How to launch a $100M DTC brand | My First Million #194

Side Hustles, Keto, Wine, and Automation - June 25, 2021 (almost 4 years ago) • 01:08:29

This My First Million episode features Justin Mares, a serial entrepreneur and author of the book Traction. Sam Parr and Shaan Puri discuss Justin's entrepreneurial journey, his insights on side hustles, and some of his current projects. Justin shares his experience with various ventures, from bone broth and keto supplements to non-alcoholic wine and innovative health challenges.

Side Hustles: Justin emphasizes the importance of side hustles for achieving financial freedom and outlines four categories: buying existing assets, leveraging marketplaces with existing demand, launching unique products with paid acquisition, and building service businesses. He shares his successes with buying and improving FOMO, a Shopify app, and an apartment building in Las Vegas. He also discusses leveraging Udemy and other platforms to sell courses and products.
Kettle & Fire and Perfect Keto: Justin describes the success of Kettle & Fire, his bone broth company, and Perfect Keto, a keto supplement company he co-founded. He explains how both ventures grew significantly, exceeding initial expectations. He also touches upon the importance of raising capital for growth and building a strong team.
Wearable Challenge: Justin talks about an experiment he conducted where participants wore continuous glucose monitors and received financial incentives for maintaining healthy glucose levels. He explains the success of this experiment and how it led to the creation of WearableChallenge.com.
Health and Wellness: Justin shares his health-conscious lifestyle, which includes avoiding microwaves, plastics, and vegetable oils, and prioritizing whole foods and quality meats. He discusses the impact of these choices on his overall well-being.
Non-Alcoholic Wine: Justin introduces Surely, his non-alcoholic wine company. He explains the growing trend of non-alcoholic beverages and his belief in its potential for significant growth.
Automation Officer: Justin proposes the idea of an "automation officer" for companies to leverage no-code tools and virtual assistants to increase productivity. He shares how his company utilizes virtual assistants effectively.

Transcript:

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Sam Parr	I feel like there's a world where this... let's be conservative. I feel like this is very clearly a $10,000,000 a year thing that makes $2,000,000 in profit. Dude, there's like a picture in the background that is just getting my attention so much. It's crooked. Do you see it?
00:29	Shaan Puri	yeah yeah
00:31	Sam Parr	There's a whole subreddit called... I forget what it's exactly called, but it's about minor things that are just slightly off. It's like, "What were they thinking?" It's like a...
00:38	Shaan Puri	mildly like there's mildly interesting irritating or something like that
00:43	Sam Parr	no it's called mildly infuriating
00:44	Justin Mares	mildly infuriating that's what I thought
00:46	Sam Parr	did you did you just guess that
00:47	Shaan Puri	well I know about mildly interesting so
00:50	Sam Parr	Yeah, anyway, what's going on, Justin? Do you know what you're getting into? Like, do you know what we do?
00:57	Justin Mares	yeah no I know a good bit
00:59	Sam Parr	Alright, good. So, we'll just do a really quick intro. You've done a bunch of stuff. I've known you since 2013, I think, right?
01:07	Justin Mares	yeah I I think actually a little earlier when you were doing the roommates how how do I make this
01:12	Sam Parr	We both had roommate businesses, and we just became friends. He moved to San Francisco. I ended up introducing him, or no, he met a girl he dated for a long time in the elevator on his way up to our meeting. She was my coworker. So, we just ran in the same circle of friends for years.
01:33	Shaan Puri	That's pretty good. So, did you get the number in the elevator or what? Was the... The elevator is not... It's only a 2-floor, you're on the 2nd floor, right Sam? So it's not too long to assume it was a fast close. Yeah, how'd that happen? Tell me.
01:46	Justin Mares	About it, yeah. He met it. Do you want me to share this? I'm happy to.
01:52	Shaan Puri	I'll do
01:52	Justin Mares	it I
01:53	Sam Parr	don't even get high
01:54	Justin Mares	The sweet... Yeah, I mean we met and this girl walked into an elevator. I was just making a joke. She was, I think, maybe a tiny bit drunk and tried to hit a button, but there are no buttons in the elevator. It's one of those fancy ones that like you walk into and the attendant sends you somewhere. So I just started sort of making fun of her for that, and in the several-story ride with like 2 other stops, I was like, "Hey, we should hang out." Then we hung out at Sam's apartment-less party and exchanged numbers, and we've been friends since.
02:22	Shaan Puri	Amazing! Okay, and Sam, did you know that Justin was going to go on to do great things at the time? Did you spot that early, or no? Was he just another dude?
02:29	Sam Parr	Yeah, well, we were both scheming. We were only 22, I think, when we met. That was a while ago. He had this roommate thing, and I had a roommate thing. I think anyone who ever starts... that's like, there's like 3 things that you start right when you graduate college, and that's like one of them. So they never work out well; they're never that good.
02:47	Shaan Puri	So anyway, is that your music discovery? Why is it so hard to find new music? We could solve that problem. It's roommate... roommate discovery is another one. And then food delivery.
03:00	Justin Mares	t shirt
03:00	Shaan Puri	it depends who
03:01	Sam Parr	you're and then like or like college craigslist
03:03	Shaan Puri	Yeah, exactly. Local Craigslist sometimes has a to-do list, or sometimes if it's like your first time commuting, you're like... I know this for engineers. I met like 10 engineers that all made the same thing first, which was basically a bus tracking software that tells them when the bus is coming. They are just so tired of the unpredictability. Like, is it 7 minutes more or less? They're like, "I need to make an app for this."
03:25	Sam Parr	Well, so yeah, we are both doing that and I knew... I mean, whatever, we've... that was a stepping stone for both of us. And then he started... You co-wrote a book with a guy, or no, you sold a company or you joined a company? Somehow you're working with my friend Terry and their whole business was buying and selling stuff. That was like pretty successful, I believe. And then you also started working on writing this book called "Traction" with this DuckDuckGo guy. Gabe is his name, right?
03:53	Justin Mares	yep exactly
03:54	Sam Parr	And then it was... and then he was doing Udemy courses. I was like, "Yeah, I mean, we're all like schemers." He had like Airbnbs, and I think you bought cars and rented them to Uber drivers.
04:03	Justin Mares	No, my roommate was doing that. I was looking at doing it but decided it was a miserable business, so I didn't end up doing it.
04:08	Sam Parr	And we were... we were always doing stuff. We had... you had a Udemy course. I probably was selling some type of information stuff, and then he started this thing called Kettle and Fire, which, first of all, I thought was so stupid on so many levels.
04:23	Shaan Puri	here through the first
04:25	Sam Parr	So first, I was like, he was like, "I wanna start selling this hard good." I'm like, "Bro, we work on the internet. Why would you ever wanna start a goods thing?" Then he was like, "It's gonna be food." And I'm like, "Your kid, why would you ever do that?" Then he said it was bone broth, and I was like, "Bone broth? People drink bone broth?" This was before the whole direct-to-consumer (DTC) thing was even a term. I mean, I thought it was the dumbest thing ever, and I was wrong. Right? It's been a smashing success. He started this Kettle on Fire thing, and it's quite big. You've also got my neighbor Sean, who is this guy named Anthony. I don't know who did it first, but one of you guys had this thing called Perfect Keto, where you're selling keto products, and then you guys combined... you.
05:11	Justin Mares	So we partnered up on it basically. I was running Kettle on Fire and, as I do sometimes, looking for another side hustle to start on the side. He had another business that was in the supplement space, but the two of us were just like, "Hey, we should work on a small side project together. Make something that does $20 a month, and once we hit that threshold, we'll blow it all on a ridiculous trip to Japan." That was like the whole goal of the business.
05:36	Sam Parr	and it's like pretty big
05:37	Justin Mares	Right, it's... yeah, I mean, we thought it would take like a year or two to get to $20 a month. We did it in the first 45 days. It was insane.
05:45	Sam Parr	and then kettle and fire is like a big thing too you guys like
05:48	Shaan Puri	I think did you raise
05:49	Sam Parr	money or did you sell a portion of it
05:52	Justin Mares	Yeah, so Kettle and Fire... We bootstrapped for the first 18 months, then raised a tiny bit of money, less than $1,000,000. We ran for another 16 months and then decided that the opportunity was big enough that it made sense for us to raise [more capital]. In 2018, we raised $16,000,000. About half of that went to secondary [markets], and the other half went to actually putting money into the business.
06:14	Shaan Puri	So, I've heard a number that either Kettle and Fire or Perfect Keto, or both, did $100,000,000 in revenue. I don't know if that's a cumulative lifetime number or if that's an annual number. Is this a public number? What can you tell me about this? Because that was a big number, and I was very surprised. I'm a customer; I have like six of your bone broths sitting in my pantry right now.
06:35	Sam Parr	yeah me too I really like
06:36	Justin Mares	I love that
06:37	Shaan Puri	There's one flavor I really like, and I feel like I never get it in any store. Then I'm like, "Alright, let me try these other five and see if any of them can match that one I really love."
