"I can't believe nobody's doing this yet" - 5 cash cow business ideas

Shaan Puri

The way I know this is a great episode is because I feel like I need to get off this and go do these ideas right now. I don't even want to finish this episode; I want to go do one of these things right now. That's how I know this is a banger.

Sam Parr

Have you guys ever heard this idea that the Australian accent is just a drunk English accent? Because, like, Australia was populated by all the criminals or the drunkards from England, and that the accent in Australia is just a drunk London guy?

George Mack

Still far off.

Shaan Puri

There's a great Paul Graham blog post that I don't know if you guys have read, called "Cities and Ambition." He has this concept in it where he says that every city whispers something to you. Every city is whispering something. So, he's like, you know, maybe in LA, the whisper that's there for you is "Become somebody." Become sort of known, become a power player, a famous person. Basically, you're not famous enough. In Silicon Valley, he says the whisper is "You're not ambitious enough." Because the status symbol here is not who's the most beautiful, or the most famous, or even the most rich, to be honest. The status symbol is like, "Who's doing the big mission here?" Right? Who's like the AI guys? Now they're the highest status. Even if you have a really amazing company, if you're the CEO of Workday and you're like, "Dude, I got an $80 billion company over here," you're low status compared to the guy who's trying to make the next version of an LLM. So, he says New York whispers something. He basically is like, "You should think about which cities you want to live in because that's what's going to get whispered to you all the time." I don't know what it would be for Austin. I'm curious, you guys. Sam, you've lived there. What's the Austin whisper?

Sam Parr

The Austin Whisper is: "How do you live a fit life on your own terms?" This means being very balanced. Austin is very much about balance. So, how do you work 6 hours a week, go for walks, be with your family, wake up early, and be healthy? Austin is a place of balance, I think.

Shaan Puri

George, what's the Dubai whisper right now?

Sam Parr

Is it like... you're poor?

George Mack

There's definitely a little bit of that. I never thought I would have ended up being in Dubai for a little bit of time, but it was during COVID and the second lockdown came along. I wanted to go to the mountains by myself, and Chris, my friend from Modern Wisdom, said, "Come to Dubai." I was like, "I grew up reading Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. I'm scared of going to an Islamic country." Chris gave me the ultimate reply: "Don't be a virgin, Khan." I went for 2 weeks and stayed for 3 years. It's a very unique, weird, bizarre, and fascinating place.

Shaan Puri

That's great! Alright, let's jump in. So, you knew that we love business ideas. I'll give you two things: you wrote an intro for yourself, and I'm going to read it. But I think you didn't do it yourself, Jessa. You said, "I'm excited to come on. I don't have crazy high stakes, huge exits of my business. I'm more of a mom's basement writing ideas online, coming up with weird ideas and essays, kind of guy." So, you know, I have some ideas, some business ideas and opportunities, but I have a lot of philosophies and frameworks. I think that's great! You also didn't do yourself full justice. You have a great marketing agency, so you have a successful business there. Also, you're not just a kid in the basement writing essays. You're a kid in the basement writing essays that get read by everybody from, you know, Joe Schmo to Elon Musk. Elon has been retweeting you a lot lately, and I think that's a good sign, bro. You've made it!

George Mack

I appreciate that you're killing the British syndrome out of me, so I do appreciate that.

Sam Parr

What happens when Elon retweets you? By the way, do you get a lot of traffic?

George Mack

Yeah, I get quite a lot of traffic. I mean, the one thing I did notice is that I've reached like **100 million** people on Twitter, and I've never had one DM from a girl. Then Chris Williamson started sharing my videos on Instagram, and it changed a little bit. It's all men, tech things on Twitter like that. But yeah, you do get quite a lot of traffic. The notifications bell does start to break a little bit.

Shaan Puri

Alright, so let's start with business ideas. What have you got for us? What are the opportunities, ideas, or little half-baked startups that are in your mind right now?

George Mack

Yeah, so as Sean kind of mentioned, I run the Ad Professor account. People might know that on Twitter as well, where we make some of the best ads online. I'm obsessed with advertising angles, and all my business ideas start with the advert first, and then I kind of work from that. So, the first business idea that I think would be pretty cool, and that I've always wanted to do but never got around to, is essentially a personality test. I know you guys love personality tests; the personality test business model that exists is quite an easy way to find out about yourself. Everybody's fascinated by it, even if a lot of it is pseudoscience. I'll never forget the day I was in the car with my mom. I hope she doesn't mind me telling this story. My dad and my brothers were there too. My mom's heavily dyslexic, so she doesn't want to do the personality test, but she wants me to read it for her while she answers. I'm reading out the question, "I don't like to get into arguments," and she'll be like, "Oh, I heavily disagree." Then me and my dad are like, "No, heavily agree." So, I quickly realized that personality tests often reflect the answers you want to be true about yourself versus the actual reality. This kind of idea of a self-awareness test is where the personality test is potentially filled out by everyone in your close circle—your wife, your parents, your business partner—and they provide their insights. The reason I like this idea is that it's a little bit of a lotta palooza. You've got one, stacking on personality tests that have always worked; two, the social graph effect; and then three, the advert angle of being able to run adverts directly on "Find out what your wife thinks about you." The question I would have is...

Sam Parr

Is it a great business idea? Do you like it?

Shaan Puri

It is a great idea! I've been talking about tests like this. I have a notebook of what's the new IQ test, the 5 love languages test, and I've been really fascinated by them. Could you run a Facebook ad funnel to one of these businesses? I think most of the people who do this use a book funnel, which is like the slowest, oldest way of doing things. They write a great book about the science behind the love languages, and then, like with StrengthsFinder, they write a book and include a code or whatever to take the test, and you go pay for the test. But I love this for the reason you just described: the viral factor. Can I tell you a story of why I think this might work? When I first moved to Silicon Valley, I worked for this guy, Michael Birch. He had built a social network called Bebo that he sold for $850 million. But before he built Bebo, he created a social network called Ringo, which was the same exact thing as Bebo but just 12 months earlier. He sold it for about $2 or $3 million. What he did was build Ringo, and it started to grow. He didn't know how to keep up with the server costs. At the time, there was no Facebook, and he didn't know how social networks were ever going to make money. So, he was at a meetup, and a guy offered him about $4 million for it. He said, "Done." Then he worked for that guy, and they had a quiz company called Tickle. Tickle was basically like it started out more on the Myers-Briggs intellectual tests.

