Speaker 1We're going to back to the roots a little bit with MFM. Everyone says they want more ideas. I've got two of them. ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪ ♪ I know I can be what I want to ♪ ♪ I put my all in it like no days off ♪ ♪ On the road, let's travel, never looking back ♪ Okay, so everyone's lonely. We know this. I want to talk to you about two different radical ideas.
Speaker 2If you're listening to this podcast, we know. You know, we know.
Speaker 1Well, these two ideas I've already been interested in and I was just trying to find an excuse to tie them together. I'm trying to make this cohesive, but they're two great ideas. And we have a precedent of getting this first one somewhat-ish right. We have predicted a couple like biohacking things, not predicted, that takes too much credit, but like we talked about it fairly early in the adoption cycle. Would you agree?
Speaker 2We're basically big pharma. We have predicted and developed several pharmaceutical drugs on this podcast. Would you like to go down memory lane of a couple of them?
Speaker 1I don't actually know all the ones that we did. Obviously, GLP-1, Sasacherone. What else were we talking about for a long time?
Speaker 2You've brought up GLP-1s kind of before they even got to market, before Ozempic ever got to market. TRT businesses, and you were toying around with the idea of like, hey, I really believe there's a big business to be built here. We didn't end up building one, but we invested in one. Well, we invested in one. That worked. You also talked about sperm freezing, not just egg freezing. And I think that's also become quite a big deal. We've talked about IVF fairly early on and the different business opportunities that exist in IVF. I don't think anyone's actually done those yet. The idea there is to build a trusted brand in the IVF world, a chain, the Chick-fil-A of IVF, as I like to say. A place you trust. Okay, go on. What do you got now?
Speaker 1So I was scrolling on Instagram the other day, and I saw two things. One, a new version, or rather another health trend that I think is going to be popular. And two, probably the best way to position this new trend I've ever seen. So Palmer Luckey, CEO, founder of Andral, also started Oculus. He was at this conference, and someone said something to him, a question that I tend to hate. And he's one of the few people I've ever seen to answer this question in a great way. The question was basically, Palmer, if you were starting from zero, and you had nothing, no connections, what would you do? What would you work on? And he had the best answer.
Speaker 3If you were starting with zero today, some bet you made wiped you out, you got to start again, didn't have your network, didn't have your wealth, what would you do today?
Speaker 4Palmer? I would try to end the tragedy of divorce with oxytocin doping for marriage counseling. We understand mammal pair bonding pretty well. There's a lot of people who want to stay together most of the people who don't want to stay together should stay together, especially for their kids. Look, if people think SSRIs are fine, which they're not, but if they were, then oxytocin doping to stay together is definitely fine.
Speaker 3So I've heard about this, it's really critical, right? So, you know, people sort of drift apart over time, oxytocin is safe. Safe, it's understood,
Speaker 4we use it on mothers and infants. It's the bonding hormone. That's right, it's the mammal pair bonding chemical. There's things you can do to increase the uptake and it's very well understood. It's also totally unregulated, which is great. Unregulated spaces are a lot easier. You can go buy a kilogram of oxytocin on Sigma-Aldrich chemical supply right now. And if you do that, maybe you won't, maybe you won't die alone.
Speaker 1Okay, so let's recap what we just heard here. So Palmer Luckey, tens of billionaire guy, very successful. He said, "If I had to work on something again, it'd be saving America from the tragedy of divorce." And that would be oxytocin doping for marriage counseling. If you do this, maybe you won't die alone.
Speaker 2How great is that? Is that brilliant? Is that the. Dude, you're absolutely right. Most of the time when you ask somebody like, "What would you do if you started up again?" They'll just give you the most vague, hand-wavy. He immediately had not only a great original novel surprising idea, but he had the pitch ready to go, locked and loaded.
Speaker 1The best. And I hate using the F-word, first principles. I hate using that word because it's overplayed and it's just not used correctly. But this is like a kind of a textbook case of that. He starts with, "Divorce is a huge deal. It impacts 50% of people. What are some potential ideas that could solve the tragedy of divorce?" You could say a bunch of stuff. You could say like helping people find the right person, having good conversations early and on a relationship. Okay, whatever. Like what all can do this? And somehow he got to this idea of oxytocin. And I think that is brilliant. I'm not saying that I. In fact, I am saying I know nothing about oxytocin other than a little bit of like nerdy research. So I'm not saying that oxytocin is necessarily great. What I'm saying is the packaging of this is beautiful. And when I heard this, I realized this is actually an interesting business idea. And I've heard about oxytocin. The reason I've heard about it is I follow these weird subreddits with biohacking. And this is how I learned about GLP-1s. This is how I learned about a little bit about testosterone. And what I've noticed is oftentimes, these people are wrong. They'll say things that are kind of ridiculous. But occasionally, there comes conversations where you're like, okay, there's a signal here. Something is interesting. And I followed along on the oxytocin forum on Reddit, the subreddit. And there's this one called just oxytocin. And it's basically mostly autistic people. So a lot of people who have Asperger's, a lot of people who suffer from PTSD, and they've been taking oxytocin for a few years now because it's fairly unregulated. And I'll explain what it is in a minute. And they are writing like a daily journal about how it makes them feel. And it's kind of amazing. So what is oxytocin? Oxytocin is a hormone that naturally occurs in your body. The most common way that people get oxytocin is when women have babies. It creates a bonding between the mother and the infant. And so right when they have the kid, oxytocin, I believe, when it gets released, the mother starts creating milk. They bond. Men get it after they have sex. You know, when you're cuddling, you know that nice feeling. That's because of oxytocin. A lot of mammals, a lot of animals, there's a strong correlation between when you, when mammals have a lot of oxytocin, they do bonding better with their partner. So they'll be like, they studied these, I think it was called prairie dogs, something like that. And they have huge amounts of oxytocin, and they are lifelong partners with their spouse forever.