06:45	Justin Mares	what's the one that you're super into I
06:47	Shaan Puri	don't even remember which one it's like the top it's like I think it's like one of
06:50	Justin Mares	the thai lime the tom yum
06:51	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I think it's either the Tom Yum or one of the other ones. It's like this Thai curry type flavor. And yeah, yeah, yeah.
06:57	Justin Mares	that that's one of my favorites yeah
06:59	Shaan Puri	Some of those, by the way, are nasty, but some of them are really good. It's like, you know, when you get a pack of cards and you're looking for a hologram or a holographic Charizard inside, and then you get a Squirtle. That's how I feel about killing fire. I know this is not common, but that's just my personal experience with it so far.
07:17	Justin Mares	thanks man I'll take that as a compliment I guess okay
07:20	Sam Parr	but back to back
07:21	Shaan Puri	To the business side, I was a customer, but I was shocked when I heard that $100,000,000 number. What is that number?
07:27	Justin Mares	Yeah, so that's not cumulative. You know, we stopped sort of disclosing revenue numbers recently, but I can say that in 2019, the two businesses combined did north of $100 million.
07:37	Shaan Puri	gotcha and is what is perfect keto so I know kettle and fire what's perfect keto
07:41	Justin Mares	Yeah, so Perfect Keto is a line of supplements and food products for people interested in lowering their carb and sugar intake. We have a clean label line of foods and supplements for people on a ketogenic diet or who just want to eat fewer carbs and no sugars.
07:55	Shaan Puri	gotcha and are you keto
07:56	Sam Parr	and sean the guy who started it by or his partner is literally my next door neighbor
08:01	Shaan Puri	Yeah, but you also say everyone's your neighbor, so I never know what to believe. And then I came to visit you and you drove me around. You're like, "That's where this guy lives, that's where this person lives, that's where this person lives." And now I believe you, but somebody listening to me, I'll be like: "Wait, he said his neighbor is Neville, then he said his neighbor is the guy who made the ice barrel thing that we talked about last time, then he said his neighbor is the student loan guy, then he said his neighbor..."
08:24	Sam Parr	Is this other thing and Student Loan Hero guy, I think, are the same guy. So they live... like he lives about 20 houses down. Anthony literally lives directly... like 30 feet from me.
08:36	Justin Mares	right yeah
08:37	Sam Parr	yeah like literally right there
08:38	Shaan Puri	So, the context here is that you knew Justin, while I've never met Justin. No.
08:45	Sam Parr	I did not not lucy
08:45	Shaan Puri	Oh, you know, well, okay. You've done two things that I think are really interesting. One is the Perfect Keto stuff and Kettle and Fire, basically building a brand that's been pretty damn successful. The other is that you write content, and I want to actually talk about some of the content you write. You have the book "Traction," which is a good book, but on your blog, there's one blog post that I remember. It's been sent to me several times, so I know other people like it too. So let's start there, if you're cool with it. You have this side hustle post on your blog, and I'm assuming this is probably one of your more popular blog posts. Is that right?
09:20	Justin Mares	yeah definitely
09:21	Shaan Puri	And you basically outlined that you've done a bunch of side hustles, and you have... kind of like you break it down as there are these 4 types of side hustles. So can you give us... kind of like give us the side hustle bit here, which is...
09:33	Sam Parr	and if you scroll all the way down to that sheet you're on you'll see your outline
09:36	Shaan Puri	Yeah, which is basically like, what are the side hustles you've done? How do you think about side hustles? And then break those four down for people.
09:45	Justin Mares	Totally! Yeah, so the reason that I got into this is when Sam and I met. You know, the two of us were like, "We want to do this entrepreneurship thing." But in many ways, it's actually a lot easier and emotionally bearable to start a company if you have just income coming in that's covering your expenses. So when I moved to San Francisco, the city is super expensive. I started doing a bunch of side hustles just to try and make income that would give me the freedom to spend my time trying to launch a company that would really create a lot of equity value and sort of like life-changing financial freedom. What I did when I moved to SF was I started Airbnb-ing our place. We had, at one point—yeah, this is 2013—we had the third-ranked Airbnb in San Francisco. We were renting out either our living room most nights or, you know, over the summers, we'd rent it out for like $15 to $18 a month. We were paying $3 a month for the spot, so that was incredible at the time. We just traveled and then launched like Udemy courses. There was a...
10:52	Justin Mares	Where I was buying motorcycles that were on Craigslist in Oakland and selling them in San Francisco because there was like an arbitrage there. I was just doing a bunch of random stuff. When I wrote this article, so many people that I've talked to were like, "You know, I want to understand how to make side income and how to think about this stuff." So I just kind of broke down the different sorts in my mind, like the four kinds of businesses that you can start as a side hustle. Some of these that I've done actually ended up being more real businesses. But do you want me to just talk through the categories and kind...?
11:27	Shaan Puri	Of what I've been sharing, here's a disclaimer: First things first, accept that what you're doing is not meant to be the next Facebook. It's not meant to be a startup. You're trying to make money; you're trying to get some profitable cash flow from a business quickly, without waiting seven years for this thing to pay off. So, let's call it what it is. Alright, let's call a spade a spade. I thought that was an important disclaimer. Now, you had these four groups. So, let's run through them, and then Sam, you tell me if you've also done any in these categories.
11:57	Justin Mares	Yeah, totally. I mean, I think truly if you're Mark Zuckerberg or like a Collison brother, like, fucking raise money and do the massive thing that you're working on. I just think for most people, entrepreneurship is a means to an end, and that end is like a lifestyle that people are trying to create. The more that you can create that and get there, the faster you get financial freedom. I just think that's a useful thing for more people to have in general. So, the four kinds of side hustles that I talked about in my blog post: the first one is buying an existing asset. Basically, you can look at what's an existing asset that you could try and purchase. Leverage your skills, connections, resources, whatever, to upgrade that. You know, make it more cash flow positive, make it do better, whatever. Then you get to capture the value created by upgrading that asset. I did this with Sam. I'm sure you guys could do this if you bought an email newsletter. You know how to run that better. Buy it for $1,000,000, improve it, and you could probably sell it for, you know, $3 to $5 million a couple of years later.
12:59	Sam Parr	Yeah, I was... My friend Ramon bought something that I had a small part of. It was a software, very small software app. When we bought it, maybe it was doing $20,000 a month. All we did was we doubled the price of the product, and it doubled the revenue.
13:14	Justin Mares	amazing
13:15	Sam Parr	and you did that too didn't didn't you own a or you bought a thing called a fomo right
13:19	Justin Mares	Yeah, yeah. So a partner and I bought a Shopify app called Fomo. It was doing $14k a month at the time we bought it. You know, we bought it... we paid less than $400k, I'll say that.
13:30	Sam Parr	less than 400,000
13:31	Shaan Puri	and you yeah
13:32	Justin Mares	which which was like a super good multiple
13:34	Shaan Puri	and you you didn't put some equity
13:35	Justin Mares	down
13:35	Shaan Puri	right so you get seller financing or what'd you
13:38	Justin Mares	Do you remember? So, we had a really interesting situation. The guy basically wanted out. It was a single founder, and we were like, "Hey, we know how to market. We have connections. We can really help grow this thing." So, we bought 85% of the business. We purchased it and then we said, "We're going to buy this and pay you in monthly chunks for the next 20 months." Every month for 20 months, we used the revenue that we were making from Fomo to make our payment to him. My partner and I basically came out of pocket $0 to acquire this asset. We were obviously working on running it. I think it ended up being $5 each to pay the developers for the first couple of months. But yeah, I mean, it was an incredible acquisition.
14:20	Sam Parr	how big is it now
14:22	Justin Mares	now it does about $95 a month sounds like
14:24	Sam Parr	a good deal to me
14:26	Justin Mares	Yeah, it's a good deal. I mean, it's a good deal for everyone. The guy has gotten his time back, he started other companies in the interim, and when we exit this thing, he'll probably make more than he would have made on the exit had he continued to run this for the last 3 years. And with no headache, it's... like a nice [outcome].
14:42	Shaan Puri	So, you're talking about buying. Category 1: Buying an Asset. This can be a house that you Airbnb. It can be an internet company that you just, you know, do what Sam did. You go in the code, you push, you know, Control + F, you find the price, and then you change the number to double, which is like Sam's genius. Or what you did was...
14:59	Sam Parr	You know who I learned that from? It was Terry. I don't know if she was your boss or what, but she taught me how to do that too.
15:05	Shaan Puri	how to how to find the price part
15:07	Justin Mares	of the code or what
15:08	Sam Parr	Well, she was like, "Look, the whole thing is that engineer-led businesses typically are priced poorly, and if you just double the price, it works." She said, "Double the price and then find out which emails or URLs are being used a bunch of times." For example, if you have like 18 people using atuber.com, contact the HR department or whoever handles procurement and sell to them. She kind of taught me the stuff that Justin's old company was doing.
15:34	Justin Mares	Yeah, exactly. So I really like this "buy an asset" thing. I think sometimes you have to have money; other times you can sell or finance. We ended up doing this too with an apartment building in Vegas where we bought a 14-unit apartment building. We could put it all on Airbnb, basically tripled the cash flow, and then sold it 18 months later for, you know, 70% more than what we paid for it.
