My First Million

9 Killer Business Ideas The Internet Hasn't Caught Up To in 2026

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Start with the signal

10 min read

Summary

At-a-Glance

  • Verdict: Skim
  • Core thesis: Large demographic, behavioral, and environmental shifts can reveal businesses early when a single striking data series is combined with product validation and an effective marketing hook.
  • Why it matters: The video offers a reusable opportunity-discovery method and several investable themes, particularly elder care and air quality, but many individual ideas remain speculative and some supporting numbers are weakly sourced.
  • Best use: Use it as an idea-sourcing prompt and research checklist, then independently validate the underlying data, economics, regulation, and distribution before pursuing any concept.

Executive Summary

Steph Smith's central method is to find "one chart businesses": markets where a demographic curve, search trend, industry report, or product-sales estimate makes a long-term demand shift difficult to ignore. Sources highlighted include Our World in Data, the Sports and Fitness Industry Association, NumLock, Jungle Scout, AskNature, Google search behavior, and community-curated tool recommendations. The edge is not merely seeing the data, but translating it into a product, narrative, and distribution strategy before the information becomes common knowledge.

The strongest thesis is the aging population. The speakers connect projected nursing-job growth, rapidly increasing assisted-living prices, attractive reported operator returns, Japan's proliferation of nursing homes, and a global elderly population projected to rise from under 1 billion to roughly 2.5 billion. They see opportunities in senior housing, premium assisted living, and services for older adults, while acknowledging that operating care facilities is difficult, regulated, and emotionally demanding.

Air quality is the second substantial theme. Billions of people face elevated particulate exposure, extreme pollution can approximate the health burden of smoking dozens of cigarettes per day, and indoor CO2 or particulate levels are often invisible until measured. The speakers argue that demand will accelerate when a marketer makes the threat tangible and pairs monitoring with a clear remedy. They cite purported Amazon sales exceeding $40 million per month across four air-filter-related listings, while explicitly warning that Jungle Scout estimates require verification.

The remaining concepts are lighter entrepreneurial prompts: recreational events for non-athletes, posture products for desk workers, biomimicry-inspired consumer goods, and breakup-related products built for organic virality. These sections are useful for creative ideation, but the transcript is repetitive, contains duplicated passages, and offers little rigorous market validation beyond anecdotes, rough statistics, and brand concepts.

Key Takeaways

  • Claim: The most durable opportunity discussed is the expanding market for elder care, senior housing, and supporting services. | Evidence: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projection cited says nursing would add 275,000 jobs between 2020 and 2030; assisted living reportedly reached a median annual price of $54,000 after rising 31% faster than inflation from 2004 to 2021. The transcript also cites 31,000 U.S. assisted-living facilities, 850,000 residents, and a global elderly population projected to grow from under 1 billion to approximately 2.5 billion. | Implication: Ken should treat aging as a multi-decade investment filter and look for asset-light software, staffing, coordination, monitoring, and premium service layers before considering direct facility operations. | Caveat: The discussion does not establish facility valuation methods, capital requirements, staffing constraints, reimbursement exposure, or regulatory economics. Technology and home-based care could also alter demand for traditional facilities.
  • Claim: Premium assisted living may support substantially higher prices because existing options often fail the emotional quality test for families. | Evidence: Steph says many facilities feel unacceptable for a parent or other loved one despite an average annual cost of $54,000. The hosts report knowing families paying $20,000 to $30,000 per month and suggest affluent customers might pay several times the average for a meaningfully better experience. | Implication: The opportunity is not simply adding luxury amenities; a defensible premium offering would need measurable trust, care quality, family visibility, and reliable operations. | Caveat: The willingness-to-pay evidence is anecdotal, and a premium environment does not remove the operational burden of clinical care, staffing, liability, and frequent resident deaths.
  • Claim: Air-quality monitoring and remediation could become a large consumer category once companies make an invisible risk understandable and actionable. | Evidence: Patrick Collison's pollution page is cited for a World Bank estimate that 3.7 billion people experience PM2.5 exposure near five times the referenced level. Delhi reportedly exceeded an air-quality index of 450, described as comparable to smoking 25 to 30 cigarettes per day. The hosts also describe home monitors turning red and closed bedrooms accumulating surprisingly high CO2. | Implication: The winning system is likely to combine sensing, interpretation, alerts, and a remedy rather than sell an isolated monitor whose numbers users cannot interpret. | Caveat: Pollution severity varies greatly by location, and the transcript sometimes blends outdoor PM2.5, indoor CO2, filtration, and health outcomes that require different products and claims.
  • Claim: Market education and threat visualization may matter more than waiting for organic consumer awareness in air quality. | Evidence: The speakers contrast air pollution's invisibility with categories such as weight loss, where the problem is constantly visible. They propose a water-filter-style demonstration that shows contaminants, scares the customer, and immediately presents a solution. Jungle Scout allegedly estimates monthly sales of $17 million, $12 million, $8 million, and $8 million for four related air-filter listings. | Implication: Any air-quality thesis should be tested around the communication layer: whether personalized measurements and plain-language risk explanations produce conversion without unsupported medical fear marketing. | Caveat: The speakers do not identify the exact listings or methodology, and Steph explicitly says to take the Jungle Scout figures with a grain of salt.
  • Claim: A repeatable way to discover businesses is to scan structured public data for irreversible curves and then connect each curve to a customer, product, and distribution channel. | Evidence: Our World in Data is described as containing thousands of charts spanning demographics, savings, poverty, lithium production, and even Kyoto cherry-blossom dates. Steph's Internet Pipes product teaches users to analyze existing data from Amazon purchases, Wikipedia pages, and Google searches; she says it has generated six figures. | Implication: Ken can operationalize trend discovery as a recurring research pipeline, but each signal should pass separate tests for accessibility, economics, timing, and defensibility. | Caveat: A dramatic chart demonstrates change, not necessarily an attractive business. It can omit margins, market structure, regulation, substitutes, and whether a startup can capture value.
  • Claim: Biomimicry databases can supply both functional product ideas and unusually strong marketing stories. | Evidence: AskNature catalogs natural strategies such as the African darter's water-resistant feathers, camel fur that regulates heat across day and night, otter insulation, and a search algorithm inspired by ants. The speakers argue that millions of years of evolutionary optimization can provide both design inspiration and a ready-made consumer hook. | Implication: For product incubation, AskNature can serve as a structured source of mechanisms and narratives, but concepts should be screened by technical experts before brand development. | Caveat: Biological inspiration does not establish technical feasibility, intellectual-property freedom, manufacturability, or superior unit economics.
  • Claim: Emotionally charged life events can support small, highly shareable commerce brands when paired with existing media distribution. | Evidence: The discussion cites an unsourced estimate that people spend an average of $1,500 after a breakup and notes search interest in divorce parties and breakup cakes. Proposed products include a revenge-body kit, breakup vodka, personalized dolls, and a box whose contents are ceremonially destroyed on video. The hosts estimate that a media account such as F Jerry might build a $2 million to $10 million annual business largely through organic sharing. | Implication: This is best treated as a distribution-led product experiment for an audience owner, not as a standalone venture thesis without proven acquisition economics. | Caveat: The foundational spending statistic is explicitly unverified, and the revenue estimate is conjecture. Demand may be episodic, novelty-driven, and difficult to retain.

Detailed Brief

Additional demographic and supply-chain signals

  • Claims: Japan may function as an early case study for commercial effects that later appear in other aging, low-birth-rate countries.; Concentrated lithium production illustrates how a single supply chart can identify strategic bottlenecks even when direct market entry is difficult.
  • Evidence: Japan's number of nursing homes reportedly rose nearly 50% over the preceding decade.; The speakers cite more than 8 million vacant Japanese homes, called akiya, with some offered cheaply or free because heirs do not claim them and local governments need occupants.; Our World in Data charts show lithium production concentrated in a small number of countries, including China and parts of South America.
  • Caveats: The transcript mispronounces or transcribes akiya as "IKEA" and does not examine foreign ownership rules, renovation costs, location quality, taxes, or title issues.; A strategic commodity shortage does not imply that a small operator can enter extraction or refining economically.
  • Implications: Leading demographic markets can be used to identify second-order service models before those needs emerge elsewhere.; When direct exposure is inaccessible, adjacent picks-and-shovels, financing, logistics, compliance, and recycling may provide more practical entry points.

