you know hedge funds there's a huge hedge fund information business I remind every one of my friends do you know who the richest man in New York is it's not it's nobody who works at a hedge fund or private Equity this person's richer than schwarzman richer than all the hedge fund guys Michael Bloomberg no way wa he by far he is the richest person in New York because he sells all the information and the picks and shovels to all the finance people and so there's a bunch of when I I worked at Goldman there's a ton of information businesses and alternative asset guys are great customers because because they're very rational if you make them money they don't mind paying you a lot they're not price sensitive at all they're very urgent they need the thing when they need it and so one of my ideas is like let's create a business where the customers are hedge funds and you know within within a week you and I could go get probably five billion dollar of ads spend on Facebook like agencies and friends who are running a lot of spend and we survey them you can pay them a ton of money to survey them and first you do it for meta then you go do it for Google then you go do it for Amazon then you you basically go through the biggest public companies and you create information that the investment in hedge fund World uses and I think that's easily a 10 million ebit do business maybe [Music] more this is an absolute pleasure to have you Jesse puie this guy has what's up Greg hundreds of profitable startup ideas it lodged in his brain uh you're my go-to guy when I when I need when I want a jam ideas so thanks for taking some time today yeah absolutely let's let's get into it so what do you got for us well what genre do you want because I can I can take us in many different directions uh yeah you know I think maybe I'll start with my formula might be helpful and then we can talk about some of them and this is like you know having done launched a bunch of businesses some which have been very successful some which have f fa I think I've gotten a better formula down and one of my favorite things is like unique insight and unfair advantage and so part of unique Insight is like I always tell people look look at your own situation like who do you know one of my favorites is like cross-sections of things you know um like one of the very successful businesses we started last year is called Ox insights and it's helping private Equity firms understand marketing like we basically do diligence for them and help them get it it's like okay well those are two cross-sections that were kind of unlikely bedfellows that we've been able to build a very successful business in so that's one and then the unique Insight is like what's the problem in there that somebody's got U and unfair Advantage usually around distribution who do you know and so I I'll start with one for fun I'm not sure the audience will will love this one but when I was running ampush I was making like $200,000 a year doing GLG and like Alpha sites call and the reason was because all these hedge fund dudes had like 100 200$ 300 million positions in meta and they would call me every quarter and they'd go what are your clients doing are they spending more are they spending less like and I was like oh man I don't have time for this so I started I went from $500 an hour to $1,000 an hour to I'm not kidding $2500 an hour and I saw no drop off in volume okay so so like I was doing whatever number of calls a quarter and so I'll give you two ideas actually that came from this so the first idea is you know hedge funds there's a huge hedge fund information business I remind every one of my friends do you know who the richest man in New York is or richest person in New York who is it it's not it's nobody who works at a hedge fund or private Equity this person's richer than schwarzman richer than all the hedge fund guys someone in real estate nope Michael Bloomberg no way wait he by far he is the richest person in New York because he sells all the information and the picks and shovels to all the finance people and so there's a bunch of when I I worked at Goldman there's a ton of information businesses and alternative asset guys are great customers because they're very rational if you make them money they don't mind paying you a lot they're not price sensitive at all they're very urgent they need the thing when they need it and so one of my ideas is like let's create a business where the customers are hedge funds and you know within within a week you and I could go get probably $5 billion dollar of ads spent on Facebook like agencies and friends who are running a lot of spend and we survey them and you can pay them a ton of money to survey them or you can give them a trip to to the Bahamas every year in exchange for doing the survey and all the survey answers every quarter is did you spend more did you spend less you know what you whatever what are your metrics like you basically collect a bunch of really and you go to hedge funds you say I'll charge you1 $200,000 a year to have access to this information and it's going to give you an edge my my better idea even by the way for pricing is we're going to hold a reverse auction only 20 people will get this information bid to your highest bid that you're willing to pay for it and first you do it for meta then you go do it for Google then you go do it for Amazon then you do you basically go through the biggest public companies and you create information that the investment in hedge fund World uses and I think that's easily a 10 million ebit do business maybe more so I haven't seen a lot of people doing this but I actually think that if you used AI to scrape a lot of data and enrich your data that's also value ad and I feel like AI assisted just data data in itself is like if you're a hedge fun and you're not spending money on that you're like I don't want to be left behind dude there was a company that we paid 100,000 a month at Goldman maybe not quite that maybe 50,000 a month called first Reign and it was literally a fancy Google analy or Google alerts for public companies because the