15:56	Shaan Puri	By the way, in the blog post, you had a couple of examples that I think are useful. We don't have to go too much into them, but you talked about this thing which is like, "Okay, if you know you have the skills to improve the value of the asset." For Airbnb, you were like, "Alright, to get more Airbnb bookings, first, if it's not on Airbnb, we should put it on Airbnb. If it is on Airbnb, we can boost the bookings by these three things." 1. Put more and better photos up. Okay, easy. Anybody can do that, but most people haven't optimized that. 2. Instantly respond to every inquiry so that we get a fast response rate. The algorithm likes that. 3. Get five-star reviews at the end or something like that. So you're like, "I can just take those three levers and I can apply them to any property now that isn't optimized for Airbnb." If they think it's worth $100, I already know it's worth $120 because I know I can just do that playbook again on any property.
16:47	Justin Mares	Yeah, exactly. And that actually leads to the second bucket of side hustles that I talk about, which is basically looking at what is a marketplace with existing demand. You don't have to go out and find the customer; you just provide the supply side. For example, buying and putting a property on Airbnb. All I have to do is understand how Airbnb dictates where I rank and what it wants from me as a supplier. Then my property is going to get booked up. I don't actually have to go find every individual customer that's traveling to San Francisco who can rent our apartment because Airbnb is doing that for me.
17:24	Sam Parr	And you did that with, like, was it you used to have a thing? It was called SQL for Programmers, or what was it called?
17:29	Justin Mares	yeah yeah sequel for programmers
17:32	Sam Parr	yeah yeah yeah
17:33	Justin Mares	Yeah, so basically, I've done this on a couple of platforms. Amazon is a big one; a bunch of people are starting FBA businesses. But I sort of think that focusing on up-and-coming platforms, where the supply side isn't crazy competitive, is actually a really good place to start. When I launched my first Udemy course, I filmed it literally over five days in my bedroom in San Francisco. There was no good quality, no good editing. It was just candidly not an amazing course from a student experience standpoint, but the content was good. Udemy was such an early platform that I put it up there, and just by being literally the first guy to talk about "here's how to learn SQL as a marketer," that course sold, I think, like $60 over the next couple of years. To this day, I still get about $1,000 a month from that course on Udemy, which is absurd. That was all because I recognized an emerging platform that wanted people creating content on the supply side. I focused on how to create a course that could reach people who were already looking for something on that platform.
18:41	Shaan Puri	Don't know if you did this for that, but there are ways to basically figure out what people are searching for. There are tools like Ahrefs or whatever, where we can find out what Google searches people are doing and in what volume. But even on individual platforms, there are ways to figure it out. I know I looked at this business to buy, and it was this girl selling a waist trainer. Do you know what a waist trainer is? No? It's basically... do you know what this thing is? I had no idea what this was before. So, it's like, you know, okay, I'm going to mansplain. Here are three dudes talking about waist trainers. Alright, so you know, if you watch something like "Pirates of the Caribbean" or any movie or show that's based in kind of olden times, girls wear this corset. It's this super tight thing that you squeeze into, and then you wear your dress on top. So, your figure gets... like your stomach gets squeezed out and then your boobs get squeezed out.
19:29	Sam Parr	like spanx or something
19:30	Shaan Puri	Yeah, it's like old school Spanx. So, what waist trainers are is basically like a cinch you wear around your stomach constantly. It makes you look good in the moment, but also the idea is that it trains your muscles or your body to tighten up. You kind of have to keep it flexed in a way for it to not be uncomfortable, I guess. I don't know what the theory is, but that's my guess. It's interesting how the Kardashians talk about this stuff, and it kind of got a little more popular. So, this girl who was building this business, I was like, "Cool! So, what do you spend every month on marketing?" She said, "Oh, we don't spend anything on marketing." I was like, "So, how are you growing so fast?" She replied, "Oh, I just saw that on YouTube. Nobody was owning the keyword for waist trainers and how to size one, how to wear one, do they work?" So, she just created a YouTube channel to be the answer to every search question about waist trainers on YouTube. If you just go search "waist trainers" right now on YouTube, you'll find all her videos.
20:24	Justin Mares	amazing
20:24	Shaan Puri	And so, all her sales just come from that. She was doing a few $1,000,000 a year in revenue and $1,000,000 of profit per year just through that one channel alone.
20:34	Justin Mares	Amazing! Yeah, good for her. But I think exactly what you're talking about is: find where people are searching for something and there's no supply there. That's a really good place to focus. Like when I launched "SQL for Marketers," there was literally almost nothing under the technical marketing or data analytics/data-driven marketing section for Udemy. So I thought, "Cool, if I put that up there, it seems like it'll resonate and do well." Which ended up being correct.
21:04	Sam Parr	and what are the 3rd and 4th ones
21:06	Justin Mares	Yeah, so the third one is basically to launch a unique product in an area where you can buy customers via paid acquisition. Again, I think all of this is super important to remember that you're not building Facebook. If you look at Google AdWords or waist trainers, as you're saying, and there's a gap there, you can figure out how to make a product. Your goal is not to make a $100,000,000 business, but rather to create one that does $1,000,000 a year. There are almost infinite niches on the internet where you can just make a product, buy some rough keywords, and sell through in a category that you know—where you're like the first to market or the first to do a really good job.
21:44	Shaan Puri	in the market
21:45	Sam Parr	that's well
21:45	Shaan Puri	What's an example in that category you've seen, either from yourself, a friend, or someone you've seen recently that's doing that model?
21:52	Justin Mares	Yeah, so there's a company actually that is doing... it's like vests for dogs, but the vests are spiky so that coyotes don't attack your dog. So you can put [the vest on your dog for protection].
22:04	Shaan Puri	this vest
22:06	Justin Mares	Yeah, exactly! You could put this vest on a dog, and then it won't get eaten by coyotes because it's got spikes all over it. I mean, what an incredible niche product! You know, that's definitely not going to go public, but that could be an incredible business. Stuff like that... I mean, honestly, that's what Kettle and Fire was going to be when we first launched it. I had no idea that bone broth would be such a compelling category and that the trend would take off like it has. Our plan was basically to look at Google searches and think, "I think we can build a $20 to $40 a month business."
22:40	Shaan Puri	so when you say you looked at Google searches what does that mean in practical terms most people have never done that so what what what did
22:45	Justin Mares	you do fair so we we use like Google adwords keyword tool just
22:49	Sam Parr	to say like how many
22:50	Justin Mares	that's like
22:50	Shaan Puri	that's like discontinued now yeah I know now you'd have to
22:53	Justin Mares	Use Ahrefs or SEMrush or something, but at the time we used a tool that was basically like: "There's 2,000 people a month looking for 'buy bone broth online', and so if we can be the supplier that will sell you bone broth online..." Assuming we convert even 10% of those people, that's 200 orders at $50 a month. You know, that's a pretty material side hustle. And so that was the reason that we launched Kettle and [Fire].
23:21	Shaan Puri	Fire! Yeah, Google is like, you know, it's like a magic lamp. On one side, you have all the Aladdins out there making wishes, and then you just get to be the genie. So, it's like there are these tools that tell you, "Here's the wishes people are entering into this magic box." They're just hoping for something. If you notice that, exactly, there are more people than I would have expected saying this thing, or asking this question, or wanting this thing. Then you go search for it and you're like, "Wow, these results suck." Okay, how do I just become the top result for that thing? So, you thought Kettle and Fire would do that. Give me a sense of how long it took for you to get from the idea—like seeing that keyword and thinking, "Oh, maybe we could do this"—to actually making, like, I don't know, $1,000 a month. How long was that process for you?
24:00	Justin Mares	So the process took about a year. Most of it was because I'd never done a physical product before, and so it was like just bumbling around in the dark... trying to find someone that can make this stuff. Had a bunch of false starts, but it took us basically 12 months to go from "Hey, I think this is an opportunity" to actually having product in box. But once we had product in box, you know, we did over $20,000 our first month that we were live, so...
24:24	Sam Parr	and you you are you the ceo of kettle on fire
24:28	Justin Mares	I am yeah
24:29	Sam Parr	You've got like three... We're going to talk about this other thing that you're thinking about doing. How are you balancing all this time?
24:34	Justin Mares	it's a good question I I honestly I've never had a good answer
24:38	Sam Parr	to this I just like are you working it well
24:42	Justin Mares	Okay, I mean, some of these things, like Perfect Keto, I don't have a day-to-day role in it anymore. You know, I co-founded it, but I've completely stepped away. One of the things that I think I'm proud of at Kettle and Fire is that we have a phenomenal team. To that extent, I get to work on stuff that only I can do uniquely well, like writing long 15-page posts about how beef is actually not bad for the environment and things like that, which I'm kind of interested in. But a lot of the day-to-day is handled by the team that we've built over the last 5+ years. So, I really am in control of my time in general. Would you just partner?
25:22	Sam Parr	With a guy like Anthony or whoever you're partnering with, how many of these things do you have right now where you have your hands in? Roughly, right now?