Lifestyle niches: recreational sports and posture

  • Claims: Fast-growing sports can produce opportunities in equipment, media, events, and local experiences before they become mainstream.; Desk-driven forward-head posture is a growing pain point, but the speakers conclude that durable correction likely depends more on strength and movement than passive devices.
  • Evidence: The Sports and Fitness Industry Association list places pickleball first and also highlights alpine touring, winter fat biking, off-course golf, and trail running.; The hosts propose a branded "suburban triathlon" for out-of-shape middle-aged men, potentially combining walking, beer, and nine holes of golf.; Products and methods mentioned include BetterBack straps, Form posture apparel, Bryan Johnson's three daily exercises, the Egoscue method, and Roger Frampton's TED Talk on sitting and standing mechanics.
  • Caveats: No growth rates, participation bases, event economics, or local-market tests are provided for the sports concepts.; Steph repeatedly says she cannot vouch for the posture products or methods, and the discussion is not medical guidance.
  • Implications: Branding an approachable identity may expand participation more effectively than creating another elite athletic event.; A posture business needs credible outcome measurement and expert validation to avoid becoming an undifferentiated gadget category.

Authenticity and contagious emotion as content mechanics

  • Claims: Audiences may value authentic emotional contagion as much as the underlying joke or informational content.; A narrowly defined community can become very large when its moderation rules protect the exact emotional experience users seek.
  • Evidence: The r/contagiouslaughter subreddit is said to have 4.5 million subscribers and to rank among Reddit's top 100 communities.; Its rules reportedly ask users to reject posts where the joke or incident is funny unless the laughter itself is the source of enjoyment.; Steph attributes part of My First Million's appeal to Sam's unrestrained laughter amplifying Sean's stories, including an Orlando Bloom anecdote.
  • Caveats: The transcript provides no growth history or monetization evidence for the subreddit.; Authenticity is difficult to manufacture intentionally without making the content feel performative.
  • Implications: Content systems should preserve authentic reactions and interpersonal chemistry rather than over-editing every emotional beat.; Explicit format constraints can sharpen a community's identity and improve the consistency of user-generated content.

Notable Concepts & Terms

  • One chart business: A business thesis made intuitively compelling by one data series showing a strong, durable market shift; it is a discovery heuristic rather than complete diligence.
  • Silver tsunami: The rapid expansion of the elderly population, used here as the core demand driver for nursing, assisted living, senior housing, and related services.
  • Akiya: Vacant or abandoned Japanese houses, some available cheaply or free; they illustrate second-order effects of aging and population decline.
  • PM2.5: Fine airborne particulate matter used to frame the health and economic burden of pollution and the opportunity for monitoring and filtration.
  • Internet Pipes: Steph Smith's research product and community for extracting business signals from public digital datasets, tools, searches, purchases, and web platforms.
  • AskNature: A biomimicry database that maps biological mechanisms to potential technical applications and product narratives.
  • Lindy effect: The idea that longevity suggests continued relevance; the speakers apply it loosely to biological mechanisms refined over millions of years.
  • Distribution-led product: A product chosen to fit an existing audience and its sharing behavior, exemplified by launching breakup products through a large humor or lifestyle media account.

Operator Notes / Why Ken Should Care

  • Build a monthly signal review that ingests demographic charts, labor projections, search growth, marketplace estimates, regulatory changes, and niche-community growth into a scored opportunity backlog.
  • Require every candidate idea to document source provenance, base rates, market size, gross margin, regulation, incumbent structure, and a falsifiable demand test before allocating meaningful capital.
  • Investigate elder-care opportunities first through software and service wedges such as family communication, staffing orchestration, care coordination, occupancy optimization, and remote monitoring rather than direct facility ownership.
  • For air quality, prototype a sensor-to-action workflow that explains readings in plain language and recommends a specific intervention; have all health claims reviewed for scientific and regulatory compliance.
  • Use low-cost landing pages, waitlists, or audience partnerships to test novelty products before inventory commitments, particularly for breakup commerce and recreational events.
  • Do not rely on Jungle Scout estimates, unsourced consumer-spending claims, or podcast revenue guesses in an investment memo without primary-source verification.
  • Deduplicate and clean the source transcript before downstream semantic analysis; substantial repeated blocks could distort topic weighting and automated extraction.

Source/Metadata

  • Title: 9 Killer Business Ideas The Internet Hasn't Caught Up To in 2026
  • Transcript words: 11241
  • Duration seconds: 2314
  • Timestamp note: No timestamps or chapter markers were present. The supplied transcript contains substantial duplicated passages and likely transcription artifacts.
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Full transcript 7145 words · 50 min read
0:00

SPEAKER_01

All right, Steph Smith's here. Steph is back. And your whole thing is finding up and coming trends.

0:05

SPEAKER_02

I call them gold mines. Some people just come back and show you a little piece of gold. Steph shows you where the mine is.

0:10

SPEAKER_00

We all run into these generation-defining stats throughout our lives, and most of us are just like, oh, that's cool. So I compiled 100 plus of these. [SPEAKER_01] There's so many here.

0:18

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_00] I love this one.

0:19

SPEAKER_00

Breakup Cake, Nerd Neck, The Dyson Mask, a search algorithm that was inspired by ants. [SPEAKER_02] I need to write this down. If you want to go down the rabbit hole, I think there's a growing business here.

0:26

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_01] We use this phrase, one chart businesses, because you just see this chart and it's like you said, well, that thing's obvious.

0:27

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] Just get into that industry. [SPEAKER_01] You have one here.

0:43

SPEAKER_01

You say, in the United States, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that nursing will be the fastest-growing occupation between 2020 and 2030, growing in number by 275,000 jobs. That's insane. That's insane. Talk to me about this nursing thing. [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Well, it's a pretty clear trend that comes with a bunch of people getting older. [SPEAKER_00] Everyone's talking about AI, and that's great. [SPEAKER_00] But what about the billions of people around the globe that are 65-plus that are just going to need physical human support? [SPEAKER_00] So nursing's one area.

0:58

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_00] Also, the rest of that stat talks about in Japan, the number of nursing homes has risen nearly 50% over the last decade. [SPEAKER_00] And Japan is interesting because it's kind of this early case study where they've hit this silver tsunami a little earlier than a lot of other countries. Why Japan? [SPEAKER_00] I think they just hit the declining birth rate earlier than many other countries. [SPEAKER_00] And so, another interesting opportunity, maybe just an interesting thing for individuals to explore.

1:10

SPEAKER_00

But because Japan hit the silver tsunami a little earlier, they have this interesting thing where they're giving away free houses or super cheap houses, sometimes free. They're called IKEA's, A-K-I-Y-A. I was in Japan this summer, and we did a walking tour, and they took us around, and they were showing us these houses, and they're like, see this house? And it was in the middle of Osaka. It was a little run down for sure, but they were like, this house is free. And we were like, what do you mean?

1:23

SPEAKER_00

But because there's so many of these people who have grown old, unfortunately passed away, and then there's also some social aspects of the IKEA's where in some cases, not all, because Japanese people really care about status. If they grew up in a poor neighborhood, their parents passed away, and then they've moved into a different social strata, they don't want to claim the house because they're like, I don't want to be associated with that neighborhood. And there's over 8 million IKEA's that are being given away by the government, or sometimes for very cheap. [SPEAKER_01] Well, have you heard the theory about Osaka and how a lot of people are lying about their age?

1:34

SPEAKER_00

Oh, yeah, the Blue Zones and how... [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, there's a book called The Blue Zones. [SPEAKER_01] And I read it 10 years ago or something, and I was like, this is my Bible for living a long, healthy life. [SPEAKER_01] But the idea is that someone studied Osaka's population, and they found that too many people claimed to have the same birth date in Osaka to the point where the only way that this could be possibly true is if many of them committed fraud in order to say that they are of a certain age so they can start receiving Social Security and other benefits that you get when you hit a certain age.

1:44

SPEAKER_01

And so it potentially puts a lot of this idea of we study this particular population for old health or old people and looking at, wow, they're so healthy when they're just liars and they're actually a lot younger.

1:46

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] They're a lot younger potentially than they've said they are. [SPEAKER_01] What are some other stats about those? [SPEAKER_01] I love talking to you because you just have the data and the stats instead of just guessing. Okay, so we didn't really drill down as much on the nursing homes and assisted living. So let me give you one more from NumLock, which by the way is a great newsletter. Walt Hickey runs it. And I feel like MFM listeners would love it. It's great because you talk about these one chart businesses. I've done a thread on something similar and I call them digits, but he calls them just numbers, right?