argument was you don't want to be the you know you need to know first when something happens to your stock and we are the fastest best way to get you that information and it was literally just Google Alerts like it and so I think there's a lot of ideas in this vein to the you know and this is a good example by the way of like getting super thoughtful about a customer and and who what they need and who they are and how to approach it but that's that's one of my ideas for for that world the other one is a is a broad idea I mean you know you've heard of alpha sites or GLG right yeah so for anyone who's listening um there's probably 10 of these companies all have been extremely successful their customers are hedge funds private Equity consulting firms and they basically Supply them with expert networks expert experts so if you I used to work at Goldman right and I had to get smart in the trucking industry so I went to them and I go hey guys I want to talk to a guy who owns 10 trucks I want to talk to one of the biggest you know I want to talk to a two truck drivers like actual truck drivers I want to talk to someone who ships through three different trucking carriers I want to talk to someone who's built the truck engines the special diesel engines like I made this whole request for them and and within two weeks they had experts for all of all of those people and I'm sitting there asking how does these diesel engine work is the techn Tey you're actually going to change the game blah blah blah I'm learning all about it right and they've all been very successful I'm talking nine figure ebit like multiple companies have hit nine figures in ebit da I think that whole Space is going to verticalized and as as my unfair Advantage like I would I'm G to ver you know we verticalized it in marketing like so and I actually think there's probably even more to it I think you could definitely sell into that group I think marketers would pay marketers to get a little bit of information around how do you do X Y andz um but I think there's an opportunity in building like a basically a marketing Centric expert Network quick ad break let me tell you about a business I invested in it's called boring marketing.com so a few years ago I met this group of people that were some of the best SEO experts in the world they were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on Google and the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and AI that could help you outrank your competition so for my own businesses I wanted that I didn't want to have to rely on Mark Zuckerberg I didn't want to depend on ads to drive customers to my businesses I wanted to rank high in Google that's why I like SEO and that's why I use boring marketing.com and that's why I invested in it they're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day Sprint with 100% money back guarantee who does that nowadays so check it out highly recommend boring marketing.com so Beyond marketing what are like three four five other verticals that could be interesting yeah I think I mean I I think there's all it stuff right I think healthc care is another one um I mean really you just go down the GDP list and you pick them off right Healthcare I think Auto um and AI right you could probably build a nice a AI expert Network that's just all all these foremost people in Ai and and I think the verticalization you know there was a company called tus I think that recently sold and and there's people innovating in the business model their Innovation was we're going to record every call transcribe it and 90 days after the call takes place we'll make it searchable and available in the database so they were actually creating data and aggregation of information that became very valuable and differentiating for them versus some of the other guys so you know I think there's things like that that can be very differentiating but yeah I mean any vertical again that you're in could be there could be a Content one it's just an expert you know go get a collection of 100 experts in content and people will tap want to tap into that in different ways totally I actually was thinking about this the other yesterday had a meeting with um my editor uh for my for my YouTube channel and podcast and I was like we should hire just like consult with the number one person on YouTube titles and thumbnails and like we'll pay Whatever Whatever It Is Well that's exactly for the marketing one I just want to get all those experts and I think not only could you do the Wall Street people as customers but I think you could do other marketers there's someone who really knows how to run Facebook ads for dog food someone else who really knows how to do Amazon for water bottles there's somebody else who and those people are sitting there with that information in their head and it kind of goes under monetized and I think I think there's a massive opportunity to connect the dots on those things and I think vertical the nice thing about verticalization is it it just it creates natural differentiation right it's like the one thing you could you could pitch against GLG or alphasight it's like well this is all we do we we focus on one specific vertical and it's just a natural pitch that everyone goes well yeah it's all it's all they do so if we're going to do marketing stuff we better talk to these guys because they're just naturally better in that space totally yeah you know they're they're the cheesecake The Cheesecake Factory there's everything on the menu that's right exactly and I think anytime yeah that happens all the time anytime something it's a whole vertical SAS thesis that people talk about is like there was AC CRM called Salesforce or whatever and now there's 50 CR M there's a CRM for Real Estate there's a CRM for by the way real estate would be another good vertical for this expert Network so both these ideas I buy like these are ideas like I'm scribbling notes I'm like I I want to start one of these but how do you actually go about growing some of these ideas like you know in your hedge fund idea I'm like yeah that makes sense but I don't know