25:32	Justin Mares	like 5 probably
25:33	Sam Parr	Okay, and so... but there's one that's your day job, right? Yeah. Okay, so for the other four, when you make these structures with people - so a guy like Anthony, or it doesn't have to be him, but the person that represents him - are you taking a draw from that business at all? Or are you just only going to pay yourself if it sells?
25:53	Justin Mares	Yeah, so at this point, I'm pretty focused on creating equity value. For example, a company I incubated, Shirley Wines, is a non-alcoholic wine company we launched earlier this year. I recruited the team, basically had the idea, tested it, validated it, lined up the supply chain, and hired the operator. The operator and CEO is taking a salary, and I probably won't get a dollar out of that business until we eventually sell it or whatever happens with it. I put in a bunch of my own money to capitalize it and get it up and running, but I'm just like, I'm not going to suck money out of that thing until we have a good outcome.
26:32	Sam Parr	So then, really the only thing you... or not the only thing, I mean the thing you're bringing to the table is you are bringing a little bit of cash. Also, you're bringing some expertise and you're guiding.
26:40	Justin Mares	yeah totally but but it also like
26:42	Shaan Puri	incubated the whole idea in that in that one yeah
26:46	Justin Mares	Yeah, I mean, I think it's basically about trying to create a compelling opportunity for someone. You know, if someone wants to be a founder or CEO today, their options are limited. They can either jump in, take no salary for 12 to 18 months, hope they can figure out an idea, raise money, and do all that kind of stuff. Or they can build a side hustle, which is again a totally different skill set that we're kind of talking about. So with this one specifically, I incubated the idea, had everything lined up, validated that it was big, brought in investors, and basically said, "Hey man, if you want to be a founder and CEO, you can just walk into this role. You take 0 healthcare, 0 salary risk, and you're good. You're a founder, you have a ton of upside, you're this operating CEO, we have investors lined up. It's a big opportunity." It sort of works for both parties.
27:36	Sam Parr	You know, when you are... do you regret or are you thankful that you raised money for Kettle and Fire?
27:43	Justin Mares	Oh, definitely thankful. I mean, really, yeah, for sure. I mean, with Kettle and Fire in particular, the business had grown to a really meaningful amount, and I still had most of my net worth wrapped up in that. So, I think getting some secondary was personally really meaningful. It also meant that I felt more okay pushing for a bigger outcome. I think I will probably raise for most things that I do going forward or invest my own money, just because of the caliber of the team that we were able to hire around us. What we were doing on a shoestring budget versus what we could do after was just night and day. We have an amazing team, but amazing people are expensive. So, it's definitely made my life a hundred times easier and more enjoyable getting to spend other people's money to increase the value of my equity by hiring amazing people. It seems like a no-brainer to me in a lot of ways.
28:37	Sam Parr	Yeah, when you explain it that way, it does make sense. But if I were one of your investors and you were doing all this other stuff, I'd be like, "What the heck, dude? Only do this thing! I just gave you money."
28:45	Justin Mares	Yeah, I mean, look... it's something that I had to work through with our investors for sure. I was very upfront with them about it and was like, "Look, this is my main focus," you know, which was very true. It was definitely something to manage around. I also think though that it's one of those things where as long as the business is going well, no one's gonna complain, you know what I mean? But certainly, if things went sideways, then it's like, "Okay, this is an easy area to [point to]."
29:14	Shaan Puri	Elon can run Tesla and SpaceX, and everyone's like, "Wow, he's amazing!" Those businesses are amazing. Jack does the same thing with Twitter and Square. If Twitter misses its earnings, it's like, "Off with his head! How dare he?" Yeah, he's a part-time CEO. What the hell were we thinking? People are pretty... they do what's called resulting pretty hard in that case. Yes, and you also did a pretty fun experiment. I don't know if this was a side hustle or what you would call this, where Sam and I were both guinea pigs in your continuous glucose monitoring trial. So you basically tweeted out something...
29:47	Sam Parr	yeah I was sending him like shirtless pics of myself like every week yeah
29:51	Shaan Puri	and typically that would
29:52	Justin Mares	including one of those little pee spots
29:53	Shaan Puri	that was not even like recommended
29:56	Sam Parr	yeah there was like a piss spot in one of my pics
29:59	Shaan Puri	a piss spot what is that it does that when you're boxing
30:01	Sam Parr	like you know when you go pee do you like leak a little on your boxes
30:04	Shaan Puri	yeah so sam sent
30:06	Justin Mares	It was just him in his boxers, and there was just a little spot to show his body felt.
30:12	Shaan Puri	Alright, dude. So, you were doing this thing where you were like, "Hey, I need like 20 people," or I don't know how many. Maybe it was 40 people that you ended up using.
30:19	Justin Mares	50
30:20	Shaan Puri	Yeah, 50 people and you were like, "Hey, we're gonna do this experiment." What you did was you sent us all a continuous glucose monitor that we just punctured into our arm. Basically, now that's measuring [our glucose levels], and then you put us all in a WhatsApp group and you're like, "Hey, here's the idea." It was like a financial incentive. I think it was you would pay us out every day that we stayed in range, and if we missed it, like you kept our money or something like that. What was that experiment, and what'd you learn out of it?
30:49	Justin Mares	Man, it was awesome! That experiment was kind of like many things in my life. I just had the idea, tweeted it immediately, and got such a strong response from people. I caught you... we had like a waitlist, yeah, totally. Where I was like, "Okay, now I gotta figure this out." You know, Sam was texting me every day being like: > "This is sweet! I'm gonna get all my fucking money back!" Like, you're very into it. I loved it, I...
31:12	Sam Parr	was into it
31:12	Justin Mares	Yeah, I was super into it. Awesome! But yeah, I learned a ton, man. I mean, one of the craziest things I think was just how well that incentive of like $25 a day really worked for people to keep them honest. You go through, you know, pay $950 for 30 days. Every day that you stay under a barrier, I give you $25 back. Just that tiny little behavior incentive, where that brownie or whatever is not $4 but it's $29, I think that little incentive goes a really long way. It's somewhat competitive and all this. So, we have had, with literally no marketing, you know, we've filled up 50-person cohorts every month since launching that in February, which, you know...
31:55	Sam Parr	oh it's still alive
31:57	Justin Mares	Yeah, yeah, people can still sign up. It's wearablechallenge.com. We've had one person go through it 7 times. They've lost about 50 pounds... it's like unbelievable to see the results!
32:07	Sam Parr	of this who's who's running that
32:09	Justin Mares	Yeah, so one of the guys in the first cohort, Aaron, got so excited about the idea. I was like, "Hey, do you want to run with this?" And so he's been running it the whole time.
32:18	Shaan Puri	and is that a business to you or what is that
32:22	Justin Mares	Not really. I mean, we're kind of thinking about how to make it a business, but it's actually a perfect example of a side hustle. Like, I will probably make somewhere between $20-$30 this year from doing that, right?
32:35	Shaan Puri	yeah when I saw that
32:36	Justin Mares	maybe more if sam joins and blows a bunch of his glucose levels
32:39	Shaan Puri	When I saw that, I was like, "Hey, this is fun!" It's kind of on brand for you because of the stuff you talk about in your businesses. But then I was also like, "Oh, this is a great business!" Everybody wants the outcome; everybody wants to eat right and lose weight. The biggest hack is not knowledge, but accountability. I liked that you were coming at it from an accountability point of view. I actually think, like, you know, the company Levels could do something like this. There's going to be a company that does this, right? Whatever Weight Watchers is as a business model, I haven't studied it, but I'm assuming you have, given what you do and what this business is. Could this not be like Weight Watchers 2.0?
33:18	Justin Mares	I think it could be... I mean, it just would need someone to run at it really full time. But I do think that there's something here. I mean, there are a couple of companies like Stick and one other that I'm forgetting, where you can sort of bet money on different outcomes. You know, I think that sort of works. I actually think the really powerful part of this is that it's a cohort; it's a challenge for a set period of time. You lose money only for that set period of time. So, I would love to expand this, and we sort of have some ideas in the hopper about what expanding it might look like. But it's definitely not my full-time thing at all.
33:53	Sam Parr	Have you heard of Styx, Sean? That's actually an interesting company to buy. I haven't been there in years, but when I used to go there... even when I went there like years ago, it was considered like old. So it's Styx, it's spelled Styx but I think there's two X's at the end, right?
34:06	Justin Mares	yep
34:07	Shaan Puri	and it's like a physical place
34:09	Sam Parr	No, it's a website called webstick.com but with two K's at the end. Is the website still all old and janky looking?
34:17	Justin Mares	yeah
34:17	Sam Parr	Okay, so it was like old back then, in 2013 or 2014, when I used to use it. What you do is you enlist a friend to be the referee, and then you create, I believe, an "anti-charity." Here's how it works: 1. You select something that you hate 2. You upload money to it 3. If you fail at your challenge, your friend clicks a button 4. It automatically goes to that place that you hate I think there were varieties of the service, but that's the basic concept.
