We found 7 business ideas that will blow up in 2026

All right, Sam, I got a question for you. Have you ever dated anyone who's a little crazy? Come here, side and crazy, could be bad crazy. There is a difference between good crazy and bad crazy. - Yeah, there's a thin line. - So I have five to seven ideas for you that I want you to help me figure out are the good crazier bad crazy. ♪ I feel like I could rule the world ♪ ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪ ♪ I put my all in it like no days ♪ ♪ All for the road ♪ - I tell you what, it just happened to me. - Please, yeah. - Okay, so obviously we're superstars. It would be a content. So I just had my quote editorial meeting where we talk about like cool stuff we want to talk about on Instagram or whatever. And previously I told them how I'm reading a book about Ted Bundy because I'm a sicko and I like reading stories of crime and stuff. And he brings me a series of tweets on things that I've learned from Ted Bundy. (laughing) And I was like, are you kidding me? I'm not tweeting out things that I've learned about business from Ted Bundy. (laughing) This is the nonsense that superstar creators still have to deal with. We're just like, we're just like the average show. - Not as easy as it looks. - Oh my God, it was ridiculous. I was like, are you kidding me? It's like, Ted Bundy didn't leave any fingerprints for the first 14 murders. Therefore, you should learn how to pay attention to the details and plan ahead. (laughing) - Oh my God. (laughing) - In mission driven. - Yes. - The Unabomber. - The case study. (laughing) - The story of an obsession. (laughing) All right, what do you got? You have something for me? - All right, Sam, I got a question for you. - Could be, side and crazy, could be bad crazy. There is a difference between good, crazy and bad crazy. And arguably they would say that about me, that I was the crazy one, but yes. - Oh, you were the crazy one. - Yeah. - But yeah, I've dated some people there off the rocker. - Okay, so today I have ideas for you that I wanna know are they good, crazy or bad, crazy? These are startup ideas that exist, that some people are doing. And in business, it's this weird thing because if your idea is too normal, too understandable, too expected, you actually have no shot. - Yeah. - So if you say it's an idea and everybody in the room nods, if 100% of the room nods and says that's a good idea, run away, you're about to waste three years of your life. You need some people to think, this is the worst idea, this is the craziest. Who would do that? Who would just let strangers sleep on their couch? Who would let strangers into their car? You're just gonna let some random guy drive you to your destination? All the great ideas sound a little crazy up front. And so you just have to differentiate the fine line between good, crazy and bad crazy. So I have, I think five to seven ideas for you that I want you to help me figure out are they good, crazy or bad, crazy? - We have a little bit of a rule in this podcast. So we try to default to optimism and being happy about the people we talk about. And so for anyone moving forward who we insult for this segment, we are actually complimenting you because as you've just said, the worst idea, the better the company it might be. That's like my apology that I'm gonna say right now, and I'm not gonna say sorry. - We say it's a good idea. That's a compliment. And if you say it's a crazy idea. - Also a compliment. - Yes. - Yes, very advanced. All right, first idea I wanna do is called pet chat. I don't know if you saw this, but go on viral right now. Chinese startup that has, it's a dog collar that uses AI to translate your pets, barks. - Dude, the, the, the, it's a white family with a golden retriever with a white picket fence. Why on earth would you think this is a Chinese company? - It has like Chinese vibes, the whole video. You know what I mean? Like, I lived in China and they used to have this phrase, and QR and they're like, yeah, we have KFC here, but it's NQR. I said what's NQR mean? - Not quite right. - Yeah. - And it's like, it's KFC, but it's not gonna taste exactly like KFC you're used to. - Same, same, but different. And so this promo this launch video was a little NQR of like, I don't think this was made in San Francisco. - Long length. (laughing) - With 95% accuracy they claim, they can tell you what your pet wants. Awesome. Okay, good crazy, bad crazy. More like amazing stupid. (laughing) - It's a group of games right away. (laughing) - Good crazy or bad crazy. I would say it's pretty interesting. That's actually great. This is great, good crazy. - Okay, you're into it. I hear a dog guy, so I do, I do, there's a part of you that would be like, oh my God, that's ridiculous. But if it were, I'd like to, you know what I mean? Like, it's kind of in that category. Now the problem is, it's like all pet products that we've talked about on this podcast. What's the my first million rule about pet products? Who knows? Who knows? And it's the best aspect of a pet business. - Yeah. - Is the who knows that factor? Is there gut health better? Who knows? Is it making them calmer and happier? Who knows? So pet supplements work this way. And for this, the 95% accuracy, everybody in the comments is like, how are you verifying? What is that checked against? Nobody knows what they want. So what are you claiming? - A lot of dog, I mean, I had a great dog for 15 years and I could tell what each bark meant. Like if I heard him, like, and I was in the other room, I'd be like, all right, someone's at the front door based off of that. Or now he's got to go to the bathroom. Or now he just wants me to come and give him attention. Like I could be like, here, I could tell what each man. - 100%. There's like the, the, the, I just water, there's water, versus food. - You very clear to me. - Yeah. - There's, hey, I got a poop and it's your problem unless you do something about this right now. (laughing) There's different, different barks. And so I think I put it in bad, crazy, just because, I think dog owners know they're dog's barks. It's not that hard to figure out. All right, the next one. Also we're gonna stay in China for this one. It's called Super Brain. (upbeat music) Hey, I wanna tell you about something pretty cool. We have a database of all of the unsexy business ideas that have been discussed on this podcast. So hundreds of episodes, the team at HubSpot went through, they pulled out all the unsexy ideas. So not the super high tech ones, but 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. What you're gonna see is a person holding up what