anyone in hedge funds you know in let's just say the real estate uh vertical or the automotive you know vertical like how do you go about you know taking this from idea to you know actually execution yeah I think who you are matters a lot in this situation like for me part of the reason the ideas come to me is cuz like I have 50 friends who are at hedge funds right and I just because I went to work college with a bunch of them I worked at a hedge fund for a few years and so I think the lesson for someone listening is like who are your friends like like what world are they in who you know because you I could kind of call any of my friends and they would all support me right and and this is small money for someone at a hedge fund but but in aggregate you start to build a business against it right and it's like well we like Jesse we trust him and so I think if if you're listening it's not go sell things to hedge funds well I'll come to that in a second actually but but I think you could you start with who you know and that's part of the unfair advantage and getting distribution early often and early right you sell things to the people who you have a relationship with or you have some understanding or knowledge or knowhow and I I think that's just an overlooked I think there's so many entrepreneurs who all meet you know they're like salese at whatever some business and they're like I want to start an e-commerce business and I'm like why like but look and if their answer is I love water bottles fine God bless right like that makes sense if that's really what you want but they're like oh no because because I saw shark tank and this I had this really smart idea and I'm like yeah I get it but like you've been talking to these people for you know the last five years like go sell them something you know go talk to them so that's that's probably the biggest push I'd have if you were to start this and you don't know anyone at hedge funds you got to go know people at hedge funds right like that's that's the only answer for the business which is why you go back to rule one and say well no just go find people you know somewhere and sell things to them but but I mean early on in ampush we did that and it's just like you know you you leverage your network extremely heavily I bet you with a with a week or two you could get 10 hedge fund meetings right through friend of a friend essentially or some some version of your network if you really cared obviously you go in you gota you got to bring it in those conversations you got to be really well prepared you got to explain why it matters to them you know you got to match their energy and their orientation you got to know their culture of the buyer um and and I think you'll have some good success with it and so you know again I I my recommendation is more so find the people you already know and find something to sell to them versus try to go and learn some new thing um yeah or partner you know be the back end and and find a front end with someone like you so if I if I was totally yeah if I was going to start something like this I would pick a really great name create a great brand build out the MVP and and then do two things I would set up cold DMS and and just start cold dming uh hedge fund managers people work in hedge funds just to like look at the website even if you know only 1% or less than 1% ends up opening you know your your messages and the second thing is I'd build audience around you know yeah around it I'd build memes around it you know funny enough like I do both of those things also I think you know that I do cold stuff and I also have learned how to build an audience um and I do think they have tremendous I think the media stuff is way more valuable than I ever expected it to be the first thing I would do is I have this crazy system on LinkedIn where I just find Mutual introductions and it works like a charm like you get your 50 targets usually you'll have a second degree maybe a third degree but even third degree works better than you would think like especially if it's like you right so I call you and I'm like hey Greg you know someone you know Andrew and Andrew knows the head of oxz like you're my friend it like it takes time it's a little more of a patient game but within a week or so you actually have a pretty good introduction and that's actually for all of my businesses how I started is using even when I was 25 by the way or 26 because everyone's now was like you have a huge Network Jesse which is true but when I was 25 or 26 I did the exact same thing to get the first 10 ampush customers they were through my network somehow and I would just I would sort of salute the people I wanted to talk to and I'd work backwards somehow to figure out how I could get an into them sometimes by the way it's not even on LinkedIn you would have to connect the dots by looking at a board member or C- level executive at a place and going oh they used to work at this company and I actually know someone was there any overlap there and and like again you work your network or you work the kind of connections a bit and next thing you know you're having a warm conversation with someone and and I think for me at least that's been the most tried and true way I've started every business yeah there's a there's an app I use called the org I'm not like Affiliated or anything but the org.com so you can just see like publicly traded companies and trending companies and seeing like who works there um you know track track them stay updated on team changes so I think using platforms like that is helpful the other thing I would do is uh besides the mutual connection thing is like I'd create content and I would just tag the people that I want to see the content in which works like surprisingly well if you're like super thoughtful like let's just say it's the uh you know the automotive uh you know business in business it's like okay go like research some stuff create something create a really interesting piece add an image or video to it because LinkedIn is optimizing that and then T you know tag two or three people that um like bring them