Speaker 2Right. Yeah, like if I have a really solid dap up with somebody, and clap, I feel a small surge of this male part, this pair bonding chemical released in my body. I can almost hear it when it happens.
Speaker 1Or when you look your dog in the eye. So there are studies that show when you look at your dog and make eye contact with your dog, you release a little bit of oxytocin.
Speaker 2Dude, when is it, have you, have you recently just had like silent eye contact? Very, like you're four inches away from your wife, and you just hold eye contact for like, 30 seconds to a minute. Have you done this?
Speaker 1No, but your friend, Chris Williamson, put out this thing where it was like questions to ask spouses to like make you bond. And like part of it was looking at eye contact together. And I told my wife, I was like, hey, I want to try this. And it's like, so we have like, we have like a scheduled time to do this.
Speaker 2I mean, it's a little bit weird, but if you want to be adventurous tonight. The eye contact thing, is it awesome? I think it's a full on eye contact. Do you do it? Hey, I want to tell you about something pretty cool. I have a database of all of the business ideas that have been discussed on this podcast. So hundreds of episodes, the team at HubSpot went through, they pulled out all the simple, relatable, interesting, profitable ideas that we have brainstormed, and they're all available for download for free. Just click the link in the description below. Thank you to our friends at HubSpot for sponsoring this podcast and putting together this free resource for you guys. Back to the show. Yeah, I've done this before, and my wife literally starts crying. It would make me cry. Within 30 seconds, she starts crying. It's like the most bizarre thing to me because I don't feel the urge to cry. There's definitely an intensity to it when you're just quiet, and you're looking straight into the eyes of somebody who you know really well. I'm going to do it today. I'm going to do it tonight. In fact, that's everybody's homework. Tonight, 30 seconds, maybe a minute, if you're feeling freaky, of straight up eye contact.
Speaker 1Yeah, it doesn't matter if it's your spouse or a roommate. Just the stare.
Speaker 2Or the mirror, if you're really, you know, if you're really in one of the Spotify-wrapped, top 1% listeners.
Speaker 1Well, one of the reasons why you feel that way is because of the chemical or the hormone oxytocin.
Speaker 2Isn't this also why, like, skin-to-skin contact with a baby, like, kind of, you hold the baby on your chest, they make you, like, take your shirt off in the hospital and stuff?
Speaker 1Yeah, amongst other things. And they point at you and laugh. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I do that with my kids. I'll be holding them, and I'll take my, I pop the top. I take the shirt off, and I, like, I want to hold them because it feels special. You bond more. And what I didn't realize is that I, if you Google "buy oxytocin," you'll get, like, a bunch of interesting websites. They're usually called, like, something sciences or something pharmaceuticals, where you can buy it in, like, a pure, I don't know if it's pure, I'm not using these words correctly, but from an idiot's point of view, like, a pure block of it. It's a powder. It's like a butter? What do you mean? I thought it was a nasal spray. Okay, so here's what I'm getting at. It's like a powder, but now. Oh, wholesale. Yes, you can buy a ton of it. lot of companies I'm noticing they're slowly getting into, if you go to which sells erectile dysfunction medicine. If you go to HIMSS, I imagine they might start selling this. But you're noticing is that this fringe thing is being turned into a nasal spray because that's the only way that you could take it. You can either take it to that or I think like a gas mask. You can't inject it and it's not a pill. But they're starting to sell this. And my prediction-
Speaker 2You do need a prescription for it, it looks like.
Speaker 1Not to buy on some of these websites. Like you can just, you can click and order it right now. Yes. So you sent this over
Speaker 2and this immediately got my brain, like I feel like my brain overheated for a minute because when you hear a genuinely interesting, great idea that you don't understand fully, you don't know, you haven't researched it, you don't know the efficacy of it, you don't know the safety of it. So those are all the caveats. Yeah, by the way, it could
Speaker 1still be bullshit. Like this is totally understudied. So let's preface everything by saying that.
