The Startup Ideas Podcast
3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole
Wed, 22 May 2024
Join us for an insightful discussion with Dickie Bush, Co-Founder of Premium Ghostwriting Academy, and Nicolas Cole, Co-Founder of Ship 30 for 30. We discuss how writing entrepreneurs can leverage Chat-GPT and Kindle Unlimited to build a profitable portfolio of books in underserved niches. We'll explore various career paths for writers and share innovative startup ideas to kickstart your success in the writing industry. Don't miss out on this episode packed with valuable tips and strategies for aspiring authors and entrepreneurs!🚀 My FREE 5 day email course to learn how to build a business of the future using the ACP funnel:https://www.communityempire.co/free-course🎯 To build your own portfolio businesses powered by community you might enjoy my membership.You'll get my full course with all my secrets on building businesses, peer-groups to keep you accountable, business ideas every single month and more!Spots are limited.https://www.communityempire.co/📬 Join my free newsletter to get weekly startup insights for free:https://www.gregisenberg.com70,000+ people are already subscribed.FIND ME ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenbergInstagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/FIND DICKIE BUSH ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/dickiebushLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dickiebushFIND NICOLAS COLE ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/Nicolascole77LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolascoleTo improve your rankings your business on Google and using AI for SEO, sign up to boringmarketing.comEpisode Timestamp00:00 Intro02:45 First business idea: LitRPG Series06:47 Boring Marketing13:44 Is GenZ Reading Books?17:24 First business idea: LitRPG Series Part 221:18 Partnering with an Operator24:39 Writer Career Paths27:08 Second business idea: AI-Powered Publishing House32:07 Third business idea: Analysis Tools for Niche Marketplaces33:25 Framework for Structuring Startup Portfolio35:56 Fourth business idea: Trends for X industry
What's so interesting about this subcategory on Amazon is that there's way more readers than there are creators. There's a lot more people who want to read lit RPGs than there are people writing it. Dude, when you see the math on these books, it's mind blowing.
So what is the math on these books? Just because I don't know.
There are lit RPG books right now doing like a quarter million a month.
If you zoom out, what you just said was identifying opportunities where the supply and demand are mismatched, but specifically in the Kindle Direct publishing market.
If you pair all that together and go female oriented, like main character lit RPGs in Kindle Unlimited, multiplied by a hundred books with digital product or some sort of subscription on the backend,
I don't know, man. This is why I love you because I would never in my entire life think about something like this, but now I have a hundred ideas that would go deeper. Let's go. Because.
All right, should we begin? Sure. Let's do it. Where do you want to start? Do you have any ideas for me? You got ideas?
I have one, but is there somewhere you'd like to start?
No, no. I mean, whenever I talk to you guys, I always leave just like rejuvenated with ideas.
So, well, first a question, question for you guys. Do you have like a note in your phone that says startup ideas and you just like log it all the time? I have a note that's called book ideas, but not startup ideas. Do you have one that says startup ideas? It's called ideas. Just ideas? Yeah. I do not have that. And I see a lot of people almost say like, oh, here's another startup idea.
Here's another one. I don't think about that all the time.
Yeah. You know why it's called ideas and not startup ideas? Because when I have an idea for a startup, I need the least amount of time. The time between coming up with the idea and writing it down needs to be as quick as possible. So when I first came up with that note, I was like, I'm not writing startup ideas. It's going to take twice as long. Minimal number of friction.
The perfect organizational system.
Don't actually name things properly. Just throw it all in ideas. So I say that because I don't necessarily come up with a ton of ideas, but I like hearing other people's and immediately saying if they're good or not. So that's my strength. If you guys have- You're an iterator. Yeah, exactly. I hear something that might not make sense, but this might.
So I don't have as many new ideas, but I'm excited to jam on y'alls.
Okay, so I have a very niche one. Go. So I was having this conversation earlier this week with this other writer slash entrepreneur because his business is he has a staff of writers and they're in the fiction space. And he was telling me a lot about how Amazon- organizes and tags different books and stories into subcategories.
