7 People Making $5M-$10M From Weird Hobbies

not saying like i'm above this no one's above this this is cool these guys just sold seven million dollars and multi tools in like a week i feel like i could rule wear i know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a days off on a goal less travel never so in order for a creator business to work the creator needs to be loved what makes a creator lovable like what attributes do they have where you see it and you're like that person has it and people will buy because of them finding creators that have like real love from their communities is the is the whole thing right because those are the most durable audiences that will kind of go it makes them not cancel it they peep people feel like they are their buddies their friends so i think like what makes them loved is you feel like you're watching a version of yourself doing it you know when you're if you're a wood worker and you watch jonathan katz noses you're like oh this guy's just like me and he's teaching me i'm learning and it's like a buddy who's walking me into my favorite hobby my favorite niche so that's to be relatable i think so relatable was a good way to put it i think you know often feels like your a big sister or your big brother too or you're like okay they're teaching me you know like you like motorcycles right like they're pain in the ass to like maintain to deal with to find the right routes to find the right routes on road to find the right roots off road but i got three or four guys that i can call and say hey i'm going to pacific northwest where do i go what do i need to pack like what am i missing like walk me through that trip you took and they give me the tools that i need to kinda get where i wanna go and i feel like those creators are the most interesting that can build durable businesses and now you're a partner at slow is that right yeah i'm a venture partner slow i've been here for about a year and before that i was at the churning group man cher i've hung out with those guys a bit they yeah they're they're i saw your i i saw your podcast with kevin which is great yeah we've had kevin on i'm friends with doug tomorrow doug i found that i found that that was you yeah yeah yeah your guys is insight back in like fourteen fifteen and sixteen which it seems so obvious now it was like we're gonna take creators and we're gonna make them into billion dollar companies and like obviously we know mister beast does that now but what a lot of people don't realize is that cher was early on this for one and number two they've had so many successes that are niche community so for example there's the what's the me guy meat either next steve or vanilla yeah meat eater and then there was like probably eight or nine or ten more we had kevin on from epic gardening yep and so like you've built these like really big businesses and that's what we're gonna talk about today particularly the creator middle class because there's like yeah yeah there's like these the mister pieces of the world but there's so many people out there that are making ten twenty fifty million dollars a year and they have like eight hundred or four hundred thousand followers in a very niche community like meat smoking or something like that right one of my favorite creators is doug mo doug d tomorrow does these car reviews he turned it into cars and bids which i i have no idea how big they are but i i think it's a a a quite a large business i'll tell you since since doug started he sold about four hundred and fifty million dollars worth of vehicles and then he takes a take rate off that oh my god so this guy doug does these like reviews where he will review an suv or like a two million dollar ferrari anything that's an ent car yes and yeah what's interesting about doug is i don't know how he did it but i have a feeling it was just him probably i actually not even with an iphone when he first started literally like a cam quarter like a traditional one right and he looks sloppy like he has like a dirty t shirt that that year but often two t shirts two top shirts that fit poorly together so like his under shirt is popping out from his and he's right usually wearing cargo shorts without a belt so it like it's like falling down and he wears high white socks and like he's just kind of a i don't know i don't know like what we're what category is but like someone like a car he's a car yeah but even amongst car many of them are more like they dress affluent because they wanna fit in he does not care about that at all and he gives these amazing reviews and so one that's the relatable thing but then you have these on this on the other end you have like the emma chamberlain where young women i think aspire to be her because she sure is cool and and has character and all that stuff is there something in there about a creator of like wanting to be aspirational versus quirky i didn't it depends on the audience right like doug audience loves him because he has the best information about every car like it like his videos that are ten minutes eight minutes twelve minutes long top to front everything you wanna know about that car which is generally like a couple things like what do i wanna drive what do i think is cool and sometimes it's purchase decision right so doug gives you everything you need to kind of learn about that rig and he's like totally una assuming and fun i'm not as familiar with emma i know she's like very loved but yeah aspirational you wanna be here when you grow up you think she's cool you love her access you like her take on things i think for the ent categories i think those pop the hardest what which is to say doug is driving a two sided marketplace that has real scale and can scale without having to put goo in the bottles or get distribution from stores or launch a physical location he is like building a a venture scale business and a lot of people who come to cars and business now didn't even know who doug was it's built the scale where they're just like oh this is like this is a great place to transact i don't even i even get here through the top of funnel from doug alright so a lot of people will talk about how you need a million dollar and three years of experience to start a business nonsense if you listen to at least one episode on this podcast you know that is completely not true my last company the hustle we grew it to something like seventeen dollars or eighteen million dollars in revenue i started it with like three hundred dollars my current company hampton does over ten million dollars in revenue started it with actually no money maybe twenty nine dollars or something like that nothing and so you don't actually need investors to start a company you don't need a fancy business plan but what you do need is systems that actually work and so my old company the hustle they put together five proven business models that you could start right now today with under a thousand dollars these are models that if you do it correctly it can make money this week you can get it right now you can scan the qr code or click the link in the description now back to the show so can i ask you about some of these middle class creators because this is pretty interesting you mentioned to one of them and i looked them up this guy's insane who's jonathan katz moses jonathan cas moses so jonathan cas is a wood worker he started a website called k tools it's tips and tricks on the right tool for the right job essentially and then he was like oh well here's this tool you can use to work with this buzz and here's this tool you can use to work with that and then sold out sold out sold out and then kept developing his own tools let me tell you what i see when i go to youtube page because it's pretty incredible so yeah it just looks like just guy he's just doing woodworking and stuff but what's crazy is the guy he only has i mean and this is like big but this is like you know pretty girl next door like attainable he only has six hundred thousand subscribers that's right which i think almost anyone dedicate four years to jerk virtually any niche and they spend twenty hours a week on it i think they can get to six hundred thousand subscribers so he only has six hundred thousand subscribers and each of and he only is outputting like one video a month like not even a lot of not even a lot of videos and they and they look great they're look looking like really highly produced videos they're not like their they're they're they're they're polished but his his quantity is not through the roof and the views aren't even through the roof no well the the cool thing about it is it's it's first of all it's evergreen content so like what he did like how often he published is important to kinda continue to to provide content for the community and build his audience and get to scale and i think like taking investment he will be able to do more of that he raised money yeah that's slow we invested two million into into jonathan