Sam Parr

Then it became everything.

Shaan Puri

Then it became, "What breed of dog are you?"

Shaan Puri

and and

Shaan Puri

Turns out, "What breed of dog are you?" was way more viral than "What is your life passion supposed to be?" This harder, more introspective test didn't capture people's interest as much. People wanted the "What dog are you?" quiz, and it went really viral. They sold Tickle for $100,000,000 to Monster, so he was like, "Holy shit! Quizzes are this amazing viral thing." People want, like you said, their favorite subject: themselves. They're curious to know the answer—where do I land? When they're done, they post or share where they landed, and other people say, "Oh, that's what you are! I wonder what I am," and they go take it as well. The only difference he made between Ringo, which was growing kind of fast and sold 4,000,000, and Bebo, which grew really fast with 1,000,000 users in 9 days, was that when he launched Bebo, it was a copy-paste of Ringo but with one difference. Instead of filling out a profile, you just started off with a personality quiz, which I think was called the "Best Friend Test." It was about how well do you know me. So, you would answer questions about yourself, and then other people would try to guess. You would send it to your friends and say, "See how well you know me." Then it would show you who knows you the best, and you would kind of compete. After they filled yours out, like guessing how well they know you, then you would fill your own out and send it back to them. It went super viral off this one mechanism. The thing you described, I think, would work really well because it is a "How well do you know me?" quiz, but your version was "How well do I know myself?" The real question there, actually, is "What do other people think about me?" That's probably the biggest question I have: What do other people think about me, and can I kind of anonymously find that information out?

Sam Parr

Alright guys, really quick. Back when I was running The Hustle, we had this premium newsletter called **Trends**. The way it worked was we hired a ton of analysts and created this sort of playbook for researching different companies, ideas, and emerging trends to help you make money and build businesses. Well, HubSpot did something kind of cool. They took this playbook that we developed and gave to our analysts, and they turned it into an actionable guide and a resource that anyone can download. It breaks down all the different methods that we use for spotting upcoming trends and identifying different companies that are going to explode and grow really quickly. It's pretty awesome that they took this internal document, which we had for teaching our analysts how to do this, and turned it into a tool that they are giving away for free. Anyone can download it! So, if you want to stay ahead of the game and find cool business ideas or different niches that most people have no idea exist, this is the ultimate guide. If you want to check it out, you can see the link down below in the description. Now, back to the show. So, Sean, do you remember like six episodes ago you were talking about going to Victoria and how someone said they did this like...

Shaan Puri

Jack Skeen

Sam Parr

Yeah, they did this executive coaching thing where you do a quiz, and it tells you about yourself. I loved that! It turns out, with Hampton, we have access to thousands of executives. So we are thinking about whether we should integrate this. Currently, we are testing it with about 3 or 4 customers. What we've done is create a quiz, like you've described, George. It talks about whatever you're asking your mother—these questions about what's your opinion of yourself. You send it to 20 different coworkers, wives, husbands, whatever, and then you get the results. We have put together a presentation to help you improve, and maybe it's a product that we could charge $1,000 for. But George, do you know about this? The thing we're talking about?

Shaan Puri

Have you ever heard about this? No? So, this guy basically does this for executives, and it's like a...

Sam Parr

360

Shaan Puri

Like, basically, it's brutal honesty—a punch in the face. So, that's the idea. He charges, I think, around $30,000 for this test. What they do is not just a quiz; they actually go and sit down to interview your wife, your business partner, your people who manage you, and the people you manage. All this stuff. Then, they come back to you with feedback: "Here's the truth. Here's where you're amazing. Here's maybe where you rub people the wrong way." And, you know, they give you that feedback. I don't know how great it is, but the two people I know who have done it were both like, "Yeah, this was massive for me." Now, they were both also in that phase where they sold their company for $100 million and needed a little bit of direction and purpose. It's wanting to indulge—it's a luxury item.

Sam Parr

They are a thirsty person asking for water.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. But hey, Hampton is a group of thirsty people asking for water. So, Sam, my prediction is that I think you will either double or triple the lifetime value of your customers if you integrate this thing. I think that is a genius idea, Sam.

Sam Parr

So, George, do you have any more tips for me?

George Mack

To people, what I like about this is that it rides a few societal memes as well. You've seen the gurus on Instagram chat about self-awareness, but what does that actually mean? Show me where that grows corn. What does self-awareness actually mean? Whereas this is quite a practical way of seizing self-awareness. I remember there's a line from Daniel Kahneman, who wrote *Thinking, Fast and Slow*. He’s the ultimate cognitive behavioral researcher and a Nobel Prize winner. Every cognitive bias you can think of came largely downstream of Daniel Kahneman. He’s the godfather. His overwhelming lesson was that essentially all that research taught him nothing. The only thing it taught him was that it's much easier to see mistakes in other people than to see them in yourself. This is that kind of idea, right? Other people notice things we don’t. We don't realize we have bad breath, but other people can realize it within seconds. We don’t realize we’re dating the wrong partner until 20 years and a horrific divorce later, but your best friend sees it in 2 minutes. So, there is something about when your ego is removed from it; other people see things a lot clearer than you can.

Sam Parr

Wasn't his other takeaway that at the end of his life he was like, "Oh, I think I was wrong"?

Shaan Puri

I think.

Sam Parr

A bunch of this research... I think he did this book and it was amazing. He goes, "I think we got a lot wrong about that."

Shaan Puri

Is that true? Is that what happened?

Sam Parr

Is that what happened, George? It was something like that where he likes... so, you know, we said these five theories and like these three, I think, actually are wrong.