2:08

SPEAKER_00

So basically every single day, he sends a newsletter of maybe five or so different small paragraphs. And each paragraph has just one statistic. And I like his because some of them are really important, the silver tsunami and how that's going to impact things much greater than ourselves. But then sometimes it's like there's this random gerbil that has infested homes in South Carolina or something like that. [SPEAKER_01] This is awesome. Yeah. He sent this paragraph about assisted living. So let me just read this out. This is directly from NumLock. Just small paragraphs. And each paragraph has just one statistic.

2:37

SPEAKER_00

And I like this because some of them are really important, like the silver tsunami and how that's going to impact things much greater than ourselves. But then sometimes there's this random gerbil that has infested homes in South Carolina or something like that. [SPEAKER_01] This is awesome. Yeah. He sent this paragraph about assisted living. So let me just read this out. This is directly from NumLock. From 2004 to 2021, the median annual price of assisted living increased 31% faster than inflation and has hit $54,000 per year. This is the crazy stat to me. There are 31,000 assisted living facilities in the United States.

2:57

SPEAKER_00

Four out of every five are run as for-profits and half of all the operators in the industry are clearing annual returns of 20% or more than it costs to operate. With 850,000 older Americans living within assisted living, the rents are getting jacked up. [SPEAKER_01] So I don't actually know how assisted living businesses are valued.

3:03

SPEAKER_01

Is it considered a real estate valuation where it's just a way to finance or pay for real estate? Or is it considered a proper operating business?

3:11

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] Hotels are classified as real estate.

3:13

SPEAKER_01

I would assume that's the case, of which 20% is fantastic. 20% operating profit on a proper internet business, that's not that great. But if it's on real estate, that's really great. However, when I read this, I think, yeah, that's lucrative. I don't want to operate this. This sounds like the worst thing ever. You'd have a funeral a day. I would love to invest in a nursing home fund, but I would not want to operate a nursing home. [SPEAKER_00] Well, what I'll say is, I have parents that are getting older and there's also tons of assisted living for not just elderly, right? [SPEAKER_00] People with mental illness or who need other support.

3:37

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_00] And I think what I've seen from exploring this space anecdotally is that most of the options really suck. [SPEAKER_00] As in, you don't really feel great about sending your parent or loved one to these places. [SPEAKER_00] And so I haven't explored this deeply enough. [SPEAKER_00] This might exist. [SPEAKER_00] So if folks are listening and they know of this, I would love to hear about it. [SPEAKER_00] But imagine the premium version of assisted living where you feel really good about sending your grandparent, your mom, your sister, whatever it is, to one of these places. [SPEAKER_00] And obviously the price would have to go way up.

3:53

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_00] But people are already spending $54,000 per year as the average. [SPEAKER_00] And so for the wealthy, wouldn't you pay five times that to send your loved one to something a lot better? Yeah. And I think people do. I know people who have people in nursing homes and they spend $20,000 or $30,000 a month. It's insane. It's absolutely insane. Okay, so you're eight minutes into this episode and you already can tell that Steph's superpower is spotting generational defining trends. She has spent hours pulling the most surprising under the radar stats and data, all for the purpose of uncovering interesting business ideas.

4:08

SPEAKER_01

She's put it all together in a thing called the Digits database.

4:10

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] And for you guys, the MFM audience, she has decided to give it away for free. [SPEAKER_01] And so if you want it, just click the link below in the description and grab it. [SPEAKER_01] All right, back to the show. What do you guys want to do next? [SPEAKER_02] Let's do the sports one. [SPEAKER_02] What's the sports data thing? Okay, so there's this website that aggregates a bunch of reports on sports, which obviously people love. Americans love sports. So they have a state of pickleball report, state of the industry report. I want you guys to guess what the fastest growing sports are.

4:26

SPEAKER_00

The 25 fastest growing sports, according to this SFIA research, which is the Sports and Fitness Industry Association. What do you guys think were the top fastest growing sports in America? [SPEAKER_01] I already opened it and I could tell you I wouldn't have guessed one of them. [SPEAKER_01] I already opened it as well. [SPEAKER_01] So the game is over. [SPEAKER_02] But I would have said pickleball and I would have said paddle. [SPEAKER_02] Isn't there another game that's just pickleball? [SPEAKER_02] That's what I would have guessed. [SPEAKER_02] It does seem like pickleball is number one. [SPEAKER_02] But number two, I would have never guessed.

4:44

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_02] Alpine touring. [SPEAKER_02] I don't even know what that really is. I think it's just off country skiing. And then I have never heard of what is winter fat biking? [SPEAKER_01] It's awesome. [SPEAKER_01] It's like, sounds like something I need to research. [SPEAKER_01] These fat tire bikes are really popular right now.

4:56

SPEAKER_01

So it's basically a bike with just a really fat tire.

4:57

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] That's all it is. [SPEAKER_01] And they are great looking. Is this a sport? [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, it's mountain bike riding. [SPEAKER_01] But the tire is particularly fat. [SPEAKER_01] That's all it is. [SPEAKER_01] You know, what do we say? And then I have never heard of what is winter fat biking? [SPEAKER_01] It's awesome is what it is. Sounds like something I need to research. These fat tire bikes are really popular right now. So it's a bike with just a really fat tire is what it is. And they are sick looking. Is this a sport?

5:19

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] Yeah, it's just mountain bike riding. But the tire is particularly fat. That's all it is. What do we say? We like big and small things. Imagine a bicycle that could drive on a beach. Got it. Number four, off course golf. Interesting. [SPEAKER_01] And then number seven is trail running. I could definitely see that. That is the I get so many videos on my Instagram of trail running.

5:25

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_02] Dude, I was at a dinner and somebody said something as a joke. And I put up my finger to my lips and I said, I need to write this down because it was an incredible idea. The guy goes, You put your finger on his lips. And then my own lips bash back and forth. And I was like, say no more. I need to, I don't want to lose this idea. Let me write this down. He said something. He goes, yeah, I do the suburban triathlon. And I go, what? And he goes, yeah, suburban triathlon. You walk a half mile, you into this bar, you drink two beers, and then you go play nine holes of golf. [SPEAKER_01] And I was like, what?

5:30

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_02] He's like, yeah, it's the, I forgot he said, suburban Ironman or the suburban triathlon. And I was like, this has legs. And I really think that if somebody created some kind of thing for out of shape, middle-aged guys to do, they'll do it. And I think if you make it, if you brand it almost like as the non fit person triathlon, and it's gotta have some version of eating and drinking being one of the legs, dude, that's the next, next tough matter. I think that could be a massive, a massive trend that people start doing. This is definitely something that I think would appeal to people. What do you guys think?

5:33

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Yeah. And that's beautiful branding. We're working backwards from the brand. [SPEAKER_02] We really don't even know actually what goes underneath. It's just the idea of the suburban triathlon. It's like you bike to the grocery store, you chug a beer and you, I don't know, run an errand and that's the suburban triathlon and you got to do it on Saturday mornings.

5:37

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_00] Next goldmine. So I love this one, our world in data. So people have maybe heard of this website. It's a website that tries to aggregate data that is a reflection of what's really happening in the world. So it includes things like data on poverty. It includes really niche things. Like I found, I went through the website and there was a graph that related to the day of the year with peak cherry tree blossoms in Kyoto. Right? That's so random, but they're collecting data on this. And I checked this website a few years ago and I want to say there was maybe 200 graphs on here. And if you go to their our world in data dot org slash charts page, I want to say there's thousands of different data points.

5:38

SPEAKER_01

I just clicked on one. It's adjusted net savings per capita from 1970 to 2020. And you can see how much per capita a variety of countries are saving. So it's literally thousands of different charts. You know, Sean talks about these one chart businesses.

