The Startup Ideas Podcast
8 startup ideas backed by data/trends to get you paid (steal these $1M+/year ideas)
Mon, 08 Jul 2024
Cody Schneider the Manic Startup Idea Machine is back. He's full of 7 figure ideas:1) Blue Collar Startups (Window Cleaning, Power Washing, Lawn Mowing)Low start up costsOptimize Google My Business listingUse AI to write keyword-rich descriptionsScale into an agency, then buy portions of other companiesPotential for $1M-$5M/year business2) Costco-style Membership ClubTarget growing "Buy It For Life" subreddit (2.3M members)Curate high-quality, long-lasting productsOffer subscription model (like Costco)Potential for $5M-$20M/year business3) Dumb Appliances BrandCreate simple, long-lasting appliances (no smart features)Target people frustrated with over-complicated productsFocus on reliability and ease of usePotential for $1M-$10M/year business4) AI-Powered Print-on-Demand Mockup GeneratorUse AI to create product mockups for print-on-demandTarget $6.8B market growing at 18% YoYPotential for $1M-$10M/year business5) AI Grant Finder and WriterTap into $2.5B grant management software marketCreate all-in-one solution for finding and applying for grantsAutomate grant writing proces6) Programmatic SEO for E-commerceBuild massive websites with AI-generated contentTarget businesses with large product catalogsCreate millions of landing pages for long-tail keywords7) Curated Book Subscription ServiceUse AI to recommend books based on influencers/expertsTarget specific niches or industriesInclude key insights from recommended booksMonetize through subscriptions and Amazon affiliates8) Renewable Energy Land AcquisitionLeverage public data on best locations for wind/solar farmsConsider starting a fund to buy strategic locationsTake advantage of government subsidies and tax benefitsPotential for massive returns over 20-30 year periodWant more free ideas? I collect the best ideas from the pod and give them to you for free in a database. Most of them cost $0 to start (my fav)Get access: http://gregisenberg.com/30startupideas🚀 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 CODY ON SOCIALCody’s startup: https://www.swellai.com/X/Twitter: https://tinyurl.com/5fjdn8d7LinkedIn: https://tinyurl.com/28e89f5rTo improve your rankings your business on Google and using AI for SEO, sign up tohttp://boringmarketing.com/Links Mentioned: Cody's Recommendation for Google Indexing Service: https://t.me/SpeedyIndexBot?start=5190421326Episode Timestamps:0:00 Intro02:04 Startup Idea 1: Sweaty Startup14:41 Startup Idea 2: Sweaty Startup HoldCo27:17 Startup Idea 3: Buy-it-for-life brands Deal Club33:00 Startup Idea 4: Curated Book Subscription Box39:10 Startup Idea 5: Dumb Appliances47:21 Startup Idea 6: AI-Powered Print on Demand Mock up Business51:43 Startup Idea 7: Dynamic Landing Page Generator Agency55:31 Startup Idea 7: AI Grant Writer1:01:15 Startup Idea 8: Solar/Wind Farm
So first off, blue collar startups, all the sweaty startup people are always going off about how these businesses are the best businesses to start. In reality, like what they never do is show you actually how to grow them. So that's what I want to talk about today. So each of these things are approachable.
You can go get started with these businesses for like 150 bucks at your Lowe's or Home Depot or whatever, you know, your Ace Hardware is right next to you. I think it's one of these ideas that's like very deceptive when you look at it, like you're like, oh, this is just some simple, dumb lifestyle business.
But in reality, like the game here is you go and you make this service business a sweaty startup or whatever the hell you want to call it. And then you learn these skill sets on how to market this type of business. You turn that into an agency, create this cash flow so that then I can go and I want to buy portions of these companies in specific geographies.
So you're just thinking about this over a seven to 10 year period of climbing this ladder. When you scale this up, what this evolves into is when you own portions of these companies, this can turn into an unbelievable whole portfolio company.
That whole thing that I'm talking about there is just basically like how you can go from like baby entrepreneur to, okay, you're playing at the pro level with the big dogs, right? Gotta stretch it out, dude. You gotta stretch it out. You need, you need the intro music. We have to figure out how to do this. I want like sip, you know, the sip theme song playing as you're waiting in the waiting room.
But when Cody Schneider comes on, it's like sip in time, baby.
Like exactly, exactly, exactly. I wanted like deep house techno, like techno bunker style. You think you're out of like late nineties rave. That's what we're going for.
So anyway, Cody Schneider, you're back. You're ready to sip. You got a lot of blue collar ideas and... Some blue collar.
I want to rip on those first because it's driving me crazy. Everybody always talks about how easy it is to start these businesses and then they never actually show you how to do this. And it's...
actually so easy so anyways i want to go there and then we can dive into there's a bunch of random stuff on that list that we got but it's going to level up from like you know really approachable stuff into stuff that's you know kind of even out of my my my range of of expertise or skill set so far so should we do it let's do it Hell yeah. All right.
So first off, blue collar startups, all these sweaty startup people are always going off about how these businesses are the best businesses to start. In reality, what they never do is show you actually how to grow them. So that's what I want to talk about today. So the three I'm going to use as an example is going to be...
going to be window cleaning, it's going to be power washing, and it's going to be lawn mowing. And the reason for this is because you want to do something that neighbors can physically see looks different on the structure next to them, because you can use that as a selling, like a leverage point to go sell the whole neighborhood on that thing. So again, Each of these things are approachable.
You can go get started with these businesses for like $150 at your Lowe's or Home Depot or whatever your ace hardware is right next to you. And then to actually get customers, I want to walk through the options that are here with this. So if you want to get sophisticated with this, what it ends up looking like is you basically optimize a Google My Business profile listing.
So with that listing, how you actually optimize that is you basically set up, you're going to need an address of some type. You can do a PO box. The best way is have some type of physical address. You can just tack it onto another business. So if you have a family member or something like that, that's the best way to do this.
And then what you're going to then go do is you build citations for that business. So business citations, what these are basically... uh, websites that are like business directory websites. If you go to fiverr.com, just Google, you know, just search in Fiverr, like business citations, you're going to find a guy, you're going to pay him 30 bucks and he's going to make 300 citations for you.
The reason we're doing this is when your business information, uh, Matt, whatever you put on Google, you want to use that exact thing that you're on all the citations. When all that matches, Google looks at that as a trust metric. And this is actually how you can rank within the snack pack, which is the three when you go and you Google something for anything local services.
What shows up on page one is at the top of most of these pages is going to be three Google Maps listings. So how do you rank within that Google Maps listing? So you come up as one of those three. This is the way to do that. So you build all these citations. Google's going to be like, oh, here's all these websites where it's all matching. So there's a trust that's built into that.
Again, reviews are going to be a component of this. We found it to be less and less important to do reviews. What really matters is that the keyword phrases that you want to come up for being in the listing. You can just have AI write this. Go find like all the keywords related to whatever the service that you're providing.
So like window cleaning Denver, window cleaning, you know, whatever the service area is, all the different variations. And you basically have it write a description of that business, including all those keywords and add that to the Google My Business profile listing.
I've even done this where I've just keyword stuffed these listings before, like straight up listed out 30 different keywords and gotten it to rank for that as long as you're, again, building these citations out, right? So that's how you can get inbound leads from the Google Maps side. And the other thing that I would do if I was running this- Wait, just on that real quick.
Yeah. So when you say AI, I get AI to write this. Okay, which AI and how do you prompt it?
So I would do something like chat. I would go to chat GPT or Claude. I'm really liking Claude lately. It's just way more human on the outputs that it's doing. You give it the list of keywords that you're trying to have it right for. And you say, hey, write me a thousand word description of a business and name your company, whatever that is, and include these keywords in that output. Super simple.