George Mack

There are a few he definitely got wrong, and there are a few funny ones where he talks about the planning fallacy. Even knowing about the planning fallacy doesn't prevent it. So, even the guys who came up with the idea of the planning fallacy, when they were conducting research on how to teach it to kids in schools or any curriculum, they underestimated how long it would take to implement the curriculum or the planning fallacy itself. So, just because you know about cognitive biases doesn't mean you...

Sam Parr

What is the planning fallacy? Can we escape it?

George Mack

The planning fallacy is this idea that if you say, "I'm gonna achieve X within a month," it will probably take 2 months. No matter how long you plan, even being aware of the planning fallacy doesn't prevent it from happening. So, you constantly find that it takes three times as long as you think it will and costs twice as much. This is interesting when you read Elon’s biography. I wonder if that's one of the reasons why he always sets absolutely absurd deadlines. He knows that even with that factored in, it's still going to be later than expected.

Sam Parr

Well, that’s what I was gonna ask you. So, is the way to fix that to make **stupidly ambitious goals**? Like, if it’s where you shoot for the stars and if you miss it, you land on the moon type of vibe?

George Mack

I think there's definitely something to that, but I wonder if you can actually **bullshit** yourself to that level. I don't know.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, the other way to do it is to **burn the boat**. You make it so that it has to get done; there is no way for it to spill over. It's not physically possible. That's when you know the remarkable things happen, right? Like, you know, when he runs out of money and the last rocket has to take off, it can't explode like the previous three. That's the rocket that actually went because he's out of money at that point. There is no other way. I think this is where there are a lot of remarkable stories of people who, when they're actually backed into a corner and there's no way out, are able to perform the miraculous. They're able to do what seemingly couldn't have been done before. You said something interesting that I want to go back to real quick. You said, "When I think about businesses, I start with the advert," which is the ad, and then you work backwards to the business. So, what do you mean by that? Can you explain it more? I think it's really smart. What do you mean by that, or maybe what's an example of that?

George Mack

I've helped so many founders with their advertising. The amount of time they spend on their idea is significant, and then they realize there's no distribution for it. It just isn't distributed naturally. So, I always think from the compression algorithm. I know we spoke about this, Sean, regarding a "sticky idea." Essentially, all good advertisements are sticky ideas. This can be boiled down to the following algorithm: the total amount of emotion times the number of people that can understand it. That is what ultimately makes a good advertisement. If I can't compress it down, because people talk about an elevator pitch, it's almost like the ad pitch. Can you compress this idea down to a person who doesn't care about you, scrolling in their feed, and then immediately think, "I'm going to give money towards this"? That 2-second snapshot is crucial. I think if you can't compress that down, it needs more work.

Sam Parr

You have an idea on here, and the sentence that you're going to reply with when I ask what your second idea is, is just the most ridiculous sentence that will ever be said on this podcast. So, what's that?

George Mack

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

Number 2

George Mack

Number 2: Sean already knows me quite well, so he knows I'm an absolute weirdo. Sam, but obviously, first impressions... there, I'm ruining it for you.

Sam Parr

Did you? I love weirdos. This is great! This is exactly what I'm about.

George Mack

So, sex is going to potentially die as a reproductive mechanism. If we just go through the history of sex, imagine a chart of the sex-to-baby ratio from the 1500s. You have the first official condom that came in 1855. There's talk that it was actually in the 1500s when people were using animal parts, but I'd say condoms as we know them now started then.

Sam Parr

I guess it's like a sheep intestine.

George Mack

Yeah, now that's a drop shipping store right there, right? Then the morning-after pill came in the 1920s and was in full effect by the 1970s. So, if you can imagine the number of times having sex and the baby rate, it's going like this with time—it's completely plummeting. What I think is looking more and more likely, and another thing we talk about is an advert-first approach. I think you spoke about this before, Sean, where you look at different technologies coming in. So, you've obviously got IVF, you've got biobanks with lots of genetic data, and you've got phenotype tests and genotype tests. I think you're already seeing this, but my friend Jonathan has a company that they're going to be launching probably around about next year. Essentially, particularly for wealthy people, and then I think it will trickle down to society, where you have 10 embryos and they can basically map now. Okay, if you want to avoid diabetes, Crohn's disease, cancer, etc., we recommend this embryo selection. Then, obviously, it's going to probably get weirder with time—whether that's height, eye color, IQ, things like that. So, we're really on the precipice of this, and all you're going to need is a few people who can crunch the data, and it's going to...

Shaan Puri

Be a.

George Mack

Wild couple of years.

Shaan Puri

So, that's actually pretty convincing because Sam's right. When I read this, you said, "We're one of the last generations to be created via sex." I was like, "I don't know what the hell he's talking about." Yeah, test tube babies and then... but when you just made that case, I gotta admit it went from "George is nuts" to "Oh, he's right." Which is basically that we already have the tech now to create a baby without having sex. Cool, IVF does that all the time. Then when you say, "Well, what's the benefit?" The benefit is selection, right? So first, it's deselection of horrible diseases. Who can argue against that? Then you have pro-selection, which is, "Do you want the blue-eyed, smarter, taller... like, what do you want?" Right? The higher likelihood chance. Let's say that science is making that more and more possible over time. It seems like that's where the puck is going. Are you going to be the parent who's like, "Nah, I'm crap shooting it. I'm just rolling the dice. I'm just gonna go do it the animal way. We're gonna do In-N-Out Burger animal style. We're just gonna go do it, and then whatever happens, happens." Whereas all your friends and neighbors are the ones, you know, handpicking the best babies out of test tubes to say, "We want the embryo that's gonna be the healthiest, the most set up to thrive." It seems like you're at a disadvantage if you're gonna go choose the old school way, right? It's like driving stick when the world moves to automatic.

Sam Parr

When I read the sentence, "George is gonna love the Earth when he comes back down to reality," I thought, once he leaves Mars and comes back, he's going to love Earth. It's great!

Shaan Puri

We have.

Sam Parr

Water. Yeah, but then I realized, "Hey, guess what? I had my child via IVF."

Shaan Puri

So, I wasn't going to say it, but Sam did this.