business and how big is it now the investment is very recent he's doing around six million dollars in revenue now from like strictly from his tool site and he's grown substantially year over year and when you and made the investment what was your upside like what did you what do you expect in five years how big of a business will this be yeah i mean we play a little longer than five years because we're early stage so i you know i i whatever don't know yeah yeah i mean we we'd love to see jonathan get to a hundred two hundred million dollars in revenue in the next ten years that's crazy yeah it's he gonna enjoy his life while he's doing that because it looks like you had a pretty good life before taking your money he he loves he wants to build a massive business i mean we're not reaching out to creators and saying hey you look like you have a really nice lifestyle business making ten million bucks a year do you wanna go to a hundred like we're we're he reached out to us you know he's like i wanna build a business of scale you know he he needs more inventory he needs more product designers he sells out all the time so he he wants to get to scale like he he loves what he's doing this is a great one and what's when you're when you're when you're doing research like if you're this guy jonathan or or someone listening and you have like a like woodworking is a niche huge niche but yeah nonetheless is is there like math between how you decide how big it can get or do you just look at like comparable are you like well there's just one woodworking eco com store that already does this much revenue i think it can be that big that's a good question i mean i think it's a little bit of both what where we say team and theme right so it's like can we invest in is jonathan back does he have the hunger is he a founder or is he just a content creator and then does he have the hunger to build something big so it's early stage we're betting on jonathan right now we can't bet on jonathan if he wants to it's funny he he made he said a funny quote goes i you know they have no control i could build ballet shoes if i wanted it now we have to look at the category that he's in and make sure we feel like it can be it can get to scale so yeah we do a little once we get deeper down and figure out that this guy's great he's gonna figure something out he's gonna take a lot of different shots on goal until he does which we've seen with lots a great creators who they're like okay i tried this business and i tried that business and it didn't work and they're gonna keep going jonathan feels like the kind of guy is gonna keep going no matter what and then yeah we've looked we looked at world work like are there other businesses in his in his genre that are making tools that are at fifty hundred two hundred million dollars in revenue and we look at that and we compare them and we say hey listen this is a this is good signal can i actually walk through that because i i am curious because like if i have a passion or if i'm a listener i a passion for something and i'm like does this have legs or maybe it doesn't quite have legs but if i just change it a little bit like the trajectory might be a lot different but still within the passion of what i wanna make content wise yeah so like alright so if you're doing word woodworking where would i start to research to give me faith that this can be a fifty million dollar year company right okay so that that's a really good question so the the really interesting thing about backing creators that are in passion categories is they have real expertise in the area that they're in which is to say because jonathan creating content in inward working he knows all the other wood workers he knows all the tool companies he knows everybody in that area and we kind of trust them to understand their own white space so these creators that we're backing and the creators that like i think have the best opportunity are the ones that are deep so deep in a niche that they've been working in for five ten years they're like oh they identify the white space it's not for us like we're we're here to say hey you're we're we we wanna match capital with creators and who are founders who wanna build something scaled and we rely on them you know doug d demi romero right back to doug like doug been in the car game both on the editorial side and creating content meeting all the manufacturers he knows when he you know there's four or five other auction platforms that are available to people who are buying cars doug like this is the one we need to build and this is why but when you're when when you're trying to justify that surely you're you're thinking like okay i feel like with some degree of certainty the best case scenario is it's gonna be a billion dollar company in ten years something like that and so what what i'm curious about though is let's say that like let's say that i'm interested in architecture but also like yeah art history let's say that i'm like you know a twenty eight year old person i hate my job i'm sort of interested in art history and architecture but i wanna build something sustainable and like potentially one like the the route that i pick when with my content i would imagine there's some type of equation where it's like i guess it would be the size of the audience multiplied by the gross profit per item sold multiplied by the quantity that they will buy do you guys have anything like that i think it's a little bit more creative than math which is to say we can't be experts in every every niche category and say hey this is how this is how this is gonna pan out i mean you have a sense of like hey these are these are i mean look kevin kevin's in the seed business like seeds don't seem like they're very you know like you they're very inexpensive but it's scale like it's a massive business i think we look for categories where they're they're high spend where people are passionate about them and that the founder really understands the category and is telling us where they think the white space is more than us saying oh here's a math here's math to solve that problem yeah that's funny i mean i my my last company was the hustle and like jesse or cher came to me and they're like oh maybe you can be one of these late i don't even think they had like a word for it but they they were recruiting me to become it was very light recruitment but it was like a let's see if there's a fit maybe we could invest in you and to be one of these creator led businesses and i was like yeah i didn't even have faith that it could become that like i i didn't know yeah you what be i definitely didn't believe it what yeah churn was really interesting because you know we at churn it was it was different at kind of a growth stage because you at post investment you can spend some more so much more time with the businesses that you can early stage you know there's a willingness to roll up your sleeves and like help help build it out like there's a lot of work we put into those companies post investment at churn in that earlier stage we kind of are betting on the founder to figure it out i think every man who's above like thirty five years old has a dream to do what this next creator is doing which is owning a ranch and selling meat what is yeah yeah what is five mary's well five mary's is rad so it's it was started by a woman named mary he and her her husband brian as well but mary's like mary's the big driver of and and brian would agree with that as well she started as a restaurant tour in the bay and couldn't find like ethically sourced meats and the way that she really wanted at scale that she wanted for her for her restaurants so she started looking at ranches and she ended up buying a ranch she's like super entrepreneurial get up and go bad she found this ranch kind of in the amount s the area of this area called fort jones which is near the like california oregon border and she bought a ranch and started raising her own cattle there she now has six hundred acres six hundred ke of cattle she's got a butcher she does shipping she has a you know like a fda approved slaughter house and she's built a very large scale business from four hundred four hundred thousand followers on her instagram channel and what was her original content like the what what got the first ten thousand followers it was all her moving to this ranch and building out this ranch life so she tells stories about herself her family she's got four daughters that are all rad that are all cow girls obviously they didn't start that way when they were when they were little but they're now kind of like sixteen fourteen fifteen thirteen like in that area they're all rope they like compete so they're always going around but it's like ranch life caring about the food caring about the people who you work with building out business also just a very strong female entrepreneur vibe she like taught courses to other women who are building businesses actually the