5:42

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_02] One of them is this population of the world distribution. So basically this is a chart that is looking at how many of all the people in the world, how many are young right now? Meaning under 15. How many are working age? 15 to 65. And how many are elderly? 65 plus. And the shocking thing about this chart, this is a one chart business right here, which is the elderly curve goes from today, right? Like in the 2020 early 2020s where it's under 1 billion. It's by far the smallest line to it's going to cross over the young population and be at, by the end of the where this has it projected 2.5 billion. And so that's the biggest grower. The working age one flattens out. The young one goes down and the elderly one has this huge spike. And so if you're building anything that's in the elder care that you're going to own for, let's say, 10, 20 years, you have this immense tailwind behind you, which is just that the population of people who fit the customer base is going to grow dramatically. We're going to go from under 1 billion people to over 2 and a half billion people that are in that market. And so that's a case to say, if you go there, let's say it's real estate, if you owned senior living facilities or something like that, you would be able to just benefit from the fact that occupancy is going to go up over time in this way. Now, of course, technology may make things completely upend and AI and all that. But you could see these huge trends that are going to be very hard to reverse.

5:45

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_02] We're going to go from under 1 billion people to over 2 and a half billion people that are in that market. And so that's a case to say, if you go there, let's say it's like real estate, like if you owned senior living facilities or something like that, you would be able to just benefit from the fact that occupancy is going to go up over time in this way. Now, of course, technology may make completely upend things and AI and all that. But you could see these huge trends that are going to be very hard to reverse. So it's hard to imagine a scenario that we change the direction of these lines. It would take a whole societal shift, population level shift to change where these lines are going.

5:48

SPEAKER_01

There's so many here. Which ones stick out to you, Steph?

5:49

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_00] So I just linked another one that I think is this one chart business. This one's hard to get involved with, but I think it's the lithium production. If you pull that up, I just linked it in the document. And you can see that lithium production, which obviously is the core ingredient in many of our batteries, is concentrated in just a few countries. A lot of it's in China. A lot of it's in a few countries in South America. That's another example of just as you're browsing through a bunch of these charts. I think that one jumps out. But the one I wanted to dive into in depth is air pollution. So if you click the stat in here in our document that says air pollution is one of the world's leading risk factors for death, which maybe is obvious to some people. But to me, when I think about what are the key causes of death? What am I afraid of? Air pollution is not at the top of that list. However, I also stumbled upon Patrick Collison's pollution page. He's got a bunch of cool pages on his website. He's got a page with just a bunch of questions. One of them is on pollution and he says that the World Bank indicates that 3.7 billion people, so about half the world's population, are exposed to this metric of PM 2.5. That has to do with the size of particles in the air. They're exposed to around five times the unit of measure that he correlates with a bunch of things, which include lower GDP, it includes stock market returns being lower, people making worse decisions like chess players making mistakes, politicians using less complex speech. So those are just some facts. But I think what's really important is obviously the health side of things. And there's another stat that I'll just quickly share, which is from a newsletter called Charter, which says that India's capital, this was recently, breached the 450 mark on the air quality index. Over four times the healthy level. And they're in this hazardous zone, which is akin to smoking 25 to 30 cigarettes a day. And obviously it is an outlier. But I wanted to call this out because I think air quality is something that is a problem in a lot of places, clearly. Some more than others. But it's something that I think people are going to be caring about a lot more. And maybe one product that came out in the last year or so that's indicative of that, that a lot of people made fun of was the Dyson mask headphones. So I'll stop there.

5:51

SPEAKER_01

What were those? Yeah, I never saw those. [SPEAKER_00] They are headphones that have a mask, air purifier attached to them. Wow. And they're expensive. They're a thousand dollars, I think, right? [SPEAKER_00] They are $700 from what I can see. And what this came out and people just made fun of them? Well, if you Google images, it's a white guy in the New York subway wearing it. You know what I mean? It's a little off on because you're talking about India and a few other countries, not maybe the New York subway. So it's a misleading ad they have. But that's pretty fascinating. Is this are these taking off?

6:01

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_00] No, I think they're in that zone of a lot of people making fun of them. However, the reason I'm calling this out is because I think there is this understanding that it's a new Delhi. It's not anywhere close to home. But I think have you guys ever used an air quality index measure in your home or a CO2 monitor? [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, I have multiple times. And I bought these air purifier things that also measure the air quality in my house. And I have them and it's shocking whenever it'll turn red and it's like, oh, God, there's something going on, we need to air this place out or whatever.

6:06

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_00] Yeah. So air quality changes over time. And I've been noticing more even in San Francisco a few days where people are like, oh, I'm wearing a mask at work, not because of COVID, but because, oh, gosh, I have, you checked the air quality? And a lot of people aren't doing this still today, but I think that'll change. And I think if you use some of these like the CO2 monitor, for example, you literally, if you go to bed with your door closed and you wake up and you check that thing, it is wild how high it is. And you know, all you need to do is open a window or circulate the air in your home. But I think it's the stuff, I guess, is people are more educated on it. I think some of these devices like the air quality monitors are going to take off. And you can see some of this data in Jungle Scout as well of just the kinds of products that people are buying.

6:06

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_02] Do you see what you see in Jungle Scout that stood out? Any product that's okay. So there's one product which has to do with an AC furnace and an air filter. But guess how much this thing sells every single month? [SPEAKER_00] What is it? It's an AC furnace air filter and an air quality monitor. [SPEAKER_00] So I'm seeing four entries in Jungle Scout and they are 17 million, 12 million, 8 million and 8 million. So what is that all total? That's over $40 million per month. What? This is what Jungle Scout is saying. So, you know, take it with a grain of salt. I'm not sure how they measure, but they tend to be pretty accurate.

6:14

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_02] So there's one product which has to do with an AC furnace and an air filter. [SPEAKER_00] But guess how much this thing sells every single month? [SPEAKER_00] What is it? It's an AC furnace air filter and an air quality monitor.

6:22

SPEAKER_00

So I'm seeing four entries in Jungle Scout and they are 17 million, 12 million, 8 million and 8 million. So what is that all total? That's over $40 million per month. What? This is what Jungle Scout is saying. So take it with a grain of salt. I'm not sure how they measure, but they tend to be pretty accurate. And so that's an example of, I think, as people try to understand the air quality around them. I think there's a growing business here. I feel like one missing gap with air quality readings and devices and all that is it's not obvious. As in, I feel like most people would be surprised to be, oh my gosh, I inhale all this stuff and it has these adverse effects.

6:44

SPEAKER_00

And it ranks here on the likelihood of death. But it's not obvious. It's not in your face. Like the GLP ones. People see themselves every day and they're constantly trying to improve their image and how other people interpret them. So I think maybe one thing that if someone was going to go figure this out, you guys have talked about the water filters. People go into your home. Yeah, I was going to bring that up. And they say, did you know, you're drinking this much of rocks and other sediment and lead in your water. Can you believe it? And they show you.

7:02

SPEAKER_00

So I feel like there's an element of that where it's going to take a while for people to really care about the air quality stuff. But there may be some middle ground where some company is able to effectively give people that aha. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, I would put it differently. [SPEAKER_02] I don't think it's going to take a while. [SPEAKER_02] I think it's going to take a marketer for people to care. [SPEAKER_02] It's just going to take a marketer and a product design that puts it in your face and that educates you about this and scares you about it. [SPEAKER_02] But then says, don't worry, there's a solution. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah.

7:21

SPEAKER_01

And that's how a lot of things get done is a great marketer or product designer figures out the way to put it in your face. [SPEAKER_02] I spend way too much time online. [SPEAKER_00] I think a lot of people do, too. [SPEAKER_00] So I've got a bad case, hopefully improving case of nerd neck. [SPEAKER_00] Some people call it forward head posture. [SPEAKER_00] But it's just because we're hunched over at a computer all day long. [SPEAKER_00] And I haven't done a ton here. [SPEAKER_00] I'm on the very early part of this curve. [SPEAKER_00] But I have played around with, I'm not using it right now. [SPEAKER_00] Hold up. [SPEAKER_02] There's this thing.

7:46

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_00] I don't know if I'd vouch for it or not yet, but this thing called Betterback. [SPEAKER_00] I'm looking at it. [SPEAKER_00] I think any time that you have to use one of these devices, I tend to get nervous that it's legit. But go ahead. What is it? [SPEAKER_00] Well, that's why I don't know. [SPEAKER_00] So it has helped me sit up more. [SPEAKER_00] Basically, it runs around your knees and your back. [SPEAKER_00] And I like it better than something.

8:08

SPEAKER_00

There's things you can put on your back that zap you and stuff.

8:09

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_00] And I feel like that's really unnatural. [SPEAKER_00] But this actually just because it's fixated around your knees, you just sit up straighter.