looks like, almost like a baseball card or like a tomogotchi of some sorts, but it's grandma or grandpa. So basically it's a way to memorialize and stay connected to loved ones for the past a way. You upload their video and audio recordings and their personality and then you can chat with them in your hand anytime you miss them. - That's messed up, man. That would break my heart. - Okay, so you're out on this one. - Yes, I want it, but if it's for a grandpa who I knew was gonna die, it would make me cry all the time. But I think it's awesome. (laughing) I've got to get picked aside on any idea so far. Just to, let me just say something really quick. They call it super brain. I've noticed, so I live in Manhattan and my office is in this Chinese area and I've noticed, like, can you read this? - I cannot, what does it say? - Okay, it's an electronic store that just says like Air Mart USA Incorporated. I then like down the street from that, it's like American cowboy ink and they sell like iPhone chargers. I then like a block away from that. It's like, you know, like USA Number One. - Yeah. (laughing) - I love that. I love when these immigrants come over here and they're not exactly sure, like the best way to phrase things and they're like, what's the most American thing we could think of? Like, that's my favorite thing on earth. I love those stores. I always patronize them. I love them. - It's the Thai food near me. - Yes, yes. - Or like, - Maybe you restaurant Thai food near me so it shows up at the top of your Google Maps or Google search. - Yeah, like triple A locksmith. - I'm in. So I love that. And so that's so funny, they call this super brain because that could just be anything. When I started super brain, I thought something else. But yeah, that's pretty amazing. It breaks my heart, but that's amazing. I would say, good crazy. - Yeah, have you seen the, you're not watching the NBA playoffs, dog? - I watch, I watch in the nicks, partially because I like seeing the celebrities on sitting like who's sitting on the floor, but also Jalen Brunson is pretty cool. - So Sam, the version of triple A locksmith that you'll appreciate. So these two women were going viral because every time they would show the coach of the spurs, behind the coach of the spurs was two. - Ladies are big boobs. - Two endowed women. - Yeah. - That's so, they were there from one game and people were like, oh wow, you know, hey, I'd love to get more coach reaction shots. And then they were there again the next time and they were like, what's going on here? Turns out, these are two girls, two only fans creators who had the genius marketing idea of splurging for strategic tickets where they knew the TV camera will show them. Literally only from the between the neck and the belly button. And they're perfectly positioned right behind the coach. So every time they show the coach to show these girls and they're Instagram and their only fans is popping off right now. And I was like, wow, this is the modern day triple A locksmith. How do you show first in the illipages as you call yourself AA locksmith? This is that. And I was like, honestly women, I, you know, ladies, I respect the hustle. This is an incredible marketing move. I do appreciate it. That was pretty brilliant how he started with a super brain and then went to triple A locksmith and you weave that in. If you talked to me for long enough, that is where I end up. It's just a question of 10 minutes or 10 hours. The conversation will land there. All right, ready for the next one? This is kind of up your alley. You're a health and fitness. And I would say early adopter, arguable influencer, but have you seen the trend of hyperburet chambers at home? Yes. So hyperbolic chambers are interesting. That looks ridiculous. That looks like a, that looks like awesome. It looks like where like, you know, you would be put to death. It looks like he's like an astronaut or something. Yeah. Hyperbolic chambers are interesting. So the reason I've known about him is I'm a huge running nerd and in the 60s, 70s and 80s and even till to this day, a lot of the US Olympic runners would go and move to Flagstaff for three or four or five months at a time because they would want to be at altitudes. And then people were like, what would happen if we let these guys sleep in a chamber that had less, I guess, less air or thinner air? I don't know the right terminology. And you would build, you would just be more efficient with oxygen and thus a better endurance athlete. And now a lot of people think that this for the average human is pretty cool. Is that the story? Yeah. So there's people are now trying to build like we've seen, uh, Saunas become something that used to be at a gym or at an external location. Now there's at Hope, Saunabrans that do hundreds of millions in revenue. We saw the same thing with the cold plunge. I think the plunge guys, you know, they sent us a home cold plunge tub. And you know, those, I forgot what they were doing, but you know, they were doing a hundred million just direct to consumer. No retail presence of people buying cold tubs for the home. And the prediction or the idea here is just like it happened for Saunas and cold tubs and red light, it's going to happen for hyperbolic chambers next. So there's a couple companies trying to do these at home hyperbolic chambers. What I liked about this one was the look was very different than the normal hyperbolic chamber and visually distinct. And I think the visual, just like how cold plunge and Saunas became something that you would share on Instagram, because it's like this weird like wellness flex or like discipline flex. I think hyperbolic chambers could have that same potential. What, what do you think? Good crazy or bad crazy? I keep saying good, but it's awesome. Do you know what? I think it's what it should be is have you ever traveled with your children and in a hotel room, you have to like share a room. And so there's these like dark tents. Like a blackout tent. A blackout tent. They're pretty awesome. So like you travel and you like can build like a crib, and it's really dark. So you could still like have the light on in your bedroom if you're kid has to sleep in your room. My opinion is if I was eight sleep or a sleep company, it needs to be a sleep company just needs to make like you know how like little girls have like these beds that have like like the princess can't be the princess can't be. Yeah. You need like a like a king can't be where it's like you know you go in and you sleep it with less air and you come out. That's that's what it should be. I don't know physics allows it to be like that