into the content hope that they like it and if they like it reach out literally right away totally and I I think the other thing I I also find a lot of entrepreneurs doing and I think I did this but then I don't remember what I did when I was young fully but man if you go to someone and you're just honest and you put your hat in your hand and you say you know what like I think this is a good idea and I mean this for anyone like if I was starting this hedge fund thing and I didn't have a network I I know someone in finance I try to find someone senior in the finance World somebody's friend somebody's cousin someone something and I'd say listen here's the idea I have honestly I don't know if it's a good idea or not all I want to do is meet people to try to better understand if this is a good idea and if so what do I need to do to make it a real thing and man humans are humans and anytime I've come with that mindset or orientation to somebody all their that's happened is their heart has opened up to me and they've said you know what there's three or four people I think you could connect with and I think they'd really be able to give you a big perspective and if you come in pretending like you know everything and you're pitching everyone and you're selling everyone it oftentimes it has the opposite effect that you think and I think owning where you are and being authentic is in in the networking process is a really powerful way to get something going but you don't think someone's listening to this and they're like well easy for you Jesse you went to Wharton and then you worked at Goldman like what about the person who doesn't live in the United States didn't go to the great school doesn't you know his friends are his or her friends are just you know construction workers or who knows right what do you say to those people well again I say two things I think well one is depending on your age it does matter where you go to college and that's like a fun one on Twitter that I always throw at people because people love saying it doesn't and I can tell you that the biggest meal ticket of my life was going to Wharton um I went to a very average public high school with like middle class immigrant parents and man that that was a I I felt the step like I've felt the step in my life and I've continued to feel it ever since so that's one thing if you're 16 or whatever you are and you're wondering and you're reading this like it matters I think it matters so that's number one I think number two is again if you're Construction worker like don't why would you start a business selling to hedge funds it just makes no sense like sell a business start a business selling something to construction people right like find the problems in the world you're in every business can make money like there's no business that does you know it's not like selling to construction is better or worse than selling to hedge funds it's it's all just what you know um and then the third thing is I don't I mean I don't want to get too spiritual here but I definitely believe the quote that once you put out into the universe what you're trying to get done it conspires to help you created so even if you were a construction worker and you're like I do want to do the hedge fund thing you start talking about it at parties you put yourself out there you ask friends for introductions you you will it may take you longer than it took me right it may take you six months to get your first really valuable meeting but you will get a meeting and if you go to that person you say I don't I'm from the construction world but I think they should have data on construction and I want to sell it to hedge funds like people will start to help you and take notice and and I've never I've just just never experienced it I mean I don't know about you I think you're like me if some random person comes to me through a friend or through even a thing like an Uncle's cousin I usually take a call for 15 minutes and if they say like look I don't know what the hell I'm doing I need some help I was like well here's a few people like you know send me an email and I'll put a little bit of work on that person I'll say send me an email outline it tell me what you and if they don't ever follow up then like I know they're not serious but then some of them are like man they come back they follow up I'm like wow I met this person they seem to have a unique energy do you want to meet them and then I'll check came with that person in a year and guess what they have a business and they're running and so yeah I think even in the third case it's it's it is I wouldn't necess start but even in that third case I think when you put put things out into the universe and you're serious it starts to conspire to help you yeah and I think everyone has an edge too so% it doesn't make a difference like using the construction worker example it's like it's kind of interesting that your construction worker building a hedge fund thing and like you have this unique insight into that space into companies in in that space I remember when I first moved to San Francisco coming from uh Montreal Canada I didn't know one person and like literally no one uh and but I ended up meeting some people like at the Canadian consulate type thing and which is random and basically when people from France were coming to San Francisco and they wanted someone to show them around I like became known as the guy who would take these people people around San Francisco and I ended up bootstrapping my network from all these like French entrepreneurs who ended up like you know the founders of zley who sold it to snap for like three or $400 million all these like startups um and my my advantage was I spoke this language and so they wanted someone who spoke the language and that's it so you hav't yeah I definitely think I find I find that helping people I mean it's it's funny right this private Equity business business uh we sell you know we're basically helping private Equity firms assess companies marketing capabilities right that's and we charge a quarter million dollars a month for our