8:12

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] So for those listening, it's a strap that when you're sitting down, it wraps around your back and then attaches to your knees. [SPEAKER_01] And in doing that, it forces you to sit up. Yeah, exactly. There's other for the women, your four female listeners. There is a sports bra that I haven't tried yet called Form, which apparently folks like Taylor Swift have used. If you look at her posture a decade ago, it was way, way worse. So there's a small part of me that believes that something like that works. [SPEAKER_01] Can I use this? [SPEAKER_01] You can.

8:30

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] You're telling me just a shirt that for me would be a shirt that's going to make me have better posture. [SPEAKER_01] What is this thing? I haven't tried it, but it's a sports bra that people vouch helps your posture. But I think generally, as I've explored this a little bit, it is a function of your muscle, right?

8:41

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_00] If you have strength in your abdomen and your back, you're going to sit up straighter. [SPEAKER_00] But there's a video I shared. [SPEAKER_00] We can include all this in the show notes. [SPEAKER_00] This is an email I sent or I'm going to send to the Internet Pipes crew this month. [SPEAKER_00] It's a video from Brian Johnson around his posture.

8:49

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_00] He worked with a posture coach for several months. [SPEAKER_00] And then Tim Ferriss has recommended something called the Egoscue method, which I have not tried. [SPEAKER_01] What's this Brian Johnson video? [SPEAKER_01] How do I just make my posture better? [SPEAKER_00] There's three different exercises that he does every single day. [SPEAKER_00] And he shares them in this video that improved his posture. [SPEAKER_01] What's this Egoscue method? [SPEAKER_00] It's a method that I think you need to work with a practitioner for, which is why, again, I'm not vouching for this in any way, but it's something that came up.

9:00

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_01] Dude, there's this great TED talk that you should watch. [SPEAKER_01] Why sitting down destroys you.

9:02

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] I think it's by Roger Frampton. [SPEAKER_01] I believe that's the one. [SPEAKER_01] But it's a TED talk that has millions of views.

9:11

SPEAKER_01

And he basically goes through this idea of how he worked. I think he worked in the Amazon. He worked with some indigenous tribe where they didn't use a lot of chairs or something. And what he found was that basically the people who in today's age we don't really do this, but we used to where if you stand a lot, you squeeze your glutes. Imagine you got a little penny in your butt cheeks that you're trying to keep from falling down on the ground. That's basically what you do. You squeeze your butt together when you're standing. And there's a reason why our glutes typically tend to be our largest muscle. And he goes through this idea of how he worked.

9:27

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] I think he worked in the Amazon.

9:28

SPEAKER_01

He worked with some indigenous tribe where they didn't have a lot of chairs or something. And what he found was that the people who, in today's age we don't really do this, but we used to, where if you stand a lot, you squeeze your ass. Like imagine you got a little penny in your butt cheeks that you're trying to keep from falling down on the ground. That's what you do. You squeeze your butt together when you're standing. And there's a reason why our glutes typically tend to be our largest muscle. It's because we are supposed to use them a lot and how we don't really use them too much anymore.

9:39

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] And so instead, when we stand, we lean forward. [SPEAKER_01] And he was saying, no, you should actually, when you stand, he was saying a lot of babies—actually, if you watch a kid, you'll notice they do a good job of this—but you squeeze your butt together and you flex your abs as opposed to just falling forward. [SPEAKER_01] And if you work on it, you can actually hold that for a fairly long time when you're standing.

9:43

SPEAKER_01

And that's the proper way to stand. And so it's not just sitting that will destroy you, but standing incorrectly. Yeah, totally. [SPEAKER_00] Well, even in the video, I did watch with Brian Johnson.

9:51

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_00] He was talking about how most people when they think they want good posture, they tilt their head back. [SPEAKER_00] And that's bad as well. [SPEAKER_00] They're like, oh, I have good posture like this. [SPEAKER_00] And you really want to be more like head, the back of your neck should be absolutely straight. [SPEAKER_00] So what's this ass nature thing? [SPEAKER_01] So if people want to go down the rabbit hole of exploring not just, let me go look at pictures of animals, but understanding how do animals produce color, what are the examples of technology being inspired by natural design? [SPEAKER_00] For example, a search algorithm that was inspired by ants.

10:03

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_00] This is so fascinating. [SPEAKER_01] So AskNature has this, there's all stuff you can click on. [SPEAKER_01] So there's one about the African darter. [SPEAKER_01] Apparently that's a type of bird and it has a very special feather that is incredibly water resistant. [SPEAKER_01] And then it tells you different applications that this potential feather or inspiration of this feather could have. [SPEAKER_01] And it talks about the strategy of how it works and the potential for copying this feather. [SPEAKER_01] This is amazing. [SPEAKER_01] How did you find this website? [SPEAKER_01] This is really cool. [SPEAKER_01] So someone shared it within Internet Pipes.

10:16

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_00] We have this survey whenever people join, which just asks, what's your favorite tool? [SPEAKER_00] A lot of it ends up being what you expect, ChatGPT, Ahrefs, etc. [SPEAKER_00] But there are a bunch of gems that come through like this. [SPEAKER_00] And by the way, Internet Pipes, it's literally tons of different resources for finding these things. [SPEAKER_01] So what the product started as, it was a course, but it was a course that existed to say, okay. [SPEAKER_00] It's called a book. [SPEAKER_00] It was a book. [SPEAKER_01] It was a book. [SPEAKER_00] It exists in Notion and there's videos and there's text.

10:34

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_00] And now there's a community and now there's things, databases like the Digits database.

10:35

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_00] But the origin was, the most common question I get asked is you find all this cool stuff online. [SPEAKER_00] How do you find it? [SPEAKER_00] And so Internet Pipes was showing people how to find this information through a series of tools. [SPEAKER_00] And that's why it's called Pipes, right? [SPEAKER_00] It's like use this tool to make sense of all of the purchases that are happening on Amazon, all of the pages that exist on Wikipedia, all of the searches that are happening on Google. [SPEAKER_00] And you go down the line, this data exists. [SPEAKER_00] And by the way, we're at a unique period where it didn't quite exist 15 years ago.

10:48

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_00] And 15 years from now, probably everyone will know it exists. [SPEAKER_00] And so Internet Pipes is a course, a book, whatever you want to call it, to learn how to do that. [SPEAKER_00] And you've made a lot of money off of it so far, haven't you? [SPEAKER_01] Yes. [SPEAKER_00] That's pretty cool. [SPEAKER_01] When you answer just yes, that means I'm not going to ask how much. [SPEAKER_01] It's six figures. [SPEAKER_00] There's a pretty wide range of, you know. [SPEAKER_00] Does the six figure include the .00? [SPEAKER_01] So it could really be $1,000.00? [SPEAKER_01] It's eight figures now. [SPEAKER_00] I got it. [SPEAKER_01] This is a really cool website.

11:15

SPEAKER_01

I could spend hours just looking at this. There's an article about camel's fur and how it keeps people cool or it keeps camels cool in the desert, but also warm at night. And why that particular type of fur is special for this. The reason it's interesting is the two that I've named are clothing related.

11:21

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_01] But if you had a clothing related brand, some type of brand, it's giving you the story for you. [SPEAKER_01] It's giving you the hook. [SPEAKER_01] Exactly. [SPEAKER_00] Exactly. [SPEAKER_00] And by the way, people in our world and business tech are always talking about the Lindy-ness of something. [SPEAKER_00] How long has something existed for?

11:39

SPEAKER_00

And it's like you are learning from millions of years of evolution, right? Of these animals that have become purely optimized for this purpose. And to your point, I think the marketer in both of us is like, what could you make off of this? There's one about otters where it's like it keeps heat in and cold water out. [SPEAKER_01] So otters. [SPEAKER_01] And I'm sure every single wetsuit company has stolen this marketing for their branding or whatever. [SPEAKER_01] But it's really fascinating. [SPEAKER_01] Sorry, go ahead. [SPEAKER_01] Well, did you ever see, you know Mischief, right? Mischief the brand. Mischief is the company that does weird projects.

12:05

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] They did a blood shoe with Lil Nas X or something. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Yeah. So they've done a ton of shoe collabs. They did one. I think it was with Jimmy Kimmel or they just announced it, but it was called the Gob Stomper.

12:23

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_00] Did you ever see this? [SPEAKER_00] No, is Jimmy Kimmel still a celebrity that one wants to collab with. I didn't realize he was booming. I don't know. [SPEAKER_00] Mischief the brand. [SPEAKER_00] Mischief is the company that does weird projects.