Speaker 2Well, we should explain the prairie, prairie vole thing, the study that they did. So most animals are not monogamous, right? But there are a few that are, that have an intense, you know, bond, a monogamy. And so they've studied these prairie voles where once the male and female mate and they bond and they spend enough of this like brief time together, they will be monogamous for life. And they will not only not go with other partners, they'll even attack if another, like if a male's there and a female comes, he will like kind of push her away. And then they did studies on this in a very small sample size. So not like a robust study, like a maybe bullshit study where they did this with humans and they had a placebo and they had humans that would take oxytocin and they would see what would happen. And, you know, for example, in one of them, they would have an attractive female come in. And if the person had had the oxytocin bonding with their partner, they would sit like an extra 15 centimeters apart from the attractive female. They would create distance. Between them and the attractive female or they would spend less time looking at them, things like that. Now, again, small studies, but it's very interesting that most people, we like to think that we're in control of our mind, that we're in control of how we're going to feel and how we're going to act. And so I'd say there's one group of people that think they can think their way to a behavior. There's another group of people that would be feelings-based. And they say, well, it's not about logic and thinking your way there. It's a feeling thing. Feelings to them are this amorphous sort of mystical thing. It's just something that happens about, it's like the idea of a soul. Whereas in truth, basically a feeling is a chemical brain state that you're in. And then you have a conscious readout of it that says, oh, I really like the way that, that means I'm in love, right? This brain state, this way I feel when I'm doing this or when I'm with this person, that means I love this person. That means I hate this. That means I'm disgusted by this, right? So we have a kind of a readout of the chemical state. And if we could find safe ways to alter or grease the wheels on certain chemical states, that's really interesting to me. And the reason why is all these ideas sound a little far-fetched before we had the miracle weight loss drugs, right? Like there used to literally be a phrase that was like, there's no magic pill for weight loss. But now there is. There's literally a magic pill for weight loss. Well, what if there's a magic pill for love or for being bonded with your partner? I find that really, really interesting. And then I think further, the example you just gave of people who are autistic or have Asperger's using this to bridge maybe a social gap that they have is really interesting. And when I was reading about this just before the pod, because you mentioned this idea and I'd never heard of it. One of the ways that it was described was, it's like a highlighter. So it's not a love potion. It's not like you take something and you immediately fall in love with the first person you see or anything like that. What it does is it highlights or amplifies what you feel. So they did studies where if somebody was domestically abused, this wouldn't override that and make them feel love towards the person. It would heighten their sense of distance between that person. So it was taking whatever the social feeling you have underneath and just amplifying it. So if it was bad, it would amplify that you want to get away from that person. And if it was good, the warmth, it would amplify the warmth for that person. So I find that angle of it to be really promising because that would be life-changing for people who have trouble connecting socially and in relationships, right?
Speaker 1Yeah, it's pretty magical. Well, the idea is magical. And I was listening to someone else, some other doctor talk about it. And he was basically saying, he was like, look, there's not that much data to back this up. So it's not necessarily that it's disproven, but it's also not proven yet. But he was like, we've been doing some small stuff where we would give it to like small teams. And he didn't explain what a team was, but it could have been like coworkers or even a sports team, whatever, people working together. And he was like, they worked together so much better when they all had small doses of oxytocin. And I found that to be really fascinating. And I like ideas that seem very freakish and strange. Like imagine walking into your office or going, to a team retreat, which I just had it, everyone has to do oxytocin in advance. That's very weird, right? That's all putting that's strange. Yes. But like maybe, maybe that's kind of interesting. And so I went and texted.
Speaker 2Newman somewhere is like, yes, not weird. We are doing that.
Speaker 1But I just, I think it's interesting. I think this is really interesting. And I tweeted this out. I'm like, who has done this? And someone was like, don't do stuff that you read on forums. And I'm like, yeah, don't do it because we are talking about it. Or, because someone else is talking about it, but there's some interesting signal there, particularly from a marketing standpoint, but potentially for like a selfish standpoint of like, maybe, maybe there is something here. Cause I've seen this enough times that when people that we call strange, where they're doing something, there's something there. And there's a subreddit where these guys, there's one guy who had Asperger's and he was talking about, I keep calling it Asperger's is Asperger's. Am I saying it wrong?
Speaker 2Sorry guys. There's a P in there somewhere between the burger that you're saying.
Speaker 1It's not Asperger's sorry guys. The subreddit where these guys who have this are talking about like they're writing daily journals and they're like, all right, I just took the dose. Okay. I'm feeling hoarding now. That's probably too much of a dose. Okay. If 10 hours later, I took a second dose. I noticed that I struggled to make eye contact with my children. Most of the time now it was way easier to make eye contact. And I had a significantly better conversation. Like they're documenting this. And it's so interesting to me. I would not be surprised if in 12 months, you and me and our listener are going to get a lot of meta ads saying this will cure divorce or something like that.