because no it does. It's a pressurized air right? Yeah, you have to like actually I think one of the challenges with this is it's technically a medical device. So HBOT, which is I guess the hyperbolic whatever therapy is a medical device. You can't make claims without clearance or safety risk pressurized oxygen in an enclosed space. It's harder to make it sexy like a cold plunge, which is basically a tub of water. So I think that's the potential downside of this one, but could be something there. Also, don't you just need your head in it like match your whole body? So could you just do like a astronaut helmet? That'd be amazing. All right, next one. Number four, the blue collar meets nerd combination that you didn't expect. It's kind of like what's a food you didn't expect? Not the cronut. It's like the drill's local taco. What else? It's like what is the unexpected food combination that sounds gross, but it's actually great. This is that it's learning to be an HVAC technician by playing a game on the Oculus Quest that I've made. I don't know if you've seen this. So they they've created these created these Quest games that are like data center operations engineer and you're like playing like a flight simulator, but they're actually using it to train and hire people because they badly need more technicians for these jobs. Okay. And I think this is pretty interesting. What what what's that you about this? Look at this guy. Like tell me you wouldn't play this game. I don't play video games really, but I do love like war sims. No, I like like war sims and oddly enough, there's like a trucking sim, a trucking simulator that I find oddly relaxing, but I do like simulator, but I don't want to play with I don't want to do being an HVAC person. No. Look at this. I feel like I actually need this. It's not even a want. I think I might actually need this. You know what I used to do is I used to love buying old motorcycles and like taking them apart and like cleaning all the parts and putting them together. That was like a huge hobby I had. I love doing that college. I would definitely play a game where I had could do that, but I wouldn't want to do HVAC. So I think this is this is how tight is the bond when you made another person who loves motorcycles or taking them apart. It's sort of like when I see another mixed race couple. I just you get a nod. It's a nod. It's a nod. It's a nod. Yeah, straight to bird base. Yeah. That relation. It's like we know. Maybe intentional walk and then you get to go all the way around the bases actually. Whenever we used to see before I had kids, whenever I saw a mixed race couple with a with a shoulder, I had to stop myself because the first eight times I was like staring into the the shoulder so hard and I'm like, sorry, I'm just trying to see what your combination is going to look like. Just so I know what we're going to look at what my kids will look like. You have a pentane shade chart. I just want to see where you fall. And there was there's whole Instagram handles dedicated to that, like different combinations. Don't you think they need a better term for it than mixed race couple? I feel like you deserve a much cooler phrase for that. I call it my kids super babies. I'm like, no, they're super babies. They're they have a diverse team pool. Yeah, you'd like, I don't know, like what's the thing called when you do Froyo and it's like the black and white swirls. Swirls. You mean that. All right. Applahn MetaQuest are teaching blue collar trade skills like HVAC repair welding, plumbing, electrical through hands-on via simulation. You put on a headset. You practice diagnosing a broken AC unit and assembly and EV battery pack risk-free, repeatable and gamified. There's multiple players doing this like interplay learning in Austin, Texas. They're the leader. They have hundreds of hours of HVAC solar plumbing and electrical training. They can actually get you like certified as a technician or an associate just using Quest skill. Very does is for welding and painting simulations. There's a massive shortage 500,000 unfilled HVAC in plumbing jobs in the US alone and training is slow, expensive and dangerous to do on real equipment. I am a believer in this sampler. Good crazy. My buddy who owns an HVAC company, they have this thing called Hoffman University where they put new recruits in for months or weeks at a time. And so I'm a little bit familiar with what he was just telling me and I went and saw the facility where they have like the, they call it a university. It's just like a you know, two-month training program or whatever it is. It's pretty cool and there's a huge need for this. I didn't fully understand it until I saw his place. So yeah, it's pretty cool. I just don't want to play it as a game. Right. Right. But if you wanted the job, if I wanted the job or you want to hire people, this is brilliant. Number five, end point arena. You're going to need to, I'm going to put the glasses down and do the sort of nerdy push-up the glasses here because this one's a little high brow. It's combining two things that I only partially understand, prediction markets and biotech clinical trials. So I don't know if you've seen this. But these guys made a prediction market for clinical trials. So I don't know if you're familiar, but basically on the stock market, there's lots of drug companies, pharmaceutical companies that their trading is highly dependent on the outcomes of upcoming phase one, phase two, phase three, clinical trials. And there's a huge, there's a, I mean, my cousin used to work at a hedge fund. And the whole idea was like, if we can have a higher estimation of the probability of success of that trial, we know where the stock is going to move once that's confirmed. And so there's a huge incentive to understand the science and understand the actual true probability versus what the stock market is predicting. And so end point arena created a polymarket essentially just for betting on, you know, right now, luteum 177, roso, patatem, terrataxal, terratactyl, the metatastic pro-state cancer. So that, that's obviously what I'm pretty well versed in. And right now it's 33% yes, 67% no. And you can see how much is being bet on it. And you can actually either hedge positions by betting here in addition to the stock. You can use these, you know, prediction markets, which are typically higher accuracy than, then, you know, individual experts, because you get the wisdom of the crowds that have skin in the game. So it's very interesting to me. What do you, what do you think of this? What do you, what do you have to make of this? Super fascinating. How'd you find