34:42	Shaan Puri	about this I think in 4 hour work week and I think it got popular than that
34:45	Sam Parr	yeah yeah it it did you think this company makes money justin
34:50	Justin Mares	I would imagine so I don't know how much but that
34:53	Shaan Puri	it could be a it
34:54	Sam Parr	It could be an interesting thing to buy. I mean, it's actually not that hard to replicate, but if they already get traffic, it could be an interesting... This would be an interesting thing to buy and revamp and make a little bit better. I think they get a lot of traffic. When we owned Toodledo, there was this one guy, an author. I think he wrote a book called "Getting Things Done." What's his name?
35:15	Justin Mares	g yeah david allen
35:16	Sam Parr	And yeah, he mentioned Toodledo, this app that Ramon and I bought. Most of our customers came to us because they read about Toodledo; it was just mentioned in like a sentence or something in the book. That's where most of the customers came from. Just because Tim Ferriss mentioned it, I bet that's where the vast majority of their customers come from.
35:36	Justin Mares	for sure
35:37	Shaan Puri	Yeah, that's funny. There was this thing called Gym Pact too. I don't know if you guys have seen that. I don't know if it made it, but it came out about 5 years ago or something like that. You would basically pledge that you're going to go to the gym with some frequency, and other people would too. I think what they were doing was, in your case, you're the house, you're like the bank. It's like, I give you the money, and then you pay me back. In this case, it would match you with somebody else. If you ever didn't do your thing, your money would go to that person. If they did it and you didn't go, your money would go to them. If you both went, your money would be safe. So you're making a pact that you would go to the gym for some amount of frequency. But I do think there is something to this kind of financial incentive accountability, you know? Betting on yourself, betting on your habit model, that I think is pretty cool.
36:26	Justin Mares	Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, we're actually looking now at... could you apply this to run little health boot camps in places like LA or Austin? Something like that where you have 30-50 people opt in. We'll handle your meals, we'll give you levels [continuous glucose monitors], we'll do all this sort of stuff. It's a more premium offering where it's like, "Hey, you're almost guaranteed to lose weight or get in better shape at the end of this month."
36:49	Sam Parr	That would for sure work. That's a little bit better than my weight loss idea, which is called "Kidnap," where you just go and take a person and bring them to the desert in like Vegas. And you just kidnap with two [people].
36:59	Shaan Puri	p's at the end yeah
37:00	Sam Parr	It's called the "Kidnap Kidnap SF," or we'll just call it "Hostage." We bring you to a farm and it's like, "Look, you only eat 1,500 calories a day. Do whatever you want all day, but this is it."
37:10	Justin Mares	I love that! Can I ask if the refund rates would be high on that?
37:16	Sam Parr	Well, you know it'll be guaranteed success. So I want to get to some of these ideas, but I first want to ask you about DuckDuckGo. You're friends with that guy Gabe, right? The guy who started it or owns it? Are you bullish on that business? Because you're one of the few people I know that has insight into it. I'm... I look at their traffic monthly because they give out these monthly updates. Is that business like... kind of like an under-the-radar thing? Do you think this is going to take over the world? Because that's kind of how I feel.
37:44	Justin Mares	Yeah, I mean, I think it's crushing. There's always a counterpoint to some massive trend or a significant amount of success. You have Amazon taking over the world, but then you have Shopify, which is crushing it. I think that DuckDuckGo is like the counterpoint to Google, especially with privacy eroding across the board. All this sort of stuff makes me believe there is an opportunity to be a big tech company with privacy as a core value, rather than just selling ads to everyone. I think DuckDuckGo really has the opportunity to be that company, and they have a lot of tailwinds working in their favor. It's also crazy that Gabe has been working on that company for like 12 years. Five of those years... is it?
38:29	Sam Parr	more than 12 I feel
38:30	Shaan Puri	like he's been
38:31	Justin Mares	It might be, actually. But for a large chunk of that time, he was just a solo founder building a search engine to compete with Google. It's like... wow. So they do.
38:43	Sam Parr	they they do north of a 100,000,000 in revenue I believe
38:46	Justin Mares	yeah I I believe so do you know
38:48	Shaan Puri	How... I don't know if you knew him during those early years, but did you know him at the beginning or no?
38:54	Justin Mares	not not the very very beginning but I knew him when it was like him and one other person working on duckduck
38:59	Shaan Puri	And so, I'm guessing at that. It wasn't a case where Tim and one other person... Man, it's crushing it! It's him and one other person, and it's sort of crawling forward.
39:08	Justin Mares	yeah
39:08	Shaan Puri	What were your conversations like? What was the outlook? I find it fascinating when people work on these businesses that don't take off right away, and they stick with it, and then they...
39:18	Justin Mares	me too
39:19	Shaan Puri	Either the world just changes, or they figure something out. It just compounds slowly, but then all of a sudden, it starts to take off. Like, what was that? There’s the flat part, and then what do you think caused it to grow?
39:29	Justin Mares	Yeah, I think that he was just getting small bits of positive feedback from communities. For example, the Hacker News community was saying, "DuckDuckGo is amazing for Stack Overflow searches," or for very specific niche sorts of searches. As he received good feedback from those groups, it was like, "Okay, let's invest in the product to make this a little better." I think that after, you know, let's call it 12 to 14 years that he's been working on this, the product has gotten a lot better. However, the trend line of where big tech is going has just become way more invasive. Privacy is a much bigger concern for people today, especially as you're seeing a lot of the censorship issues and other things happening in the big tech world right now. I think that DuckDuckGo is one of the few companies that, for over a decade now, has said, "Privacy is one of our core values." They've built an incredibly complex product to compete with Google, which is just not easy to spin up overnight. You know, it's not a side hustle. It's not the type of thing you or I can build with a couple of hours a week over a weekend.
40:36	Sam Parr	Can we talk about... can we go through some of these ideas? Do you want to start with Airbnb camping? Because you texted me about this, and I want to learn about it. I just looked at a house the other day, by the way, down the street from my house to buy for Airbnb. I'll have to send you the numbers. I don't know if it... it seems like a lot of work for not a lot of output. We'll see.
40:55	Justin Mares	Yeah, I think that's probably true for a lot of Airbnb right now. I think the thing that is compelling to me is, like we talked earlier about new platform stuff, like Hipcamp and some of these other camping platforms that are exploding. Again, I think if you could leverage capital, build up the supply side, and provide water, toiletries, and all the basics in locations that people actually want to camp at, you could build a pretty material business. It may not be a $10,000,000,000 business, but I think it would be a really solid side hustle and cash flow asset. It would require a lot less management and work than Airbnb because, at the end of the day, you're camping. Sorry, you know, it's not like the stove burner doesn't work or the AC is off. It's just a plot of land. You're welcome.
41:47	Shaan Puri	plot of
41:48	Justin Mares	tent on there the experience I provided for you
41:50	Shaan Puri	where where nothing worked and you had to fend for yourself that's what you want exactly
41:55	Sam Parr	Maybe I can host a hostage out there. Exactly. When you were doing this, what numbers were you modeling out?
42:04	Justin Mares	Yeah, so I was mainly modeling it from a NOI basis, which is Net Operating Income. That's a term that's used a lot in real estate. But basically, I think that you could get like 30 to 40% cash-on-cash returns by following this strategy.
42:18	Sam Parr	that that sounds like the greatest thing ever why didn't why have you done it
42:21	Justin Mares	Because I am getting high returns from my time elsewhere, you know, unfortunately, I would love to find someone to run for me.
42:27	Shaan Puri	If somebody who's listening to this is like, "Oh, I'm the perfect guy for this. I love camping. I have a camper myself. I'm in an area that's like a high-demand thing for Hipcamp or Autocamp or whatever." Yeah, great! You be the operator. We'll put up the cash, we'll buy the RVs for you, and you run the thing. Let's split it. So, email me at [email protected], and then I'll loop in these guys. We will fund your small rental business of campers if anybody's in the location that does this. Because that's a great idea! You're absolutely right; there's basically tons of demand and they're supply constrained. So, if you just build out more supply, you're going to get bookings and you're going to get great returns off of them.
43:10	Justin Mares	Yeah, exactly. It's one of those things that can scale really nicely. These platforms are here to stay. There's a lot of venture dollars going into making these more of a thing. I think that you could crush it on these platforms. Is it something I want to do full-time at this point in my career? No. But do I think someone younger, who cares about camping more than I do, could really do well here? Absolutely.
43:30	Shaan Puri	okay great that's a great idea what else you got
43:33	Sam Parr	alcohol baby let's talk about that
43:35	Justin Mares	yeah so near and
43:36	Sam Parr	dear to my heart as a as a as a as a nonalcoholic beer drinker
43:41	Justin Mares	Yeah, so, you know, a couple of months earlier this year, we launched a company that I talked about: Shirley (surely.com). We basically saw so much interest going into the non-alcoholic beer space. Bud Light bought three spots in the Super Bowl: one was for the seltzer, the other was for Bud Light, and the last one was for Bud Zero, which is like the non-alcoholic option. This is so interesting because there's so much attention going towards it. We saw a ton of really good non-alcoholic beers and some excellent non-alcoholic spirits options, but there was nothing in the wine category. So, we decided to build the first clean label, really high-quality non-alcoholic wine brand and wine company. We hired real winemaking talent, and we launched earlier this year. It's going super well! So, how much...