And one of the most interesting takeaways from our conversation was he was saying, if you want to create a new category of story, so something that someone hasn't done yet, you should not do the exclusive to Amazon. Because Amazon is, you could publish to anyone or you could do Kindle Unlimited. That's like specific to their subscription service.
And the TLDR of Kindle Unlimited is you get compensated based on the number of page reads, and then they have that total pool of subscription revenue. And then it's like Spotify, but for books. So you get these little like royalties based on how much people consume your book. And so his insight was, he was like, if you're creating something new, you publish it wide.
But if you're creating something really niche, You should look at the existing categories in Kindle Unlimited and then basically like try and stay in that category. And then you're just playing the better, best game. You know, you're not trying to do something different. And so then we got on the topic of there's a there's a new subgenre that's really been catching fire. That's called lit RPG.
Have you heard of this? No. OK, so it's RPG like role playing games literature, right? Lit RPG, but it's not literature. This is, I mean, this is, this stuff is not well-written at all, but it's essentially reading a video game. So you would, the story, like you would open it and the person would be like, I woke, I opened my eyes and a button is flashing in front of me. It's a quest giver.
He's giving me my first quest and I have to go get a bow and arrow. And I take my steps. It's literally like articulating playing a video game. which if you think about it is like the male version of romance for females, where it's like, you feel more productive than playing a video game because you're reading a video game. Do you know what I mean? Okay.
So lit RPG, anyway, the takeaway is lit RPGs are catching fire.
Okay.
New subgenre that's really, really popular now. And this guy that I'm talking to, he's like, what's so interesting about this subcategory on Amazon is that there's way more readers than there are creators. There's a lot more people who want to read lit RPGs than there are people writing it. So I spent an hour and I was just like going through the bestseller list of lit RPGs. And I'm like, wow.
wow, this is a really great example of this niche is starting to grow. The writing quality is pretty low. It's like very indie. The cover design is really low. It's very indie. And if you were to go into that subcategory, but with some money or with some funding and be like, we're going to elevate the writing. We're going to elevate the stories. We're going to elevate the book covers.
We're going to elevate the branding. And then you sort of incorporate all the stuff that we know and talk about where like you had a lit RPG specific newsletter to create that flywheel. You had a paid newsletter. You had like a digital product. Like you created that whole value ladder, but it's all centered around this one very, very, very specific sub genre in Kindle Unlimited.
I see a lot of potential in building super niche, like publishing houses where like, I was even just thinking, just entertaining the idea for us. We're like, what would that take? I would literally take, you could hire a writer. You could pay them because they get to write what they love. You could pay them like five grand, six grand a month, seven grand a month.
They write those stories full-time. Each cover you invest three, four, five grand into. But your upside, because you potentially could own this sub-genre, there are books, just for context, because I have a tool that looks this up, there are lit RPG books right now doing like a quarter million a month.
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This is why I love you because I would never in my entire life think about something like this, but now I have 100 ideas that would go deeper. Let's go. Because if you zoom out, what you just said was... identifying opportunities where the supply and demand are mismatched, but specifically in the literary world, right?
So my head goes, how do you find all of the sub genres where there is more demand than current supply? And so you identified that because you have niche expertise, but- almost you mentioned there's a tool of these books doing high amounts of revenue. How do you build something else that goes, okay, here's the search volume.
And then the number of books in that category where there's a mismatch, that's where you insert the niche publishing house and go, okay, cool. This is underserved. We're going to staff this one and monetize that mismatch until it's, it's like finding arbitrage within the Kindle direct publishing market.
So that's exactly where my head went to, which was how do you build a SaaS tool that does that, except you don't want to sell that SaaS tool because you want to build the publishing houses yourself. So you build an internal tool.
So there, so there's a tool called publisher rocket and it's made by this guy. This guy owns a website. Talk about an amazing website called, um, the site's called something self-publishing and basically, or, uh, Kindle publishing.com or something. And all he does is talk about publishing via Kindle on Amazon. Super niche, but like really lucrative site.
And he built this SaaS tool where you can type in any book, any subcategory, any anything, and it shows you the search volume. It shows you the average estimated sales of that book. It shows you like keyword competition. So I'm obsessed with this tool. Like once a month, I'll just open it up and be like, what is this book doing? I just want to see.