All it's going to do then is just going to write this article or write this description, this business description that includes all those keywords phrases in it. But it's going to feel natural. It's going to feel like it's, you know, not just listing out the keywords, like I said, like we've done in tests. Although that works, this is going to be a more effective way to do that.
So that's kind of the breakdown of this, of how I would go about and do that. And then all of those keywords, you also want to include them in the service offering. There's a section within the Google My Business listing. where you can like just list out the services that you offer, those same keywords include those there. And that's gonna help on the ranking side.
And then images is the other component of it that we found to be really important. Reviews are way lower than people think. It's honestly shocking, especially in like smaller geographies. It really what matters is like, is this an exact match for whatever this person is searching?
And is there more business information that I can find off of Google, basically, that's supporting that this is an actual company that does the service that's in this location? And here's its phone number information, that type of thing. And again, all of this is like, you could use a Google business platform. Phone number, real phone numbers are more effective is what we found.
If you can get, you know, even a cell phone and have that be the one that you're linked up to or use, you know, one of these like VoIP softwares, that'll work as well, any of those types of tools. But basically that's kind of, you know, to take a step back and run down through this whole thing of how you optimize these profiles.
It's, you wanna find the keywords that you're trying to show up for, that when you Google them right now from wherever you are, that map pack shows up on that front page, right?
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So if the answer is yes, so it's like you found a keyword, it shows that map pack, then green light that keyword. You're going to include that in the description of the listing. You're going to include that in the offering. It's like this like... you know, what you do and the services you offer section, include that there as well.
Whatever your highest target level keyword is, you can also include that in the listing title. There's a little bit gray area. This is not technically like you're not supposed to do this, but it can help with your ranking. Um, so what I would suggest is whatever you name this business, name it with that exact keyword in it.
So again, saying you're doing window cleaning, like try to get it as close to like Denver window cleaning company as possible. Right. Um, have you ever seen that, uh, that meme and it's like tie near me, it's like this restaurant named tie near me. So that the reason they're doing that is they're trying to basically like tie near me is a huge, uh, trafficked keyword. Right. Um,
And so they're trying to show up for that when somebody searches it in whatever city that it's in. So you're basically using that same strategy here. And then so that's how you optimize the listing. And, you know, to use SEO terms, that's on page optimization.
And then the off pages and taking that exact data that you use to fill out that listing, the phone number, the address, the business title, et cetera. And you go and you build all these citations out those listing citations. So that's kind of layer one of this. The next layer down from that is then you have to go and get those citations to actually be seen by Google.
So what you can use is you can use an indexing bot. I'll share the link that I have for this one. The one I'm liking right now is I think it's called like Speedy Indexer. It's literally a telegram bot. That's the only way you can get access to it.
But you give the list of citations that that person that you just bought this off Fiverr that they built, and you send it to this bot and it will go and it will index. Basically what it does is it drips traffic into these pages. And the reason we have to do this is because these citation websites are massive, right? We're talking about like hundreds of millions of pages sometimes.
And so Google doesn't allot enough crawl budget to actually go and see the entire website. And so what we do is we're basically like sending pings to this specific URL and this company handles this for you. And it's super cheap. I'm talking like, you know, a couple cents per listing that you're doing. Like, right.
Like you can, this whole thing I'm talking about, you can do for under probably, you know, $300. You can get started with this entire company. And yeah, So once you've done that, Google's going to see them. The indexing box will show you which ones have been indexed. And then it'll do about 50%. It's just hit or miss. That's how it is. It doesn't work always with all these things.
So say it gets 100 on the first go. Whatever that 200 is that left, you just run it again. You run it indefinitely until all of these start to hit. So that's another component of this. If you do that, you're... miles ahead of the people that you're competing against in the space.
And then the thing that you can go further with, if you want to, is you then take the Google Maps listing and you can embed that listing. And so this is something that Google prioritizes as being like if somebody embeds that, then it's like a good it's basically a signal that this is like a good resource. Right. Think about when somebody embeds a YouTube video, when they embed a map, et cetera.
It's a signal off the page that this is, again, another real company. So you can use the service. It's called, oh God, what's his name? Kevin PBNs. If you just Google it, this website called Black Hat World is going to come up. Do not take any other advice off of Black Hat World. And if this is like the sophisticated level of this, that's a layer down.
And again, this is like, I would only go here if it's entirely necessary and you're trying to compete in like a very competitive market.
I was wondering what you're going to say about that.
Yes. So with all that said, what you can do is you basically can embed the Google Maps listing on this PBN network. So what a PBN network is, is it's called a private blog network. And a private blog network, imagine it's like thousands of blogs that this company owns that all internally link back to each other and are all basically like kind of juicing themselves up.
So this used to be a way that you could like rank things previously. This was years ago. Now how people use them is they use them as like a tier two or a tier three link. So what this means is they're basically, you build your backlink and then you build links from... other sites to the backlink that you built so that it gets seen.
This is another way to get those sites indexed if you're trying to not do the speedy index bot. But again, that works so effectively, you don't need to do that. But to get back to this, so then you embed that... That Google Maps listing and then include the business information there as well.
And you can, again, get these for like, you know, I think 50 cents to get these published and basically these PBN articles released.
made that includes this embedded in the wordpress site and that's another way for you to get these in but i mean i've seen case studies and shout out jackie uh jack chow or true i can't remember his last name or how to pronounce it correctly so i'm totally butchering that but he's just done unreal case studies on this type of stuff um and a lot of what i just talked about are methods that he's basically like kind of pioneered or shown out in public and then we've used it on companies that we've uh that you know i work my brother's in the medical space and we do a bunch of stuff with like
you know, local business type of deal. And this is the things that we've seen be effective. And it's really just riffing off of a lot of what he's doing already. So, but yeah, man, that whole playbook is like, you just gamed Google Maps and you now have organic inbound leads.
And the results from this type of work, like we've seen it in like a week and a half, go from like, it's not in that snack pack to it's in that snack pack when you do this type of work. It's like, I mean, I couldn't get that to happen in SEO if I tried, right? You know, the time horizons on traditional SEO to rank on the front page is like,
at least three months plus, like even if the site, uh, is like has some authority and has some, uh, uh, you know, that company has existed in that community for a long time, but this is a way to really quickly go and do that. So, yeah.
Yeah. And once you do that and you've done it, you can point to success. You can do it for other companies too, right?
That's exactly where I'm leading with all this. So the game here is you go and you make this service business, this sweaty startup or whatever the hell you want to call it. And then you learn these skill sets on how to market this type of business.
You turn that into an agency and then you go and you cold email every window cleaning company in the US and you're like, hey, window cleaning company, I know how to grow and get leads. Let's do a part. I'm going to do marketing for you. Here's some set flat fee. Here's all the things that we're going to do. You can even do it on a performance basis. There's all these different models to do that.
But before we jump in kind of to the next phase, there's two other things I want to talk about, just things that we've seen work and I think could be really effective for these businesses. So the other one is direct mail. So you can use this company called lob.com. And what lob.com will do is like you build a flyer. It's going to be an 11 by 8 flyer. And you do it in Canva.
I think that's the dimensions. Don't quote me on that. But basically build that out in Canva. You can upload that into lob. And then you can upload a list of addresses.
that you were trying to send this direct mail out to and what i the addresses you can go and uh if you just search like addresses and xyz zip code find the find the richest zip codes in your area and that's where you want to send these to and offer that service to right um so there's a direct mail play here and then the other thing that you can also uh do is uh i mean straight up just like putting flyers on doors is going to be like another piece of this just like you
old school classic and i'm talking from like you're starting out from zero and you're trying to figure out like how do i get this to uh make me 100k a year and be my own boss this is that this is all the things that i would layer on together and again this isn't a super uh heavy lift to do all of this this is all like very accessible and and you know most people could do this so um
But anyways, so you got this company, it's established now. And you're like, all right, I know how to do this marketing. None of these other people know how to do these marketing, but they have businesses that are 15 years old, 20 years old that are in this space. So now you go out and you say, hey, we do digital marketing for these people.