Speaker 2Well, I'm the type that I have an initial reaction to these things. Like I don't, I don't do drugs. I don't even go to Burning Man cause I'm scared of like, you know, just new, new experience. I'm very happy in my life. I just kind of like to chill in a, in a happy little bubble. I've, I always have a kind of fear based reaction to things that sound weird, unfamiliar, or like, you know, chemically altering. And I think there's some good, there's definitely some good in that, right? There's, there's obviously you can protect yourself that way, but it's also over time. I've seen how things that initially sounded very fringe can become very normal in not that long of a time. You know, like when you years ago were like, Oh, I hurt my Achilles. And so I injected BPC, whatever, one 57 in my, and it's, and it's healing my Achilles. And I'm like, that's a crazy thing to do. You're like, no, it's the Wolverine stack or whatever. Right? Like, I'm like, yeah, even more reason not to take this, you know, it turns you to a Wolverine or whatever. Like, I don't know. I don't want that. And now peptides are, are, are shockingly common. And same thing recently, a psychedelics company just got acquired for $3 billion by Eli Lilly. Did you see this? No. What was it called? It's probably the biggest psychedelic acquisition ever. This company called, I don't know how you say it, Attea Beckley. They just got bought for 2.8 billion. And, you know, psychedelics are the same sort of thing, right? Like, you know, growing up psychedelics were seen as a certain way, right? It's like, you know, tripping balls and it's a, it's a way to have a good time. And then, and now psychedelics is, I would say amongst smart friends considered to be one of the best interventions for people who have PTSD and other forms of deep trauma as a way to kind of do 20 years of therapy in 20 minutes type of shit. Now, again, this is maybe anecdotal. There's whatever. All I know is it went, from very fringe and, and labeled a certain way to way more mainstream and now seen in a very different light. But it's the same thing. The sort of social acceptance shifts over time for these things. And I suspect that something like this is also something that where social acceptance could shift over time. The idea you said of, hey, before we go to this team retreat, you know, quick, everyone, you know, let's, let's do the flow nays in our nose here real quick. It's going to help. That sounds like laughable right now, but I don't know that I've seen this shift over time many times now, right? So who's to say this isn't also one where, where that might, might be true.
Speaker 1I have, I texted Jack Smith, our resident biohacker. And I said, have you ever taken this? And he said, no, but one time an intern at my company got effed up on it after he took some. And then once I took a taxi driver and I was telling the taxi driver about it and he asked to be paid in. in it. That was his. so uh the the opportunity sniffing bloodhounds something's there so that's cool uh that that was one of mine um but i think that's interesting and so this is this is one of those things where we're gonna have to look back in 12 months and be like were we were we on that or not
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Speaker 1okay second one have you ever heard of the knights of columbus no is this that medieval
Speaker 2play that you told me about once okay second one have you ever heard of the knights of columbus
Speaker 1no that's where you go it's
Speaker 2like a buffet what is that called
Speaker 1no that's a renaissance fair i forget the name of the restaurant but so check this out so we're talking about the lonely loneliness epidemic a little bit uh so in 1882 there was this guy he was a priest up in new haven in connecticut what was his name his name was uh mcgivney he was a catholic priest someone in his parish died and he was like dude this sucks this man had two kids and a wife and he died he was the earner for his family we have to do something about this so he convinced something like that to happen and he did and he was like i'm gonna do something about this and he was like 200 of his male people in his priest to join what he called a mutual benefit society where they would all chip in money and they would help pay for this guy's family for a little while and then if any uh any of the mother uh died some of the money would go towards them this sounds very similar to life insurance right um and that's sort of what it became and so the knights of columbus is now an organization it's a fraternal organization that's been around since 1882 it has something like two or three million members they have 30 members and they have a lot of money and they have a lot of billion dollars in assets they do like 10 or 5 or 10 billion dollars a year in revenue and it's a fraternal organization for catholic men and the whole thing is that they um you pay dues something like 300 a year and you basically show up in your church after hours and you guys plan charities that you're going to do together so predominantly it's like pancake drives or they do a lot of like homeless stuff and they're there to help each other and at this point they're a huge lobby they like it's quite powerful and they're there to help each other and they're there to help each other but the way they make money is they sell life insurance to their members and they crush it it's been around for over 100 years and it's a massive business and i've always been interested in this type of business and what this is is basically a shared interest group that they get together for and and help other people or help themselves in a variety of ways and it monetizes by selling financial products insurance products and i think that this is a really interesting business for a couple reasons number one the knights of columbus they are actually growing mostly through young men for decades young men were not joining it was mostly old men and they have local chapters i think they have like 14 000 chapters all over the country and it was mostly old men and it was kind of dying and what they're noticing is that young men like between 30 and 40 are joining and it's their fastest growing segment so i'm interested in it for that reason the second reason i'm interested in it is because these exist for over a decade and i think it's a really interesting business and i think it's a really interesting business for all types of organizations so for example uh let's use good sam as an example have you heard of good sam no no what is good sam good sam is an rv owner membership so it's all based around a shared identity and community and they monetize through financial stuff so good sam is if you own an rv you spend a couple hundred dollars a year and you get some better insurance for your rv but you also get like you get discounts to like campgrounds and things like that okay another one is there's a thing for uh it's called the uscca i was a member of it when you get your conceal and carry license you can pay 300 and you can get access to monthly trainings for like gun ownership but also you get insurance if you ever get prosecuted for shooting someone and they do about 400 million dollars a year in revenue and these are huge businesses that last a very long time and in my opinion there's a lot of interesting opportunities to jump on this whole loneliness thing and monetize it via financial products