services it's a very high ticket item half of the customers were students like I was like older than them and they're like VPS at these firms now VP plus and I was a you know and but I was helpful to them you know I prepped them for their interviews and I and I just did it because I cuz you know they're young you two years younger than me they're like hey Jesse you work in finance now can you help me prepare them it and that's that's just I don't know that's what I do I help people like I'm willing to help someone just because if people have helped me right and I'm just like okay now you roll in and imagine there VP or principal at Blackstone or pick your favorite and I'm like hey I got a new business I'm trying to start it what do you you know what what do you think is going to happen in that sales conversation they literally do everything and anything they can to find an opportunity for us to to collaborate on something and then I get to say Blackstone is a customer or whoever like like so it's just you know I think there's a lot to be said about finding ways to be helpful in ways that are true and unique to you again I think being helpful inauthentically everyone can tell but being helpful authentically to the types of people and to the like to the for the things that make you light you up or give you energy I think is a really valuable thing what other ideas you got um you want to do somewhere off-the-wall stuff yeah 100% so you know we started a couple supplement businesses in e-commerce which have kind of been a slog but I do think supplements are an awesome category I think they're high margin I think they're endlessly marketable and I think there's something really interesting about making the person feel like the supplement is meant for them okay okay so like let's use a most common example in the market there's Centrum which is this like daily multivitamin most of us have heard of then there's Centrum Silver and it's like oh that's for the old people and there's certain things in that that the old people need so one of my ideas is to take the world and this came actually I'll tell you if you talk to any South Asian again this is myself you talk to any South Asian dude you probably have a million Indian and Pakistani friends and if you I'll tell you like their lipid profile I can tell you right now they have low D3 they have high LDL they have some heart ISS like some you know maybe a little high cholesterol like a and probably high glucose like they they just have a similar profile because of you know genetics and the fact that we were not meant to eat pizzas and burgers we were meant to eat doll and Roy right like it's it's a very specific lipid profile so one of my ideas was like let's create a by the way South Asians are also the highest diper income in the United States higher than Jews higher than everyone else right let's let's create like an Indian South Asian men multivitamin like centrum's not the right one for them right like we'll call it musty right and it's G to be a hundred bucks a month and it's going to be meant for them and it's going to speak to their issues and it's going to talk about that and then I was like okay well what about for black women and what about for you know apparently lots of Jewish dudes have digestive issues like that's a common issue for Jewish dudes like so one of my Ecom ideas is basically like a a hyper demoed multivitamin or vitamin orientation and I think that like the ads on Facebook would just be perfect like it again it's back to this thing of you just find an area that no one else is in and I can the only one who can say I am this is the South Asian vitamin and is it 70% similar to Centrum maybe but like if you have the money and you why wouldn't you buy the thing for you yeah I like the idea of like a studio around this like kind of like how uh you know the m match group has dating apps for every category or IAC has a bunch of different verticals like what does that look like for for supplements for different demographics totally and and yeah exactly so I think that you do supplements for different demographics um the other thing I like about it dude is here's a couple other data points to think about one is this is a perfect example of something that could not be retail because there's just not you're not going to get shell space for there's not enough Indian people in any one area maybe maybe in in like Toronto or Vancouver but every other city in North America knowon Ontario Miss Saga maybe those two places but nowhere else in America in North America right but so that's number one number two is you could charge a lot for it number three is like it's you know there's I I forgot the number exactly but I think it's somewhere in the ballpark of 10 million uh South Asian so 5 million men South Asian in the US right growing growing category it's like 100,000 people paying you 100 bucks a month like that's a real business dude like that's that's like a nine fig it's a real business that's one of the verticals right so what I like about it is that it it just it fits in so many different places frankly I wish this is what I would have I had the same idea and I chose a different thing and I like we wish we would have done this but it's still on the list it's still on the list well thank you for sharing it and being open with it appreciate that um how do you go about I know nothing about like create creating supplements like how how does one go about doing that you know it's it's funny like it's uh some of these guys who were building like airplanes and aircraft every sometimes I'm like wow it's so incredible and then other times I'm like you know the world is like the beauty of being alive right now as an entrepreneur is like man there is a system there is a submarket and a whatever for everything so I had a similar intimidation in the beginning and then like obviously you can go in like order the raw materials and then find someone to mix your supplement like you could build a whole supply chain on the other side of it in the beginning you could literally go to third parties who will white label