But the mistake, I think there's two mistakes that people make because people have been doing this where you like look at search volume and then you're like, okay, I'm just going to write a book for this. The mistake that I see is one is the person sees that opportunity and then goes, okay, I'm just going to go write one book for that keyword or that subcategory.
And then I'm going to do it again in a different subcategory and then do it again and then do it again. And you don't ever have density in one. you're just sort of bouncing around to like the next SEO opportunity. Whereas I see more opportunity in going, this subcategory is exploding, lit RPG. I don't wanna just write one book in that category. I wanna write a hundred books in that category.
So you just flood the density of that one subcategory. And then second is when people do this, they're more entrepreneurial than they are like publisher or writerly. So what happens is they identify an opportunity, but then they publish a low quality book with a low quality cover in that subcategory. So even if it makes a little money, it's like, it just looks like it's all the same thing.
Whereas if you spend some time going through these subcategories, you're like, it's really clear. you know, Penguin Random House isn't in this subcategory. So you have an opportunity to go, I'm going to walk in here and essentially look like a major publisher is taking this over, but it doesn't cost that much money.
The reason people don't do it is because most writers don't have the money to do that.
Okay, I want to riff on this idea a little bit. So, first of all, lit RPG.
It's sick.
I'd read it.
If you could do a RuneScape one where I got to relive playing RuneScape for hundreds of hours, probably just get to watch one character.
Dude, that's what this is. Well, you know what it is. It's analog Twitch. Exactly. It's analog Twitch. Yes. So... Here's what I would do. I would partner with the top hundred Twitch streamers and be like, I'm going to create... Oh, that's smart.
Because what's going to happen is people are going to notice, people are using this tool and they're going to notice, okay, lit RPG, search volume is going up, demand and supply mismatch. There's going to be the AI rush to create... you know, people are going to create these books with AI and stuff like that. And it's going to be like low to medium quality.
And it's like, what's going to separate you from them? Well, yes, it could be like a nice cover and actually doing it well with writing, but having a name in the audience. Yeah, exactly. The name in the audience and just be like, listen, um, you know, streamer, I'll give you 50% of the revenue and, um,
So my only thought there is what is the overlap? That's what we don't like to hear on the Startup Ideas podcast show. So I jumped to, what is the overlap of people who watch Twitch and also read books?
So this is what's so interesting about this subcategory. Great question. Okay, did anyone see, this is totally left wing, but you'll see the connection. Did anyone see that Tucker Max went on Tucker Carlson recently?
That's too many Tuckers for me, by the way. No, I haven't seen.
Okay, so Tucker Max, the author of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, really successful author. I skimmed through the interview. It's like neither one is really my target consumption.
It's okay, it's okay.
But it popped up in my feed and I was like, okay, let's just see what this is all about. But there was one line in there that really stood out to me where Tucker Max is talking about him publishing his books and he goes, I can't tell you how many people, how many fans have come up to me over the years and said, I've never read a single book.
These are guys, like just guys that want to read about his debauchery. He's like, I've never read a single book cover to cover except for yours. And I thought that was such an interesting example of especially because the majority of readers are female, like two thirds of all readers are female, not male.
But he was a nuts example of writing something that brought a ton of people who weren't reading into that category. And part of me wonders if the same could be true for gaming, because the majority of gaming viewers are male, you know?
And okay, question, is Gen Z reading books? Are they reading books?
I think, so I've seen some interesting stats like all over the board where it's like, yes, but a lot of the reading experience has changed. Like, have you heard of Wattpad?
Yeah.
Which is like the fiction. It's also very like romance driven and stuff, but Wattpad is, is nuts because it's a lot of really young people reading a ton, but it's really low quality writing. But because it's genre specific and it's digital and it's like a different medium.
It was also acquired by a South Korean company. So I imagine a bunch of the readers are.
From Asia.
Yeah, from Asia. That's a thesis, I don't know.
There's also a big audience there for like manga and comic and things like that. Like your average.
I'm Gen Z for what's worth. I'm on the edge. Are you officially? 28 or 96 is the cutoff. Boy. So I'm not really that much.