baller farms woman took her course and then launch baller farms with baller scale now that's another it's similar yeah it baller farms has a lot has a little bit more controversy around it but the woman's name who i forget right now lives in utah her husband and her bought a ranch and it's like very well shot it's very beautiful and it's a little bit more composed than mary's content mary's content is a little bit more like if you look at mary's content right now you're like literally watching her build a house her and her husband and her kids are going out and like grabbing rocks and putting from the land and putting them on the heart and she's building them out she's feeding cows so was she successful before she bought the ranch no she had like three or four restaurants scale to san francisco got it she was like she's been she's i mean as you know with restaurants they're not like they can be doing great but they're not they're not like you can't it's hard to retire off them until you get to real scale so she was a prop provider i think it as a prop that's the category i would put her and she had restaurants she was serving great food she had a good life but it wasn't what she wanted so she went out to the farm instead of she saw an opportunity to like build a ranch that had ethically sourced meats and raise cattle and tell the story while she was doing it it's like so deeply authentic it's it's basically like i think i saw i forget the director's name guy something guy ritchie guy ritchie and he was telling the story that always stuck with me i think i heard it when i was a little bit younger and it always stuck with me but it was basically like when i try to live my life he's like i am a director and i want my life to be a movie and i'm the director of my own movie i'm the director of my own life and i hear like what she's doing or i see what mary doing and to me it's like social media makes it so much easier and attainable to say i'm gonna do something epic and i'm gonna bring people along the way and that is why it's going to be so epic because they're going to support me and this is so awesome so how big of a company does she have and she's and it's just selling beef she well she does a lot of things so she sells subscription box boxes of beef she also sells these she she's done these courses like i mentioned she sells whiskey and cookbook she actually doubled down recently on a tall product line so she you know because she processes her own meat and has she has like tons of tall and has been making it you know sparingly this lady is awesome they do camps they do a cowboy camp where you could like go into yeah yeah i think it's a small part of her business but it's like she brings she brings people on it's it's a heavy lift she does it like it's seasonally but she brings people in and kind of teaches them with the idea that people can learn what it's like to live a ranch life and and come out there kind of in a dude ranch kind way but she'll make you roll up your sleeves and do stuff for sure definitely how how big is this business is five mary's ranch i mean so as far as like all of these businesses that i'm talking about like as an investor i talk to all these folks and i like some of them if it's publicly disclosed i i'd be happy to to share that but the way i would frame this business is that it is like it has the ability to to achieve venture scale and i i would say the threshold the venture scale is probably a hundred million in revenue right it can do it yeah yeah awesome also the the the coolest thing about mary is like you know the meet the me business is great and i think she will always do it and it it's but this tall line that she launched is something that can scale even more like i don't know how much you've seen about what's going on with beef tall and people using it for you know their skin and care it's very popular and she does it right there on her farm she make she makes it she they built the place to process it and they and they do it right there on the form and that's another line of business and that brings me to another topic with all these guys is they have opportunity to take lots of shots on goal it's like okay i built out this meat business how much scale can it get to can i exit it do i wanna exit and you get to a certain place there and then you say okay well what else can i offer my audience that is totally organic to who i am they will totally buy because they it's something that they want and maybe that thing becomes the thing that is venture scale or maybe she tries something else that becomes venture scale but the beautiful thing about all these creator than this kind of creator middle class that we're talking about is like it's not just one business that they can start but two things i'm gonna push back on two things that i want you to put me wrong number one focus like nine out of ten times one of the reasons not out the ten times a lack of focus is what kills a company like it's sure it's more often than not it's better to do one thing incredibly well than to do a bunch of things because it's just hard to pull off a bunch of things great the second thing is operations is very challenging particularly for a ranch i mean just like a software company is pretty easy you're just behind a screen and there's no capex for a ranch that's really hard who is operating her business and how on earth do you find all these wonderful operators and also balance creating content because i do this podcast two times a week and then i also have a company and it's quite challenging and that's probably a lot easier than running a ranch great running a ranch is very hard and she will tell you and you can watch and you can see so i agree with that so when i think of focus i think of my answer to your focus is prioritization which is to say she's gotten the ranch to a place and now she decides if she wants to double down on another line of business and then she needs to make sure that she has operators in place that can that she has enough time to try and build out that next line of business and or bring in another person or two to operate and help launch that next line of business so she's got a ranch then she's gotta make sure she has enough time energy either with the people who are supporting her ranch or somebody to help her with the tall line so it's about prioritization and then building it out i agree with you but you look at somebody like can i like if you look at somebody like jo willing yeah are you familiar with jo i what i know bottom is he was a a former seal yeah badass looks like a seal looks like a gi joe and has a podcast but i don't know much about his products yeah so that so that that's another example of like how you get to scale where you're trying shots on goal and thinking about prioritization so jo like you said he's got a massive podcast your agree he looks like a gi joe and you're right that he that he is a an ex seal and he's also very like taking pictures of his watch at four am when he's starting his workout and he's a big j you guys he's also very intentional father and talks about how to raise your kid you know kind of you know knock glued to screens and and and you know with with intentional things like that so jo like speaks to a lot of people and he has a great a course called echelon which he teaches to fortune five hundred ceos and people and the the the general public can can kind of apply and be part of those as well and he did pretty well with that business and he continues to do well with that business echelon is like so he dropped i'm looking at the website it's corporate so i imagine like if i had a guess it's six figures and he comes in talks and then like three of his team will drop in and help you with some leadership issues and within your business that's right that's right i think it's a more scale than that but yes i mean he does he he does big conferences with like multiple like fortune five hundred ceos and he's very well respected in that in that world cool in the leadership in the leadership he talks a lot in his podcast and in books about how to be a great leader and how to like you know manage up and manage down and he he's he's pretty prolific in that in that sense and then he launched a tactical apparel brand starting with boots and moving into close which are like you know your american made kind of workout slash military guy closed which i would have to make that would be one of the harder businesses actually to run that's a very hard business because returns and yeah returns and sizes and that would be hard yeah supply chain and yeah it's it's hard right and so he took those shots on goal right he saw a place where he thought that he can move his audience really interesting then he launched jo fuel what's that protein like it's like a pre workout post workout during workout energy drink kind of droop of drink did that probably crush it crush he probably makes a hundred million dollars a year