this? A guy tweeted this out. Interesting name. I think I love it. But you know why it's called end point arena is go to the top left of the website and tell me what you see, Sean. And point arena season five. That what you're looking at. Yes. It says season five, which leads me to believe are they trying to make it like a series? Like is it end point arena? Like this is the show. And the show is like, will this drug get approved or not? Yeah, I have no idea. This is amazing. So that's kind of fascinating, right? Okay, here. Let me just read you this article. One day in early May, a web based platform, call sheet tied to contracts to a upcoming psilocybin drug that could wager on when on when the company would submit the drug application for blah, blah, blah, and the FDA would approve it or not. These are event contracts, which is kind of the basis of all prediction markets. They're trying to speed up science and point arena CEO Michael Fisher, who is a PhD study of economics computer science at Stanford, became curious about the promise of prediction markets and he created an app around this. He said, I became very interested in the concept of experimentation and encouraging other people to think about in place bets on what they think is going to happen if they do certain experiments. He argues that clinical trial focused prediction markets can democratize keywords. That's a trick word for us. Yeah, do you say the word? Democardize the trial process and give participants motivation to become experts and improve experimentation. Blah, blah, blah. Okay, so the Y here is a little bit of a turn off. I don't think I think he said a lot of words, but he really was just saying we want to gamble. I think that's, I don't find that interesting. I wouldn't want to align this for prediction markets. And correct me. Is this like, is this you and me if we take opposite ends of the bet? Are we betting against each other? Are we buying stakes? So the way it works is there's a price for a yes contract. And every time somebody says yes on the yes contract, the price of yes will go up unless there's corresponding pressure on the nose side. So it's basically there's no, there's no bookie. There's no middleman who sets the price, the market sets the price, the yes is versus the nose. It's not directly like a stock market where I'm buying your shares necessarily, but I can buy, I can put money in at yes and more I do it. It'll skew the price up to incentivize people to take the other side of the action potentially. Let me just read you what he said. He made the bold claim that prediction markets could eventually provide scientific benefit. Here's a hypothetical example, a known GLP1 drug is being studied in a new indication. If somebody already taking therapy for the therapy for diabetes or obesity experience improvements related to the new condition being a value of the trial, they could use the first hand information to inform a prediction on the market. In theory, patterns that emerged through those predictions could provide early signals about a drug's potential and additional indications before the trial is released. So for example, one could do a more focused target of trial with fewer people. It's a way to speed up science and create a market where one is incentivized to move quickly and use fewer resources to get towards an outcome. I don't know if I fully understand it or buy it. I don't understand it. Therefore, I'm going to say this stupidly. I know I don't understand it. And I guess therefore, I know I don't buy it. This is, I can't decide. I think it's very interesting, but I would say bad crazy. Hey, let's take a quick break. You know that feeling when strategy is done, the brief is written, everyone's aligned and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content that someone is usually you and it's due tomorrow. Well, the breeze assistant from HubSpot can help. It works right inside HubSpot. You can draft campaign copy, blog posts, emails, all in your brand voice, all using your actual customer data. So you don't create just content. You create content that converts. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Number six, the Cleveland Schvitz. Great name. This is an interesting company. So check this out. It's a bathhouse plus a steakhouse. In Cleveland. This is actually the reboot of the office. All right. So a 98 year old Jewish bathhouse in Cleveland that combines Russian style steam, cold plunge and massages with giant tea-bone steaks and cocktails. You sweat, you plunge, you eat steak. It's a full social experience. Parts spa, parts day house, part private members club. Isn't this amazing? It's blowing up right now. Bars Tool called it the hottest reservation in the country this winter. $165 a person covers your drinks, your steams, your cold plunge and a full meal. Their phones are ringing off the hook with reservations at all hours. It's attracting millennials and Gen Z who are discovering it through social media. They recently opened ladies days and co-ed days after being male only for decades. A group, you know, for example, a group of six friends could book a Saturday at the Schfitz, the alternate between the steam and cold for a couple hours, get massages, then sit down for steaks and cocktails. It's the new going out. It replaces the bar restaurant spa or nightclub for an outing. I'm in. That's awesome. It's not even crazy. This is just downright spectacular. Have you heard of this company called the other ship? I'm an investor in other ship. I love other ship. So I went to my first other ship session. So basically the best way to describe it is for somebody who doesn't know. So the one liner that I would describe it is it's Soul Cycle for sauna. And so in Manhattan where I live, it's all like young. It's like a combination of hippie-dippy but also like yuppie-tech people. It's quite fun. And you go for an hour long or maybe 45 minute long session and there's cold plunges. And then there's a huge sauna where you're in, you're like basically, you know, naked with like 50 people in the sauna. And then there's like a leader who's doing breath work and is like moving the towel to get like the eucalyptus flavoring in your face. And it calms you down in a weird way. I'm not doing it justice but it's actually quite awesome. And there's loud music going on. Again, I'm not doing it justice. But for some reason you do get in this little strange trance where it is hot in there. You have a certain smell. You hear noises. You feel the wind going against you. It's quite cool. And they even have like single nights where you can like go and like, everyone there is