Tell us what the kids are doing.
Yeah, exactly. See, I think the cutoff is like, if you actively have a Snapchat, do either of you actively use Snapchat? Like I have not used Snapchat in a long time.
If we did, it would be concerning. Right. You could take us to prison right away.
I am right on the edge where I have not opened Snapchat in like seven years. Some of my friends do. It's like a 50-50 split. I remember using it a ton in high school. But you are clearly not Gen Z if you don't have one. And if you have one, I think you are like Gen Z slash Zoomer or whatever it is.
You know what's another great data point that proves that? Do you remember, this was a couple months ago, but the Instagram CEO went on some podcast and he was like, yeah, the most used feature on Instagram is not the feed, not the Explorer, but it's DM. Because Gen Z and young people are just sending content to each other in their DMs all day. And I had this moment where I was like,
I haven't checked my Instagram DMs in four years. Like what? This is the most used feature?
That's the, yeah, old person, young person test right there. So my thesis, no data to support this. I don't, just prefacing it. As most good theses are. My thesis is most of Gen Z haven't read a book, have not read a book, and... It's a great question. And, actually not and, but... I think that's going to change. There's now this new trend around like. Anti-tech. Anti-tech.
And books are going to be this like. I'm reading this paper thing. Exactly. You're not going to believe it. It's counterculture. Yeah. Interesting. I mean, the reality is a book is super hard to compete with, you know, a video game where a video game Call of Duty is like optimized, like literally for.
I don't know if you can undo the brains, man.
Yeah, I know.
I grew up on an iPad. I hated reading it because I played a ton of video games.
I mean, you know this. You were a professional World of Warcraft person. These video games hijack your brain and you just get immersed in these worlds. Now, you can make the same argument that, well, a book could immerse you in these worlds. Yes, but it's just a lot more work. A lot more people don't go to the gym than go to the gym.
That being said, I think that whatever, if 10% of Gen Z reads now, I think in the next five years, 20% reads. And I think it's because it's the shift around anti-tech. But I do think that the vast majority of them are just going to be like, I grew up in a Call of Duty world. It's just hard for me to sit down and be in an analog world.
Okay, so a couple interesting things to tie together. So one is one of the growing trends in gaming is that more and more women are coming into the category. So it used to be, or at least the perception was like 80-20, you know?
Dude, if you heard a girl's voice in like Call of Duty, in the lobby, you'd be like, ah!
What's going on?
Get out of here.
I remember the days. 14 on the internet. Yeah. But now it's like 50-50. And so if you pair that with the fact that the majority of book readers and book bingers are female, I think having female-oriented lit RPGs could be a fascinating subcategory and differentiator. Because I was scrolling through, and every single book cover is like, male enters game world, defeats dragon.
Okay, where's the female market in that is interesting. And then a third stat, I can't remember what it is directly, but it's something like Kindle Unlimited subscribers... cause you have a part of the subscription is you can read any book in Kindle unlimited, like for free part of your subscription, basically they read something like eight to 12 plus books a month.
And so like the romance category, these women that are binging these books, they literally will read one of like Colleen Hoover's. She's like one of the bestselling romance novelists. I study everything. I like to know everything about this shit. She's moving like millions of copies. And her readers are literally reading one of her books a week, if not every three days.
So there is tremendous demand. And even the most prolific writers that are just cranking it out. Like what's the fastest you could crank out a book? One a month, maybe one every two weeks. If you're just like, screw everything, just put it out.
So if you pair all that together and go female oriented like main character lit RPGs in Kindle Unlimited multiplied by 100 books with digital product or some sort of subscription on the back end. I don't know, man.
I can tell you with 100 percent certainty there's no one doing that. So there's no competition, which is always a good thing.
Okay, just to entertain the shiny object, there's part of me that's like, what is the real cost to test that idea? couple grand, couple grand a month maybe. And then you could put out 12 books, like one a month, and you get a year of data. And if you're wrong, you burn, I don't know, 20, 30, 40, 50 grand. If you're right, that's like an entire new business. Because when one of those pops,
what naturally happens is then all of the readers go, well, I really liked that. What are the other books in this subcategory? LTV gets longer or longer. Dude, when you see the math on these books, it's mind blowing.