in revenue off of that crush you know and then and then chris pratt joined in because you know chris pratt is very military friendly and like jo and like all that kind of stuff and that thing is like you know it's in walmart it's in gmc it's like you know and walmart really likes to support those like military founders and like you know it's a it's a product that people like and people really trust them because he has you know like a like like they would a hub in because you know he's he's he's such a specimen and he talks about working out and training and people really do that so these are all places that he totally has permission to be in and so you could say okay well the focus is why one of them is not working better or you like try something you launch it it does fine but what do you do with the fine thing like if someone running his clothing company yeah i mean that's i think that's what you do with the fine thing as you say okay this thing is like doing fine let's get let's make sure somebody's running and i'm sure somebody's running and he he he's a prolific content creator so i'm sure he has partners and operators that are running these things you know being a leadership guy and being in the military i'm sure network is vast when it comes to like getting great operators and knowing how work with them and communicate them i mean he's a proper entrepreneur you know what what's funny is i i guess i am a creator which i i don't have anything wrong with with that title but i didn't seek out to become that i previously started a business and right i was mildly okay at running a company i'm pretty good at hiring but i was mildly okay at doing the work myself and i would say mildly okay at being a creator but finding operators is still hard for me and like working with them as a partner is quite challenging how do you find a partner if like let's say that you're listening to this and let's say that you have twenty or thirty thousand followers and you're like something is here but i don't know when to get help and how do you decide when and how yeah i mean i think entrepreneurs have to be able to that that is kind of one of the telltale signs if they if they're a founder that they know how to hire and that they can attract people to hire which is to say if you're a creator who like does general comedy and or just general entertainment and you decide okay i wanna start coffee or i wanna start goo a bottle i think attracting a operator is gonna be very hard because they're gonna say okay well is this person really gonna put the time into it are they really behind it is their audience really gonna believe it like is their audience really gonna move when they say move and you have to have a real value proposition for an operator to wanna come on board and work with you so i think if you have sound principles and what you wanna build and why you can find a good operator like part of that is the test of at least what we invest in we invest in a creator that is a founder that can attract talent to run their business so where do you go to find them i mean first you gotta decide what your special sauce is and where you need support and i've i've heard you talk about many times like where places that you need support and you need to be very clear about that and he needs to you need to like make sure that you're attracting talent that's gonna like cover the hundred and eighty degrees also you don't have to you can kind of date before you marry which is to say work on some projects with them you know work on like say hey i wanna build this out i wanna try this out make sure you're you're putting enough capital into it so you have money to pay an operator and that you have a plan for it so i think it's really important to we we look for we look for folks that you need that that can attract that 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really interesting in the auto care space there's this great not guy named larry he has a company called ammo nyc and larry does detailing of like celebrity cars wow larry has two point three million subscribers on youtube and all he's doing is cleaning cars and making videos about it he details cars sorry yeah that was that was the k version of that i'm looking has been yeah first of all there's like a four million dollar acid martin that he cleans but then there's also gonna be like a car that's been in a barnes like a barn and that's gonna take like a week right yeah yeah so he yeah so larry has a robust business cleaning celebrity cars that either are going to auction or they just have a bad collection and they're gonna be taking it to you know a car show or they're gonna be you know going on going on a a a a trip that's with all the like hot hotshot chick car owners and he really gets in there and like really understands the cars and has built products with his own mixtures and built his own brushes and towels and everything all d see and he uses the top of funnel which is the car content of detailing these cars which is like kinda carp porn for people and any car enthusiasts who has like a proper collection knows larry and uses his products dude i would watch these videos like silent like this would be like just play in around of my living room on apple tv for like you know eight hours while i'm just hanging out at today just larry is awesome check out this other guy detailed geek so this is the other side of of larry oh my god this guy has almost four million subscribers so what's he what's he do like more low end stuff he just like he is somewhere in i wanna say like the dakota or the midwest i don't know i don't i can't remember exactly somewhere where they drive lots of pickup trucks second dirty that's right it looks like the cars have been for like four weeks on a hunting trip in the mud where he's like getting out shotgun shells and he does these twenty minute long videos that get insane views and he too launched his own products called detail geek really really interesting guy i've tried to talk to him many times i talk to him once he's very happy with his lifestyle business he does not want to engage with people who invest in these things and help scale these things he's like i like my family i like my life and i make good money and bob's your uncle and he he doesn't need it and let you know larry larry is a little bit more in the sexy world but this but but the detailed geek does not care this guy's is awesome what's your what's your you probably can't say it's this stupid question for being even ask but this company definitely does more than ten million in revenue i would think here's what i'll say all of these middle class creators i think have the ability to be avail venture style businesses with the right with the right founder and the right hires so which is to say direct to consumer businesses who kind of somebody came up with an idea like casper or or glasses that you can buy over the internet or shoes that are different like they they were kind of built in a brand boardroom and somebody said okay well i have a new product right that i think the audience wants and then i'm gonna go build a brand and then i'm gonna go build an audience and i'm gonna go spend a money bunch of money to to build consumers these kind of middle class brands have gotten to a place where they're like i already have the audience i know product mark market fit i'm ready to ready to go and then it's the right field of the fire determines whether they're gonna get to venture scale or not when they're starting is it just oftentimes them with an iphone and them editing it either on their phone or on the computer and how how big have you seen them get it with just doing it in that sort of scrappy hustle way great that's a great camera so mary back to mary she just shoots everything on her iphone like that's it you know she's she's on instagram she shoots everything on her iphone it goes on her reels like you know it's just her making the content so that's one that's one version of so if the question is from your audience can i get started without a big setup the answer is yes you know like yes and obviously depends on the genre you're in and the stories that you're telling you know mary's telling a story about her life she's relatable like you you wanna know where your meat comes from it's mary it comes from there it's not highly produced beautiful you know it's just mary doing her thing and mary's rad and her kids are rad and her husband's are at and you can tell that right away larry started with a small setup and now he's got a four bay or a three bay garage in his spot in connecticut that's all lit and he's got a guy who shoots it with him and he still does it all himself but it's just two guys he two guys but two with almost three million subscribers basically yeah i mean he's got more people that work in the business but yeah it's like two or three guys but it's like a beautiful studio yeah slash detail spot it's all well lit he's very intentional