Sam Parr

Exactly what you are describing, I did, my friend. Yeah, and listen, we did it because there's a gene that runs in our blood that we didn't want to pass on. We did it. We accomplished it. We eliminated that gene. We got rid of the target, the two.

Shaan Puri

60, Gene dude. Yeah, you got rid of that damn... being beautiful has caused too many problems for you.

Sam Parr

Yeah, we wanted our kids to be 58, and it worked. So, yeah, I did exactly the thing that you're talking about.

George Mack

I'm going to get rid of the British self-doubt. I think there's two types of people that hear this. There's one type that goes, "This is really weird. Why would anybody ever do this?" And the second type goes, "Oh my God, I've been so worried about this family hereditary condition for so, so long. Of course!" So, the first group, if you actually hear that and think that, you're probably quite lucky that you don't have it. But anybody who has... like I've got a few different family chronic conditions. As soon as I heard this, I was like, "Oh, if I could not see my child go through pain that I've seen other family members go through, whatever money this takes..." It goes back to Sean's work. Work backwards from the Facebook ad: "Are you concerned about ABC, diabetes, Crohn's disease?" Insert condition funnel right there, and immediately you can see how you can have very wealthy people paying a lot of money for that. With time, the unit of economics will go down further and further.

Sam Parr

And it also makes sense because people are waiting. I've got so many friends who are in their thirties, late thirties, and they're wanting to have their first kid. They're yuppies who have focused on their careers for a long time. Then you get into your late thirties and you're like, "Shit, my parts aren't working as they're supposed to." I could use a little help to make this happen. It's so, so much more common than I ever thought.

Shaan Puri

So, yeah, funny story. We were doing the podcast with somebody who's super, super wealthy—like a billionaire. Before we did the pod, I wanted to meet the person, so I went to their house, hung out with them, and got to know them a little bit. Ben was with me, and we hung out. It was great! We had a long conversation about a bunch of different subjects: business, tech, life, blah blah blah. Somewhere along the way, this person mentioned, "Oh yeah, I have this many kids, and we're expecting our next one." We were like, "Oh, congratulations!" So, anyway, when we were leaving the house, we said goodbye to everybody, met the family, and said bye. Afterwards, I asked Ben, "So, what were your big notes? What were your takeaways? We just got this amazing access to this person. None of this was recorded, but we can learn from this. What did we learn?" I had all these business nuggets, like, "Oh, he mentioned this growth tactic," or "He said this was the reason why that thing succeeded." Then Ben goes, "I looked at his notes. I found the ultimate luxury item." I was like, "Wait, like his car or...?"

Shaan Puri

What?

Shaan Puri

What are you talking about? He had showed us his garage of cool cars, and he was like, "No surrogate." I was like, "What?" Because we were walking out, we saw his wife, and he said, "We're expecting a baby next month." But his wife is not 9 months pregnant. Fucking Columbo! He's like, "That has gotta be... right? That's gotta be the ultimate luxury item. It's like you don't have to go through this incredible body experience to carry and then birth this baby. That's the ultimate luxury." I started laughing at that, and I thought, "Oh, he's kinda right. I think there is."

Sam Parr

So, I disagree with you on that.

Shaan Puri

You disagree that it's a luxury item?

Sam Parr

Yeah, I think it's...

Shaan Puri

Everybody wants it.

Sam Parr

No, I think I... I don't want... I mean, look, it's a bunch of dudes talking about stuff that we aren't going to experience. But, like...

Shaan Puri

Dude, I could barely form a sentence. I called it a body transformation. Yeah, I have three kids, and I still don't really understand what's going on.

Sam Parr

Yeah, but no. I think that's a necessary thing to go through in order to bond with your kid. So, I don't...

Shaan Puri

I know if you, as the alternate, are saying if you're adopted, you're not going to have a bond. I think there's a lot of nuances to that.

Sam Parr

But George, what do you think?

George Mack

I mean, I like these things because I don't...

Shaan Puri

I'll tell them.

Sam Parr

Tell me your opinion on what we should do with women's bodies. Yeah, put me in.

George Mack

On the spot there.

Shaan Puri

Okay, I'll give you a different angle on this. My wife wanted to deliver naturally—no medication, no nothing—and I was like, "Are you nuts? Why would you do that? I did this the hard way." She said, "No, that's what I want to do." So, we went to this birthing class. Giving birth the natural way was by far the most... scarred into my brain, you know, three hours I've ever been in. One of the things that I raised my hand at was about 90 minutes in. They were just describing what seemed like voluntary torture, and I asked, "Hey, I just gotta know, is this what most people do?" The instructor said, "No, no. I think she said 80-something percent—maybe 85% of people choose an epidural." I thought, "That makes sense to me." An epidural is also kind of a newer technology, right? For 100 years, there was no substitute for an epidural. But once you have the option to have a baby without feeling all of the pain during delivery and labor, obviously, a lot of people opted into that. There are a whole bunch of birth businesses that are like... you know, the epidural is a birth business. After we had our baby, they asked, "Do you want to freeze the cord blood and eat the placenta?" I was like, "I don't know what you're talking about, but no to the eating." I asked, "Freezing? What's that for?" They explained, "Well, if your kid ever has a thing and they need stem cells, this is a super-rich source of stem cells." I thought, "Cool, so how does this work?" They said, "We're going to take the cord right when the baby's born. This might save your baby's life someday, but we're just going to freeze it, and you're going to pay us a couple thousand dollars now and then like $500 a year for now until the end of time." I was like, "Okay, yes, but also, how do I go buy one of these businesses? This is the most incredible business I've ever heard of! You're playing on parents' fear at a time when all of their love endorphins are kicking in. They're like, 'Okay, my purpose in life is to protect this baby.' And then it's a set-it-and-forget-it, you know, tens of thousands of dollars subscription for a thing that you're just going to... the ultimate insurance policy for your kid. That has to be the best business I've ever heard of."

George Mack

That's good.

Shaan Puri

So, if anyone has ones out there, I'm still looking to buy them. I've never seen one for sale, which I think is another signal that it is a very good business.

George Mack

100%

Sam Parr

What’s the selling eyes as art thing?