So what is the math on these books? Just because I don't know.
I mean, there are books as big, and these are like indie authors. They're a conservative, like my book is doing well, could go 20, 30, 40, 50 grand a month. On Amazon, the books that really explode and pop are 100 grand, 200 grand, 300 grand a month. It's nuts.
And how long does that last? Is that just like, you know, for four months, it's 100 grand or 200 grand or?
I think it depends. But I think on average, it probably pops to that for around like three, maybe six months. And then it levels off and hits some sort of plateau. But there are series that and or like even just the author as their whole library. That's like, yeah, I have 50 or 100 books in my library and my portfolio does 200 grand a month.
How many authors actually look at data first and then decide to write a book based on data?
I think it's not writers that do that. I think it's entrepreneurial people who do that. And then they are just like, and I'm just going to write to fulfill on the demand. But I think the people who are actually talented at writing almost never think about this, which it's like the whole game, you know?
Yeah. It's an interesting experiment in leverage. Yeah. because you have this idea and something we talk about is, I think Hormozy's got a great definition of power, the ability to go from idea in your head to thing in the real world. So you have this idea, how many different steps are there between you executing it? If you had all the resources possible, it would be being tested tomorrow.
And then it's a nice, okay, why can't I do that? What would I need to do that? And how could I set myself up in five, 10 years to operate that way? Or I can be testing these ideas that come to my head because you just said it. What is actually required? It's a couple grand. It's a writer. It's the tool to do the development or do the research.
Theoretically, you should have one person who can hear that idea from you and go, okay, that is being executed on right now. And I think from a portfolio company perspective, that's where you want to get to. Because right now you go, I'd have to write it. I'd have to do the research. I'd have to, and it's just not worth the upside.
The risk reward relative to the other opportunities you have is too high. But if you- If someone else is doing it. Exactly. If you can put yourself with incentivized upside on that person, then there's no reason you can't have those ideas and actually execute them.
I was just on the phone with an operator.
Why is that in quotes?
I'll tell you why. Because I was like, yeah, I'm looking to hire an operator. They have this idea for this business. And it's a great idea. And here's why it's going to work. And it's like a shoe in. And he goes, by the way, just so you know, no operator likes being called an operator. You know, like we're never call an operator operator. an operator. We're entrepreneurs. We build the business.
An operator- It sounds like a cop. He's like, it sounds like I'm operating a crane. Like I'm operating a crane.
Yeah, you kind of are. It sounds like a bad operator.
You kind of are, man, but you know. I think as someone who, I identify more with operation than I do coming up with ideas like I talked about at the beginning. I love being called an operator. The opposite would be you're an ideas guy and you don't do anything. You know? Hey, don't look at us. Interesting. I think they're a poor operator.
But yeah, I think that not enough people take their ideas and find, we'll create basically a mini idea lab where they're like, okay, instead of investing, let's say, let's say you have a couple hundred grand of, of cash, which is like Ehrlich Bachman is the only example from Silicon Valley of like the ideas guy.
It's like operating the household founding Aviato.
Yeah.
Exactly. So you take instead of investing, you know, into the S&P, you you find an operator and you use data to inform some of these bets. And you like this is a perfect bet where it's like, OK, if I'm going to invest five, four grand a month, three grand a month. share the upside, but this thing could potentially pay back 20 X and there's like IP in it. Yes.
Oh, okay. Sorry. So real quick on that. So this entrepreneur I was talking to, he was also like, for years I've been basically doing this model. He would like find a niche and then put out volume in that niche and capitalize on it. He was like, recently, what I've learned though is you actually don't really care about making money on the book.
And he's like, now we will spend money with advertising to drive more page reads because what the film studios care about is how many downloads and page reads it has. So you might make a hundred grand on a fiction book that does really well, but who cares? Because I could take that IP and turn it around to Paramount and they'll write me a check for $2 million to turn that into a series.
And I was, when he said that, I was like, Like not only is the cash return 10 or 20X if you get it right, but the long-term IP value, dude. And you know what's crazy? And the thing he said to me is he was like, and this requires more time reflecting on, but he was like, you come from the world of, copywriting, ghostwriting, content writing.