about the look and feel and that makes sense for like these high end cars right like it's like for high end cars and people who are like very wealthy who have you know multi million dollar car collections who are watching this kind of video like you wanna like you don't wanna just shoot it on iphone you want to look beautiful because larry cares about what one side of the car looks like before one side of the car looks like after and you gotta you gotta really show that so you need equipment and you need light and it you can't just shoot it you know in the front you know the in the front driveway there's one more really funny story that i think you you would you would like there's this guy named toaster i name who's tony yeah tony i don't really i i i don't wanna butcher your last name but better he better be some italian guy with the name of tony so he was working at sherman williams making like you know like it's like an entry level job making blends for paints oh tone like paint tone i thought it was like tony from the garage with like slick back there it's like a little bit it's like a little bit of that he's not like a slick old guy like that he's like he's he's an interesting cat and he's done a great job so he starts making tiktok while he's working at sherman williams while he's blending paint just kind of like talking about paint blends and just kind of posting tiktok casually and he starts to blow up and then he gets fired from sherman williams because he's using their office for tiktok oh they blew that one which is like duh right so he launched his own paint brand oh my god tones or paint and it's like running a clown card into a bank other than he's not a clown he's really smart and he's done a really great job and he if you look at his tiktok you know he's got north of a million followers and he's how's like a no dude tiktok he's two point three and on youtube because you a million and i'm almost positive that all the videos it's literally just a camera on a pink can and you six to drills in their any mix it that's all it is that's right and so that's where it's kind of like back to your story where you can just start and then if you hit the right audience you can you can you can really build it out but i think the the ones that are and we'll see how he does he's doing great now and he's a smart business guy and he's figuring it out and is that venture scale business like is he gonna have his own sherman and williams is gonna get to a hundred million dollars in here he could it depends on execution at that point i think that the ones that i look at and the things that we wanna invest in it slow and the things that i think have a better shot to get to venture scale businesses are the ones that have been building audience trust for years that are known for that specific niche and may have a really strong community and they are creators that are entrepreneurs how long are they typically creating content before they launch a product it could they could do it on their first one or they could do it after four or five years you know jonathan katz moses the wood worker you know he he launched a product very soon after and and kind of his story was about launching the product a lot of but he he did a lot of videos about woodworking and tips and trips and people were following around for a while so i don't think i think it just depends on your niche in your audience like i think like you really have to be a trusted voice of authority in your niche you know like you have to people really trust jo you know people really trust a people really trust humor people really trust mary but i'll push back a little bit on that because because okay so jo was a veteran so like he knows about being tough which is like a kind of his thing peter tia is a doctor so he knows about health but yeah like this guy worked at sherman sure she williams that's why it's like someone else it's not like you need a phd you know i think like they're not to discredit them but like i bet you i could spend one year learning how to clean cars and i and i can like make at least interesting enough content and then maybe after a little while longer like formulate a product know what mean not like i need to i don't need to spend eight years of schooling to do this totally make totally make i agree with your point exactly which is to say toaster is a wool because he hasn't spent like for me somebody who has spent years and years and is a trust so back to your architecture architecture idea or your art your your artist idea like somebody who has built five or six years of trust and authenticity with this an audience and scaled it they have more permission to launch paint and then you think that you you feel better about their understanding of about the industry and product market fit feedback from their audience what their lane is what they can sell like you feel better about investing in somebody who's been in it for a long time versus somebody who was like okay for a couple years they've been creating content so toaster is like a big will see i think he's great and he's smart and he's gonna do something but somebody like larry yeah i think you could start a detailed channel and like grow it but larry has been doing this for ten years and when it comes to getting distribution in other you know like getting to scale like the chemical guys did which you know they took an eight hundred million dollar check and they were they had shops they had locations they scaled into all the different auto specialty shops and home depot and everywhere like that comes from years and years being involved in the industry and really understanding the white space and really understanding our audience that people who kind of just get started like you know mary's been at it for six seven years and built that trust so i think the ones that build the trust and understand the community like they really have an opportunity to scale in a way that somebody who's just getting started is like a let's see so you can use a little bit of me as an example but just the just the audience anyone who's listening and has a passion but like i i've sort of thought like oh it might be interesting to do youtube or instagram a little bit more it might be interesting to get into this creator space what's the lessons that i should learn from these people on the repeatable process like what's the best practices that i should take away like i know that this is part art where it's just like if you have an factor it just kinda can work but surely there's some type of workout plan where if i lift this amount of weight you need this my amount of food i'm gonna be at i'm gonna be at least in the nineties percent might do it for two years versus everyone else so like what are the what's like the the lift weights and eat and eat lots of protein kinda checklist version of this yeah that's a good question i mean i a couple things that come to mind and i'll and i'll we can decide together if it's a complete answer or not i think for you personally and for or or or to take you as an example like think you double down on the stuff that's really interesting to you and stuff that you wanna talk about and bring people and you can build an audience around your journey right so you you're doing a lot of that now which is like business building you're interested in entrepreneurs you're interested in like what's going on in the business world and that that that'll drive into you can decide if that's gonna work in the a bottom of the funnel where you can go beyond being a creator every day so for example like you like motorcycles you are sober you have a family and you are interested in like intentionally raising your kids and being a husband i would think through the things that are your passion hobbies and that bring you the most joy and i would double down on creating for those things with keeping in mind it doesn't have to be day one but pretty soon that you have to be thinking about creating content building an audience establishing yourself as a voice of authority in something that there is a bottom of the funnel bottom of the funnel meaning a product that i could eventually sell yes kevin's sells race farm beds and seeds doug sells cars jonathan the wood worker sells tools the retailer sells chemicals the tones guy sells paint mary sells meet you know on and on and on do you think it's safe to say that any content niche can come up with a product or service that can sell or should you think first like what could i sell and then let me think of which content falls within that category of something i'd be willing to dedicate ten years to to creating that content around yeah that's a good question i mean i think you don't wanna you know like it's really hard to sell products if you're just funny right you know those those are like i was telling you about my my mormon buddies they like the la new york crowd might laugh at them like oh these like they might like you know