George Mack

Yeah, so this is one thing I noticed while I was traveling around Europe. Have you guys seen this store? Let me pull it up. So, how old...?

Sam Parr

Are you George?

George Mack

I'm 30. I just turned 30.

Sam Parr

**Yeah, good energy! I like the energy.**

Shaan Puri

This is called an **indicator of interest** from Sam.

Sam Parr

Yeah, and Sam starts to ask, "So, what's up?"

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. So before we do that, let's talk. You've been past the first 20 minutes of the pod where it's like, "Does this person have anything interesting to say?" to now, "Wait, I need more of this guy in my life."

Sam Parr

The second a British guy says, "whilst a mug," you have my attention. That's my favorite word.

George Mack

Oh, it is... well, can you guys see this? So, for the people who are listening, your eye for art... in Amsterdam right now, I walked past a store. Outside of the store, there's this thing where you kind of lean into a telescope, and reflecting back from the telescope is your eye. What's fascinating is that I've got relatively nice eyes. I don't get many compliments on them, but I have blue eyes.

Sam Parr

You can say that again, George.

George Mack

There you go! You could have kept me blushing too much, Sam. So, you then have certain friends of yours that probably have beautiful eyes and get compliments all the time. What's actually fascinating, similar to the personality test, is when you zoom into someone's eye. Even if they've got the ugliest eyes in the world, they're beautiful. So, like my eye, I was like, "Wow, this is incredible!" You can even do it where couples partner their eyes. They said, "Oh, the fastest growing companies out of Europe right now are growing pretty fast."

Shaan Puri

Did you do this?

George Mack

I did do it. Yeah, my girlfriend and I got our eyes scanned.

Shaan Puri

Is it like on the wall behind you? Where is it at?

George Mack

No, no, no. It's not on the wall behind me. I'm getting it from my mom as a gift.

Shaan Puri

Is it print or digital? What do they do? What do they give you?

George Mack

You can print it and then you can do big blow-ups on the wall. They charge quite a lot for these things; it's like £200 to £300.

Sam Parr

And the reason why you like this is because you're all about distribution. You were walking down the street, you see the storefront, you can look into this thing, and they show you a picture of it. Then, you pay money to buy it.

Shaan Puri

And you said the sticky idea is **emotion times market**, right? So this is everybody's... the market, and the emotion I think is pretty strong in this.

George Mack

Yeah, it's so personalized to them, and it looks beautiful.

Sam Parr

Dude, you can buy a necklace or a ring with your wife's eye print, correct? This is awesome!

Shaan Puri

There's probably no reaper purchase here, but this is awesome as a one-time thing.

George Mack

And it's so much more beautiful. Even if you think you've got boring eyes, when they zoom in at that level, it's like seeing the universe. You go, "Oh my God, this is its own mini universe inside of me."

Shaan Puri

I noticed on their landing page they don't have very many, you know, boring black eyes like mine. It's all like beautiful greens, blues, and hazels.

George Mack

I think you'd be surprised. To quote Brendan Schaub, "I think when you get under that, it's crazy."

Shaan Puri

Well, I’m definitely curious. I would want to do this. If this was around me, I would definitely want to do it. I would certainly do it with my wife or my kids because it’s just a thoughtful, cool thing rather than the same old, same old.

George Mack

So, one of the innovations I'd like to see is: could you distribute this online? With smartphone cameras getting better and better, is there an ability, like AI scanning the image? Is there something there? Or is it that you send a little device that sits on their camera, giving even more definition so they could do it at home? And all of a sudden, you can imagine the advert... first of all.

Shaan Puri

Oh dude, if you could do this with an iPhone...

George Mack

How beautiful your eyes are! Boom! Global market immediately. Alright.

Shaan Puri

I'm going to send this to somebody to try to make this.

Sam Parr

Dude, this is awesome! I just texted this to my wife. I said, "Hey, let's go!"

Shaan Puri

To Europe.

Sam Parr

This is awesome! No, they have a New York location. If you click "Find Gallery," they have galleries all over the world.

Shaan Puri

So, George, you said this business is doing well. What do you know about them?

George Mack

Doing really well! From when I went into the store, I was like, "This ticks all my boxes." The Lota Palosra effect right here is ticking all my boxes. They said it's like one of the fastest growing startups in America. They opened 150 locations in the last year or something like that, so it's growing like bananas.

Sam Parr

Do you guys want to hear something? So, the other day, have you seen this? It's mostly women, and it's this thing on TikTok where you go to this place, and they hold up colors to your face and tell you your color palette. Yeah, what's that called? Color scale? Or color grade? It's like a noun where it's like, "Hey, what's your blank?" I forget what it's called. But anyway, my wife wanted to go. She saw an ad on TikTok for it, and she was like, "This looks cool." I was like, "I'll go." You pay $100, and they rented this tiny... it's like a huge closet, basically. You just sit there, and they hold up a shade to you and go, "No, not that one."

Shaan Puri

Is it for clothes, or for makeup, or for everything?

Sam Parr

It's for... and at the end, you get this thing that says, "You are this one," whatever. There are like 18 categories, which means this makeup, this clothing color, all these colors—these are your colors. For me, it was like, it's all women. It's like Margot Robbie. It just said some other white lady who is also an example of this person. So, you should wear clothing in the wintertime that are these colors, and in the summertime, these colors, whatever. But it's a brick-and-mortar thing that has been franchised out, similarly, I imagine, to this business. I was like, "How many of these a day do you have?" She's like, "I'm packed! I've got 14 a day, and each one has paid $100." I give HQ, like the headquarters company, half of it or something like that.

Shaan Puri

What was it called? What's the name of it?

Sam Parr

Yeah, and I think I went... I think the place that I was called, the place that I went, it was called "The Color Lab" or something like that, right? Where it's like, "Sign me up!" It had the same type of shtick as this one, George, where it was like a brick-and-mortar, it was franchised.

Shaan Puri

It's like DXA.

Sam Parr

Yeah, there was like a thing outside and you're like, "Yeah, of course I have to know what color I am, otherwise I'm gonna be ugly." It totally got me. Have you seen these guys on like TikTok or Instagram? It's mostly like a woman thing.