single. And it's pretty awesome. I'm actually, I thought it was amazing. I went one time and then my wife and I like, we'll go on like our date night and you can go at like 9 p.m. That's amazing. Yeah. I'm so jealous. I haven't gone. They opened up New York. I think they opened up one more location somewhere. They got a bunch in the works. I really want one to be out here in the Bay area. I'm not much better at this. It's a good business. It's a great business. And I think the hard part is his, he didn't try to make like the subway sandwiches of like locations where it's just like this very simple box. No, this is high end. This is like high end everything. And it's like he wanted to make what I think he successfully made, which is the most epic kind of sauna breathwork experience that's probably ever been made as like a place you can go. And so I saw Dana White, the president of the UFC, did one. He went to one. He didn't know anything about it. He went to one. He's like, standing out. I don't know what like this is the most amazing place I've ever been to. He's like, if you're in New York, you need to go to this place. This place is incredible. And he grabbed this like, he went live on Instagram because he was just so hyped from what he's like, that was amazing. And so I'm pretty jealous. I really want to go check it out. I'm a big believer in breathwork. I've been using the other ship. Yeah, you've been talking about breathwork for like six years now. Yeah, I think they're kind of deprioritizing the app. But even better than the app is like, people don't really use or know about this phrase. But state is going to become a very important word over the next 10 years. Managing your state, being in a great state, state of mind, but really it's just how you feel, how you experience the things you experience. So if you are in a bad mood, you can go to a good thing and have a bad time. If you're in a great mood, you can, like I've told the DMV story before, you can go to the DMV and have a great time. And I think most people are pretty poor about managing or controlling their state. And the easiest way to manage a control state is not to think your way there, but to use the body. The body can drag the mind. And so going into hot, cold, breath and music and you can, and certain odors, like you know, you can literally change your state. And I think that's going to become very addicting to people. I think people are going to love what they're getting out of that. And it's very similar to why SoulCycle and Barry's bootcamp work. It's not because it's the best workout. In fact, you could argue in many ways, CrossFit, Barry's SoulCycle are not ideal workouts. You're not great for strength training. You're not getting people's form is all over the place. But you go, you're in a dark room with a bunch of other people. It's a communal experience. The music is pumping. There's the leader who makes this. So you don't have to think you feel a sweat. You're doing hot yoga. You know, you get the temperature thing. You change states. And I think that's what people go truly for, not the fitness layer. It's kind of becoming a recurring joke that everything comes back to like when we were 14 and 15 years old reading books on pickup artists and how to meet girls. And one of the first things that they try to teach you is you have to go into like a session to meet a girl. If you go to a bar and you're like, I want to meet a girlfriend or whatever, you have to change your state. And you have to be in a positive state. And then what they try to teach you is when you meet someone, how to bring them into your state. And so that's pretty funny that you predict that state's the new word. The word generative is out. State is in. State's going to be in. I think it's going to be in. So I think this is awesome. I think it's. Cleveland Schmitts. We love it. I wish it wasn't in Cleveland though. But I do like this. That's a horrible name. Cleveland Schitts. Schitts. Schitts? Yeah. It just sounds like there's a lot of bacteria there. Like when I think of that word, I think of like the steam is coming from like a sewer. That's the Oakland Schitts. All right. Number seven. The Funday Press. Have you seen this? No. All right. So imagine a newspaper like the Sunday press, but it's the Funday press. It's a newspaper that has none of the news that just makes you depressed. It's only the fun games and comics. So this is made by a guy that we met who is like a pretty prolific board game designer. It's that guy right there on the left. And he's made a bunch of like, I think he made, is it cards against humanity? He made like one of the big games like that's like one of the best sellers in the world. So he has a very creative guy. I went, I did a call with him and behind him like his backdrop was not like a library of books. It was a library of only board games. But thousands of different board games that you've never heard of and this guy's like a game designer. And so he created this actual physical newspaper that gets delivered to you. That's got like crosswords and sedocuz and like just the fun parts and none of the depressing heady stuff that comes in normal news. What's are you amazing? I'm so into this. I think this is awesome. Do you remember highlights magazine? No. What is that? Is that like the city? Is that cool stuff in the city? Is that what that is? No. So if you Google highlights, I assume this is for kids, right? No, this is for adults. Oh, this is not. It looked like it was telling you like cool. It's kind of like the Lego kits for adults and like, you know, like what do we call it adulting? Cudalting is the trend. It's like a multi-billion dollar industry of like giving adults things that feel like their childhood that will help de-stress them. I think that's a horrible word because that just makes me want to punch myself if I say I'm a adult. It's like when people say like you're the name police today. It's like when people say like they're adulting because they scheduled their first doctor's appointment. My reply to that is what you've heard. - It's like four, it wasn't on your bingo card. - It's like, yeah, it's like, dude, you're 22, okay? If this was 1946, you'd have eight confirmed kills in the South Pacific. Like, don't tell me that you're adulting by scheduling a doctor's appointment, okay? Be a man and just call and give the doctor's appointment. I don't need-- - I'm very scot-gallowed of you, 'cause those, those, tight, I like that. - I just think it's ridiculous. I think that adulting is stupid. That said, the fun day press. - You literally do this, by the way. - Collect many foods out of LOL