now, and that was a hate crime you just committed. You called him a "dot I O" guy.

Greg Isenberg

All I know is that I'm wearing glasses. And you know, if that... oh, here we go, it's Samp.io just joined the chat.

Sam Parr

what what's your where do where do people connect it's it's is it public school or late checkout

Greg Isenberg

checkout dot studio

Sam Parr

Late Checkout dot Studio. I see, I knew you're not a dot com type of guy. You have Late Checkout dot Substack dot com, right? I like your newsletter. Where else? What else do you want to promote? You're always tweeting cool stuff. You always tweet things with the first line being like, "The future of blank is blank," which I dig.

Shaan Puri

Greg, back in the day, wrote a series of blog posts called something like "Tiny Little Life Hacks" or something. What's the name of that post, Greg? It was like 10 years ago.

Greg Isenberg

little life hacks guaranteed to improve your life but this is before like thread boy

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly! You were ahead of your time. Now, today, you see these all the time, but back then, these were great. I actually implemented many of these little ones that you did, like a three-part series. It was so good that people called you back for an encore and a second encore on top of that. So, go read that series if you want to love Greg. If people read that, they'll fall in love with you, I guarantee it. Well, that's why I'm here.

Sam Parr

one is dress formal when you go on flights do you do that

Greg Isenberg

It worked back in the day. It actually worked, you know? This is years ago. Yeah, what else is on that list?

Shaan Puri

yeah we don't pick them up

Sam Parr

When you're out with people breaking bread, put your phone on airplane mode. Yeah, that's a good one. Pour people's drinks before yours; people appreciate that. So Ceeva, my bud Ceeva, he did that to me this weekend and I was wooed. He *wooed* me.

Greg Isenberg

And I saw a picture of you and Ceeva today. It looks like you guys are dating. So, yeah, that obviously works.

Sam Parr

I'm leaning into his arms. It definitely worked. I scheduled 30 meetings, not one-hour meetings. You get through just as much. Yeah, I totally believe that.

Greg Isenberg

But here's the thing... this is all obvious now. So, I'm good at saying that. I looked like an idiot back then. All these ideas might sound like stupid ideas right now, like the good water stripe atlas thing.

Sam Parr

I'm just joking I think good water you could definitely make that work

Greg Isenberg

yeah I'm I'm the I'm the guy who looks stupid in the moment but looks good in 5 years

Shaan Puri

accursed life

Sam Parr

Yeah, well, number 3 is to send postcards to friends. So I'll be on the lookout for a postcard.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, you had one that was like, "Go to this little website and they have a bunch of unique gifts." It's like, just show up—not on a gift-giving occasion—but when you go meet someone, just bring one of these for them. People obviously remember it. These are sound principles, like "How to Win Friends and Influence People," but it's real. Especially in Silicon Valley, the social IQ is so low. But if you did any of these things, like, you know, if somebody's listening to this in Texas, they're like, "Yeah, you pour the other person's water first," or "You show up with a gift." But, you know...

Greg Isenberg

I mean, I almost sold my last company because I met someone... I gave them a Tiny Buddha [figurine], and they remembered me. Like, they made an offer to buy my business. So it *does* work.

Sam Parr

It's one of those things where you're like, "Of course I should do this," but you don't actually do it. Then you read it, and I'm like, "Alright, fine. I'll start sending gifts."

Shaan Puri

That's a perfect way to explain it. All of these are things that you're like, "Yeah, I know, I know those. Those aren't new." And then if you just said, "Okay, cool. Let's look at this question differently: How many of these do you do regularly?" Now all of a sudden, instead of knowing 10 out of 10, you do 1 out of 10 regularly. Like... that gap is why I like that blog post.

Sam Parr

Greg, dude, we appreciate you coming on. You're full of ideas. I... you were supposed to be solo with Sean. Sorry I crashed your party today, but things change. I appreciate you doing this and coming with us.

Greg Isenberg

this is a blast I was smiling the whole time

Sam Parr

good that's a win alright appreciate it that's the pod