Shaan Puri

I've heard of the trend, like the color analysis type of thing. I don't know, George, you probably know the fancy word for these things. But there's the concept of consumerism, right? Which is like, you know how Americans basically feel like we need to buy certain things. I'll give you an example: a friend who lives in India came over to visit, and they said, "Yeah, India has really changed. One of the things is like India feels like America. We've become consumerized." He's like, "You know, before, Indians used to have one, max two pairs of shoes. But now it's normal to feel like you need ten pairs of shoes. You need all the different colors." It's like, that's not a real need, but it starts to embed itself in culture. You almost convince yourself that you need this much stuff; you need to buy more things. I think there's this personal consumerism, which is around needing to know X about yourself. You need to know your quantified health, your color grade, your personality test. It seems like you can just keep selling into that. There just seems to be an increasing amount of consumerism around the self too, not just around material things in your house.

George Mack

Yeah, I don't know the specific thing for it, but it's this idea of the **infinite consumer abyss**. You stare into it, and it stares back at you.

Shaan Puri

Dude, look at this guy. The infinite consumer abyss—just off the dome. That's why this guy's the guy.

Sam Parr

If I'm gonna... if we're gonna have an infinite consumer abyss, I'm getting red. Because according to Lily's Color Lab, those are my colors.

Shaan Puri

Wait, so you did this, or you made it sound like your wife did this?

Sam Parr

Well, she was like, "Let's do this," and I was like, "I'm in. Here's $200. Let's just... plural." Yeah, yeah, like, "Let's find out our colors."

Shaan Puri

Color I.

Sam Parr

I don't know, dude. I didn't use any of it. I just went to experience what it was all about. I don't know.

Shaan Puri

Sam, Lilac Bar, let's go.

Sam Parr

I just wear blue and black. Anyway, that’s my color.

Shaan Puri

Alright, let's do these other two ideas because I'm curious now. By the way, you know how...

Shaan Puri

I know this is a great episode because I feel like I need to get off this and go do these ideas right now.

Shaan Puri

I don't even want to finish this episode. I want to go do one of these things right now. That's how I know this is a banger. Alright, so let's do number 4: **mold cleanup as a service**. What do you mean by that?

George Mack

This, yes. So, one big meme or wave that I was noticing in America is people becoming more and more concerned about mold in their houses.

Sam Parr

Yeah, people freak out about that in Austin, particularly.

George Mack

Yeah, 70% of houses in America apparently have mold. Obviously, it varies in terms of the amount, but the downstream effects include autoimmune conditions, severe health issues, asthma, etcetera, etcetera. Working backwards from the ad, first find out if you have mold in your house. Picture a horrific image of mold and the damaging insights into the effects it can have. You could sell the visit for free, and people are ripping up their houses, spending tens of thousands of dollars—hundreds of thousands of dollars—because if it's your home and you have poison in it, the friends that I have who are renting are literally moving out of their houses. They're not sticking around. Now, if you actually own the home, it's even stickier. I like it from an ad perspective and a health perspective. If you could partner with a big health influencer as your Chief Influencer Officer, that person could just chat about mold all day and run the funnel of finding out for free, then sell them all the services on the back end. This is similar to what Maric Health has done for blood optimization, but doing it in the house. I think there's a lot of money to be made riding that wave. I know, Sean, you talk about one-shot businesses. People are searching for mold in Google Trends; it's just steadily getting bigger and bigger every year.

Shaan Puri

I love that for a bunch of reasons. So, what is it that you said? **30% of houses have mold?** **70%?** Okay, so that is also a killer hook for the ad, right? "75% of the 70% of houses have mold. Find out for free if yours does! Type in your address, and we'll send out a person for free to diagnose it." If you know that 70% have something, then your conversion, even if 10% or 5% of those people are going to spend a few thousand dollars getting rid of the mold, that's pretty good. You could target high-value areas. You could also just run this as lead generation only. People who do mold servicing probably are not great at Facebook ads, so you could just be great at the Facebook ads part and then farm out all the leads to the mold companies all around the country. That seems like a really good part of this business. The last thing is that there are so many people with undiagnosed health issues. Maybe it's fatigue, maybe it's bad allergies, whatever's going on, and you can't find the root cause of these. I think this is why something like gut health has taken off in such a big way. It seems like one of these things—yeah, if your gut's screwed up, then everything downstream is going to be screwed up. It could explain 15 different health conditions. It's the same thing: if your environment is toxic, then that could explain 15 different conditions that you might have. Who's going to argue that? No, I want to keep it toxic! Once you find out that they are... We had a pest control guy come to our house, and he's like, "Yeah, see that little nook under the house? That means you have mice and rats under the house. Even if you're not seeing them in the house, they're here." He asked, "Would you like me to seal this and place some traps? I can come by every month and spray." I was like, "Cool, here's $300 a month. Go for it!" You know, that's a sub-$300 a month subscription that I'm on now for the vague possibility that there's a rodent problem at our house.

Sam Parr

What you're going to learn, George, about moving to Austin is that it's like the most health-conscious city I've ever been to. Some people are pretty extreme, but it's kind of exciting to be around those extreme people. I know people who have a Brita or a Berkeley water filter for their entire home. I started researching it. Have you guys ever seen the inside of a water heater, like a water tank? They're horrible.

Shaan Puri

**Disgusting! It's horrible.** You see that there's a picture of somebody literally just holding two fistfuls of what looks like either mold, fungus, or just mulch of some kind.

Sam Parr

And so, I saw one of these videos where they just cut open a water tank, like a water tank for the water heater.

Shaan Puri

Water heater tank autopsy.