44:29	Sam Parr	Should you? By the way, I want to brag. I've been talking about this for like 4 years now, haven't I, Sean?
44:35	Shaan Puri	I don't know if that's a brag or really it's a knock on you. You had the inside, he took the action he...
44:41	Justin Mares	well I don't want to do that
44:42	Sam Parr	I don't think that's true. I mean, yeah, I'm just talking shit.
44:48	Shaan Puri	but but you you have
44:49	Sam Parr	been so I get like a I get like a like a just like a like a attaboy
44:53	Shaan Puri	yeah yeah
44:54	Sam Parr	I deserve an attaboy
44:55	Shaan Puri	For that, for sure. So, I think you were going to kind of ask him something like, "How much did you put in to start this?" Basically, how much of your own money did you have to seed into making a venture like this happen? Yeah, so I put in close to...
45:05	Justin Mares	A $100,000 investment is needed to make this happen, and some portion of that was a loan that I took out just as revenue started to come in. But yeah, it's about $100,000 that's been up.
45:14	Sam Parr	not a lot
45:15	Shaan Puri	that's great
45:16	Justin Mares	no yeah it's not a crazy thing
45:18	Shaan Puri	weekend for sam
45:19	Justin Mares	thank you
45:22	Sam Parr	I feel... I feel like... like, okay, so you're telling me you could start this with $100? And how many hours a week are you working on this?
45:31	Justin Mares	I had to get it spun up. I mean, it was much more about hiring the right contractors and people. So it was 5, 10, maybe at most.
45:39	Sam Parr	Okay, I feel like there's a world where this... let's be conservative. I feel like this is very clearly a $10,000,000 a year thing that makes $2,000,000 in profit. Like, it could definitely be way bigger, but I feel like that's relatively... I'd [consider that achievable].
45:52	Shaan Puri	be disappointed if it didn't hit that mark right that's kinda what you're saying
45:55	Sam Parr	it's like yeah
45:56	Justin Mares	that would be
45:56	Sam Parr	the same
45:57	Shaan Puri	expectations at least
45:59	Sam Parr	Yeah, so, right? Let's give it six years to do that. Let's grow slow. I feel like that's a pretty surefire way you're going to get that. Do you agree?
46:09	Justin Mares	yeah I certainly do
46:10	Shaan Puri	I hope so
46:10	Sam Parr	seems like a good investment
46:11	Shaan Puri	The case, right? A DTC brand like that can sell for about 1x revenue, let's say. So, you could turn a $100,000 investment and let's call it even 20 hours a week for a year to spin it up. You turned $100,000 into basically $10,000,000 worth of total equity value in terms of the company. In that case, I don't even think it'll take 6 years. I think that's 2 years.
46:35	Sam Parr	yeah I'm being like ultra competitive yeah I agree
46:38	Shaan Puri	so that's but but yeah I
46:39	Justin Mares	mean that's the basic thing
46:40	Sam Parr	where are the other opportunities in the space that you when you're researching
46:44	Justin Mares	Yeah, I mean, there's a ton [of changes], right? I think that we're at this generational shift where people... You know, 10 years ago, everyone was like, "Let's go out!" Maybe this is just me getting older, I don't know, but all of my friends were like, "Let's go out to the bars and get really drunk." Now all my friends are like, "Let's have one glass of wine and then have a great long dinner," or try, you know, not drinking at all. Right? And instead, you...
47:05	Sam Parr	young people I don't young people I don't think drink
47:07	Shaan Puri	yeah it it's
47:10	Justin Mares	it's becoming much more common shockingly
47:13	Sam Parr	That's what I'm saying. The Gen Z-er is not as common. The second I could drive...
47:19	Shaan Puri	Justin, have you heard Sam's Gen Z analysis that he does? His trends analysis on Gen Z? He's like: > "They don't have sex, they don't drink, and they're depressed... but they're really cool looking." What do you call them?
47:31	Justin Mares	yeah
47:31	Shaan Puri	they're really cool
47:32	Sam Parr	They got nice teeth. They always wear Vans, and they always have properly fitting teeth.
47:39	Justin Mares	color do
47:40	Shaan Puri	they like
47:41	Sam Parr	what do I say like red I don't know or millennial paint
47:44	Shaan Puri	have like a really sweeping generalization for that
47:46	Sam Parr	Dude, it's like the truth. Do you have to use TikTok? They all have like sick-ass haircuts. It's true, they all got like amazing... I mean, Justin's got a...
47:55	Shaan Puri	justin's got a gen z cut right now he's he's looking he's looking gen z
47:59	Sam Parr	Dude, the young people... I'm saying they don't have a lot of sex. Not nearly as much as before, and they don't have...
48:04	Shaan Puri	even with all that teeth and hair they they're not in sex what's going on dude I don't know it's like
48:10	Justin Mares	male testosterone is down 50% over the last like 40 years
48:13	Shaan Puri	that's right
48:13	Sam Parr	Yeah, maybe that's it. It's like there's something going on here. They also don't like alcohol; it's a health thing or... I don't know what it is, but they don't drink.
48:23	Justin Mares	Yeah, I mean, I honestly think one of the reasons I'm bullish on the non-alcoholic space is that we are getting to the point where there are just better options. If people want to alter their state of consciousness, I'm seeing a lot more friends opting for cannabis, ketamine, or some of the psychedelics. These options don't give you the hangover or the extra £30 over a year of heavy drinking. I just think people are opting for different sorts of compounds and different highs to give them the experience they want. Yeah, exactly.
48:53	Shaan Puri	I tried that recessed drink you guys mentioned, the CBD one. It doesn't do anything. Doesn't it? CBD is kind of like a carbonated drink. Great branding, amazing branding, I would say. The drink tastes terrible and didn't do anything, so I was like, "Well, I'm out on that one." But I love the idea of it. I kind of wish if they just put LaCroix in that can, I'd feel amazing. I'd be like, "Yeah, this is the best! This is the future!" But instead, you know, they tried their own thing. What are some businesses that you're like... you mentioned testosterone. We invested in this testosterone replacement company because we were like that same...
49:23	Justin Mares	which one
49:23	Shaan Puri	It's called Peak, or they're just rebranding to Hone. Basically, it's at-home direct-to-consumer testing for your testosterone levels. When you get tested and if your levels are low, there’s a telemedicine doctor who will say, "Hey, by the way, if you want this to go up, there are some solutions that we can offer you." Basically, they have their own...
49:42	Sam Parr	their own heard of that justin
49:44	Justin Mares	I've heard of trt I didn't I didn't heard of like peak or home
49:47	Shaan Puri	it's basically it's also not b to c trt
49:50	Sam Parr	I don't believe
49:50	Shaan Puri	in it to throw 6 letters at
49:53	Sam Parr	you don't believe in it it's real yeah
49:56	Justin Mares	Yeah, maybe that's not a well-said thing, but I tend to think that some of these issues, it's like, you know, your testosterone levels are low. It's like, okay, the reason that they're low is that some inputs from your environment are not healthy. So rather than trying to fix the symptom, you should try and fix the environment. But what?
50:12	Shaan Puri	are the biggest inputs you can change to to boost testosterone from your from your opinion
50:17	Justin Mares	I think diet, sleep, and inflammation are important factors. Additionally, I’m trying to cut out endocrine-disrupting hormones, which I believe are a horrifying issue that not a lot of people are discussing. What are they? Let’s talk about it. So, there are different plastic compounds. You've heard of "BPA-free" and all these sorts of things. There's a whole class of substances called phthalates (P-H-T-H-A-L-A-T-E-S) that have a really strong negative impact on testosterone and the endocrine and hormonal systems. They are present in almost everything, and it's important to avoid them.
50:56	Shaan Puri	or they're from something
50:57	Justin Mares	Else, yeah, a lot of plastics. These are like synthetic materials that are just in... water, plastics, food packaging, creams that you use. They're everywhere.
51:08	Shaan Puri	So, what's something you do lifestyle-wise that I'd be like, "Dude, why are you doing that?" Like, I went to my friend's house one time, and instead of using toothpaste, he dipped his toothbrush in this powder and started brushing his teeth. I was like, "Hey man, what the fk is that?" Because he's always like three steps ahead in health and products. At first, I used to judge him, and now I'm like, "Uh-oh, am I killing myself by using toothpaste? Should I be using this powder st?" You know what I mean? If I were to be in the house, what would yours be?
51:34	Sam Parr	can I guess justin can I guess yeah my guess do you use a microwave
51:39	Justin Mares	no not at all
51:39	Sam Parr	I didn't think... okay, although that, like, you... yeah, but like you go out of your way to not use a microwave, right?
51:46	Shaan Puri	yeah
51:46	Justin Mares	yeah yeah
51:47	Sam Parr	okay do you you definitely only have glass tupperware correct
51:51	Justin Mares	yeah for sure
51:52	Sam Parr	What else is there? Do you... I've got a few more. I could peg you, but you tell me.