12:41

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_01] Like they did a blood shoe with Lil Nas X or something like that. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. [SPEAKER_00] So they've done a ton of shoe collabs. [SPEAKER_00] They did one. [SPEAKER_00] I think it was, I don't remember if it was with Jimmy Kimmel or they just announced it, but it was called the Gob Stomper. [SPEAKER_00] Did you ever see this? [SPEAKER_00] No, is Jimmy Kimmel still a celebrity that one wants to collab with. [SPEAKER_01] I didn't realize he was booming. [SPEAKER_01] I don't know. [SPEAKER_00] Maybe it was, maybe they just announced it there. [SPEAKER_00] But these Gob Stomper sneakers that Mischief created, I thought they were cool.

13:18

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_00] They basically, the bottom foundation of the sneaker comes gray at first. [SPEAKER_00] And then as you wear it more, as your shoe wears away, it looks like a Gob Stomper. [SPEAKER_00] And it was just like, [SPEAKER_00] which is the candy that you suck on and each shell layer of shell turns colors. [SPEAKER_01] Okay, cool. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, exactly. [SPEAKER_00] And so my, you might think this is the silliest idea ever, but when I went to the Galapagos and I saw these red footed and these blue footed boobies.

13:42

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_00] And by the way, fun fact for the listeners, the reason that these birds have different colored feet is because of what they eat, which I just thought was so strange and interesting. [SPEAKER_00] But imagine a sneaker brand that was, again, stick with me here. [SPEAKER_00] This might be a really awful idea that's related to health in some way. [SPEAKER_00] So let's say you're wearing a CGM and on your shoes, your shoes change color in some way based on how, if you're in range or some other metric that you care about. [SPEAKER_00] But basically you're able to signal something in a way that changes through your feet. [SPEAKER_00] That awful idea.

14:00

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_00] Oh, it could be like if we could show your fertile or something. [SPEAKER_01] It's like those parties, right? [SPEAKER_00] Where you wear it, what are they called? The stoplight parties where you wear red, yellow, green. [SPEAKER_00] That's pretty funny. [SPEAKER_00] We could stoplight shoes.

14:24

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_00] Maybe that's a better version of the idea. [SPEAKER_00] Okay, let's do a quick one, which is, I actually saw this in the Trends newsletter a while ago.

14:27

SPEAKER_00

I didn't write this, but it was this stat, which is the average person spends one and a half thousand dollars after a breakup. I have no idea where the stat came from, but it definitely got the wheels spinning. And they came up with a bunch of different ideas, which I think actually are getting some traction. Divorce party ideas is something that gets search volume. Breakup cake, people throwing their own breakup parties. And I was just like, huh, I don't know if there's specific brands that are taking this on. But I was like, huh, that's that one and a half thousand dollars. Don't know where it came from. Right. But there's something there.

15:03

SPEAKER_00

That's like if I'm F Jerry, you know, that Instagram account and they have these, they built a kind of little media empire. They have a bunch of other accounts, but they also have products they make. [SPEAKER_02] Like they made that card game. [SPEAKER_02] I think they make some products now. [SPEAKER_02] If I was one of those accounts, I would be jumping on this. [SPEAKER_02] I would basically say, all right, it's already viral. [SPEAKER_02] It's remarkable. [SPEAKER_02] People are going to talk about this. [SPEAKER_02] So how do I make, you know, the best breakup cake delivery service or the revenge body kit. [SPEAKER_02] And it's like, we send you this seven day detox.

15:47

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_02] We send you a healing crystal. [SPEAKER_02] We send you a juice cleanse and whatever else to get that person out of your life. [SPEAKER_02] So you get the bad juju away. [SPEAKER_02] And I'd be like, this is called bad juju or whatever. [SPEAKER_02] And I would just try to create a viral product through that. [SPEAKER_02] Because I think it's on brand and I think it has enough demand where you could see this doing two to ten million a year, all organic. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah.

16:20

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_02] Just because the product is so viral. It's probably not going to be enormous, but there's enough of a niche there, especially if you're one of these accounts because you already got distribution. Or you're somebody who goes to those accounts and partners with them and says, Hey, I got the right product for you guys. [SPEAKER_02] Let's do some kind of profit share and I'll run this business and you guys just help me promote this, whatever, the breakup vodka. [SPEAKER_02] And it's the breakup vodka kit or whatever, whatever the thing is. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah.

16:45

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_02] I mean, I'm imagining all the tropes of someone gets broken up with and then they become super fit and they get a PhD and they just become the best version of themselves after the breakup. Doesn't always happen, but you could imagine something like that. Or something that's even less work. It's like, what are those voodoo dolls where you poke it and you're sending ill will towards them. [SPEAKER_02] You could just upload a photo of your person.

16:59

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_02] We print you a doll that looks like close enough to them. [SPEAKER_02] And you can do that.

17:01

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_02] That reminds me of, did you see that startup empty?

17:09

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_02] It was fake. [SPEAKER_00] Did you hear about this? [SPEAKER_00] It's, I think it was, it had the silly spelling too.

17:13

SPEAKER_00

It was like E M P T I or something.

17:16

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_00] And it was a fake startup that people thought was real. [SPEAKER_00] And basically they sent people these empty boxes. [SPEAKER_00] And the whole idea was like, look, we send you these empty boxes. [SPEAKER_00] And there's some motivational quote from Buddha in it. [SPEAKER_00] And it's like, rid yourself of all the things you don't need in your life. [SPEAKER_00] And the idea is that people are supposed to take all their junk, put it in these boxes and send it to this company for free. [SPEAKER_00] But they pay this company to send them these boxes.

17:40

SPEAKER_00

But it was a fake startup. And all these people are writing about it. And they're like, oh, this is so smart. And it was a fake startup that people thought was real.

18:00

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_00] They sent people these empty boxes. [SPEAKER_00] And the whole idea was, look, we send you these empty boxes. [SPEAKER_00] And there's some motivational quote from Buddha in it. [SPEAKER_00] And it's, rid yourself of all the things you don't need in your life.

18:17

SPEAKER_00

And the idea is that people are supposed to take all their junk, put it in these boxes and send it to this company for free. But they pay this company to send them these boxes. But it was a fake startup. And all these people are writing about it. And they're like, oh, this is so smart. What a cool company. Minimalism. Yeah, exactly. It was a joke. But yeah, actually, you could do that with this too. You could send them the breakup box.

19:02

SPEAKER_02

It's like put all their crap in this, all the crap they've left in your house that reminds you of them. Put it in this, send it to us and we will send you a video of us burning this box in an epic way.

19:14

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_02] And you get to have that at the end. [SPEAKER_02] Those are the types of ideas you could do with this.

19:19

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_02] Nice.

19:24

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_02] So before we started recording, you were starting to tell me, here's my theory of why people like this podcast. What is your theory? [SPEAKER_02] Okay. [SPEAKER_02] So there are many reasons to love My First Million. I think there's something that you guys have done, especially recently when you and Sam just go back and forth and you tell a really funny joke and then Sam just starts laughing hysterically, in a contagious way that most people would hold back on a podcast, but it's literally as people say, you're in the room with him. And it reminded me of this subreddit I found recently called r/contagious laughter—4.5 million people subscribe to this.

19:41

SPEAKER_00

And it's one of the top hundred subreddits out there. And it's literally just a feed of people laughing. And there's dozens of posts every day. And as I went down it, I was like, there's got to be a post of Sam and Sean. Well, okay. Let me tell you a couple of interesting things about this. [SPEAKER_02] First, I think this subreddit must be new or growing faster recently, right? [SPEAKER_02] Because I hadn't heard of this subreddit before and I keep an eye on the top subreddits. [SPEAKER_02] Maybe I just missed it, but I've also seen this trend on TikTok. [SPEAKER_02] I don't know if you've seen it.

20:22

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_02] Somebody will be like, I'm a clinical psychologist and I can make you happier in the next 10 seconds. [SPEAKER_02] Repeat after me. [SPEAKER_02] Ha. [SPEAKER_02] And there's a duet. [SPEAKER_02] So that guy's like, ha. [SPEAKER_02] She's like, ha ha. [SPEAKER_02] Ha ha. [SPEAKER_02] Ha ha ha. [SPEAKER_02] And you're just like, okay, I see where this is going.