He's like, if you know how to do that, and then you apply it to fiction or storytelling, you are 10 times more dangerous than the person who came up in the storytelling world, but has no knowledge of hooks or selling or like, and the difference, and this is part of this other book I'm working on called Writer Career Paths. But if you look at
The best selling nonfiction authors, James Clear, Mark Manson, whatever, they are a tenth of the best selling fiction writers. The IP value is astronomically different. You know, James Clear goes and makes 30 million off Atomic Habits. John Grisham makes 300 million off of legal thrillers. plus the value of his library and IP.
So what is even more interesting is if you think about that bet and you go, I'm gonna go into a sub-genre, I'm going to elevate the experience, I'm gonna flood it with quality volume, you're also not just building Cashflow from book sales or long-term IP value, turning it into series. But you also could break that into its own company. And then a publisher goes, whoa, you built a niche library.
We'll acquire your little publishing house for whatever. So you also have exit potential.
Do you know what the multiples are on publishing houses?
I have no idea, but I'm going to guess it's in the ballpark of like five or 10 X cause you're buying IP. It's gotta be, it's not two X, you know, five to 10 X profit or revenue. I'm going to guess it's probably top line because they care more about the longterm value.
So it, let's just say it's seven X.
That's a nice round number to use. Let's just say it's 7.28x is the average.
Let's make it difficult. Let's say it's 7.28x. Perfect. Perfect number. You know what makes it 17.28x? Is if you have technology. Also true. So if you're like, hey, you know, Penguin, we're this like up and coming publishing house that uses our own technology that scrapes
No, dude, I got it even better.
Okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just need to keep going. Okay.
Because I think the real value is you build a niche library and then you train AI on how to write that specific subject.
We talked about this last, on the last episode.
So it's one thing to go, I, you know, I'm dominating lit RPGs. It's another to go. And I built a 300 page prompt. where AI can create the version of each new book to 80%, and then we only need labor to take it the last 20%. That is not a 5 or 10x acquisition.
And later on, the deals that you have with creators and streamers... Could also do. Right. That, you know, for the next five years, you could license their name for all these books. Mm hmm.
And by the way, the total side, maybe people are doing this already, but talk about like a startup idea I would never do, but I think would crush it. I don't understand because romance is the biggest literature category. It literally is 10 times bigger than the next biggest category.
And I don't understand with the explosion of OnlyFans, why the biggest OnlyFans creators aren't partnering with ghostwriters and writing, I'm dead serious.
This goes back to the overlap of reading and OnlyFans.
No, but this is the thing, is that the majority of romance books are women that are literally reading porn at home.
Right, but OnlyFans is the majority are women. So you're then still convincing men to read. That is true. That is true. It goes back to the same core issue. Yeah, there's a core issue. We have a bigger problem here. It's that most men don't read. Maybe this would bring them into the category.
There you go, right? True, true, true. Like, dude, okay, but, like, if you saw, like, the most popular OnlyFans girl be like, here's my tell-all e-book of this experience that I had on OnlyFans, I have to believe that that would do some numbers.
More or less than they're making on OnlyFans. Probably less. But even if it was less, that's more for them, you know? I just, I don't know. This is the writer bias. It's like... I know you got this great business, but a book would kill it.
Have you thought about writing?
Let me talk to you about writing. I know you got this thing over here.
Let's talk about writing on the internet. I'm just saying, look, no one said that these were all going to be good startup ideas.
We just promised startup ideas. That's why you need to... talk with your friends about startup ideas, right? And put it on the internet. And put it on the internet so you get feedback, right? Now we went down that rabbit hole. We know it's probably not a good idea. But it might be.
I'm just picturing like, you guys seen Elf where they bring in Miles Finch and he like sits down and like, all right, we're bringing her in. We got to pitch her on this book. And she like sits down and calls across the table and was like, you just, you need a, you need a memoir.
Or you need a, just the rate of revelation could be really high. We need an opening hook. I'm just saying anyway, that's the only startup idea I came with today.