52:01	Justin Mares	I got this 19-step home water filtration system installed at my house.
52:06	Sam Parr	the metal one
52:07	Justin Mares	it's like 25 feet tall and in this outside it's insane
52:11	Shaan Puri	it's outdoors
52:12	Justin Mares	The plumbers... yeah, they're just at every step. So there's one [filter] in the sink, there's one outside that filtered all the home water. The guys came in to install it, they're like, "We have never seen anyone install something like this." But yeah, so I have that set up that I just recently got. The Tupperware stuff... [I'm] pretty diet cautious in general.
52:33	Shaan Puri	are you super ripped I can't see you for your your neck up here are you like okay
52:37	Sam Parr	no he's lean yeah you're lean you're like 10% body fat right
52:40	Justin Mares	I'll send you a pee spot photo
52:41	Shaan Puri	yeah exactly I need to I need to pee
52:44	Sam Parr	Well, I've seen you without a shirt. You're not huge, but you look like a soccer player, right?
52:51	Shaan Puri	who's more fit you were justin
52:54	Sam Parr	it depends on what we're talking about
52:56	Shaan Puri	who is do you aspire more for your body or for his body go
53:01	Sam Parr	I would prefer I right now I prefer to be leaner and skinnier so I'm trying to lose fat and look a little bit more
53:06	Justin Mares	like it
53:06	Shaan Puri	Alright, great! So, you have the insane water filtration system. What is that, by the way? What's the name of it?
53:12	Justin Mares	it is called the radiant life I think
53:15	Sam Parr	like there's another one sean do you sell the people I
53:19	Justin Mares	I do I haven't sold it
53:20	Sam Parr	do you like it I definitely
53:21	Justin Mares	saw it in my backyard
53:22	Sam Parr	is it infrared or is it
53:23	Justin Mares	hot stone it's the yeah it's like the the hot stone one
53:27	Shaan Puri	And like red lights on your toes or something in the morning. What do you do? Do you do anything with any kind of light, UV, anything?
53:32	Justin Mares	No, I try to get outside. I mean, this is one of those things that I think is like... There's some people that I think over-optimize where they're like, "Oh, I need more light exposure, so I'm gonna stay inside and like shine red light."
53:43	Shaan Puri	on my stuff
53:43	Justin Mares	and I'm like just go outside
53:46	Sam Parr	do you do do you only use 0 drop shoes
53:50	Shaan Puri	no what what is that
53:51	Justin Mares	I did for a while. I just didn't realize that it's a zero-drop shoe. So basically, shoes with no heel.
53:57	Sam Parr	Yeah, most shoes have some type of... yeah. But a lot of people believe that ruins your Achilles, hurts your calves, and ruins your posture. Do you only eat meat with salt and thyme?
54:13	Justin Mares	I try to when I can it's the best meat in austin for sure
54:16	Sam Parr	where do you eat your meat from
54:18	Justin Mares	So, I now eat most of my meat from salt and thyme or stuff that I've hunted, or a friend has hunted. I love it! This is awesome.
54:26	Shaan Puri	Okay, great. Did we miss any other ones? Any other good, like, sort of self... I don't know, what do we even call these?
54:33	Sam Parr	Well, look, I think what we're teasing, but there is truth in this. Like, guys who are on the cutting edge and the things that we joke and laugh at, I believe that's going to be normal. You know, like totally. I remember years ago, I got into this hobby about raw denim, which at the time was super nerdy, and everyone made fun of me. It didn't get entirely mainstream, but it got a little bit mainstream. It became quite popular, and that's kind of what we're talking about here. So, like, I remember years ago people were talking about ayahuasca, and I was like, "What the...?"
55:03	Shaan Puri	fuck is that
55:04	Sam Parr	And now, I know so many people that are doing this stuff. So totally! Oh, and Dan said you use nonstick pans. You definitely don't use nonstick pans, for sure. I could tell that.
55:13	Justin Mares	yeah I I use a ceramic set or cast iron yeah
55:17	Sam Parr	Yeah, that’s an easy one. But anyway, go ahead. What was the answer? Were you going to... are there any other things that we can learn from how you live?
55:23	Justin Mares	Yeah, I mean, I think that cutting out things that are causes of inflammation or the obvious ones is important. It's like, don't microwave stuff in plastic. Try to buy things that are not overly processed and packaged. I think actually avoiding vegetable oils is a tremendous, tremendous thing. Like you said about raw denim or ayahuasca, you know, five years from now, ten years from now, a lot of people are going to be way more conscious about vegetable oils and the damage that they cause. Specifically, there's a compound called linoleic acid in there that does damage to your inflammatory processes.
56:00	Sam Parr	olive oil or peanut oil or what
56:03	Justin Mares	Yeah, I mean hopefully olive oil, avocado oil, animal fats, lard, ghee, butter, stuff like that, coconut oil.
56:09	Sam Parr	do you wanna talk about you wanna talk about 1 or 2 more of these sean or what
56:13	Shaan Puri	yeah let's do let's do you pick you pick the topic let's do one more topic
56:17	Sam Parr	Oh, I know! I was gonna ask you really quick. All these things that you're doing, just like no microwave and all this stuff, do you actually feel a difference? Or is it... are these all...?
56:26	Shaan Puri	long term or is there any short term pleasure and benefit I can get out of these
56:30	Sam Parr	right do you feel different
56:32	Justin Mares	Yeah, so the way that I think about this is from a baseline standpoint. You know, if you have a pretty high baseline—like imagine you're super strong—it’s going to be really hard for you to notice if you're a bodybuilder putting on like 1% or 2 pounds of muscle or something if you already weigh 225. I think that I have a pretty high health baseline, so a lot of these things are more preventative and not like, "Oh my God, I feel amazing." You know, whereas I felt like shit the other day. But for the average person, if your baseline is relatively low and you want to lose weight, you're not sleeping well, and your stress hormones are all over the place, a lot of these interventions will make you feel a material difference after like 20 or 30 days.
57:15	Sam Parr	I think there's a world to build, like a Wirecutter version of this. For example, you're saying a lot of stuff, and my best friend Jack is into all this. When I stay at his house and visit him, that's how I see how he lives. Jack's really honest. I'll ask him, "He takes all these supplements. Did any of these do anything?" and he goes, "No."
57:33	Justin Mares	I'm like
57:33	Sam Parr	I don't feel any different. And like a guy like you, I imagine you actually care about longevity. You also like to tinker and try gadgets. You know, I like trying gadgets as well. I just want to see the latest and greatest. It's fun to experiment. But the issue is that someone like you—or not you, but some of the folks in your world—they can get a little woo-woo. I'm like, I don't know if they're talking about crystals or if this is actually going to make a difference in my life. It's really hard to know if this truly is meaningful. I went to Peter Attia's blog about this as well to learn about fitness. He talks about so much stuff regarding fitness and diet, and I'm like, "Just give me the basics! If you just do this, life will be a little bit better, and you're 80% there."
58:17	Justin Mares	Yeah, I think there's a big opportunity for that. I think that one of the problems is, like, if you're an influencer, you're gonna get way more attention and interest from people when you talk about butthole sunning than you are about "eat a healthy diet."
58:30	Shaan Puri	you know
58:31	Justin Mares	what I mean like yeah totally like I
58:33	Shaan Puri	think that's the problem sunny you you seen that
58:37	Justin Mares	yeah or perineum bathing
58:39	Sam Parr	what's that mean same thing
58:42	Shaan Puri	you never seen this article sam it went like super viral it's basically I'll
58:45	Justin Mares	send you a
58:46	Shaan Puri	Oh, what did you guys get? Like, they're tanning but then they raise their legs above their head so that the sun goes directly into their butt, and they're like, "Oh, you know, never felt better." You know?
58:57	Justin Mares	the sun's energy right into your 4th eye
58:59	Sam Parr	do we wanna go over one more thing or 2 more things what do you wanna do
59:03	Shaan Puri	it's your call
59:04	Justin Mares	well we can't end on butthole something there
59:06	Shaan Puri	yeah I guess because that will probably leave a bad
59:08	Sam Parr	I've got an interesting story for you. I have a friend named Nick. You know Nick Ray, I bet. Yeah, Nick jokes about it, but he's being serious. He matches with girls on Tinder or whatever app he uses, and he calls them for a prescreening for a date. He's like, "Let's just talk to each other," because Nick just wants to get down to business. He asks, "Oh, do we want to date or not?" One of the questions he asks right away is, "What's your credit history?" or "Do you have debt?" And then Justin has this idea: he goes, "I think I can create a dating app based on your credit card history."
59:49	Shaan Puri	But, just to be clear, this isn't about your credit rating. He's not saying he only wants very rich, creditworthy people. It's more like, if I know what you're talking about, you're...