20:55

SPEAKER_02

And then she just gets to like, ha ha ha ha ha ha. And by the end, both people are just cracking up. Because it's like 10 deep and you can't help yourself. [SPEAKER_02] The body will just start genuinely laughing just from making the sound. It goes both ways. It's not like something funny happens and therefore I break out laughing.

21:08

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_02] Totally.

21:19

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_00] One of the funniest moments on My First Million was your Orlando Bloom story, which I think if I just heard you telling it by yourself, I'd be like, yeah, that's pretty funny.

21:21

SPEAKER_00

But Sam's laughter layered onto that where he was dying as you were telling that story just made it honestly top five moments in My First Million history for me. But that's why I think this subreddit is so great—even in their rules or community guidelines. You know how someone posts something and there's typically a bot that says, hey, report this if X, Y, and Z? On that subreddit, it's like report this if you're laughing at a joke or some incident and not the laughter specifically. They're like, we only want you here to hear other people laughing. So I just thought that was a fun thing and reminded me of why I think some people love My First Million.

21:36

SPEAKER_00

It's just so authentic. That's just Sam being Sam. And you're like, whoa, okay.

21:43

SPEAKER_02

I just get to be that.

21:44

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_02] That's awesome. [SPEAKER_02] That is awesome. I think any time that you have to use one of these devices,

21:52

SPEAKER_01

I tend to get nervous that it's legit. But go ahead. What is it? Well, that's why I don't know.

21:57

SPEAKER_00

So it has helped me sit up more. Basically, like it runs around your knees and your back. And I like it better than something. There's things you can put on your back that like zap you and stuff. And I feel like that's really unnatural. But this actually just because it's like fixated around your knees, you just sit up straighter. So for those listening, it's basically like a strap that when you're sitting down, it wraps around your back and then attaches to your knees.

22:23

And in doing that, it kind of forces you to sit up. Yeah, exactly. There's other for the women, your four female listeners. There is a sports bra that I haven't tried yet called form, which apparently like folks like Taylor Swift have used. If you look at her posture a decade ago, it was way, way worse. So there's like there's a small part of me that believes that something like that works. Can I use this?

22:47

SPEAKER_01

You can. Like you're telling me just like this like shirt that I mean, for me, it would be a shirt that's going to make me have better posture. What is this thing?

22:57

SPEAKER_00

I haven't tried it, but it's a sports bra that people vouch helps your posture. But I think generally, as I've explored this a little bit, it is a function of your muscle, right? Like if you have strength in your abdomen and your back, like you're going to sit up straighter. But there's a video I shared. We can include all this in the show notes. This is actually just like an email I sent or I'm going to send to the Internet Pipes crew this month. But like it's a video from Brian Johnson around his posture. He worked with a posture coach for several months. And then Tim Ferriss has recommended something called the Ego Skew method, which I have not tried.

23:36

SPEAKER_00

And what's this Brian Johnson video?

23:39

SPEAKER_01

How do I just make my posture better? There's three different exercises that he does every single day.

23:45

SPEAKER_00

And he shares them in this video that improved his posture. And what's this Ego Escu method?

23:52

SPEAKER_01

It's a method that I think you need to like work with a practitioner for, which is why, again, I'm not, I don't think I'm vouching for this in any way, but it's just something that came up.

24:02

SPEAKER_00

Dude, there's this great TED talk that you should watch it.

24:07

SPEAKER_01

Why sitting down destroys you. I think it's by Roger Frampton. I believe that's the one. But it's a TED talk that has millions of views. And he basically goes through this idea of how he worked. I think he worked in the Amazon. He worked with some like indigenous tribe where they didn't have a, they didn't use like a lot of chairs or something like that. And what he found was that basically the people who in today's age, we don't really do this, but we used to where if you stand a lot, you squeeze your ass. Like imagine you got a, you got a little penny in your butt cheeks that you're trying to keep from falling down on the ground. That's basically what you do.

24:45

SPEAKER_01

You like squeeze your butt together when you're standing. And there's a reason why our glutes typically tend to be our largest muscle. It's because we are supposed to use them a lot and how we don't really use them too much anymore. And so instead, when we stand, we kind of lean forward. And he was like, no, you should actually, when you stand, he was like a lot of babies. Actually, if you watch like a kid, you'll notice they do a good job of this. But you squeeze your butt together and you flex your abs as opposed to just falling forward. And if you work on it, you can actually hold that for like a fairly long time when you're standing.

25:21

SPEAKER_01

And that's the proper way to stand. And so it's not just sitting that will destroy you, but standing incorrectly. Yeah, totally.

25:29

SPEAKER_00

Well, even in the video, I did watch with Brian Johnson. He was talking about how most people when they think they want good posture, they like tilt their head back. And that's bad as well. Like they're kind of like, oh, I have good posture like this. And you really want to be more like head, the back of your neck should be absolutely straight.

25:50

SPEAKER_00

So what's this ass nature thing?

25:53

SPEAKER_01

So if people want to go down the rabbit hole of exploring kind of not just like, let me go look at pictures of animals,

26:02

SPEAKER_00

but understanding like how do animals produce color? What are the examples of technology being inspired by natural design? For example, like a search algorithm that was inspired by ants. This is so fascinating.

26:17

SPEAKER_01

So as nature has this, they have this like, there's all stuff you can click on. So there's one about the African darter. Apparently that's a type of bird and it has a very special feather that is incredibly water resistant. And then it tells you like different applications that this potential feather or like inspiration of this feather could have. And it talks about like the strategy of how it works and like the potential for copying this feather. This is amazing. How did you find this website? This is really cool. So someone shared it within Internet Pipes.

26:54

SPEAKER_00

We have this survey whenever people join, which just asks like, what's your favorite tool? A lot of it ends up being what you expect, ChatGPT, Ahrefs, etc. But there are a bunch of gems that come through like this. And so by the way, is Internet Pipes, it's literally just tons of different resources for finding these things.

27:11

SPEAKER_01

So what the product started as, it was, I hate the term course, but it was a course that existed to say, okay.

27:19

SPEAKER_00

It's called a book. It was a book.

27:20

SPEAKER_01

It was a book.

27:21

SPEAKER_00

It exists in Notion and there's videos and there's text. And now there's a community and now there's things, databases like the Digits database. But the origin was, okay, the most common question I get asked is you find all this cool stuff online. How do you find it? And so Internet Pipes was showing people how to find this information through a series of tools. And that's why it's called Pipes, right? It's like use this tool to make sense of all of the purchases that are happening on Amazon, all of the pages that exist on Wikipedia, all of the searches that are happening on Google. And, you know, you go down the line, this data exists.

27:57

SPEAKER_00

And by the way, we're at a unique period where like it didn't quite exist 15 years ago. And 15 years from now, probably everyone will know it exists. And so it's like this Internet Pipes is a course, a book, whatever you want to call it, to learn how to do that. And you've made a lot of money off of it so far, haven't you?

28:16

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

28:17

SPEAKER_00

That's pretty dope.

28:18

SPEAKER_01

When you answer just yes, that means I'm not going to ask how much. It's six figures.

28:22

SPEAKER_00

There's a pretty wide range of, you know. Does the six figure include the .00?

28:28

SPEAKER_01

So it could really be like $1,000.00? It's eight figures now.

28:32

SPEAKER_00

I got it.

28:35

SPEAKER_01

This is a really, really cool website. I could spend hours just looking at this. Like there's an article about like camel's fur and how it keeps people cool or it keeps camels cool in the desert, but also warm at night. And why that particular type of fur is special for this. The reason it's kind of interesting is like the two that I've named are clothing related. But like if you had a clothing related brand, like some type of like it's stealing the story for you. Like it's like not stealing. It's giving you the hook. Exactly.

29:05

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. And by the way, like people in our world and business tech are always talking about the like Lindy-ness of something. How long has something existed for? And it's like you are learning from millions of years of evolution, right? Of these animals that have become purely optimized for this purpose. And to your point, I think like the marketer and both of us is like, what could, you know, what products could you make off of this? Like there's one of like otters where it's like it keeps heat in and cold water out.

29:36

SPEAKER_01

So otters. And I'm sure every single wetsuit company has like stolen this marketing for their branding or whatever. But like, so it's like really fascinating. Sorry, go ahead. Well, did you ever see, you know Mischief, right?