People, you basically make an agency, a digital agency, and you do some type of service fee. That's how I would do it because it would be a cash. I'm just trying to create cash flow. And the reason for that will come up in a second. So I'm trying to create this cash flow so that then I can go and I want to buy portions of these companies.
In specific geographies, say you go and you be like, hey, I want to buy 20% of your company and we're going to handle all of your marketing for you. So you spend this upfront cost and you use the cash flow from your agency and use the cash flow from your window cleaning company that you built initially.
So you're just thinking about this over whatever, a seven year period, seven to 10 year period of climbing this ladder.
What this evolves into is when you own portions of these companies and you have all of these geographies that you're servicing and say you own 20% of a window cleaning company or an HVAC company or whatever this ends up being, this can turn into an unbelievable portfolio company, like holdings company. An example of somebody that's done this, his name is James Dooley.
He's this guy out of the UK, absolute gangster, just a legend. He's a degenerate gambler too, so I love him. He bets on horse racing and owns horses and breeds them. It's so sick. That is the dream. Literally, my dream is that. Anyway, he's done this where he basically goes in, he buys portions of these companies, and over a three-year period,
I mean, they can basically double or triple these things, right? So when you think about from an investment standpoint, like he has the same playbook. He's running over and over again. It's the same skill sets. It's the same team members. He doesn't have to change any of that. All he's doing is he's just running those same plays in these different places. And that's how, I mean, he's an SEO guy.
He's an SEO guy and a legit OG classic. Yeah, totally. I mean, he's worth like $100 million, allegedly, from a portfolio standpoint.
The only thing I would do differently here would be I probably wouldn't buy 20% of these businesses with cash. I would just... earn that equity kind of seller financed and be like, yeah, I'm not going to charge you for all these services. I'm, you know, but I'm going to, I'm going to do these things for you. And like, maybe you put some cash down, but you know, I think that's the way to do it.
Totally. And there's so many different ways that you can handle it. The biggest problem is getting the cash flow so that you have the leverage and the skill set. So you have that leverage. And that's like what that whole thing that I'm talking about there is just basically like how you can go from like baby entrepreneur to, okay, you're playing at the pro level with the big dogs. Right.
And that again, it's like you could that. That whole model that we just talked about, that's a three to five year sprint that if you really wanted to and you were like ready to grind, like you could do that whole thing, what we just described. And the other thing that I would do and layer on top of this, I know you'll love this, is I would film, I would do these services that you can film
that are like satisfying. And then you put those on YouTube and that turns into another revenue stream for you long-term, right? So like, have you seen the guys that like mow like lawns? They like take like nasty ass lawns and they like trim them all up. And then they, I mean, they get like 3 million views, right? Same thing you do with window cleaning.
You can do it with, you can do it with power washing. Like there's massive channels out there. And so just thinking about that layer. So that does two things. It's like that turns into a profit center for you because you're going to get ads, you know, ad dollars off of that.
But simultaneously, you're going to also get inbound leads from that because they're going to show people that are in that geography. Like if you lift that in the description, like cleaning, you know, or mowing a lawn and, you know, blah, blah, blah, South Carolina. Like it's going to it's going to show that to people that are in that geography. It's going to understand that over time.
And that's that's kind of the data. Now, there's another layer of this here that you can you can play into. So.
Is it not Alex Hermosi-esque a little bit? Because, I mean, right? He did. The only thing I think that's missing a little bit from this story is what he did with, what was it called? Gym? Gym launch. Gym launch. So he was like, yeah, I had this gym and I, you know, grew it from X to Y. Like, I think the personal brand story is really, like, huge with this. You have to be able to say,
100%.
100%. I mean, we've talked about this on other episodes where it's like, hey, you go and you create YouTube videos showing people how to do this, right? Like how to do Google ads for window cleaning or whatever, right? Or how to do Facebook ads for window cleaning or how to even just what we just talked about on Google maps, like how to rank your window cleaning business for Google maps.
What's naturally going to happen. People are going to watch this. They're going to be like, Oh my God, I don't have time for this. Like, can I just hire this kid? Boom. That turns into your first customer. But again, using yourself as the case study is always the most effective way to do this, right? It's like, we did this for my company that I owned and here's the results.
We can do this for your company that you own. And like we, the idea is we can, basically expect results that are similar. Super simple idea, right? But it looks very, I think it's one of these ideas that's like very deceptive when you look at it, like you're like, oh, this is just some simple, dumb lifestyle business. But in reality, like when you scale this up,
And you look at the path of like where people, and Hormozy is doing these exact same thing, right? He's like, cool, I built these, like he's now at that level where he's investing in other companies. Like his investment in school is a perfect example of this, where it's like, he's like, oh, well, I leveled up to these layers.
And now I'm at this pro level, which is where I buy portions of these other companies. And then I use my platform that I built to basically go and promote this, right? I mean, it's the same thing you're doing. It's the same thing I'm doing. It's the same playbook, but in a totally different category.
I like it.
How big of an opportunity is this? I mean, just to use James as an example, like, again, if he owns, from what I've seen, he owns about 150 different companies, equity in 150 different companies.
I think he goes after specific categories and then he, you know, for each major geography or each major metro area, he partners or buys a percentage of some company and he always goes with some scrappy upstart, you know, some dude that's in his late 20s that's got two kids that's like there to grind, right? Yeah. And he's like, cool.
I'm like, we're going to help you double, triple your business over the next two to three years. And I mean, I think this is 100% $100 million company, especially when you look at like what are... I mean, these companies sell for a lot of money, especially if they have a foothold within an area, right? If an HVAC company has been in an area for 20 years, right? Like there's equity.
There's just name brand equity in that over time. So when you go and you try to sell that to PE or whatever, or you just go and you do a bundle, right? There's probably... a version of that as well, where you sell, uh, the percentages of each of these companies, uh, that, that you have, that you have in your holdings company that, or that hold it, that, that holdings company owns.
So before we move to the next idea, I don't know if you saw this, but Cody Sanchez bought a piece of, uh, Resi brands.
No way.
Yeah. Yeah. So Resi brands is like I think it's the fastest growing painting franchise company in the United States. Insane. They also own Pinks, which is just killer. Pinks is what you were talking about a little bit.
They're out of Austin, right? Austin, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So they're like visual... It looks like these guys. Dude, I have friends that wear this street wear.
Yeah, I mean, I wear this street wear. Exactly.
Right?
Yeah.
It's like 80s. It kind of looks like an 80s, like, porno. 80s is back. Porno guys are washing your.
Look at the top billboard right now, and it's all synth. Every song is leading with synth. It's synth or it's folk. That's the only thing that's happening right now. Or Kendrick, that's the outlier, the only outlier in that whole list. But anyway, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, but it's related.
I mean, it's totally related. So basically the idea is they took window cleaning, but they wear these like, I don't know, it's like 80s porn mustache guys cleaning it. And it's so TikTok friendly.
You'd see them in a calendar.
Yeah. I would buy a calendar. 100%. Cody Sanchez ended up buying a big piece of the business. What do you think about that? I mean, it's brilliant.
I think the only thing that I would... be against with this type of stuff is I love when influencers buy companies that they have some type of distribution advantage with. So when they have an arbitrage that nobody else has access to, and maybe she does have that and we don't know about it. Again, I have no idea.