Honestly, like that was pretty damn good. I like it. Yeah. I mean a lot there.
And what I like the most about these exercises is there is a world where all that could happen and it's simply a skill deficiency as to why it hasn't happened. Correct. It's literally, and that is like the both exciting and the frustrating part for me when I hear ideas like that, I'm like, if I was better at this game, I could,
align the pieces of leverage to pursue that idea if I thought it was good. But I don't have the leverage. I don't have the hiring skill. I don't have the ability to prioritize. So I hear that and just kind of get frustrated that I'm not good enough to do it. I don't know if y'all feel that way.
I also think that, yes, I do feel that way. But I also think that you got me thinking that there's a whole variety of competitive analysis tools that are probably great businesses to build. But the thing is you don't sell it. You use it for your own advantage. So you have things like Jungle Scout for Amazon, right? You have things, there's a tool I use called Gummy Search for Reddit.
There's all these tools in a bunch of different platforms. First of all, there's a whole, like here's a prompt for people listening. Like what are competitive analysis tools for platforms that are up and coming?
that haven't been built yet and then go build them and then just use it for yourself and train yourself and think about ideas for yourself like for example there's another one I was using called Etsy Hunt it just goes on Etsy it's basically Jungle Scout which tells you like how- You pay for those? You pay for them.
Yeah, people pay a monthly fee, but it's one of those things where the price discrimination is completely wrong. Like I don't remember exactly what Etsy hunt charges, but it's probably like less than 50 bucks a month. But if you create a killer, like there's some Etsy sellers who make millions of dollars a year.
Yeah, the real value is knowing how to exploit the data, not necessarily the data itself.
Exactly.
You know, as like a meta question, I'd be curious to get your take on this, too, is I think the thing with startup ideas like this, what we just talked about is a great example. Like, I actually think that what we talked about with the lit RPG stuff is an amazing idea. But I'm sort of aware that I don't know that I want to be the one to do it, you know. And so when you when you come up with ideas.
The mental model for how do you decide what you want to do or even what you want to put your name on versus you're like, I know that's a great idea and I know that would crush, but I'd rather hire someone or hire a small team to do it.
Maybe even put it under their name or a different name, you know, and like what what is inside your core portfolio, both from like a time and a perception or brand standpoint? And what is under a tangential portfolio that's more distanced from you?
I think it's a good question to ask. Like whenever you, especially people like us who are on the internet and like write and do podcasting and stuff like that, like you have to, it's important to have like a theme. Like it would be pretty random if I created an OnlyFans competitor, for example.
I thought you were going to say account.
Or account. Both of those would be out of your ballpark. You'd be like, I don't, you know, I don't, I don't get it, but I hope you're okay, Greg. You know, like... I'd be getting a text saying like, you good or something like that. You good bro. Yeah. So, you know, one exercise I do just for myself is like, I have like, this is my, this is kind of like my mission.
This is my MO and this is like my lane or my two lanes I want to be in. And here's the portfolio businesses that support that, that mission. And I think everyone should have that. You have that with like writing and start writing and that like that category. But that's one of the reasons why I started this podcast, which is the comment section of this.
Maybe we might find someone who's like, yeah, I actually am passionate about lit RPG. I'm one of those people. If you want to do that, DM me. Yeah, DM him. There's probably someone screaming at their podcast listener right now and being like, these idiots. Yeah. Why am I still listening? There's hundreds of thousands. Lit RPG is like the biggest thing ever.
And that's where I think having these, spinning up these like small idea lab teams make a lot of sense where it's not you, but you're advising and you're accelerating them.
Have you thought about any writing, almost taking the ideas that are talked about and have someone write up like threads or long form content kind of extrapolating? Here's how I would do this thing as a way to repurpose your content.
That's a great idea.
Like imagine someone doing a mini deep dive on this market and you just have a team that they hear the startup ideas because V1 is putting the podcast together, hoping someone listens to this exact episode that's interested in lit RPG. V2 is writing it up and distributing that specific thing. So the ideal person might find it.
With and like taking the time to do some due diligence and data and be like, we went, we took this idea from the podcast. We researched it. Here are the takeaways. Let's curate it, point people back to the podcast, but also show what we found. That's a great idea.