dolls, and you do buy elaborate LEGO sets that you do like for nights on end. - I'm not gonna hashtag it though, but I will talk about it on a podcast in front of millions of people. So it's different. - This is pretty interesting. Yeah, so highlights magazine was, I thought those were kids. So highlights magazines, like what I grew up like reading as a kid. So I thought this was gonna be comparable. But this is pretty interesting. Does it sell? Do people buy it? - Yeah, I think it's kind of new, but okay, here's the, here's what it says. It's an early-stage indie project. There's a competitor called the Sunday Club that runs the exact same model. All games, no news. Also, the New York Times games only product. So no news from the New York Times has a million paying subscribers at $5 a month, $60 million an ARR. So this is basically the physical printed out version of that idea. - Yeah, I think it's pretty awesome. Let me show you something kind of interesting. I've been really interested in physical newsletters. And this is sort of tangential to it. But I read this article in the Wall Street Journal, how there's this crossing, the headline is, "The crossing guard "making $14,000 a month mailing out her musings from her job." And so it's this woman named Christine and she has a monthly physical newsletter where she just writes about things that she's experiencing as a crossing guard. And it's just entertainment. It's just silly, it's cool. And she posts, she's like, how to forget how she shared this out. But I don't think she had a very big audience. And now she has tens of thousands dollars a month where the people paying money to get this physical newsletter. And I think I said this two years ago actually that I think that like these, I wouldn't call it a magazine, but I would literally call it a physical newsletter, the janky or the better. Like if it looks like it's on printed paper that's stapled together in a Manila folder, I think that you can make some really cool products that way. And I think that people are gonna continue to be drawn to quirky things like this. And the "Funday Press" is one of those that fits that category. - Right, well, I appreciate you playing my game. - Crazy, crazy good or crazy bad. - Do you want me to tell you something that's similar to this that you can, I'll give you two more ideas that are actually quite similar to this last one that you can kind of, you can judge. - Today's podcast is brought to you by my friends at Mercury. 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, I like products that are easy to use. I like products that get me and the problems that I have. So like, it's really easy to make a joint account with my wife. Very easy to spin up virtual cards. 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/personal and learn more. Mercury is a Fintech, not an FDIC. I see you insured bank. Banking services are provided through choice financial group and call them NA members FDIC. (upbeat music) - All right, so I bought this thing called. I guess it's, I don't know what the noun that they would describe it, but it's a dumb phone, but go to dumb.co. - Bookmarked. - All right, dumb.co. Hello from the flip side. - Okay, so check this out. It's a flip phone. So I have this flip phone. It's just a TCL phone. It's $25 and then $20 a month after that. And what they've done is they've created an app that I have on my phone. And it's basically, I believe this phone is its own phone, but reality is, is that it's more like a forwarding phone. So if you call my phone, I can turn my phone in, I can turn my iPhone in dumb mode or smart mode. If it's in dumb mode, that basically means I can't receive calls and all the calls are gonna go to here. And all the texts are gonna go to here. And replying to a text message on here is a huge pain in the ass because it's like the Nokia, you know, where you have to like, to get the letter C, you gotta click it three times. - Three times, yeah, yeah. - And so it's pretty cool, but here's why I think this is particularly interesting. And so when you order it, they have this documentation. They give you a pamphlet on like how to set it up. And their branding is quite good. So like if you go to their website, click where it says, I think month free of phone. And so there's not any articles written about this company. And so they actually have a customer service number. I just called the customer service this morning and I was like, what's the story of this company? Tell me everything. And I could tell, I was talking to the CTO. I could tell it was like a three or four person company because I could hear people in the background and I was literally calling his phone 'cause I could like FaceTime him. I could tell. Basically the background is it's a guy who previously had a company. He's sold it. He's self-funding this company. They have four full time employees according to the person I called this morning. And it started because he hosted like a friend's challenge where it was one month without a phone. And they found that one month without a phone wasn't particularly feasible. And so he's an entrepreneur. And so he created this app that helped you turn a $25 TCL phone, which is what this is, into a forwarding device where you can sort of like replace your iPhone at least for parts of the day. And it's quite interesting. And their branding is really cool. If you go to the website, everything is like very like old school-y and but fun. And there's like pull-or-y pictures. And I have a feeling that this is going to take off. I don't know if this company is going to work, but I think it potentially could. The reason I think that is if you go to, there's a subreddit called dumb phones that I've been a subscriber to for a while now. And it's been taking off. I think it has 200,000 subscribers on it. And I've been noticing that it's definitely been growing. It's definitely been growing a lot. And it's quite fascinating. And I looked up a bunch of different reviews for a variety of phones. And I settled on this one. And I went and looked and CNN recently did the best ad campaign ever for this company. So basically they took one of their presenters and they had them do a brain scam where they measured his short-term memory. So they had them read something and they were able to, I don't know how the science works, but they were able to look at how focused were you when you were reading something, how much did you remember in a few other tests. Then they gave them this phone, this brand, how I found it, they gave them this phone for two weeks and then they had them redo the test. And his capacity to focus and