But her audience of entrepreneurs doesn't feel totally aligned unless she goes and she's like, I'm going to franchise this thing. And then I just use my audience as the way to basically spin up. We take the business, and that's honestly probably the angle that I would go at this room if I was in that position, is, okay, we got 30 locations right now.
How do we turn that into 300 locations in the next three years? And then that's when you go and you approach traditional PE. I mean, you just have an app.
absolutely massive exit right um that's probably the bridge like they just take the same marketing and they're just trying to get like a ton of top of funnel inbound of people that want to start you know business in a box companies and this feels like a business in a box company but i i would say this like if you ever see a brand that people are repping
that the product is unrelated, like the clothing is unrelated to the brand, that's when you know that that company is absolutely going to rip in whatever category it's in. You can't fabricate that. It only happens organically and it only happens when you're doing something cool and original that...
really people that are on the front of that, that adoption curve are like, Oh yo, like this is very, this is something I like. And again, I have a friend who's, uh, he's in the podcasting space and like, this is how I know about this. And like, he reps the merch, like to your point, right? Like just wearing you out. Cause he, it, it's, it's,
the stylization on it is insane right and though that when you think about that and you see any company that that's naturally happening immediately go okay that's that's like a business that you want to try to buy into they're doing something right you don't you don't even have to know what it is it's just a signal that this is this is a good thing 100 all right what else you got cool um have you heard of uh this uh buy it for life subreddit tell me about it
Okay. So I stumbled on this thing and basically what it is, is there's this group of people that want to buy products that they're tired of consumerism. And they want to buy products that are like the highest quality they can, you know, at, you know, doesn't really matter the price. I want this thing to last for forever. And so massive subreddit, insanely fast, how it's growing.
Like if you look at the data, um, And all that people do is they basically are like, hey, I'm trying to get like the best jacket for X or like these types of boots, right? Like Doc Martens that are actually good quality. What is the brand that I should go after and look for? And this subreddit is just dedicated to that.
So it's all it is, is people basically like question and answering what is the best of XYZ category? Like I was just, how I stumbled on it is I was looking for the best blender, right? So I was like... I bought so many blenders over my life. I mean, I can't take it anymore. Like, I want one. Like, what is it? What is it going to take to get me to one?
And so they suggested it was basically this like industrial blender. And I was like, oh, my God, this is like you read the reviews on this and like, yo, I've had this for 80 years. Right. Like I got I just got to pass down. You know, my my mom just passed it down to me type of thing. And so I think there's this whole subset of people.
And what's interesting is all these people look like they have money because the products are not small price tags, right? We're talking about like, you know, $800 like pairs of boots, right? Like that type of deal. And, you know, I mean, this blender was like two grand, right? But I think there's an angle here and I actually don't know what this company looks like.
And that's what I want to throw out to you and have you kind of, we can rally off of it. But I think there's an angle where you do like, imagine like a Williams-Sonoma, buy it for life, stumble upon crossover. So you just like are swiping through this and you're like discovering all of these products that are like the highest echelon of their category that they're in.
So I think that's an angle of this. And I think you could probably pair that with like a deal monitor for these brands that are considered buy it for life brands, right? So you go and you scrape that subreddit, you find all of the buy it for life brands. And then you basically, I know there's these websites that exist. I don't have a lot of experience in this, so bear with me for my ignorance, but
You basically set up monitors for these types of products so that whenever deals come on the market for, you know, it's really just probably like Google Trends is how a lot of this is happening. But whenever, or not Google Trends, Google like notifications or Google News or how you can set up like a listener. And then anytime that you see a price drop, then that site, it goes up on there.
You basically scrape it, just probably an affiliate play that's there. And there's probably a subscription on top of it because these people want to buy these goods, but they're looking for, oh, it's 30%. off like these boots I've been looking for 30% off. So let me go buy that. So anyways, I'll throw the mic to you. I'm curious your thoughts.
I mean, this isn't just any subreddit. This is probably one of the fastest growing subreddits. I think it has 2.3 million members. So this is just like a macro trend around people are just tired of buying things that break. Totally. So I love the macro trend. You know, what does it look like? I don't know. I think that there's probably... Like, it would be really cool if there was...
you know, if I bought, you know, almost like a Costco membership, but totally buy it for life. It's like $100 a year. I get access to these amazing discounts. All these products. And if one of these products breaks, we will, you know, not only buy, you know, lifetime guarantee, but we'll give 20 of them to, you know, if it's a sweater, we'll give 20 sweaters to, you know...
people who, you know, need sweaters, you know, and if it's a blender, we'll send 20, you know, 20 blenders to a soup kitchen, that sort of thing.
Totally, totally. So there's some type of like, you know, community or some type of, I don't know, social cause that's tied into it. Dude, I think that's brilliant. I mean, it is probably just taking the Costco model, right? And then you just turn into like, you're just a marketplace distributor. And I mean, let's just do the math real quick, right?
So say you had 10,000 people that were subbed to this, it's $100 a year. And so you're coming out at, what is that, a million? So you're coming out at a million in revenues, right? Uh, then you go and you negotiate relationships. You probably would have to get it at a way larger scale. Uh, it'd probably be like a hundred thousand.
But again, if there's 2.2 million people that are a part of this, just imagine getting 10% of those people on this list. So you're coming in at 220,000 people. So you get 220,000 people, they're paying you a hundred a year. Uh, so that's going to be 22 million, um, or no 220 million. Is that right? I think so. No public math. Yeah, so $220 million.
And at that point, you go to these companies and you negotiate buys based on that, right? You just have like a gnarly division that focuses on this. But to zoom out to the macro trend thing, I think this is something that people are getting obsessed with. Like, how do I buy a knife that will last me for 20 years? Like, how do I buy...
Everything in my home, I'm so tired of things breaking, even when it's considered decent quality in the first two years of its existence. And it's funny because the next company that I'm going to pitch you is basically this. It's related to this. It's in the same vein, but an entirely different category. But I like your idea of the membership thing.
I think that this is actually the way that this would be the most profitable. And you just pass on the savings to the people. How you actually make money is based off the memberships. Yeah.
can I pitch you a pitch you an idea real quick that I had right before this call? So, uh, been into, it's going to sound like dumb, but I've been into reading recently. Hell yeah.
Yeah.
Hell yeah.
I can't read. So it's, you know, whenever I hear that from somebody, I'm always very, I, I, I look fondly at it.
There you go. So I've been enjoying books and, uh, I've, I've been like, whenever I hear someone recommend a book that, you know, maybe on a podcast or YouTube video, I always write it down instantly. Actually, I just instantly buy it. And after a certain point, I finished all those books. So I would say, let's say I'm a big Cody Schneider fan, which I am, by the way.
I would go to ChatGPT and I'd say, here's Cody Schneider. This is who he is. Here's his link to his Twitter. What are the five must-read books that Cody Schneider would recommend to me?
Super interesting.
I'm looking to get better at XYZ topic, SEO, organic marketing, whatever. So I think that there's an opportunity to basically create... I guess it's like a newsletter and it's like books that X, Y, Z influencer would recommend. And it's I don't know if it's weekly or monthly, but let's just say it's probably a book club.
What if it's that where it's like you pay a subscription and then you're going and basically because like I want this like you tell me like what are the top most influential books for this person that's in my category? Like, right, we do business for a living. Like, I want to know every book that every business person has ever referenced and influenced their career.
And like, I want to read that book, right? Because that's the idea behind this. I mean, book clubs are already happening. It's just a different twist on it. So I 100% there's something in this.
Yeah, but I think with book clubs, would a book club... I don't think it's a book club, sorry.