Speaker 2you're saying you basically take a deep interest-based community yeah could be religious could be non-religious could be rv owners or whatever um and then you become a member you get to meet other members so you kind of get community belonging you get maybe some discounts that immediately kind of justify the value of your your membership because this is marketing for them but the real the real banana is you figure out how to sell a finance a commodity financial service but people will have some preferential attachment to you because you are the community 100 and
Speaker 1i think now is an interesting time because the loneliness thing it's quite easy to like capitalize on that and two these things last forever what do you think
Speaker 2well i i mean i've never heard of this i have heard of healthcare shares i mean i guess in general that's a thing right like there's a whole health insurance life insurance model that's kind of like this is usually religious i think is the the general way these go and i never understood if this is just some tax loophole type stuff or if there's a better value prop for these things do you do you know a lot about these healthcare share programs
Speaker 1for some it depends what your offering is for some of them there is tax benefits so there's some like weird rules around if you are a membership and you are considered a um i think they call it a um uh a mutual benefit membership where like everyone gets the same benefits you do get you don't have to pay taxes on i think it's the the investment gains of your premium something like that there is some tax advantages for sure but that's not required in order to make this awesome
Speaker 2so so i'm looking at this now so it looks like these healthcare share programs are often like instead of paying into your paying you know two grand a month to blue cross you pay the same two grand a month or maybe even a little bit less you pay maybe a little bit less you pay maybe a thousand a month into a healthcare share program and now if anybody in the community has that forty thousand dollar surgical bill the group coordinates to get the money paid out to that person who needs it but i think there's some weird stuff where like legally they're not obligated to pay it it's like a high trust type of situation but like not contractual in the same way that that health insurance might be although people who have had trouble getting health insurance to pay for things that they think should be covered probably would disagree that that that is any more likely to be paid out is is probably a fair fair criticism but what's going
Speaker 1on here first of all health insurance is like a whole other thing where i'm like i i don't know if i would touch that that's very messy but the majority of these businesses they are not insurance companies they are partners with someone else who does it and they get a more tailored plan so so the knights of
Speaker 2columbus they just have all the money and the members and then they
Speaker 1go to who uh knights of columbus might be one of the few that does it maybe because they're big enough now but like aarp if you know aarp so aarp does billions of dollars a year in revenue aarp is a association of retired people i think it's if you're above 50 or 60 you automatically get a letter from aarp that says hey come join aarp you'll get our magazine you can come to some of our events and you'll get a discount on your health insurance and they partner with united and so they are not they license their name so they are the trusted brand and something like the marketing channel but they do not actually provide the health insurance but but they're a partner and so they aren't actually
Speaker 2running that well these these faith-based businesses are very interesting so um i just did a a interview with the guy behind angel studios so angel is probably the 10th biggest studio in the world and you've never heard of it and it's basically all values-based content they call it which is like one out of every 10 of their movies or tv shows is religious like it'll be like uh the jesus like game of thrones for the but the book underlying book is uh the new testament and it's like called the chosen are chosen something like that it's like a show about jesus and he said 200 million people have watched that show what um it's like it's like on amazon prime it's like one of the one of the most watched shows ever in the history of television is that show it's on seven it's on the seventh season and they helped produce the first three seasons of the show and it's like it's like on amazon prime it's like one of the one of the most watched shows ever in the history of television is that show it's on seven it's on the seventh season and they helped produce the first three seasons and they helped produce the first three seasons of the show and they helped produce the first three seasons of that but they make they make all kinds of movies and shows and their community is basically three million members who want content that's going to have no cursing no drinking no drugs um stuff like that and also just heroes like good good people doing good things are in the movie so like it can't be just like a dark film where like everybody's kind of bad right or like everybody's flawed and messed up and it's just a bunch of messed up people living together right like they're trying to avoid that type of content and so like for example they have one movie right now called the runner if you watch the trailer for it's owen wilson and um this guy alan whatever richardson something like that and basically the the premise of the thing is they're delivering a an organ donor like their organ donor uh van they're driving this this liver and suddenly like three cars like pull up in front of it and they have guns and they're like um how much does this liver go for in the black market they're like a million dollars and they're like oh we gotta get out of here dude i saw that
Speaker 1trailer last night in a movie and in my head i was thinking there's like 18 guys like trying to kidnap this this body part for only a million dollars It's crazy. Like, they did so much work.
Speaker 2What kind of margins is this operation running?
Speaker 1I just,
Speaker 2that doesn't seem
Speaker 1worth it, right? Like, in the movie, they're, like, blowing stuff up.
Speaker 2Have you seen the cost of ammunition lately?
Speaker 1They definitely spent more than a million to get, yeah, I saw that. To get the liver. But the, and so what about it?
Speaker 2Well, so, but this business is a juggernaut. They're doing 400 plus million dollars a year in ARR. What? 450 million in ARR. It's a public company. You can see their data. And the way they did it was they basically said, they had a worldview. In fact, the guy who started it, he's this epic marketer who did the marketing behind, like, Poo-Pourri and Squatty Potty. He was, like, one of these, like, really viral marketers. You know, like, Dollar Shave Club? Like, they would make videos like that.
Speaker 1Dude, there's, like, a whole, like, Mormon cabal of these, like, really good. You know, marketers up there in Salt Lake. And they, all those companies that I think you named are either Mormon-based or, like, some affiliation. And they're really good at marketing.