his capacity to remember went up significantly. And I saw that and I was like, "That's the greatest ad I've ever seen. This is perfect." Plus you do these one month challenges where you buy the phone and it's only $20 and it's $20 or $25 a month after that to subscribe and get their service. I think it's really cool. I think this could take off. And the company I believe is only four months old. - Have you been using it? - I just got it this morning. I just got it this morning. And so I'm gonna test it out. I can give like an update, but I think it's really promising. And I noticed that when I walked out into my office and showed it to my team, I was like, "Check this out." Everyone was like clamoring. They were like, "What is that? Let me see that." And I think it's really fascinating. - I mean, the problem is the problem is so real. Total agreement on the problem. And then the question is, "Which of these solutions is gonna be the one?" Like you've told me about brick before. How you brick your phone? You've told me about the dumb phone. And there's other people, oh, you know, George Mack has two phones. One's a smartphone, one's a dumb phone. Like, you know, people have these like different systems. I'm really curious what the right solution is gonna be. But the problem is cargantuan because everybody's got the phone and everybody who has a phone is addicted to the phone. I really don't know anybody who's not addicted to their phone. So, you know, just in my life, I don't know. Of all the people I know, it seems like there's a 95 to 98% addiction rate. And the question is, what's gonna be the nicotine patch for that? What's gonna be the AA for that? How are people gonna get off this addiction? Is there gonna be a solution that some percentage of people gravitate towards? My opinion is that to all the big companies out there, this appears to be a very niche silly thing. My prediction is that in 10 years, this will not be. I do not think Apple came out with this. If Apple came out with a version of this, I think they could sell a billion of these things. Well, you know that they're like, if you Google Apple flip phone, like there's, they're working on it. They're working on it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think it's rumors. I think they've announced it, but there's for sure rumors. iPhone fold is what it's gonna be called. I don't know if it's another screen. I don't know what it is, but they're calling it like a flip phone. So I guess there's all these, and it's not important exactly what it is, but there's all these bread crumbs out there that I'm seeing that's pointing to, this is actually gonna be a mega trend and not just a niche thing. And I can give you another really cool example. Have you heard of this lady named Kat GPT? Okay, look her up. That's her Instagram handle. Okay, so this lady started getting popular on Instagram. I think she has four, 600,000 followers. Incredible name. Yeah, it's cool. And she started doing educational videos on AI. And one day in 2023, she came up with this idea to create a physical phone, like a landline. And she made a post about it and like no one wanted it. So she got to put it on the back burner. And then last year, she was like, you know what? AI is actually like can make this process a lot better. Let me see if I can use chat GPT to make this product a little bit better. And she used the product chat GPT to help make this a physical landline. It's not really a physical landline, but it looks like a rotary phone. Like the ones that like your grandparents maybe you had or like these like old school physical phones. And she used chat GPT to like help get it approved by the FCC's 'cause you had to like do some approval process and to help like design it whatever. And she put a video out about it and it went quite viral. I believe there was. I do this is amazing. It's a physical phone like the old school phones. Like you can either have it on the wall, the rotary wand or just a normal corded phone. but it's a Bluetooth. device to your actual phone. Yes, so smart. And her branding is beautiful. And what-- I'm not one of these. In 2025, she launched this to her audience. And she was like, I tried this in '23. No one really wanted it. But I have a bigger audience. Screw it. Let's do it. And she sold $800,000 worth of this product in five months. Now, in 2026, she says the goal, and it's early in the year, but tracking towards $5 million a year in revenue. And if you go to her website, to me, what's quite clear is that she can have all types of skews. And I think she said this. I think she wants to launch this thing called Cat Labs. So basically, she can create all types of phones. But if I was her, I would basically look at everything in my phone that does something, or even my Alexa that does something, how do I create a product that undoes it? Now, this sounds crazy. But you could have a handheld GPS, or you could have an old school, more old school alarm clock that doesn't do anything else, but just goes off and on. And maybe you could use your voice to turn it on and off. Or you could have a jail for your phone. And you could become a company that's all about phone addiction issues. And you could have a variety of skews. And the same way, Ridge Wallet started with Wallets, and now they also sell-- We're just giving away free game here. I love it. The phone jail is a great idea. It's cool, right? And I used to have a phone jail. It was just like kitchen aid. No, but you got to make it look like the phone jail. Of course. I had one that was just like a timed topware container. But I think that she does a beautiful job with branding. And everything's pretty cute and cool. And it's the clear, like, David versus Goliath, with Goliath being addiction. And David being like, but don't you just want to focus and make your brain feel good and be less lonely? And I think that's such a great marketing story. And she's doing a really good job with it. This is a great find. I love this. That is really cool. And I like the sort of ant-- just be the antie of the main thing. It's not like you're trying to convince everybody. It's just that 1% of people are going to feel overstimulated by the thing. And if you can provide the alternate, and you can do marketing via TikTok with really visual, buzzy products that are going to get people talking in the comments, which is exactly what this does. Like her top TikTok just says, I brought back landlines. And she's holding one of the physical phones. And there's people who like it, who hate it, doesn't matter. But it's going to get a reaction. That's how you can grow, you know, grow