Sam Parr

It looks like what you would see with an old coffin that you opened up, which is a bunch of rotted skeleton bones. It's just like, "What the hell is this? I don't even know what this is," and it makes you crawl. I remember seeing this and thinking, "Is my water heater like this? Are my pipes like this?" I have to get one of these Berkeley water filters. I need one of these things. This is very similar, and the difference is, I think getting mold out of your home is either quite hard or, in some cases, impossible. I don't know if that problem can actually be solved. Getting a new water heater or a water filter at your house is much more solvable. Particularly, my in-laws live in New York City, where these buildings are built in the fifties. A lot of times, the pipes are similar, and the water that goes through New York City has been around for a long time. I remember seeing these videos of water heaters where they cut them open and do an autopsy. I thought, "Yeah, I'm never drinking water from any of this shit ever again." I was like, "I need to find a place to replace this that is in line with what you're talking about, and maybe even more of a pungent ad."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's a good one. Should we move on to the next one? Alright, let's do this last one. Your final idea, I think, is a really fun one because it's not even a business; it's like a country-level idea. You should be the CMO of the UK. Explain this idea.

George Mack

Yeah, I like how when Balaji went from cryptocurrency to now trying to build his own country. You go, "Fuck, I've been thinking about companies this entire time. People out here think of countries."

Shaan Puri

and

Shaan Puri

I don't... the cities whisper, right? He's in Silicon Valley for too long. It's like, you need to be more ambitious. You're starting companies? Oh, that's cute. I start countries.

George Mack

So, one of my reflections, coming from the UK, is about experiencing America. We spoke about it to begin with. Despite all the political shenanigans, attending the 4th of July in Nashville was wild. There were flags everywhere, and people were chanting "USA! USA! USA!" Everyone was on the streets.

Shaan Puri

Was at.

Shaan Puri

The end.

George Mack

Of the day, chanting "USA!" and then people were going, "You can't do that!" That's why we're chanting, because we got rid of you guys. Anyway, I then reflected on it and I realized that I'd never met an American that doesn't celebrate their national day in some regard. Then I realized I've never met a Brit that does celebrate their national day. And then I realized I've never met a Brit who even knows the day of their national day.

Sam Parr

Well, because you guys have been like the bosses, there is no Independence Day. You were like the colonizer, right? Like the...

George Mack

Exactly. So, that's one of the issues with it. The irony is, by the way, the national day is St. George's Day. I'm English, called George, and I had to Google it. It's April 23rd in England. There are no flags anywhere; you can't have national pride. I do think part of it is the colonization side. Also, St. George is like, "Who was this guy?" Whereas for Independence Day, you have a clear enemy. So, thinking from an advertising perspective, who is St. George? He slayed a dragon. Nobody cares. Essentially, they're canceling St. George's Day and creating Dunkirk Day instead.

Shaan Puri

Yes.

George Mack

The Britain's finest hour. We've made a lot of mistakes, but Britain's finest hour was when we escaped Hitler's Germany. 400,000 men, with Churchill, all of Britain came together, sending the boats across. Literally, the only reason the country exists and we're not speaking German, and I would argue Adolf Hitler doesn't conquer the whole of Europe, is because of this day. So, there's an enemy, no matter where you stand politically: Adolf Hitler is the number one enemy. When it comes to the ad strategy, make it the most British day imaginable. From midnight to 12 PM, you can complain, moan, drink tea, and talk about what's wrong in the past, present, and future. But come 12 PM, get the RAF in the sky. Get kids dressed as British icons. If you look at the number of British icons—Charles Darwin, William Shakespeare, John Lennon—there are so many icons of history that the world should be grateful for. I think you could add billions to the tourist economy of the UK and unite a difficult nation for at least an afternoon.

Sam Parr

Sign me up, my friend! This sounds awesome. There we go. We could... and Oasis, by the way, just announced they're going on tour.

George Mack

Going to that.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I'm... he's like, "Darwin shakes? Sounds like Oasis."

Sam Parr

Liam Gallagher

Shaan Puri

But honestly, playing "Wonderwall" would not be a bad idea. That might be the official song of Dunkirk Day.

George Mack

That we got.

Shaan Puri

So, you posted this. Did anybody like hit you up? Did you get some, like, you know, a PM in the DMs? What happened?

Sam Parr

The private... I mean, who's the... like I...

Shaan Puri

Don't know. Harry, reach out.

Shaan Puri

Who? Who?

Shaan Puri

Who? Who's?

Shaan Puri

Supposed to.

Sam Parr

Reach out.

George Mack

Not yet. Not yet. We were... I'm not gonna... I'm gonna keep banging the drum for a while.

Shaan Puri

But I just want to make sure you should run ads to your essay, to your blog post, targeting specifically... as hyper-specific as you can.

Sam Parr

The zip code of the royal family.

Shaan Puri

Ten grand of ad spend, and I'm pretty sure you're going to get a meeting at the palace. We're here to discuss.

George Mack

Let's do it. Let's do it. Don't cook that.

Sam Parr

That's fantastic! That is like a funny conundrum that England is in. It's like, well, you guys have been the man for so long that there's not really a "started from the bottom, now we're here" type of story. It's more like you've been the man for so long and now you're in force. So, like, that's pretty good longevity.

Shaan Puri

Well, the thing is, you need the brand, right? So, like, I bet if I walked outside right now and went to, you know, just a nearby... I don't know, if I went to Home Depot, and if it was a busy day at Home Depot, I feel like if I could get two other people with me to start chanting "USA," I'm pretty sure the whole store would just start arbitrarily chanting "USA" too. This would happen not on July 4th, but because there's such a pride in the USA. The brand is really, really strong, right? It's like freedom, number one. There's the American Dream, and there's the pride of America. Whereas, I think, what would the country stand for? So, you were like, "Drink tea and wine," which is humorous in a way, but what would be the thing? Would it be creativity? Would it be art? What would be the thing that we can hang our hat on, like, "We're the best at this"? What is the British pride about?

George Mack

I think from first principles, the reason why *Independence Day* works is because there's an enemy that you escape. Just using the concept of creating an enemy again, talking about advertising tactics earlier, it's a great angle. But the enemy of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany could unite. It's the only thing that can unite this country, I think.

Shaan Puri

Right.

George Mack

So, and then just go through the... like whatever you want to pick. You want to pick literature? You want to pick the Industrial Revolution? We've got some classic hits in the library. We've got a lot.