Speaker 2So, this guy's a Latter-day Saint. And, you know, so what he did was he was, like, tired of looking at, like, YouTube videos where, you know, your kids, you never know what you're going to get when your kids click on YouTube. Like, they can get to, they're two clicks away from watching somebody, like, you know, smoke meth. And so, he's, like, you know, that's not great. So, he created this, like, filter. And, like, the project didn't even start as a real business. He literally just. He literally just took a movie. I think it was, like, Cinderella Man. It would wipe out all of the cursing, the sex scenes, the drug scenes. But it would leave the rest of the movie. And so, he's, like, you know, the gluten-free movie, basically. Yeah. And so, he creates this filter. And he publishes it. He publishes the movie. And immediately gets sued. And he ends up having to, like, pay $10 million in a lawsuit somewhere along the way. But this tool and these movies started attracting a lot of people. So, like. 100,000 people eventually wanted, like, the service. They then started doing this thing where, like, you would go rent. Like, technically, you would rent the DVD for a dollar. And then that gave his group the, like, permission to, like, wipe out all the scenes. And then give you the streaming version of it or something like that. Like, created this whole loophole to try to make this business work. And finally said, all right, I'm tired of getting, like, sued by the movie industry. Because they don't like that we're doing this. Why don't we just make our own movies? And our own TV shows. That just have, like, out of the box are clean. You know, better for you. Did he raise funding? Yeah, they raised some money. But, like, it's amazing that they've, you know, they've reached this incredible scale. And it's really only, like, you know, it's like 2 or 3 million people. It's not like that many people. But 2 or 3 million people each who pay, you know, 13 to 20 bucks a month for this streaming service. You know, just like you're paying for Peacock and Paramount and, you know, whatever tier 2, tier 3 streamer service that you. You subscribe to. And then the members vote on the content. So, basically, they'll take a movie that's already made. And they'll show the trailer. Or they'll show, like, a snippet of the movie to the 2 million members. And the members vote. And if 70%, if less than 70% green light it, the deal's dead no matter what. But if more than 70% say yes, then the movie, like, kind of gets picked up by them. And it's going to go into their marketing pipeline and whatnot. And they have, like, a higher average, like. Rotten Tomatoes and hit rate than, you know, all the popular studios. How did you meet this guy? Ben met him somewhere at a barbecue or something like that. And Ben knows that I've been, you know, curious about the movie and TV industry and making a movie. And he said, you know, you should talk to this guy. He's done it. You know, he went from no experience in the movie business to now doing almost half a billion dollars a year in revenue for their movie. Kind of their, like, values-based A24, right?
Speaker 1Like. Do you know anything. I saw a movie last night. I went and saw the Chris Hansen movie. You know what that is? Catch a Predator? Yeah. He's got a movie? It's about him that he doesn't like.
Speaker 2Wait, didn't he get canceled also or something, though?
Speaker 1I think he was cheating on his wife. I don't think he was a predator. I don't think he was breaking the law, but I think he was doing not good stuff. That's part of the movie is that he was. While he was doing this, he wasn't, like, a good husband, basically. And it's called Prime Time. It was pretty great. And it's got Robert Pattinson. It was awesome. It's an A24 movie. And every great trailer leading up to the movie was A24. I don't really know anything about A24 other than Scott Belsky, who I have a man crush on, was a tech guy, is now working there. Do you know anything about A24?
Speaker 2Well, what do you want to know? I know some things about A24, but I'm not an expert.
Speaker 1How does someone start a studio? Like, because it seems like they came out of nowhere. It seemed like there was a startup at first. And if I remember correctly, their movies early on were kind of dumb or artsy. Like, they weren't, like. Mainstream movies. But now it seems like everything they do, I want to see it.
Speaker 2Well, one of my business theories is that a great way to think of a business idea is to find the reaction to the action. Like, for example, when Facebook was in its absolute prime and everyone was using Facebook. Facebook created this world where all your photos would be public and they would be permanent. You'd post them on your profile, your timeline, your history. Everyone could see them. And so that became the action. And the reaction became. From Snapchat. Photos you could send that would self-destruct in 10 seconds. And it's actually that the popularity of one creates the need for the other. And you see this a lot of times, right? So, as, you know, we talked about GLP-1s. As food calories become abundant, you know, you have DoorDash and you have fast food and you have all these, you know, the way that the food industry went. Well, then there became a higher, a greater need for the reaction. And this happens over and over and over again. You see this right now with, like. Like screen time limiting apps and Brick and things like that. Like things that are getting quite popular that are really just like a reaction to kind of the current norm. And so A24 was also a reaction to the action in a way where the movie studios and the people in Hollywood really started to become extremely conservative and predictable in the movies that they would fund. Because why would you fund an unproven screenplay by this. You know, cool hipster who's drinking matcha when you could just go do Spider-Man 7. You know, like, why not? Why not just do Spider-Man again? And so they kept gravitating towards what they call these, like, four-quadrant movies. I don't know if you've seen, like, the quadrants. Have you ever heard this before? No, what are they? It's like males under 30, females under 30, males over 30, females over 30. It's whatever. A simplified version of that. But it's basically the big short. Like, if both of us said, like, yo, do you like the big shorts? I love the big short. Well, we love the big short because we're in one of those quadrants and it hits for us. But guess who it doesn't hit for? It doesn't hit for, like, women over 40 in the same way as it does for, you know, men in their kind of 20 to 40s. And so the highest kind of potential for a film is something that satisfies all four quadrants. You know, Harry Potter right now. It's like if you go, you know, the new HBO series for Harry Potter, they'll put a billion dollars into this because they know that millennials who read it growing up are now 30, 40, 50. You know, 50 years old, they like it, but so do kids still. And so you're going to get this huge demographic. The TAM is really large. And so what happened was studios became quite risk averse and they started gravitating towards sequels, superhero films, and other things. That created an opportunity for folks like A24 who could go pick up at pretty low cost and pretty uncompetitively all the other films that were being ignored. What are the great films that are being ignored right now? And so what they found. What they found was that these independent directors were creating really interesting things that could be produced on a fairly low budget, had pretty low expectations because there was not a lot of demand in Hollywood for their product. And so they started creating cool, edgy, they're making stuff nobody else was making. So they were like differentiated out of the box.