their supplements for you and let you sell them however you want like if you wanted to validate this dude you could have you and I could build this business in a week because there's a third party who will slap a label on something call it whatever we want and we can start running Facebook campaigns on it within a week and so the answer is that you start with something like that and then you slowly get more you know that's how we started then you slowly go okay wait let me actually work with a doctor and formulate something and they have their research and we do some other things and we start to formulate like a a proprietary blend of something and then you go to a third party who manufactures it for you and and that's it and again I'm sure as you get bigger you can you can keep ripping cost out and improving supply chain and all that stuff like it becomes a bigger function but early on it's just it would be silly to do all that stuff in my opinion so I'd first start with one of these third parties that will literally make it for you on demand whatever that and just throw a white label on it then I would go one level further and make a proprietary formula and then maybe when I'm a much bigger business I would like buy my own ingredients and maybe there's third parties that just mix it for you if you want that but in the beginning you just you just need something to sell someone and see if it works and you're you're uh a paid ads Savant so how would you go about thinking about your paid ads strategy for something like this yeah you know one of the funny things you know this right I've probably overseen over my career two three billion dollars in paid spend right we did it we scaled Uber to 100 million a year in 600 cities Dollar Shave Club to was spending three million a month with us for four years Stitch fix Casper you name it and and we basically ran at least their paid social if not all of their digital and when I started doing this on my own I totally it up um actually because I was so used to running bigger things that I was like oh go go create this special creative go do X go do y and it turns out that what you actually need to do in the beginning is the first month or two is what they call seasoning the pixel and so you create actually five to seven static non-v video ads that are very basic with your product with the pixel and you spend 50 bucks a day 25 bucks a day and the first week is going to be the worst results you've ever seen and then you'll see Facebook will start to learn your audience a little better and maybe every week you make a small adjustment just to what's working spend a little more on what what's working pause what's not working basically based on how much they're spending or what the metrics look like and then you and you kind of Let It Go and so what you should see is after two months the the pixel will be seasoned because like the CPA will be cut in half and you'll just notice that the metrics will all look better now Facebook knows who your audience is now you can get crazy with the video creative and some of the other things um that are you know ugc like the more engaging creative but part of it is you almost want bad creative up front because you want Facebook's algorithm to get a better and better signal on who your audience is and if you give them too much good creative like you know if I show you a pretty girl with dancing around or whatever you may buy the product even though you're not the Right audience and then Facebook kind of learns the wrong lessons you want them to learn oh this is like a really crappy ad but oh man it's an Indian supplement I'm Indian okay I'm gonna buy it man the site looks really bad but the formula looks good okay you want that to be your first 100 transactions to calibrate the audience really tightly and then and then you light up again video and ugc now one of the big mistakes people make here is you really shouldn't grow your spend until the the economics are profitable until your first order profitable which means let's just do this math if you're a $100 supplement it's kind of expensive supplement but let's just let's go with that you're probably doing 70% gross margins maybe more so you're making $70 in profit your CPA Target should be like 50 right at the highest because that makes you Mak money on every transaction and what you have to do is calibrate your spend your creative your metrics internally to that that would be considered a two row as right on your spend and it's too easy to convince yourself to spend more on a shittier metric and this what it forces is a discipline of sorts that you you're not allowed to scale until you can't spend more than $50 a day until that 50 is able to do and what what it means is you may spend six months trying to rip through different creatives and and hooks and all the things you know you and I know from the world of organic social but then when you get it and everybody gets it if they they stay long enough it is a it is a dream because now all of a sudden you have a money machine that you can just keep turning up um and if you read my newsletter we actually started using some like lending in our case and we didn't follow this Rule and it was a big mistake like it made us too too able to spend money too fast and that's actually a really bad thing in in customer acquisition and in terms of creative because like nowadays creative is you know is huge M the main lever like what do you what do you recommend to folks in terms of creating how do how do how do you create creative that that is going to get you that two row as yeah I mean I have a whole presentation I shared privately with a handful of of Business Leaders of that's like get the organic social formula which you and I know really well like is it a good hook is it gonna get someone to stop what they're doing and in order to do that I typically think of it as curiosity and benefits I think Craig Clemens the the guy from Golden hippo says that like make me curious and tell me what's going to benefit me right and that that's the first thing in the hook uh and and that means you got to