I mean, you get a box, just like those snack pack boxes. I just want, cool, four books show up day one of the month, and it's like, this month, we're highlighting X, Y, Z person. The reason we're highlighting them is because they did ABC. They're experts at, you know, one, two, and three. And these are the books that they said were most influential within their career.
I'm like,
it's the history of Rome it's the best podcast dude it's just this dude like you can tell just passion project obsessed with it he's just reading off the facts and then he's like yeah and that guy was a fucking idiot It's iconic. But anyway, like I'm just imagining like that.
That's something that I think when I when I don't have to think about it, but I get the educational drip that I'm looking for. I think that's valuable to anybody. Right. That's like competing at a high level. They want to know everything about everybody they're competing against or has competed in the same category before them.
Yeah, and I also think that if it's influencer-based or creator-based, you just target people that, you know, if it's for me, let's say, yeah, people who follow me on X, just get those people. I'm sure you can get those emails for like pretty cheap. And then and then just send them like I think they're, you know, businesses have levels.
So like level one of this is just the free email with like Greg Eisenberg would recommend these two books this month. And here's some key insights. from those books. And then the next level is join the book club, to your point. And it's like, you don't even have to, for $99 a month, we'll just send it to you right away.
And then the next level is maybe a membership that synchronous events and digital stuff. That's the business.
A hundred percent. No, I think it's brilliant. I, again, it's just, I'm like you, or it's like, I, as soon as I hear a book that somebody mentions, I just like, yeah, I mean, that could be a feature of this too. Right. It's like you go and you scrape everything of that they've ever been on or talked on and like, cool. What is the things that they've mentioned based off of these transcripts?
Cause like people, I feel like every interview besides this one that I go on, it's like, what books would you recommend? Or like, what are you listening to? Like that type of shit. And, I mean, just extract that out of there. Just do rag over the top of it.
Even if you haven't explicitly recommended the book, you can infer based on all the stuff that you've talked about, all the people that you've talked about, all that stuff. You like it?
I love that. Yeah. Green light. I think that that's another one. It's super simple too. It's just, you can use off the, off the shelf tech. And I think the distribution is exactly what you said. Like choose these figures that are already in public, like Huberman or whatever, right? It could be anybody, any of these, any, anybody that's in any category. So.
And then you're also making affiliate on Amazon. Exactly. What's the percentage?
8%, I think, is for books. Yeah. I mean, it's just great. It's an unreal. And again, I think there's layers of it too, right? It's like build big list. Typically, people who read have a higher income level. That's the trend. Shocking. So then you have an audience. And the... So you have the audience, so you sell ad space on that. You have the affiliates of the books.
Sorry, I'm still on the big insight that you gave that people who read have a higher income level.
dude it's so stupid but so real it's it's crazy actually uh there there's like a direct correlation in relationship to this rather than listening to things like they often people that don't listen to things and who read more have more money to spend it's their filter it's so weird it's it's the economic data around it is actually wild so but um all right to move on yes uh dumb appliances
All right, so I have a dishwasher and it takes me seven button clicks to make it go. And every time I do it, I hate doing the dishes because of it. I despise doing the dishes because of it. And I think this is a larger trend and the data shows this as well. Like again, go to Reddit and look for people being like, what's the dumbest dishwasher that I can find?
What's the dumbest washing machine that I can find? What's the dumbest fridge that I can find? And again, I think this is a pushback from, it's a part of that larger trend of people just want things that last. They want things that they can fix and they can work on. And I think there's an opportunity. I would literally just call it dumb appliances.
And your whole thing is like, we don't connect to the internet. We don't like, it just works. It's like maybe four buttons. That's the whole thing of whatever the minimum amount is to get the thing to function. It does that, right? Yeah. And I think there's a huge opportunity. And I think I would just sell it like that. We built the dumbest dishwasher. You plug it in and it runs. That's it, right?
And that's the angle that you go from. You talk about simplicity. You talk about it lasting for a long time. You buy it for life type of deal. And I think there's an opportunity to build a brand in that space. And then... I think the larger trend here is, do you see that story where some dude was mining Bitcoin off of the processor that was in his fridge?
They hacked his fridge and was mining Bitcoin off of it. He's like, I couldn't figure out why my bandwidth on my network was so high. He's like, there's no way we're using whatever it was, some insane amount of data. And then they found that this was the reason. And I think everybody's like, I don't need this to be connected to the internet.
I don't want to chat with my fridge, my fridge to tell me what to do. The last thing people want is for a robot to tell them what to do. Think about when your seatbelt alarm goes off. You hate your car when it does that to you. Now, scale that up to your fridge telling you, oh, you need milk or whatever, or scale that up to AI when it's like, you can't ask that question. That's not all right.
People are going to get pissed. You want to know how to red pill people? Tell them that they can't research the thing or learn about the thing that they're trying to learn. So anyways, to take a step back, I think there's an opportunity for dumb appliances just in every category within the home.
I love it. I want to show you a quick tweet I saw today. Shilma note, my parents have had the same washer and dryer for almost my entire life. They bought them used in 1989, 35 years without issue. I've had to replace our washer twice in the nine years that I've had it. They really don't make them like they used to. And it's these like boxy, I guess, General Electric. it looks like, or Maytag.
100%.
And I think that's the larger trend that's happening, right? Especially anybody that has... basically disposable income. They're trying to, they're thinking about these things and they just want that quality level at the highest level that they can get it. You can be the source for that in any form. You're going to get that customer loyalty. And then again, you can just move throughout the house.
Like start with one, just everybody that you talk to has had this experience with a washing machine. Like, The Samsung, like it doesn't dry shit because the sensor's off of like when it's dry, right? And so I'm having to dry, I'm having to time dry it over and over again, but it auto turns itself off because it's saying that it's dry, but it's not, it's damp. I put my hand in and it's damp.
I think for a lot of people, that's a huge frustration. And so if you come to that and you solve that problem, like there's a massive market that you can go after. And I think it could be very cool, like calling it dumb appliance or stupid appliances or, you know, there's some name that's like in there that would tap into that frustration, that anger that people have with these.
Okay, before you go on to your next idea, I want to give a dumb idea based on this. So I saw a TikTok of like some like 19, maybe 1980 something Honda Civic that had like never been drived. And it sold for like a ton of money because it had like 10 miles on it or something. And honestly, I was looking at it and I was like, this is the most beautiful car I've ever seen.
So I think one of the dumb appliance company ideas is you create a new car company, no screens. Analog as hell.
All knobs.
100%.
100%.
Have you seen the light phone? This is this larger trend that's happening where people are like, yo, I don't want all the sophistication. I want the minimum that gets the job done. Like all of the... It feels like bloat. So much bloat has happened. And really, I think what this is in response to is the inflation and what's going on.
Like always what this does is there's a contraction that naturally occurs after like a growth period. And I think that this is the response. Like this is where people are coming from with it, where they're like, you know, I just want... If my phone just did GPS, I could text, I could call, I could do notes and maybe I can read on it. Like I don't want anything else.
Like I don't want, I don't want Instagram. I don't want it tracking me. God knows what's happening with TikTok. And so I think that again, like exactly to your point, like a dumb car, like a knobs car. Right. And you just make it so that you can work on it. I mean, we have this, uh, we have this 1980 Chevy square body. It's just like baby blue, uh, it's a four cylinder.
And the thing is just like, it's the easiest engine that you could ever work on. Right. And that thing, like if it breaks, we can just fix it just at home. Like you don't, there's no, there's like, there's no computers in it. There's none of that. Right.
And I think that there's this segment of people that are growing that want that, that want these types of, these types of products, they're pushing back against, uh, uh, you know, the, the, what's happening from a modern, like just, just the technology that's being built into this, that feels like fluff.