Speaker 1Do you remember the early movies? It looks like it was like the movie The Room, which I saw. It was pretty awesome. I don't know some of the other earlier.
Speaker 2So do you know, and I'm sure by the way, this is like a extreme oversimplification and somebody who like lives in the movie business is probably like yelling at their phone right now being like what that's not it. That's not the whole story. You're forgetting a B and C and I'm sure there's a B and C and they did a bunch of things. Well, you know, they they branded their studio. Well, they have limited edition merch. They figured out a different form of marketing. So like the Timothee Chalamet, like where he leaked his movie trailer instead of saying this this summer coming to it. To a movie theater near you, this guy, this guy in the hottest film of the year. It was like a zoom recording, like a meeting that got accidentally leaked that had a file name that sounded like a real thing. And it was like an hour long and it was this weird thing that they were doing, you know, that sort of stuff. For example, the guy yesterday was saying they have a movie with Kevin James, you know, like King and Queens, Kevin, Kevin James. And they were like, he was like to market that movie. Kevin James was like, hey, you know, the character in this, he's like this painter. Just like teacher who's like a painter. So let's just create an Instagram account where I'm a teacher and a painter. We don't even mention. And people are gonna be like, isn't that Kevin James? But then people will be like, is that just like a Kevin James lookalike? This guy says he lives here and he's just painting every day. And he doesn't, what, what's going on? Let's just do weird shit like that. And then they sent him to the Superbowl and they bought 12 seats and they left, you know, 10 of them empty. And he sat, you know, 11 of them empty. He sat in the middle of the Superbowl with, with empty seats on either side. He was wearing a tuxedo and he's holding flowers. Cause that's like a famous scene from the movie. And they didn't even explain what was going on. And suddenly, but they, paid for other influencers to be in the same section because they knew those influencers would be like, dude, that's Kevin James. And why are all those empty seats? Why is he wearing a tuxedo? And why is he holding flowers? They put out their story and it created intrigue and people started wondering what the hell's going on. And then the movie comes out and it does really well because they can like do this guerrilla marketing that the traditional studios don't really understand or don't have the like DNA to go do. I think A24 and some of the upstarts have figured out that because make it like, when you think about the cost of making a movie, it's pretty mind blowing. So he was talking about a movie they made and he goes, yeah, it costs 14 million to make. Okay. How much do you spend on marketing? 40. So 14 million to make and 40 on marketing.
Speaker 1Whoa. So the 14 million, does that include the actor's salary? Everything. Yeah. Full production costs. So it's $54 million all in for this.
Speaker 2All in. So, so, but, but this is very common. I was talking to a friend who made a movie and I was like, it'd been three or four years since he had first told me about the idea to when it came out. And I was like, damn, that's takes forever. But I guess that's just the creative process. And he's like, do you know how long filming takes for a movie? I was like, no, he goes 30 days, 37 days for us. I was like, you shot the whole thing in 37 days. He goes, yep. End to end 37 days. And that's complete. I was like, was that fast? He goes, no, that's normal. 30 days. That's how long it normally takes to shoot these things. Is that for a normal movie?
Speaker 1A normal movie can only take 30 or 60 or 90 days.
Speaker 2The actual shooting of the filming of the movie.
Speaker 1Wow. I didn't have no idea.
Speaker 2So you spend time like writing, getting it funded. That could take like years sometimes to get it, like it to get it to the, for day one of principal production. And then afterwards you have to do all the other like mixing, mastering, color correction, like all that stuff that could take time. The edit can take a lot of time. And then you have the marketing and distribution. So the whole thing takes years, but the making of the movie, like the, the actual, like, Hey, lights, camera, action, go say your lines. That thing's like 30 days, which is insane to me. Same thing with calls. Like, uh, I think the grand theft auto games, they would spend like a couple hundred million making the game, like years of development and engineering time and animation and all that stuff. But then they would spend equally like hundreds of millions on marketing. Uh, and like, uh, maybe not grand theft auto specifically, but video game for the video game industry is very common to do that. So for movies and video games, which are two of the kind of like biggest, you know, parts of the American economy, they spend more money on marketing than they do on actually making the product, which is some people would say it's kind of sad, but it's kind of crazy. Today's podcast is brought to you by my friends at Mercury. Uh, they make the world's best banking product. I think, you know, this already, I use Mercury for all of my businesses. I think I have like maybe seven or eight businesses. We use Mercury as our business banking across all of them. And now they actually just launched a personal banking account. So I have my personal account there. I moved off of Wells Fargo and chase. I'm just all in on Mercury. Why? Uh, I like products that are easy to use. I like products that get me and the problems that I have. So like very easy to make a joint account with my wife, very easy to spin up virtual cards, uh, one click and I get savings yield. It just has all the stuff that I need in one place. So if you're looking for the best banking product on the market, it's definitely Mercury. I will fist fight anybody who disagrees with me on that. Go to mercury.com slash personal and learn more. Mercury is a FinTech, not an FDIC insured bank. Banking services are provided through choice financial group and column and a members FDIC.