be high brown laugh at these people the the funny new york like or la actor comedian crew who i know who makes content they're yeah they're broke they don't sell anything that's right i think you can build a big audience that doesn't transact and you should be careful about that and i think if you're in a niche passion category that you like learn and love you will eventually figure out what the white space and you can build the product or a service that works there and i can give you more examples of people who are doing that but i think if you're building content you have to be keeping in mind what's the bottom of the funnel like what am i moving what am i gonna move people to i think you start by building a voice of authority in in in in an area like you can't even if you have a large scale audience in you know in an in an area doesn't mean that you can move product like you have to learn how to do it like the the people that we've been talking about today like have learned how to move product and learn how to build product and learn supply chain and hiring and you know subscription and blogs and how to keep their audience from churning and how to you know keep things in stock like you're an entrepreneur you gotta you gotta know how to you gotta know how to build a business and that is to say also like there are two kinds of business there's lots of kinds of businesses but two there's like lifestyle business it's like hey i can make a million dollars a year doing this or i can make half a million dollars you're doing this and or i can make two million dollars you're doing this on it that's just fine with me the problem with that is is from bearing deals and adsense and like selling like merch and a couple little things here and there the problem is is once you stop like your revenue goes away you're you're just a freelancer yeah exactly you you've built something that you can't exit and for some people that's okay and like it it's not like a what's better or what's worse but like if you're gonna spend five years building your audience build them into something that you can like transact into and you can add value to them by cool new tools or like great ethically think sourced meat or like cool color tones for your bedroom or you know anything that kind of like adds value to your audience is there a medium or a platform that matters so you've we've talked about tiktok instagram and youtube those are all video one thing that i've predicted i i wrote this or did we did a podcast on this where like there hasn't been like a billion dollar twitter creator but i think there will be and there might be actually some now i said this like three or four years ago do you think that it has to be video and audio or video and we know podcasting works too so video and audio i think video and audio or the are are the examples that i've seen where people have been able to build kind of like lifestyle plus slash venture scale businesses i think the audio is a great way to connect with your audience like consistently and you can really like own the relationship and and build like a cadence of trust with them it's a very intimate platform where if you love something you listen to it weekly i think video video is the same way and building an eco around the video the video first platforms is for me it it has more signal alright instead of a commercial break i'm gonna tell you a quick little story so a few years ago i got really into crypto bitcoin ethereum i was all about and i wanted to be at the center of the action i didn't want just wanna buy the coins i actually wanted to be you know on the edge i wanted to be a part of the community that was actually building this thing and look i'm not a genius i don't know how to build a blockchain but i did realize that i could create a newsletter that would keep people up date on what was going on in the world's of crypto that's what i had wanted it i wanted to know what's new what's interesting what should i pay attention to and i had friends that had sold their news at our companies like sam had built the hustle austin had built morning brew and they had sold their newsletters for tens of millions of dollars so i thought how hard could it be i launched a newsletter called the milk crowd it was a daily crypto newsletter and it grew like wildfire we grew it from zero to over quarter million subscribers in a year partly because the content was good but partly because people were crazy about crypto and that was a good time to be doing this but the reality is that we wouldn't have been able to do that and build that business that we ended up selling a year later for millions of dollars had we not had bee high bee was the reason we could do it in a year because if we didn't have that we would have had to build all sorts of custom stuff or pigs expensive consultants do things or use five different tools and try to stitch them together bee hype just did it all for us it was it is the best way to start and grow a newsletter and email with this little secret of the business world because they're free to send a free to grow and you could build this incredible relationship between you and the readers so check it out b was actually offering thirty percent off your first three months if you use the code m m thirty so go to b hive dot com and then use the code m m thirty to get the deal today there's the link of the description i was gonna ask you what niches you think like someone should exploit you said that was you you gave me the energy if that was hard to answer but i'm gonna so i'm gonna like tease you up push me i'm i'm definitely gonna push you but we're gonna ease me push me listen yeah yeah so i'm sure that you have a list of like creators that have one to five thousand people and you see them and you're like oh they're they got something here and and and who is on that list is there anyone like that or a category like that i am i'm gonna preface this by saying like a lot of the companies that we've talked about here are very dude focused and so i i i wanna like also say that there's there's lots of categories that i'm i'm still i'm learning and getting better at and but one is everyday carry i think is a really interesting category everyday carry being handgun or does that include like mason knives and everything i think like knives i mean obviously we've seen what's going on with ridge wallet but like a creator that owns that like at what you keep what you keep in your in your in your pocket every day so yeah not got wallet watch key chain pens writing tables there's there's some creators out there that do it there's a really cool scaled company that sells knives called blade hq it's also a a company that's in that's in utah and they started creating content because they couldn't advertise because they were selling what is considered by the internet weapons and i think the the every the everyday carry creator there are some of them that are really kinda of popping up they haven't some of them haven't reached the scale you know what i i completely agree with that and if i was listening to this so i think that there can be a h key so h was a watch blog that eventually i was on the board of holding we we invested in a churn and and i don't know it didn't the outcome wasn't as expected but it that doesn't that's right but i don't think that meant the business itself was bad i i don't know anything about the company but i've had to guess maybe it was like they just grew too fast or something like that and you could correct me if i'm wrong but i think there's to be a h for fountain pens or a h for fancy pens i agree that's i mean i think those are the kind of things when we see those were like whoa you know like chest creators it's really interesting people who play chest passionate you know that's interesting yeah fountain pens any of the everyday carry stuff is great i also think two egg creators like second amendment write creators who are teaching who kind of do product reviews on different guns and different vinyl and different h and things like that have a massive audience i'm obviously we've seen what happen with black rifle coffee yeah but the ones who are actually teaching about tactics and safety and different weapons and scope and and vinyls to to kind of carry it like those have massive audiences and have and some of them have built scale businesses and i think that that those that's an interesting category as well there's a guy named i actually this is like the first time i've ever said this word out loud one of those words that i i read it and i know it but i'm afraid it so i don't know if it's hitchcock or hi okay forty five i thought maybe that meant like he's in oklahoma and he's like a redneck and he was born in nineteen forty five right and right he's this old man that you would only understand this if you live in the south or you live in the midwest like i am from and we all had grandfather like this they like wore like overalls or wrangler