know your audience you got to know your customer you got to know all these different things then uh then you got to deliver some value and usually it's informational value in the in the creative itself one of my favorite Frameworks is the Pas the problem agitation solution framework right where you say well the hook is something you have an issue with you don't immediately jump to the solution you you add you like uh you know and then you then you present the solution at the end of the ad and and obviously then you can trums on the landing page my favorite example of this like this has become my favorite product this is like if I was Oprah this is Jesse's product of the year uh is have you seen this Air Moto thing no so okay so once you have kids and you're a dad one of the random jobs you get assigned of many there's many many jobs like suitcase carrier and whatever you just you are the inflating guy you inflate okay you inflate tires on bikes you inflate car tires if something goes wrong with your car you inflate pool toys um there just nothing you don't inflate your responsibility is to inflate it's just it's the law of dads right and so I get this ad on on Tik Tok and it's like it's like you know it kind of is making fun of this like you know do you get annoyed by this you have to do it and then it agitates the out of you it's like shows the guy at the gas station looking for quarters trying to fill his wife's tires and he's pissed off then he comes home and his kid's like can you fill the bike tire for me and the bike tire keeps deflating and it's like it's annoying and he's sweating and dud it was like I was like yes yes that's me like you know it's such a random thing too because I would never consider myself and I was like man these guys like I was just so agitated and then they're like it's a mini compressor so it's like this tiny little compressor right it connects it it's really smart it's automated you can press a button plug it in and it just goes until it needs to turn itself off it can just set to whatever PSI you need to right and I kid you not I like bought one and it blew my mind like I handle all the things even taught my son now how to do it he's a little older like you know it's like just a total Game Changer like it literally like we like joke about it and then I was like I just bought 10 of them and every man I know I just give them like here you go here's an aoto dude dude and so the second the last part is kind of extreme but like the example of great creative was knowing your customer really well presenting the problem like connecting and then really agitating it um and again they just did a wonderful job of like and every single agitation was felt very real for me being at the gas station trying to find quarters to fill my my wife's car my you know my kids incessantly asking me to and that's just that's a that's a perfect example that's the case study that's why before you do ads do or organic content because it totally alongside yeah 100% yeah because it allows it's R&D basically and here's the other thing about people get so strange about organic and I man I I scream this at the top of my lungs I'm like if your organic sucks no one sees it yeah by defin even mine and yours now we probably write certain like I've written tweets I'm like this is gonna Crush gets like 1,200 Impressions and I'm like all right well that was a bad idea but guess what no one saw it like it's totally asymmetric and and the world you know everyone talks about the beauty of asymmetric payoffs I mean it has no downside whatsoever it's just it's like an ego downside people are afraid to look stupid and I'm like man I no one sees it like your bad tweets no one sees them 100 per. um before we move on from supplements I have a a related thing I want I want your feedback on actually so a buddy of mine his name is Rob Jama he's when he does something he sold the company to Shopify when he does something I I really pay attention and he launched something new the other day which I thought was really smart so he is Somalian uh by ethnicity he's Canadian lives in Toronto but he started this uh skincare line this is like a digital guy like a software guy and it's called it's called Uh the company's called glean but it's this it the product called cazel which is an allnatural multi-purpose ingredient used for thousands of years to help alleviate redness and diminish hyperpigmentation cool but it's targeted towards people who H are East African and it kind of reminded me a little bit about your thesis here so what do you think about what do you think about this business and and have you ever thought about like skin care or beauty in that category Beauty and skincare is a great category it's not one I know super well I don't I mean I kind of accidentally know supplements I think look how expensive it is too $17 this has got to be super high margin right it's you can just see that it's there yeah I love it man I think it's I think it's great I think the question I would like I want to see the Facebook account my guess is a 70 75% gross margin the bottle looks a little fancy so maybe a little lower than that shipping matters a lot in these things you know like even the weight basically the weight below one pound matters a ton to keep the costs really low because of the USBs shipping site looks fine I mean it's not I would look at it in Mobile because that's where all the traffic will come like the desktop nobody goes to the desktop website [Music] um but to me I would want to see their ads library on Facebook and I'd want to know from them do they have an ad that generates greater than two row ads like you know and and it's all the only thing that matters in Ecom dude is first order profitability it's just the only thing that matters Ms and if you can't be first order profitable and scale then it doesn't matter it's your basically the market will tell you if the idea is good or not based on that metric and your ability to obviously put good creative out there um assuming your product you know there's demand for your product um and then obviously like I I should