these types of businesses. And then if you just up level it and say, well, am I really just selling a landline? Or am I selling a return to the physical? Yeah. A return to the real. And it's like, oh, I like that. There's a lot of people who want to return to the real. What is that in tail? Oh, there's other products that might make a lot of sense in that case. Yeah. It's sort of like what's that funny bottled water company? Murderer. Like a death. Liquid death. Like it's sort of like that where it's like with these phones and like this thing that I have here, the mode is not the technology right now. The mode is not the product. The mode is the brand. And I think that with if you took someone who was in advertising and you said, just focus on ads and focus on building a brand that's really, really cool, that is the mode. Did you see Zach, whatever, I forgot his, Zach, he had a Gary, the guy who did the Cali app so that he didn't have it. Did he have an eye? Did he have an eye? Did he have an eye? Did he have an eye? I know what his new thing is. Did he announce it? Yeah, it's on. He did a YouTube video. It's gonna, let's talk about it. So let's give the context. So he came on here when he was 17 years old or something. He was doing class periods, he skipped class to come be on our podcast and he was doing a calorie tracking app. Not an entirely new idea, but he did a, he made a simple app with his friends and they really leveraged TikTok to grow the app. And he talked exactly about what he was doing. He was at a few million in an ARR at the time. And they grew it to something like 20 or 30 million in ARR and they sold the business. And he's, now he's like a college student who sold the business for, I don't know, a bunch of money. Some are between the United, let's call it $50 to $100 million. Last time he was on, he came on after he sold it and he was talking about what he wants to do. Next, he said, I wanted to do something with hardware, something physical, partly because there's just a fun challenge, partly because seeing, where can I go where there's less competition for when it's getting easier and easier to create content, easier and easier to create apps. How do I do something that's a little bit different? And so he just came out with a YouTube video announcing his new thing, which you want to describe it. I did much to video. I had just known that I knew what space it was gonna be and then roughly the product. Well, I didn't see the video. Where did he, what's it called? - It's an alarm clock. (laughing) It's an alarm clock and it's basically an alarm clock that you, it's like a physical brick. So you put it somewhere else. So your phone alarm won't stop beeping until you tap your phone to the brick. So it's kind of like a way to get up out of bed and stop doom scrolling. And his idea is like, - Wait, I don't understand. - How does that help you stop doom scrolling? - Because you have to get out of bed and go touch your phone to this thing that you put presumably in the kitchen or somewhere else, somewhere where you need to be up and active, not just sitting in bed on your, you know, most people, they wake up with an alarm clock, they look at their phone, they see a bunch of notifications. - God, he got it. - They snooze the alarm and they stay in bed looking at their notifications, social media, whatever for 20, 30 minutes. And that's how they start their day. - God. - It's the idea would be your alarm clock goes up and that beeping's not gonna stop until you're up out of bed and you touch the thing. - Awesome. His new thing's called Flow. Is the name of the company. - Oh, cool. Wow, okay, he released this yesterday. So FlowAlarmClock.com. This is awesome, great video too. I thought that my prediction was good but then seeing like a young guy who's way more in the know and like in the pulse of young people because he likes that, it's like kind of, that's like the real validation. - Yeah. So are you on board with some of this stuff? - Well, I'm bored with it. What do you mean? Oh, the dumb phone and-- - You on one? I don't trust myself, meaning I love to buy a gadget but there's a graveyard of gadgets I don't use in my office and I'm learning like, hey, look, I gotta really be committed to actually commit to the bit. If I'm gonna do it, like I gotta really wanna use the thing and change my lifestyle to do it. So don't just buy all these things for no reason. - So I'm gonna kind of wait and see. If you tell me like, yeah dude, I use it all the time. This is, if four weeks from now, you're like, this is my new normal, then I'll buy it. - The brick has stuck with me. That is, it's at my front door and depending on which activity I'm gonna go out and do. So if I'm going out with my family, that continues to have maps, text messages, calls, and Uber, I think that's it. And then if I'm gonna go workout, it literally just has my workout app, that's it, and Spotify, that's it. - So yeah, I just deleted social media off my phone and it kinda did the same thing. There's not really much else to do on my phone once you take that off. - What am I gonna do? - It's just too easy to go to twitter.com. - Oh, I didn't even think of that. I wouldn't even think to do that. It's such a bad experience. Dude, they're just cons, they're trying to get you down the beat. They nuke it for you. Like, you can't see a reply, you can't do anything. But then I end up just spending so much time on Claude asking it questions. So I just had to like nuke everything. I had like, - That's the only way. - Just like, I don't know, it's just the habit of like, I have, in the elevator, reaching my pocket, pull it out, do something. And like that, that like action has to like go away entirely. And we're ready for it to go away. I just can't have anything working. (laughing) - Yeah, let's hear. - All right, is that it? - That's it. - All right, that's the part. ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪ ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪ ♪ I put my all in it like no days all ♪ ♪ On a road, let's travel never looking back ♪ All right, let's take a quick break to talk about a podcast. 'Cause if you're listening to this, you like podcasts. And what's better than one podcast? Another podcast. And let me tell you, another podcast you should check out, it's called Success Story. If you like hearing about different success stories and hearing Q&A sessions with successful business leaders or hearing keynote presentations, or just checking out conversations about sales and business and marketing tactics, this is a great podcast for you. So check it out wherever you get your podcasts.