jeans and like a flannel shirt and they're pretty nice and stoic and you like to be in around him well that's what this guy is except his passion is like every type of gun on earth and so he'll do like a machine gun and they'll say like oh this is a cute little machine gun let's see what it's about or he'll be like like a revolutionary and i don't know anything about guns but i just like watching yeah but it'll be like a revolutionary war canon or like the type of gun in a civil war where they like you know put the thing down on than they load the black i i don't know anything about this shit or like a silence sir on a gun like what's that sound like and this guy have you ever seen this guy he's got eight million subscribers on youtube no i haven't seen oh my god it's like looks like forms he's the bob ross of guns is what he is that's the best way to put it so that's awesome yeah there's and there's some newer cats on the scene like check out this t rex arms it was started by a couple brothers one one of them name was luke lucas bak and he's actually since broken off from t rex arms but it's like tactical second amendment cons creators massive firearms accessory business you know does some advertising but there's a lot of restrictions on that sells their own tactical gear has a total cult like loyalty and they're running a really scaled business now what crazy thing is is is lucas it's part of brothers and lucas and the brothers have split and lucas is now starting his own so i'm actually interested to see what lucas builds on his own and if if if t rex continues to grow but that's that's a properly scaled business alright so everyday carrie what else i mentioned chess i think that's interesting people are really passionate about that we've seen some really cool scale businesses come out of chess what's a chess business that's scaled chest dot com i mean that's a multi billion dollar company that's right that's right ji ji too yeah we we know that that's a really great category have you seen brazilian ji ji fan i lived in texas mandate i feel like if you you you like everyone did that shit yeah look look up the brazilian j fan fan website this is a two sided marketplace started by a ji champion and a guy who kind of did commute like continuing education the scale of course i guy is this is yeah the famous coach right right but what do you do it's a two sided marketplace so you just two instructors can upload their videos and then people can sort it through like i wanna do learn how to do a you know rear naked choke or i wanna learn how to sp better or whatever they can pick coaches that they like the site can help kind of id coaches that you might be interested in and this total web one point o this is great and i can't say how much they're doing but it's a it's a good business what about you being the creator no man this is like the hardest thing i do man talking talking like seeing myself on the internet is like my least favorite thing i'm very excited to talk to you i can this what you wanna talk about is great but man i will never watch this because i just cannot watch myself i cannot be a no one watches myself like i i've never a seen and i've been in my life and it's one of these things where you you you have to have tough skin but like the the mormon family that i mentioned yeah they have a whole subreddit dedicated to mocking them and i met them and these people with the most of people in the world were the it was the most loving family they took us in i felt like i barely knew them and i was their cousins they were like the most loving family and people mocked them like crazy and then on our pod someone will be like you know you you look fat or skin than i thought or you look older they're are young and like we get mocked constantly yeah i think it's a very hard thing to do is like putting it out there and and and building their audience around things that they're really passionate about talking about and and yeah i love the idea of getting involved in a creator led business but and right right now i really love the the thesis that we have at slow kind of like building out supporting them and matching capital to creators who are entrepreneurs who are really wanting to build build things at scale let's say someone said you gotta quit slow right now and you have to go and join we'll give you like a draft like you get three you get three pairs of creators that you're like i wanna oh actual creators i wanna join that company and i want like a little stake in it boom are there three that you think are going to the moon you know we we have the things called sarah's list sarah was my wife because she joined we like planned where she could join airbnb at a time where she could still have a very comfy gig like a forty hour you're not totally grinding and you get a lot of salary but your stock it's still ten x you know if there was a if there was a a a billy list for you and traders that you like what would the top three or four be oh my god i love what kevin and doug are doing at epic gardening and cars and bits like those are both humans that i like and would like to work with which which is kind of like my most important which if you asked me if i hypothetically would go and work with a creator like i would need to like love them as a human and love the category and those are both categories i can really get behind i just sold my car on cars and bits oh you did what car two thousand twenty a amg e sixty three station wagon nice were we happy with the price yeah i got what i wanted i hit my reserve oh good yeah i think that's awesome i only own old car so now that doug is selling old cars as well i can sell my scout if i if i'm if i'm ready to move on it but i i that's great yeah yeah it's it's a good it can be a really good about buying experience for everybody okay you should follow sarah mca cali sarah mca acosta has a company called go clean go right now sarah is just like the queen of clean and people have been following her since like the pandemic and she's been building she's got a couple million subscribers on instagram i think two point four and think she's got a real shot to build a a really awesome business so i think she's really cool does she own house work dot com that's the that's what it is i remember exactly what it but yeah so she has people that love her they dress up for her of halloween one she is a bad ass and she is really cool so i really like that business does she sell anything yet or is it just it looks like she doesn't even have like her own product so there is still like it looks like it's she's still a predominantly a media company she mostly makes revenue through yeah affiliate links and brand deals and stuff like that at the moment oh this is that's a good one i think she's great the queen of clean that's a good one i i don't know if that's what anybody calls her but i i just i just said that dude this lady comes out with a a laundry detergent like this gonna be the greatest thing ever forget it yeah i really like her i also really like this creator named go con so when he was like thirteen fourteen or maybe even younger he started making like minecraft youtube videos right and he built this massive audience and then he kind of like put it down focused on school got into mit and when he was in mit it was during covid so he started making videos about going it going to an ivy right like going mit you know i think he has you you tell me i'll have it in front me was he have six million youtube subscribers yeah more oh my god i'm looking at his numbers how so is he in his teens so so he launched this no no he's post college and he's launched this thing called next admit which helps students write college entrance exams just teaches them how to use chat to you no well teaches them like teaches them how to not right so he has people that like read through them who have also been in the iv he reads through them and he basically like you know at i don't know eighty bucks a pop or something he helps you kinda like do that but he's also kinda gives you a lot of information about how to think about the big story you're gonna tell when you wanna get into college about the thing you did in high school and now he's starting like sat prep courses and he just knows his audience and he knows that young first generation kid who wants to get into that ivy not not bum like you and i were in high school and he really has an opportunity to build a really scaled service business that really understands what kids are thinking and kids want when they're trying to get into iv and they're trying to get that's awesome so i like him a lot those are really interesting you want and i'll and i'll wrap up by rec kit i'll give you my too okay good yeah yeah yep please do you have youtube made first bro i should while you were talking so the first one i mentioned this guy got a harder path to build a business business because clothes are harder but it's called the iron