you know one thing I should say one big lesson we learned was having a good unique bleeding edge product like the guys who have done colostrum there's like multiple nine fig Revenue startups because they were really early to that Trend like that Trend matters a ton in these categories of beauty and and supplements that's like if I could go do what if I could go tell myself one thing when we launched the supplement world I would have said Trends find something more on the bleeding edge don't pick like we picked God heal and it's just such a tired category we just I just wouldn't have done that that's the one piece of advice I would have told myself I'm sure I wouldn't have listened to myself but that's what I myself Jess you have time for one last idea yeah of mine yeah or I can I could jump in no no I got I got a bunch um give me a genre and I'll give you a good idea I I like these Niche ideas like I I I like you know your first idea was really like unbundling and the second you know second idea was it was like demographics so anything here's one I texted our CTO about last night okay do you you don't have kids so you don't so there's a guy called Perry grip on Spotify and and he's got the catchiest kid songs you've ever heard in your whole life okay like I know them all so I will sing like one is called my favorite one is called Haunted cupcake and he's like oh haunted cupcake sitting on the plate or I want to eat you but I'm too afraid what are you filled with nobody knows is it creamy butter or a spooky ghost haunted cupcake haunted cupcake there's that there's like it's raining tacos and basically my kids from four to six I mean if you looked at my Spotify obsessed with it and this guy reportedly makes like a million bucks a month because he just I mean you can just look at he's hundreds of millions of streams of these songs right and so my idea I texted R CTO last night and he he was like playing around with AI stuff and for un for our supplement brand and he he created a song about our supplement brand and it's a good song using AI so I was like could we like create kind of like the ghost kitchens like could we create like ghost Spotify channels that are kids music that are all AI basically driven and and just make a ton of M like like you can make an unlimited amount of Music basically and I don't know how distribution Works in that world like I don't know how Perry grip got popular I like my kids I'm guessing other kids told I have no idea I have to that's the part I don't understand it makes me a little nervous about it like I don't understand distribution but feels like a good idea how does it work with sunno and and some of those products like you know I created like the theme song of this show the startup ideas podcast which 90 80% of people love it but 20% of people like have nightmares about it I used uh suo to create it but like could I go and put that on Spotify and earn Revenue like who owns the music I don't I have no idea that's a great question my guess is you own it but I don't know I mean we have to look at the us but one way or another there's a way to use AI I mean chat GPT you could make me a funny Melody about I mean this guy haunted cupcakes like yeah the guy I mean well I'm a creative enough person and so is Adam our CTO that I think we could brainstorm topics like that and just see like what are things kids talk about and like I want like even like you know my as my kids got a little older my older two are nine and seven now like they're into like boobs and farts and like and I bet you like there's probably a whole genre of songs I mean dude there's a Spotify channel that takes various categories and just says it just it repeats the exact same Lyric over and over again and it's really catchy but it's kind of annoying what the hell is it called it's like mango yeah it's called H that's strange that's the name of the channel okay and it's I don't know if you can even hear [Music] this mango mango mango mango okay so do you know you want to know what the other songs are yes okay you're gonna you're gonna be blown away by this you ready I'm ready cheese cheese chees cheesy [Music] cheesee okay you want to do one more do one more let's do one more can you guess what it's going to be mango cheese eggs donut the number one is the serial song it's all the same is the point it's just written it's written to that thing and they like they have 50 volumes of songs I mean maybe these guys are doing this already yeah this is a huge Insight that you've blessed us with which is which is it's easier to create music now than ever you can monetize off these platforms and children's music all is kind of sounds the same I mean dude there something we're gonna I want to see how how hard it'll be us for us to try this yeah this is my dream by the way like all my businesses like you know private Equity Consulting for marketing is like it's not an easy you know it's hard you got to get good people you got to know your you're like my dream would be to make a million bucks a month off a business like this yeah totally I love it Jesse thanks for coming on where could people get to know you more sign up at bootstrap giants.com that's our big area of push right now we're trying to build the largest community for you know profitable ambitious companies we you know the the pitch is there's a lot of content out there for VCB as you and I both know there's a lot of content out there for 4 Hour Work week it's kind of like this music example but I think there's a ton of I think that most underserved Founders are buil bootstrap profitable fast growing businesses that just don't get any love and we're we're going to share my insights I've done this multiple times we're going to spend a lot of time opening up the private Equity world uh to this group so mid-market and lower mid-market private equity which I think are the right types of partners for profitable businesses um and we're going to be doing a bunch of other kind of acceleratory type things there so bootstrap giants.com sign up beautiful all right my man catch you later peace that was great [Music]