Shaan Puri

I think I have an answer to my quest, to my own question, that adds on to what you just said. The UK is sort of like the Harvard of countries. It is Ivy League, it is prestige, it is old money, it is old history. We've been here forever, and the great minds have come from us. I think that's the branding. The US is more like, I don't know, a big state school. It's a bit of a party school, right? Whereas, you know, we're more like USC, while the UK is more like Harvard, Yale, or Princeton in its vibe and brand. So, it's got that old luxury, old money, old prestige brand, which is elevated. I think that's part of... well, that's what I would lean into more. It's not like modern and super high-tech; I would lean into the other side on the branding.

Sam Parr

One of my favorite ad campaigns of all time was a Rolex campaign from the seventies. It featured a picture of Dwight Eisenhower.

Shaan Puri

You know.

Sam Parr

The general during World War II, and then the President of America giving a speech to troops. He had a Rolex on, and then it showed an admiral of a great ship giving directions to his crew. He looks like he's going to war, and he's wearing a Rolex. Then I think it's JFK wearing a Rolex while he was talking to Castro or something. Amazing, whatever. The headline was, "The men who control the destinies... the men who control the destiny of the world wear Rolex." It's one of my favorite ad campaigns of all time because it makes me associate Rolex with prestige and doing something—not just being elite, but actually flexing that muscle. I've never seen a good idea on how to reuse this ad campaign that I love so much, but this might be the one. It's like the people who have given the world art or the people who have helped shape the destiny of the world are British, whatever. But that's one of my favorite ad campaigns of all time.

George Mack

Yeah, if you... I think the copy is, "If you were here tomorrow, you'd be wearing a Rolex." He does different variations of that. I broke that one down a few times. It's so hypnotic. Even that line, "If you were here tomorrow, you would wear a Rolex," with an image of the White House, creates an aspiration association with the White House. It puts you in it. That is hypnosis. If you spoke to a hypnotist about a sentence, that sentence is all literal hypnosis.

Sam Parr

Like, for example, there's a Porsche one that I love, Sean. It says, "Too small to get laid in, but you'll get laid the second you get out of it." And it's a picture of a Porsche.

Shaan Puri

Right, or the New Balance one. The only shoe worn by high fashion models in London and dads in Ohio.

Sam Parr

Yeah, yeah, yeah! I love that one.

Shaan Puri

Right, that's like such a good one.

George Mack

Like I said, we've broken down a load of these on the AMP Professor. So, like one of the Porsche ones is, "Honestly, now did you spend your youth dreaming about someday owning a Nissan or a Mitsubishi?" Yeah, that's good. You may get lost, but not in the crowd.

Sam Parr

That's another good Porsche one.

George Mack

If this car doesn't excite you, check your pulse. You may be dead! So yeah, there are so many... Did you go to the ad professor on Twitter? We've got so many of them.

Shaan Puri

So, we should talk about the Ad Professor real quick. You have this marketing agency, and to grow it, I thought you did a brilliant thing: you created this anonymous account on Twitter, the Ad Professor. I think you didn't tell people at the beginning that it was you, right?

George Mack

Nobody knows to this day.

Shaan Puri

Well, there you go! Breaking news scoop: "Came out of the closet." YouTube thumbnail: George Mack comes out and reveals his truth. We got it!

George Mack

Yep, people would click on that. They already know.

Shaan Puri

So, he creates this thing called "The Ad Professor." All he does is give... it's like, I love ads, which you do, and you collect them. So, you just started threading, "Here's just badass ads." Then, people start DMing you. From what I understand, it's a better salesman than any sales guy you could have hired to go out and pitch for business. Is that true? Can you talk a little bit about it?

George Mack

We also create ads for brands. For example, on Friday, we reached about 30,000,000 people with one campaign. It included 23 different ads that we've created, such as one for Ryanair and another for Tesla.

Shaan Puri

What you're saying is you created ads "on spec," meaning you pretended Tesla was your client. You said, "Here's the ad we would make for you, Tesla," and "Here's the ad we would make for you, Ryanair." Those also went viral because you really did a good job with that, right?

George Mack

Exactly. So, like the Tesla one, it takes, I think, about 3.4 seconds to read this ad—the same time it takes a Tesla to go from 0 to 60.

Sam Parr

This is great! It's a picture of a Tesla driving off. This is a really cool website.

Shaan Puri

So you do that, and then people just start sliding into your DMs wanting to work with you guys? Or how do they even...? Because you don't even say, "I have an agency, by the way," right? You don't do heavy calls to action on this, or am I wrong?

George Mack

A little bit like a plug at the end, but it's always value-sourced. I think that model of who you went to school with and knowing people that way, versus just making dope things online and people seeing the ads, is interesting. People are realizing that those poor shots from the '70s still have relevance today. I'm trying to create ads that are just super sexy. There's this weird thing I discovered via looking at AdHorn on Reddit. There are hundreds of thousands of communities dedicated to people chatting about AdHorn. I then created the AdProfessor off the back of that. But yeah, no, it beeped and nerved me until today, I guess.

Sam Parr

Does this make good revenue?

George Mack

We do okay.

Sam Parr

And how many people are working?

Shaan Puri

Do they? Great! Well, say the name of your agency.

Sam Parr

The way so that people can go find you guys.

George Mack

On the website, I just go to **adprofessor.com**. Sam was mentioning the website. Then we have about **40 people**, give or take.

Sam Parr

Wow, this is awesome! You're... this is really cool. I would like to use you guys.

George Mack

Thank you.

Sam Parr

I feel sold. When I go to this website, I'm like, "This is cool." I've filed that Twitter handle; I thought it was really cool.

Shaan Puri

Alright, we are going to split this. That was part 1 of an episode with George Mack, where we discussed ideas, ideas, ideas. I thought he had some bangers in there. The next part we're going to do is his frameworks, which is actually what he's more known for. This guy has published essays and tweets that get retweeted by Elon Musk like once every week. He has some really awesome ideas and frameworks that he has curated or uniquely come up with. We're going to talk about those. That's all part 2 with George Mack: the big ideas.