Speaker 1So if you're looking
Speaker 2for the best banking product on the market, go to mercury.com slash personal and learn more. So your biggest hit in like a hits driven business where you can have lots of flops.
Speaker 1Yeah, that profit needs to cover six flops.
Speaker 2Is like a two point something X return.
Speaker 1But that's the same way with all creative businesses. That's the case. So for example, Mark Manson, when he came on two or three years ago, he either said this on the podcast or when I was hanging out with him. His book for, I think it was Penguin, sold 20 million copies. And he was telling me. He was like, yeah, like my mom and dad, like they always kind of gave me a hard time because I was, they thought I was just kind of playing on the computer because I was blogging. And then it turned into a book deal and all this stuff. And I was like, well, when did they start taking you seriously? He was like, well, Penguin put out their annual, I think it was Penguin. I could be getting it wrong. They put out their annual report because they're owned by News Corp. And he was like, they said that I outsold Hillary Clinton. And I was, and I helped like make the whole company profitable that year. And he like was, and I was like, wait. so you were the reason the company was profitable. And basically with a lot of these publishing businesses, whether it's games or it's movies, it's like one or two things, it drives everything. And the rest is like, hopefully it doesn't fail.
Speaker 2That's normal. What was surprising to me was that the one or two things that hit really big, your biggest hit, I would have just expected to be much more than like a two and a half X return. I would have thought it's like, in his case, like a book. Yes, you're right. Most books fail. Sure. But when a book hits, like the subtle art hit and you sell 10, 20 million copies, well, that book costs almost nothing to print. And so they're printing money when it hits. And that's what I was surprised at. You know, like in startup investing, like you get a 50 X, a hundred X, a 200 X, a thousand X return when you hit. And I was surprised that the movie business isn't like that. Or at least my layman's understanding from a few of his, a few of his examples and looking at their business.
Speaker 1Yeah. And it doesn't seem like it's a fun business to be in right now.
Speaker 2And I think he explained why, by the way, he goes, have you ever met a billionaire who doesn't want to make a movie? I haven't. And he said like, there are every year, let's say a thousand films get made far less than that get distributed. So most, even of the films that get made, not just the films that get pitched and, and written like screenplays and stuff like that.
Speaker 1But I think there's some tax advantages there. I get pitched this all the time and I never like, I get these emails and I never like, actually seriously read them. But isn't there something where if you fund a movie, there's some type of like, you can depreciate something weird.
Speaker 2But it's, it's not that good. Like you can, it's a, you can write it off, but it has to be, it has, the thing has to go into production. So it's not like you could just like say you're doing it and like get it. You have to actually spend the money. The money has to go into the project and the project has to actually go get, start, you know, day one of production. They changed the rules on this. And so it has to actually get, get made. And if there's no return, well, yeah, you might've saved money in taxes, but you lost your entire principal. You know what I mean? Like if you have a million dollars in, maybe you get a 300K write-off, but you might lose your million dollars. You'll probably lose your million dollars.
Speaker 1I didn't think it was going to take the entire episode to give a shout out to Grindr by the way. They listened to the, so we had the, are you
Speaker 2wearing a Grindr vest?
Speaker 1Dude, they listened to the episode that we had with the, or the, the former owners of Grindr. Great episode. It, in terms of YouTube, wonderful episode with Rick Marini, when we talked about Grindr and how they like turned the business around, they decided to send me some merch and it's kind of the least gay merch ever. It's, it's an arcteric vest. Like I wanted something a little bit more like with
Speaker 2some pizzazz. Like a scarf?
Speaker 1Yeah, I don't know. Like something like this is, this is way too straight for me. I wanted something a little bit more gay. I thought it'd be more enjoyable, I appreciate the love Grindr. I just wish that, uh, you'd lean in a little bit.
Speaker 2Grindr, where's my puffy vest? This is a hot collab.
Speaker 1Grindr, MFM. Well, that's it. That's the pod.
Speaker 2All right, let's take a quick break. I want to tell you about Marketing School. It is a podcast that is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network, and it is a podcast that is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network. And it is a podcast that is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network, and it is a podcast that is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network, and it is a podcast that is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network, and it is a podcast that is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network, and it is a podcast that is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network, and it is run by Neil Patel and Eric Hsu. And these guys are both marketers who are running businesses. And so if you want real world tactics from practitioners who are actually out there in the field doing it, this is the podcast for you. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts.
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