It doesn't feel like it's adding value to what the goal is of people trying to accomplish with this tool. Right. It's like, I just want my clothes washed. Like I don't, that's it. Right. Like I just want my car to get me from a to B. And I think there's this whole subset of people. And again, I think a lot of the times they have money.
So that's why you could sell and make these kinds of boutique brands in these spaces. So.
Yeah, and I think it's... People want to go from point A to point B, but it's also people want these devices to be sacred. So if everything has a screen on it, you're just constantly being overwhelmed and distracted. So the idea that you can hop into a 1987, whatever, Honda Civic, but it's pristine and there's no knobs. You don't need Google Maps. You're going for a Sunday drive.
You know what I mean? There isn't... there isn't a hundred, you know, serious XM radio stations, right? Like there's, you only put in like one channel and it's jazz, you know, that's it.
Totally. Totally. You're like intentionally limiting yourself and like through that finding like, you know, peace or whatever, or whatever that, that thing is that we're all searching for and never can find. So I have a question for you. How much would you pay a year to not ever see marketing?
Um, you're asking the wrong guy because I'm probably like you, like I was watching.
Only see marketing that you like. Uh, if you had some way to filter and I'm saying like a hypothetical, I don't know how you'd actually do this.
Yeah.
I would go in that. I'd go up to 20 probably. I've just only seeing to, to choose when I see marketing and the marketing is filtered for what I really love. I would, I would a hundred percent, I would pay money not to see it. I think that that, that is a part of the screen thing we're talking about. Like, I'm even thinking about this.
Like, how do I have as few screens everywhere, like in my space? Because it's so much time is spent on it now. And again, we work in this digital space, right? So like, that's why it's a tool that we can use. But like, you can find yourself just so often being just sucked into this thing. And it happens with every device now. So cool. Next one. Next one. Let's rock. Let's do it. All right.
So print on demand mock-up business, right? So print on demand for the people that are uninitiated is basically they have all these products and you sell them and then they manufacture and ship them. It started out in the apparel space. That's the only reason I know about it because I spent a lot of time here and another life.
And what you basically could do is like build thousands of different variations of graphics out. You could put them on all these different skews of t-shirts, sweatshirts, you know, anything. And then this company, basically when you sell it, uh, you know, on, you know, through your website or whatever, they manufacture it and then they ship it out, but it looks like it's coming from you.
It's basically functions is kind of like a three PL as well. So, um, The opportunity here, so the print-on-demand market size is about $6.8 billion. So it's growing at, I think it's like 18% compounding year over year. So it's growing super quickly, which is crazy when you think about it.
The opportunity, I think, right now for somebody is go and you basically make mock-ups of the print-on-demand products. And people are already doing this traditionally. Like a photographer, they would go and they'd shoot these super aesthetic... like basically of whatever skew that they're trying to sell, right? And there's all these items that are the most popular.
You can literally go to Printify or any of these print-on-demand sites and sort by most popular. And you'll see which of the items sell most often, right? So here's the angle though in the AI age. If I go and I prompt mid-journey, make me an image, you know, blah, blah, blah, aesthetic. Here's the setting, the whole thing. but make them wearing a Gildan 2000 shirt, which is askew,
It's going to know what that is, and we've done this, because it trained itself off of all these images that say Gildan 2000 in it, right? So it understands what that is. So there's this opportunity here, I think, to basically go, and just like we were talking with the cricket idea, same strategy, target people with a print-on-demand interest.
You make them where it's like a drop pack of like, here's 150 different mock-ups of the Gildan 2000 shirt, but you have every variation and you can go and find these keywords. If you just do Gildan mock-up, right? You're going to find all these variations on like SEMrush or Ahrefs. And from that, I think you could build out the same type of company. It's just like an unlimited subscription.
They get access to these constantly. You're constantly updating and just running it. And then as new SKUs drop or whatever, you just go and you refresh that. And then as the aesthetics change, you go and you refresh that, et cetera. And probably the angle that I would think about this with is like go to something like Etsy or any of these print-on-demand shops. You can find them all over.
Find what are the best-selling products and the aesthetic that that product has currently, right? So maybe it's like Boho or whatever, right? drop that into an AI and you'd be like, define how this image looks. It lists out, okay, here's the aesthetic, whatever. And then you're like, okay, cool. I'm going to go generate all of these mock-ups.
Now the layer up from this is then you build a mock-up generator. So you have all of these images of Gildan 2000s that are in a Boho style. And you're like, cool. Like I just built this graphic that I want to be, to have go on top of that. And you basically have it where it's like, you know, you've designated the space where it's like, we're going to, you know, put that image on it.
It does the overlay. So it looks like it's actually on the shirt, like the whole thing. And then you bulk generate, you know, we'll say 10 different variations. So it's basically a mock-up generator that is a part of that as well.
And I think that this is, again, another million dollar a year company, if not $10 million a year, just based on the market size and how much sales, how much is happening in this space. Yeah.
I can't believe you just gave that one for free.
Dude, all these things, I wish I had time to build. I sit here and I just like, when I can't sleep and I'm in pure insomnia, this is the things I think about. I was just thinking about the epic gardening and what I would do. This is what I was thinking about this morning when I was laying in bed. It's like, oh, if I was him, this is how I would do this. And it would just be a programmatic SEO play.
And then naturally, that's what I spent. Portion of this morning looking at is like all the angles to basically go and build out just like a massive website to increase their volume.
Real quick, real quick on that. Real quick on that. So he's a he's a big YouTuber. I think he might have a million subscribers.
subscribers at this point and I believe he started Kevin I think it's Kevin right yeah yeah Kevin I think he started selling seeds different you know right so rare seeds yeah what would you do you know what's your advice to Kevin the only reason I say this is because someone else might be like oh I'll go and do that
yeah so i would look at like seeds there's thousands of them right which means there's millions of keyword variations for all those different seeds so what's great when you have a e-commerce website that has a ton of skus that you're selling you can basically mix and match like all of the different
uh products that you're selling this is how marketplaces actually work right like if you look at an etsy or amazon they have millions of landing pages that are dynamically created based off of the keywords that they're seeing people search for within the platform that they're ranking for on google etc so with ai now you can basically do this and you can build out these massive sites when you're just a small like company right there's actually a business that my co-founder and i max were thinking about building at one point we ended up going with swell and that's like you know what we're shipping on currently but
there's this opportunity to basically approach Shopify stores that have massive amounts of listings. And you're like, yo, like you've got 10,000 SKUs. We're going to programmatically dynamically spin up a million different landing pages. I'm going to go and I'm going to do auto indexing using Google's indexing API and
for every key that you have you can do 200 uh calls a day you can have 20 different uh accounts or 20 different projects on a google cloud account so uh right there that's what that's 4 000 submissions a day that you can do to ask for crawl budget and this can all be done i mean we built this whole thing out when we got somebody to pay us like three grand to do this and then again we just ended up going in a different direction just because we saw more market pull but
With all that said, the angle here is you basically take the same products, but you can mix them up in all these different ways and build all these landing pages. And a lot of the times what ends up happening is it's the same products. It's the same best-selling products for XYZ seeds, right? We'll say like daffodils or whatever there's, you know, carnation, any of these different variations.
But there's all of these long-tail keywords that are being searched for that. And if you build landing pages for this, like I've seen this on websites that I've worked on where it's like we ship 10,000 landing pages and
14 days after publishing these, just publishing them, not even doing any indexing, we were accounting for almost 30% of the organic traffic that was happening on the site on a daily basis. So increased it by 30% in 14 days and also increased the organic click volume by about 10% in 14 days. And so that's his company, great example of this.