59:56	Sam Parr	not gonna be rich stav but
59:57	Shaan Puri	or whatever
59:58	Justin Mares	what he's saying
59:59	Shaan Puri	I want to look at your purchase history. Basically, the stuff you buy. If you shop at Whole Foods, if you go to the gym, if you don't, or whatever. If you go to the bar and you ring up the bill, that'll tell us how compatible we are. That was your idea.
01:00:10	Justin Mares	yeah exactly
01:00:11	Shaan Puri	and are you dating right now are you single
01:00:14	Justin Mares	I am recently engaged recently engaged
01:00:16	Shaan Puri	and if you matched you and your fiance's bills up before you got engaged would would you have been a good match
01:00:21	Justin Mares	great fit
01:00:22	Shaan Puri	great fit
01:00:22	Justin Mares	Yeah, for sure. That's amazing. I think that where you spend your resources tells a lot about someone that a Hinge profile doesn't. So I suspect if you were to say, "Hey, we are matching the two of you up because you spend an absurd amount of your income at this weird butcher shop in Austin or at Whole Foods," we're probably gonna get along, you know? Or at least have a higher odds of doing that from a lifestyle compatibility standpoint than Hinge does.
01:00:51	Shaan Puri	sam what do you think
01:00:52	Justin Mares	alright let's do
01:00:53	Sam Parr	Yeah, I mean, I think... no, this was for.
01:00:59	Justin Mares	I think this is one
01:00:59	Sam Parr	of those things that people say I think we're gonna
01:01:01	Justin Mares	give that one a no but
01:01:02	Shaan Puri	I enjoy that you said it
01:01:05	Sam Parr	Yeah, like I think my opinion is that when it comes to dating, you really just want to optimize for getting laid quickly. I think, regardless of whether people admit it or not, they just want to get to date one so they can get in bed for step two. I think that really people say they like certain things. When we had our roommate matching app, I don't know if you could actually vouch for this on your end, but people said they wanted this, they wanted that, they wanted this. Then they would meet someone and they're like, "Nah, forget it. I'll just do it," right? So I think the same is true with dating. You say you want to do this, you want to do that, but then if I show you a person who you just think is attractive, even though you had all these rules, you're going to say, "Alright, whatever. Let's just do it."
01:01:46	Justin Mares	Yeah, no, I think that's probably true. I think this would probably be better as a matchmaking service than a broad-based dating app, right?
01:01:53	Sam Parr	And then, well, let's wrap up with the one that we've actually talked about before: the automation officer.
01:01:58	Justin Mares	Yeah, let's do it. Basically, I think with the rise of no-code tools and virtual assistants, all this sort of stuff, the average company could be 30% more productive. We do this at my company; we have basically one virtual assistant hired for every two people on the team. We provide them with training that says, "Here's how to use virtual assistants. Get all of the repetitive stuff off your plate." I just wish I could hire someone to do that as a service, where he or she sits in product meetings, marketing, or logistics team meetings, and it's just like, "We're going to automate these five pieces," and just continually does that across the company.
01:02:36	Sam Parr	Where did you learn that from? Who? That's so interesting to give vats to every two people.
01:02:42	Justin Mares	yeah yeah I just started doing it when we started the company
01:02:45	Sam Parr	I think that's pretty amazing
01:02:47	Justin Mares	right it's been great
01:02:48	Shaan Puri	How did you learn how to manage a VA? What you can use them for and what you can't? Where?
01:02:54	Justin Mares	did you learn that part obviously some trial and
01:02:55	Shaan Puri	error but like what was the spark
01:02:58	Justin Mares	Yeah, when I left the company I was working with, Terry App, we got acquired. Then I was kind of starting to do my own stuff on the side and was like, "Okay, I want to try and scale myself to do more stuff on the side." So I originally hired VAs [virtual assistants] to help with responding to Airbnb requests and then ViewMe requests. Then I slowly got them more integrated into my life.
01:03:21	Shaan Puri	I love it! Did you take a course or something? Where did you get this training that you have for your employees? Is that modeled off something, or what?
01:03:29	Justin Mares	No, we basically have some internal documents that myself and other people on the team have written up around how to leverage virtual assistance. We just do that.
01:03:37	Shaan Puri	you should publish this
01:03:39	Sam Parr	yeah I feel like that's
01:03:40	Shaan Puri	I feel like
01:03:40	Sam Parr	You're kind of like this. You're not dismissing this, but you're kind of brushing over it. I feel like that's actually one of the more interesting things that I've learned today. I think that's actually pretty amazing.
01:03:48	Shaan Puri	I've had a lot of people ask me for this, and I actually suck at using VAs (Virtual Assistants) and don't really use them. But I know I should and could do more. I kind of pinged the audience and asked, "Alright, if I could teach you anything, what do you think I could teach you that you want to know?" Surprisingly, this was like number 5 on that list. So, I plan to eventually learn it myself and get better so that I can offer this to others. I was very surprised to see that on the top list of things people wanted to learn. They felt curious about it and believed there was value there, but they didn't know how to unlock it.
01:04:23	Justin Mares	that's interesting yeah I mean maybe this is something that I should publish at some? And I don't know
01:04:28	Sam Parr	How much do... what... what... what? How much budget do you allocate? Is it like $2 a month per 2 people or what?
01:04:34	Justin Mares	We probably spent about $10,000 across the whole company.
01:04:41	Sam Parr	so you what do you guys have you have 20 people
01:04:43	Justin Mares	we have 33
01:04:45	Sam Parr	Dude, that's pretty sick how you've kept it relatively small. I... I have no intel, but I would imagine your revenue is in the $60,000,000 range if I had to guess. That's a pretty lean, mean team for how much value that is.
01:05:02	Justin Mares	Definitely, and I think the VA [Virtual Assistant] piece is a big part of it. We just have a very efficient team that's pretty focused on getting stuff done that they uniquely can do, and the VAs are super helpful with the rest.
01:05:13	Sam Parr	well dude this is sick man I I can't see sean's face I can't see where he's at
01:05:17	Shaan Puri	Yeah, my camera overheats. This is a recurring problem. I moved my whole setup for this, but then I also have two babies inside. So I thought, "Alright, do I want to risk babies crying or my camera overheating?" Guaranteed camera overheating, and I chose the camera.
01:05:31	Sam Parr	Justin, do you want to promote yourself? Where do you want people to go? A lot of people are going to listen to this, so... your website? Your Twitter? Where are you going to... what are you going to promote?
01:05:43	Justin Mares	Yeah, so probably my Twitter - I'm @jwmaers - or you know, my website justinmaers.com. I have a monthly newsletter that I send out where I talk about various things. I think about health, business, and whatever else is kind of on my mind. That seems like people like it... I think Sam, you like it too, right?
01:06:01	Sam Parr	Yeah, I'm looking at your stuff now. I'm a subscriber. I get your... it's not a Substack, it's just a blog, right?
01:06:07	Justin Mares	yeah but I have a monthly newsletter that is on substack but not
01:06:10	Sam Parr	Yeah, that's right. I get your emails in my inbox, and I message you about it. I'm like, "Oh, I just saw your Airbnb thing!" Because I actually want to do that. I think that's sick. I think that'd be a great way to finance a pretty large bit of land. I think that's fun. I went shooting... I went to this place out in Texas where you shoot guns and then afterwards you go and ride ATVs. It was like I was in heaven. I was like, "This is just the most fun I could possibly have!" I have to go and buy a place so I could do this all the time.
01:06:40	Justin Mares	it's awesome
01:06:42	Sam Parr	what are you gonna say sean
01:06:43	Shaan Puri	I was gonna say, Justin, I gotta give you the compliment that your blog deserves. Your content is so good that it made me question, "Is this guy really a good entrepreneur, or is this just a facade?" Usually, there are some people who are truly great at putting out content and also great at actually walking the walk, doing the business side, and having done it themselves. They're not just studying others and writing content. However, often what you'll find is that people are good at one of the two. I know a bunch of amazing business people who either don't want to or struggle at creating content. Conversely, I know some great content creators who, once I meet them, I realize, "Oh, this is your business. You've never done a business outside of this content business." So, when I found out that you were good at both, I was like, "Okay, props to you for that." That's how good the content was; it made me do the research and ask, "Is this guy legit or what?"
01:07:33	Justin Mares	I appreciate that. I'm definitely not good at the content business side of things or posting frequently, but I really enjoy putting it out.
01:07:40	Shaan Puri	but you've been doing this for years now
01:07:42	Sam Parr	Yeah, you've been doing it for years. I'm looking at your site now and reading your 2020 review. I just clicked off Central Athlete because you talked about Central Athlete. I mean, it seems like you've been doing this for years, so I mean, that's consistent.
01:07:54	Justin Mares	definitely I I like it but in small doses not as a full time thing
01:07:58	Shaan Puri	alright great we should wrap it up
01:07:59	Justin Mares	about it
01:07:59	Shaan Puri	Dude, thanks for coming on! This was fun. You're like a perfect fit for the type of audience that we have. They're going to love the content and the ideas you shared. That was great!
01:08:09	Sam Parr	I appreciate it coming thank you
01:08:11	Justin Mares	thanks for having me on guys this was fun

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How to launch a $100M DTC brand | My First Million #194

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