29:48

SPEAKER_00

Mischief the brand. Mischief is the company that like weird projects.

29:53

SPEAKER_01

Like they did like a blood shoe with Lil Nas X or something like that. Yeah.

30:00

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So they've done a ton of shoe collabs. They did one. I think it was, I don't remember if it was with Jimmy Kimmel or they just announced it, but it was called the Gob Stomper. Did you ever see this? No, it's Jimmy Kimmel still a celebrity that one wants to collab with.

30:16

SPEAKER_01

I didn't realize he was like booming. I don't know.

30:19

SPEAKER_00

Maybe it was, maybe they just announced it there. Um, but these Gob Stomper, uh, sneakers that Mischief created, I thought they were kind of cool. They basically, the bottom, uh, foundation of the, of the sneaker comes gray at first. And then as you wear it more, basically like as your shoe wears away, it looks like a Gob Stomper. And it was just like, which is the candy that you suck on and each shell layer of shell, it turns colors.

30:48

SPEAKER_01

Okay, cool. Yeah, exactly.

30:50

SPEAKER_00

And so my, like, you might think this is the silliest idea ever, but when I went to the Galapagos and I saw these red footed and these blue footed boobies. And by the way, fun fact for the listeners, the reason that these, um, that these birds have different colored feet is because of what they eat, which I just thought was like so strange and interesting. But imagine a sneaker brand that was, again, stick with me here. This might be a really awful idea that's related to health in some way. So like, let's say you're wearing a CGM and on your shoes, your shoes change color in some way based on how, like if you're in range or some other metric that you care about.

31:34

SPEAKER_00

But basically you're able to signal something in a way that changes through your feet. Like that awful idea. Oh, it could be like if, you know, we could, we could, we could show your fertile or something.

31:46

SPEAKER_01

It's like those parties, right?

31:47

SPEAKER_00

Where you wear it, like, what are they called? The stoplight parties where you wear red, yellow, red, green. That's pretty funny. We could stoplight shoes. Maybe that's a better version of the idea.

32:02

SPEAKER_00

Okay, let's do a quick one, which is, I actually saw this in the Trends newsletter a while ago. I didn't write this, but it was this stat, which is the average person spends one and a half thousand dollars after a breakup. I have no idea where the stat came from, but definitely got the wheels spinning. And they came up with a bunch of different ideas, which I think actually are getting some traction. Divorce party ideas is something that gets search volume. Breakup cake, people throwing their own breakup parties. And I was just like, huh, I don't know if there's, you know, specific brands that are taking this on.

32:34

SPEAKER_00

But I was like, huh, that's that one and a half thousand dollars. Don't know where it came from. Right. But there's something there. That's like if I'm, if I'm F Jerry, you know, that like Instagram account and they have these, like, they built a kind of like a little media empire. They have a bunch of other accounts, but they also have products they make.

32:49

SPEAKER_02

Like they made that, that card game. I think they, they make some products. Now if I was, if I was one of those accounts, I would be jumping on this. I would basically say, all right, it's already viral. It's me more of the, it's, it's remarkable. People are going to talk about this. So how do I make, you know, like the best breakup cake delivery service or, you know, like the, the revenge body kit. And it's like, you know, we send you this like D seven day detox. Um, where you, we give, send you like a healing crystal. We send you like a juice cleanse and whatever else to like, you know, get that person out of your, out of your life.

33:22

SPEAKER_02

So you get to get the bad juju, you know, away. And I'd be like, you know, this is called bad juju or whatever. And I would just try to create like a viral product through that. Um, because I think it's on brand and I think it has like enough demand where there's that you could see this doing, you know, two to $10 million a year, all organic. Yeah. Just because the product is so viral, you know, it's probably not going to be enormous, but there's a, there's enough of a niche there, especially if you're one of these accounts, cause you already got distribution.

33:48

SPEAKER_00

Um, or you're somebody who goes to those accounts and partners with them and says, Hey, I got the right product for you guys.

33:53

SPEAKER_02

Let's do, you know, some kind of profit share and, uh, I'll run this business and you guys just help me promote this, like, you know, uh, whatever, like the breakup vodka. And it's like, you know, this is the breakup vodka kit or whatever, you know, whatever the thing is. Yeah. I mean, I'm imagining, you know, all the tropes of someone gets broken up with and then they become super fit and like they get a PhD and they just become like the best version of themselves after the breakup.

34:16

SPEAKER_00

Doesn't always happen, but you could imagine something like that. Or something that's even less work. It's like, what's those, what are those like voodoo dolls where you like poke it and you're like, you know, you're sending like ill will towards them.

34:26

SPEAKER_02

You could just like upload a photo of your person. We print you a doll that looks like, you know, like close enough like them. And like, you can do that. That reminds me of, did you see that startup empty? It was fake.

34:38

SPEAKER_00

Did you hear about this? It's, I think it was, you know, it had the silly spelling too. It was like E M P T I or something. And it was a fake startup that people thought was real. And basically they sent people these empty boxes. And the whole idea was like, look, we send you these empty boxes. And there's some like mood of motivational quote from Buddha in it. And it's like, you know, rid yourself of all the things you don't need in your life. And the idea is that people are supposed to take all their junk, put it in these boxes and send it to this company for free. But they pay this company to send them these boxes. But it was a fake startup.

35:13

SPEAKER_00

And all these people are writing about it. And they're like, oh, this is so smart. Like what a cool company. Minimalism. Yeah, exactly. It was a joke. But yeah, actually, you could do that with this too. You could send them the breakup box.

35:23

SPEAKER_02

It's like put all their crap in this, all the crap they've left in your house that reminds you of them. Put it in this, send it to us and we will send you a video of us like burning this box in this like epic way. And like you get to have that at the end. That's, you know, those are the types of ideas you could do with this. Nice. So you were right before we started recording, you were starting to tell me, you go, here's my theory of why people like this podcast.

35:44

SPEAKER_00

What is your theory?

35:46

SPEAKER_02

Okay. So there are many reasons to love my first million.

35:49

SPEAKER_00

I think there's something that you guys have done, especially recently when you and Sam just go back and forth and you tell a really funny joke and then Sam just starts laughing hysterically, like in a contagious way that most people would hold back maybe on a podcast, but it's literally as people say, like you're in the room with him. And it reminded me of this subreddit I found recently called r slash contagious laughter 4.5 million people subscribe to this. And it's one of, I think the top hundred subreddits out there. And it's literally just a feed of people laughing. And there's dozens of posts every day.

36:24

SPEAKER_00

And I was just, as I went down it, I was like, there's gotta be a post of Sam and Sean. Well, okay. Let me tell you a couple of interesting things about this.

36:33

SPEAKER_02

First. I think this must, I think the subreddit must be kind of like almost like new or growing faster recently. Right. Because I hadn't heard of this subreddit before and I kind of keep an eye on, on the top. Maybe I just missed it, but I've also seen this trend on Tik TOK. I don't know if you've seen it. Somebody will be like, I'm a clinical psychologist and I can make you happier in the next 10 seconds. Repeat after me. Ha. And there's like a duet. So that guy's like, ha. She's like, ha ha. Ha ha. Ha ha ha. And you're just like, okay, I see where this is going. And then she just gets to like, ha ha ha ha ha ha. And like by the end, both people are just cracking up.

37:07

SPEAKER_02

Like, cause it's like 10 deep and you can't help yourself. Like the body will just start like genuinely laughing just from making the sound. Like it goes both ways. It's not like something funny happens. Therefore I break out laughing. Totally. One of the funniest moments on my first million was your Orlando Bloom story, which I think

37:23

SPEAKER_00

if I just heard you telling it by yourself, I'd be like, yeah, that's pretty funny. But Sam's laughter layered onto that where he was, you can just tell he was dying as you were telling that story. Just made it honestly top five moments on my first million history for me. But that's why I think this subreddit is so great, even in their rules or their like community guidelines. You know how someone posts something and there's typically a bot that says, hey, report this if X, Y, and Z on that subreddit. It's like report this. If you're laughing at a joke or some sort of incident and not the laughter specifically,

37:56

SPEAKER_00

they're like, we only want you to be on here to hear other people laughing. So I don't know. I just thought that was like a fun, a fun thing and reminded me of why I think some people love my first million. It's just so authentic. That's just Sam being Sam. And you're like, whoa, okay.

38:12

SPEAKER_02

I just get to be that. That's awesome. That is awesome.

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