And you basically just build out this massive site and you turn it into a marketplace. And honestly, what I would probably then do As soon as you have all of that search volume, you have all of that domain trust, et cetera, then you open it up as a marketplace, a gardening marketplace where vendors can come on and you basically like charge a listing fee, just a classic marketplace play.
And you take a percentage of whatever the sales are that they're doing. But I think that's, that's the, you know, if I was in his shoes, like that is what I would do. And that's the path I would follow. And again, this is peak manic insomnia. So this is exactly how I love you.
but anyway hell yeah illiterate and manic as hell oh you know man that's the only way i know how to live just gas down i have two modes it's either it's either i'm like laying flat and not doing anything or i'm going as fast as i can and that's that's how i like cities that's how i like my life it's like either the biggest city you've ever been in or like in the middle of the woods like you know it's it's it's just both sides of the the spectrum it's the only place i know how to live so
Cool, all right, next one. AI and grants. Again, one of these I stumbled upon just looking at data. And so grants, the industry, grant management software, the market size is 2.5 billion. Insane, had no idea. This is just like writing grants and submitting them and seeing if you got the money back, right? Um, so I looked at the search volume in relationship.
So AI grant finder search volume for it. AI grant writer search following for it. It's not a ton, but it's like growing quickly. And I think people are just realizing this is possible. So I think there's a market to punch in through here. So what this looks like, this is totally a software play and AI powered software play.
I'm imagining what it ends up being is like, it's an all in one solution where it's like you put in the type of your, you know, your information about your company and and then access to all of the grant, you know, basically aggregation websites.
And then what the AI does is it goes and it rank stacks the grant opportunities against each other based off of your information and finds the ones that are most likely for you to get money off of. And you can like factor in, okay, what's the size, et cetera. And then you basically build a writer then in on top of that.
So it has your company's information and then it has what the grant is asking for, you know, whatever it is you need to provide to like from a proposal standpoint. And the AI is bridging that gap to create, you know, to basically get this money for you. And I know the space is massive. So this is how most HUD housing is actually built.
So a builder will go and they'll basically write for grant money so they can get this building, you know, basically subsidized for free. And then 20 years after the building has existed, they then own that outright, right? But, you know, The government just built this thing that they're renting for because they have to hit these affordable housing minimums.
From my understanding, again, this isn't where I spend a lot of time. This isn't the space that I'm deeply in. But I had a friend that worked at one of these companies. She was just like, this is all she did was basically manage a team that wrote grants for this builder, right? So anyway, yeah.
So this idea would actually rip it, especially in countries that are less, like more socialist than the United States. So I did a quick perplexity search. I'm here in Canada for the summer. And like just for students, the Canadian government gives $3.2 billion a year to
for grants and then you have film and art and you know what I'm talking about so it's just and no one not no one but most people don't want to actually go through the work and filling out grants so this idea makes makes a lot of sense to me
Totally. And the distribution play here is just copy Jenny AI. Look at their playbook and basically that's the distribution mechanism. It's the same thing, right? Do influencer type stuff that levels up into SEO.
And I mean, I'm seeing this more and more and I'm curious your thoughts on this where I'm seeing software companies more and more basically do partnerships with the largest influencers in a space that are currently... uh, basically shilling some type of software that's in their category. And then they're like, yo, we're going to give you an actual, what do you share? Whatever.
Five, 5% or something. And, uh, you're, you have to, you know, you're going to do X amount of posts or whatever. Just of course to promote this thing, like right at this moment, right. They're only getting whatever that percentage fee is from, uh, whatever the affiliate commission is. And they're like, oh, if I can own this company, it's a way more valuable asset, right?
I'm already promoting this other software that I'm an affiliate on. How do I create this partnership with it?
That's an idea in itself, by the way. You look at what creators and celebrities are shilling naturally. And you can start with software and then just approach them and be like, hey, I see you're shilling CapCut. I'm going to go create a CapCut competitor for you. Exactly.
100%.
I think that's the new future is I think what's going to happen. And I think it's changing what the fuck, like where is venture going to fit into that? Like you're telling me that like I'm going to write you a check and then you're going to give 5% of this company away to this influencer.
Like I think that traditional VC is going to look at that and be like, what do you mean that's what we're doing? Yeah. Absolutely not. But what that does, I think the leverage has changed within all of this. Now, if you want to be an excellent VC, you have to have distribution. It's more important than ever. I'm working with this VC company or this firm right now.
We're growing their podcast email newsletter because they're like, yo, we're realizing this is how we're You want to be competitive. We have to have distribution. We have to create inbound of the best founders in the world. And I think you said this on a different show that we recorded, but people think A16Z is a venture company. It's like, no, they're a media company that does venture.
It's the opposite. It's the other way around. And I challenge every person that's listening to this to think about this now. You're no longer a company that makes media. You're a media company that makes products, right? You're no longer a product company that makes media. You're a media company that makes products. And I think that that is the thing that's happening.
And as soon as people realize that and adopt this, that's how they're creating a competitive edge for themselves when whatever. And this works most effectively in industries that are not software, that are, you know, the grimy, like old school dirt under the fingernails types of businesses.
100%.
Because he wanted every person that would be his inbound target, right? And they curated it in the beginning, from my understanding. The things that would go to top position, it was only the stuff that they found interesting, which naturally over time attracts the people that they want to basically write checks to, right?
We have time for one last idea.
Cool. All right. This one is a huge one. And I don't really know. I, again, stumbled on this data and I just find it interesting. So it's a larger trend that's happening, but so nobody, a lot of people don't know this, but I studied economics in college. This is actually what I'm really interested in. It's like big data trend analysis.
I always joke, like I'm a practicing economist, which is they don't exist. That's called being, you know, an entrepreneur doing business, which again, they don't exist. So, What's happening right now is that basically all of the states are having to write these documents for solar wind farms. Which geographies in the states are the best places to basically put wind and to do renewable energy?
in that geography, in that state. So if you go and you search, you know, Washington, best place for solar wind farm, Washington, or best place for solar wind farm, Oregon, all of these public documents exist documenting, okay, here's the places where the wind's consistent. Here's the energy that can produce per acre of land that exists there, et cetera. So I think there's this opportunity.
I saw this and immediately I'm just like, okay, gold mine, whatever. This is basically signaling where everybody's going to build these things. And I'm still working out the numbers. I'll probably actually publish everything that we're... Because again, I find this interesting. This is what I do in free time with all the free time I have.
But I think the angle here, there's a couple of different angles. It's basically like some of these areas, like you can get an acre of land. We just found one where it was like $140 for an acre of land. And that acre of land, when you put wind on it, it's in one of these geographies that they're saying is like a high... It's like an energy-dense area for wind.
And that acre of land can produce like 1,400 a year when you rent out the space. When you put one of these turbines on it, you can... The payback on the shit is insane, Greg. Okay, so... An acre of land, again, imagine it costs you, we'll say $1,000, right? You can get these turbines for every, and I'm probably going to mess up this information so people correct us, but it's going to be close.
But for every megawatt of energy turbine that you produce, you can get them for about $1.3 million. So you're into this thing for 1.4, right? And you need about an acre to an acre and a half per megawatt from my understanding. What that turns into is that when you sell the energy that that turbine can produce, again, this is just based off of quick Google search stuff.
We're going to do probably a deeper document on this whole thing. But when you look at the energy that that can produce, it's in the range of $600,000 per year when you're selling it on the open market. I don't know what the margins are on any of this, but that's like the amount of energy that a single turbine can produce is that number. So that means that's true, right?
That your payback period on this investment is 2.4 years, right? I'm over here and I'm looking at this and I'm thinking, holy fucking shit. Like, This is going to be an absolute gold rush. We think about what happened in wildcat oil days. It's the same thing. They're defining these areas that are going to be high value.