snail alright so the iron snail i started following this guy a while ago his background is that he went to film school and sean and i talked about this on a previous podcast that the creators nowadays the younger folks when you know when i was well still but even when i was younger and youtube was just getting started it was all about being authentic which meant like kinda scrappy and just thrown together now they're way more well produced and so this guy tells you both the history of clothing like wide why jamaican are obsessed with clark shoes apparently there's some like some history behind that oh yeah but then he'll also do like here's the highest quality lowest price clothing ranked he'll say why are the why do japanese makes the best genes on earth down right and so he'll like break down and do these really interesting and you know what's funny is like the the reason why he he's gonna win is because you can be a woman this is mostly men's clothes so you could be a woman you cannot give a shit about clothing you cannot give a shit about history but you watch his videos because they're so well produced and because he's so funny he's hilarious that you're engaged and you're bought in right he is currently in the process of launching his own clothing line and so he's like doc he's documenting it clothing is like the hardest thing ever so it's gonna be our business but and the second one it's project air so look project air it's this young guy named james who's in the uk and it originally started out with him building model airplanes so what started as just like a model plane turned into like an rc plane which then turn into i'm gonna build the world's fastest rc jet or i'm gonna build the world's largest rc jet or i'm gonna set the land speed record for an rc car okay and he's even done things like i'm gonna send a like a spacex i'm gonna send a rocket it up and i'm gonna have it land right back down just like spacex does except i'm gonna do it like in my garage so it's like became like hacker engineering stuff to where the stuff that he does is actually incredibly challenging math problems like he's yeah a proper engineer he's got one video where he built an rc battleship and he was like i'm gonna have him fight and sink each other and so good i see this guy and i what do you think his bottom of the funnel is selling rc kits it's very similar to mark what's mark robe crunch labs yeah it's very similar where it's educational stuff and if i had to guess a large percentage of fathers like me who want my children to like i think it's cool but like i don't wanna build an rc plane and take it somewhere i'm gonna look like a pe file going and do in this shit would be weird but if i get my kid into it i you know like how fun do this shit you know what i mean like you like go like buy rc car take it to a how old you how'd your how your a little one we got ways to go when you're gonna ways but you just gonna bring them along in the in the pre yeah i'm be like yeah yeah look my kids just a prop basically so i can give you a school yard with a with a really fast rc c car awesome and so yeah and so i think there's a bottom of the funnel for that to like build like model kits i will check him out yeah robe is done it right like that's i mean that business has exploded those guys have done a great job building out those that subscription kits and there's this entire entire there's this one guy his name's rem i think r e m i and this would be my last one type in rem rc c plane so check this out this is so strange so it's r a m i r c is a million followers tell me what the first video that you see can you can you tell me what that says rem rc plane world's biggest rc twenty nine million views on this one building an airbus this guy is building a freaking airbus so he's building remote control airplanes there at that are the size of a of a olympic sized pool like these that's basically a fucking plane is what he's building and there's a really weird part about the story so they never truly call this out i think maybe they do occasionally okay but you're gonna see them on like an air like an airs strip and you're gonna see him take take off from a house and you're like does this guy is rem just a rich guy with a with a where what is going on right it's tyler perry house so tyler perry yeah his hobby is he loves rc planes and so he is this guy's patron and so this guy rem i don't know if he lives there or if he just spends some time there but tyler perry he put him he just puts him in a para and takes some to the park he i don't know what he does but tyler perry has this massive hanger at his house except i bet you he has a hanger with real planes to be honest he's so wealthy but yeah he also has one dedicated to rc c planes and you'll see it's so funny tyler makes cameo like you'll see him like basically i i know that tyler's paying for it because tyler's is always the one flying the plane and so these guys rem will like build the jets and just hand it to this like guy who they barely talk about or mention and it's tyler flying the jet because they like don't wanna wreck you know it probably calls a hundred grand for this jet yeah and this guy it's it's such a oh i guess they do call it out so flying planes with tyler perry but that's like basically it like they barely talk about it the fact that it's just this like got i think it's from dubai broke that's the cool it's so this guy has a million followers and i think that's like another interesting thing so the the those are picks yeah that's good this isn't in a pick that that like my anyway you should check this one out have you seen hacks smith what's hacks smith dude these guys just dropped something called the smith blade oh these other tell it dude seven they just did seven million dollars on kickstarter in like a week thirteen well it says thirteen days ago i think i think they dropped it this time last week that's what i wanna say seven million dollars and it's just a box cutter it's a no it's a multi tool i'm multiple school like a swiss army knife right it's got like five different kinds of knives on it and like you know a swiss army knife he's gonna have your toothpick in your tweezers and a couple different kinds of knives that have different edges and blades on it and this one is built with the kind of intention of everything that you would like these guys also sell lightsabers like you gotta check out their their youtube page oh my god and they have fifteen million subscribers yeah they they sell like lightsabers and and and all kinds of like what's a lightsaber such as a flashlight a lightsaber have you seen star wars i i know what it is but i don't know how you no make so you haven't seen just know about star wars you haven't seen star no i was like playing sports and stuff and going out was i also played sports and i know it and i know what star wars is i don't know what it is but i don't know how is it a flame it's a little it's a mini saver bro check it out i mean they call their saver what's comes out of the metal part a piece of plastic light but that's what's the flashlight no these are yeah they're bad flashlight you could call it that but they're you know they're hundred and fifty dollar canadian or they're three hundred and fifty dollars or they're five hundred dollars they're like back i just bought a five hundred dollar laser pointer the other day because apparently if i could shine it on a piece of paper it's gonna light it on fire so i'm not saying like i'm above this yeah no no no no one's above this this is cool i'm i'm into it i'll tell you no no one's above it these guys just sold seven million dollars and multi tools in like a week so i really lives are still willing to have sex with us by the end of this episode billy man you're you're cool i'm really thankful how you came on and and and hopeful hopefully we'll stay friends but you're the man yeah man thanks for having me on i love what you're doing and you know happy hunting thank you that's it that's the pod i feel like i could rule where to know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a day's off on a goal travel never looking back my friends if you like m m then you're gonna like the following podcast it's called a billion dollar moves and of course it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the number one audio destination for business professionals billion dollar moves it's hosted by sarah chen spelling sarah is a venture capitalist and strategist and with billion dollar moves she wants to look at unicorn founders and fund and she looks for what she calls the unexpected leader many of them were underestimated long before they became huge and successful and iconic she does it with unfiltered conversations about success failure for your courage and all that great stuff so again if you like my first million check out billion dollar moves it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network again billion dollar moves