I think you can build a big SEO thing with that. Cause I don't think necessarily, I don't think you have a subscription model of like, we're just going to send you cool startup idea breakdowns because I wouldn't personally pay for that.
It's kind of like trends. We actually, we added a, so we have like a paid membership. It's $149 a month. And one of the things that people get a lot of value is this monthly, we go like, Hey, we were on Google trends and we were on Reddit and we found like these trends and here's like a couple of business ideas. That's cool. And it's a monthly email.
And like some people have said like just that email alone, it's kind of like a show.
That's a great idea. It's also, that checks a bunch of the boxes that we've learned with paid newsletters. It's infinitely rewarding. repeatable. It's tied to a financial outcome.
Let's take that and apply it to our niche. How do we make trends of writing businesses? Categories. What is the niche down version of trends for X industry? So you just said- Great point. Same thing. It's if you're a writing-based entrepreneur and you're interested in this world, what is the, I want to see what the Google trends are on this. I want to see what Amazon's doing on this.
What is all these different publishing platforms on this topic? And the $149 a month, same thing. You can charge higher because it's like generating a legitimate business idea from that. That's an amazing, we should just go do that.
That's a great idea. You totally should. And you know what the beauty about all this is, is it puts you- at the focal point of an industry. So all of a sudden, even with Community Empire, I just see people building these types of businesses now. And then all of a sudden, I can invest in them. We can acquire them. Trends for X. It's one of the reasons why I actually event businesses.
So B2B events... is interesting because the host of the event ends up meeting everyone.
Like I have to go in person?
Yeah, no, I just like the idea.
I have to leave my house?
I'm not saying I'm doing it, but one of the best parts about the event business is that the host gets to know everyone in a particular industry. And there's a lot of value in being the gravity in a particular industry. And when you end up creating... What you would be doing here, which is really cool, is you're giving people an unfair advantage, basically.
And whenever you give someone an unfair advantage... That's really good.
The more I'm thinking about that. That's the problem with doing a podcast like this, though. We did this last time. It's like I walk out of here... And I sat down this morning and made like a priorities list. And then I have to just figure out where this shiny object slots in. And again, it's a skill issue and a resource.
But I also think, I mean, we have some pieces. Justin's a great example, could create a template for this and then go, okay, Justin, help us execute this, you know?
We can do it for you too. That's one of the reasons why I built a bunch of agencies is because now my agencies are my idea labs. I have a design agency when I need designs. I have an SEO agency when I need SEO. I have an ad agency when I need ads. I have a community team when I need community stuff.
I literally have everything and that's also one of the benefits of owning agencies but keeping, not growing agencies for the sake of growing it, keeping it like
It's almost like an in-house, you're financing your team and saying, while you're not working on my ideas, make a little money elsewhere. But if my idea pops up, I'm going to be the one who employs you.
And it's okay even if it breaks even. We talked about that a bit with the ghostwriting side. Even if it breaks even, even if your agency breaks even, it's not the end of the world because... you've compiled an amazing team who have this, who are gelling so well together. And then no agency works at 100% productivity. Good agencies work at 70% productivity at best.
So realistically, if you're at 40 or 50%, you can use that 20, 30, 40, 50% on your own projects and you don't have to pay for it.
more stop more i can feel the future energy required to execute on these we had a nice priority list till you showed up craig i'm sorry it's okay i'm just gonna write this as an email send it to myself in six months and say re-listen to this once you've taken care of the priorities
Yeah. Thanks for, thanks for jamming. Oh, these are great. Yeah. And, um, where could people find you on the internet? I don't know. On the internet. Yeah.
Start writing online.com. It's typically the best place if you want to start writing online or Twitter on Twitter, Twitter, LinkedIn.
We'll, we'll link it in the, in the, in the show notes. So people just click there and.
Shoot us ideas. Shoot us DMs if you have ideas.
Yeah.
Happy to jam on them once the priority list gets worked through, but it's a lot of fun.
Yeah, this was a lot of fun. All right. Thanks for coming on later. Boom. See everyone. It's the pod.