This was happening during that same period where you had basically geologists were going and looking at these areas and saying, hey, this area is strong likelihood oil. How did Getty... you know, make all of his money. He used the data that the geologists were using. And that's like the angle that, and so I think there's a bunch of different plays here.
I think there's like an angle where it's like you build a website that's aggregating all of these areas. They're like, it's specific zip codes a lot of the times. So anytime land, like, you know, just land, like raw land comes up in those areas. It comes up on that site. You're basically scraping all of that. You're aggregating it and you have some type of email notification.
I think that's the software play that's probably in here. I think the other play is you go and you, you know, you build basically a fund and go and you buy up these locations. And I mean, right now the government's subsidizing these commercial, you know, uh, uh, projects. Like it's like 30% basically tax credits that you get back on this shit.
So you're telling me I can buy a turbine for it's one, you know, whatever, 1.3, but you're getting it for 800 K. I mean, that's a fucking, that's a, that's a residential home right now. Like that's insane. And so, uh, The crazy part about this, too, is, like, again, if that payback period is right, and please, somebody that knows way more about this, like, send us the information and the data.
Because, like, I'm, you know, obsessed with this right now. And I want to know. And, again, we're going to do all this research. But this is, like, just the last week of stuff that I've collected. So... That payback period is 2.4 years. The average lifespan of one of these turbines is 30 years, right?
So that means that 20, whatever, 27 out of the 30 years that this thing exists, it's making you money, basically. It's printing 600K a year. Again, just using what the market is paying for that. Again, there's a margin in there somewhere. I'm just using that. We'll say that's top line revenue.
So if you have a hundred of these things, right, that are running on a wind farm, like that, I mean, you just do the math, right? Like that's 60 million. Sorry. Yeah, that's 60 million. Yeah. Like scale it up to a thousand. That's 600 million. Scale that up to 10,000. Yeah. It gets insane very quickly, right? And we're not talking about like massive things and the government is investing in this.
There's tailwinds behind it. The data is public. I think this is like, this is a massive thing that's way above my pay scale, but something that's very interesting that I'm looking at, like, you know, that's a 40 year time horizon type of deal.
Yeah, I like it. Not enough people are talking about the tax benefits from it. There's a guy by the name of Ankur Nagpal. He started carry.com. He didn't talk specifically about wind, but he did talk about solar. And I don't know if you know this, but there's crazy tax benefits if you invest in a commercial solar project.
I had no idea.
Yeah. Upfront federal tax credit. There's depreciation that offsets federal and state. And you get the income stream from the project. So for example... He tweeted this. He was like, if you invest a million dollars in a solar project, you get 40% tax credit up front. So it's literally $400,000 against your tax bill. That's number one. Then you get to depreciate the asset with time.
So that's essentially, he calls it a phantom loss that you deduct against your taxes. So these projects can be fully depreciated minus half the tax credit over five years. And then you get the income streams. So he says, if you get 5% for 20 years, that's 50K a year. So he says, let's put it all together.
For a million dollar investment, you get $400,000 tax credit upfront, $800,000 in federal depreciation, $800,000 in state depreciation, and then 50,000 a year for 20 years. So I didn't believe it, honestly. So I texted one of the an entrepreneur who, who develops tons of these projects. He's in this space.
Yeah.
He's in the space. So I was like, there's, I just said, I just texted it. I sent him the link to that. Where do I send the bag? I was like, cause I was, I was, I was sus, you know? So I was like, what have I been doing? Not investing in solar my whole life. And then he said,
Lots of challenges making it work for W-2 employees, but if you're not, it's amazing for business owners and high net worth folks. Lots of brain damage learning the tax code and finding slash diligencing deals, but yes, it's great and a great investment.
I mean, that's probably a company they spin out though, right? It's like you spin out this investment arm and also the tax code arm that's servicing clients that are investing in this and they're paying you a percentage and you have some, you know, whatever, some type of fee that's built.
So something I found fascinating is that last year in 2023, there was 10X the amount of investment in wind than there was in solar.
Interesting.
Even though solar is cheaper.
Why is that?
No idea. But this is just what's happening. I think it's like... So my girlfriend's from the semiconductor space and she's a material science engineer. She did a bunch of shit in neuromorphic stuff. Basically way smarter than me, right? She can read. And so the... What she said is that the upkeep on these solar panels is the challenge because there's breakage that occurs naturally, right?
It's like a fucking piece of glass. So if like hail happens or you got to clean them off and those types of things, just like a lot of moving parts that are existing within a single unit. And so when you scale that up, it gets, you know, you have a lot of nodes that can go wrong basically. Now, in contrast, when you look like a turbine, it's like, yo, it's just a spinning thing.
Big spinning thing, right? The challenge is the manufacturing of them and the transport. Like that's the issue. I mean, I don't know if you've ever been on a remote highway and, you know, whole section is cut off because one of the wind blades is taking up both lanes. And, you know, like that, that's something that is happening. Right.
And so I think that they're figuring this out and the costs are coming down with this, but it's already cheaper than natural gas. And natural gas, it looks like can't go cheaper. So what's going to naturally happen in the market? And solar is still getting cheaper. That's the crazier part of this. It looks like wind is kind of at its threshold of decreasing costs.
But solar looks like it can go further down. So this transition is going to happen. The market is already solving for that. It's going to be cheaper than ever before to produce energy through wind and solar. Now it's just a matter of time. It's just like, how can you basically ride this larger wave that's happening? And again, to your point, I don't even think you have to build these things.
It's just writing checks into this. You go and you build these other businesses. But I mean, it's a no-brainer, right? Yeah. Totally. What you just laid out. It's like, of course I'm going to win. Like it's going to win. We all know business, right? Like the thing that we're using currently and there's something that's cheaper. Okay. Yes. Right.
Also, the thing that I found super interesting is like a lot of the states that you wouldn't think that would be investing in these renewables actually are. Texas is the leader right now. They're producing the most renewable energy in the US. And historically, I mean, that is where oil comes from, right? All of the old families, they're all oil families, right?
But they're investing in this and they're just looking at it. I mean, it just comes down to dollars and cents, right? This is cheaper to do this than it was. Also, I think it's very interesting when you now start to think about this as a resource, a natural resource that this...
like traditionally natural resources when you look at them it's like you know does that timber does that mining does that these these you know stuff water rights etc uh and this is now an added natural resource suddenly these states are becoming more valuable like they're natural resources that they have like you just invented two new categories like do you get a lot of sun oh do you have a lot of land cool like you just solar farm right like so when you look at like northern nevada as an example like that's an asset that now suddenly exists right
And again, you have an area where it's like constant wind that's humming, right? And access to a grid. Okay, that's a solar farm. And so you got this natural resource that now is coming to an existence. And so I think whenever this happens or has happened historically, like you see generational wealth come into existence. So yeah, that's my spiel. The monologue is done.
It's beautiful. You, that would, the whole thing was, you know, I have a tear coming slowly down my face. You're an angel.
I can hear the violin somewhere back there.
Somewhere back there. If you've, if you've made it this far in the episode, the only, the only way we know to create more episodes is if you subscribe on YouTube, like on YouTube, comment on YouTube, we read the comments and, uh, you know, go check Cody out. He's, uh, A phenomenal Twitter account. Just Google me. Google him. Stuff will come up.
It should. And on YouTube. If I don't come up, I'm doing it wrong. I'm doing my job wrong and I'm very bad at it.
Actually, that's true. But we'll include some links in the YouTube description anyways. Thanks again, Cody.
You're a G. Love a G. Thanks for hosting, man. I always enjoy it. You always make me think about it in a different way. It's like so valuable to me.
My pleasure. I'll see you later, man.
Later, homie.