3 Killer Businesses Hidden in Plain Sight

All right so check this out I'm going to tell you about three products that are hidden in PL sight and the genius of these is that they take something that's free and they sell it they take a free thing and they sell it and I'm going to tell you about one example that makes hundreds of thousands of dollars another one that makes millions of dollars and then another one that's made hundreds of millions of [Music] dollars all right I want to tell you about a couple of business bus ideas I'm going to start with one

that makes thousands of dollars hundreds of thousands let's say one that makes millions of dollars and one that makes hundreds of millions of dollars and they're all products that are hidden in plain sight so we've all seen them but you probably never even realize their businesses and secondly the magic thing About all of them they sell a product that's actually free what inspired this did you just see something found one found a second found a third drew a line three dots make a line so that that's kind of what happened here so first is I'm

on Twitter and I see Joe gbia who's the founder of Airbnb friend of the podcast I see Joe tweet out something about a screenshot of an app that was checking water um water quality uh so the cleanliness of water it was this app Called Oasis I thought that sounds familiar Sam mentioned that like I don't know six months ago Sam mentioned that in passing but I never really paid much attention to it what is the story of this thing Oasis so here's one that's making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year selling a product that

is free and it's hidden in plain sight and it's just water quality testing so there's a kid who is behind this and we we we chatted With him so Oasis is a app it's an app that checks the water quality it'll tell you if your city's water is clean if your County's water is clean it'll tell you you can hold up a bottle of this aquapa right here and it will tell you is this aquapa actually clean or does it contain you know P forever chemicals that whole deal right what's what's in app and a

website right an app and a website and it's started by this guy named Cormac and Cormac is from Minnesota which is known for having really fresh water he said drink growing up he would just drink tap water no problem he drink hose water like you Sam and that was what he did and then he moves to LA and he just starts doing the same thing he starts drinking tap water he notice tastes a little bit different and he gets an upset stomach he gets a little bit sick nothing life-threatening but he's like dude that's weird

um like I just I just drank the water like why Is the water so much different here so he tries to look it up he says how do I find out if my water is actually safe to drink out of the tap and it turns out that you can go to any City and you can request a report you can request a report about the water quality in your area so he does that and he finds oh man there's tons of contaminants in my water and so he stops drinking tap water he goes to Whole

Foods he buys water from Whole Foods he says well let me see if This one is actually contaminated too turns out you can contact any B bottled water company and they have to provide you a report about the testing of their water and he finds that the water is being sold in Whole Foods also has lots of contaminants in it and then he's like what the what's going on here and so he creates a app really for himself but for others too to be able to check the uh quality of water whether it's your city

your town or bottled water that you're Drinking and he's basically just aggregating free data that already exists that anybody could go so when we first mentioned it it was on the Jeremy gfin episode a few months back it was at $10,000 a month in revenue and the way that you make revenue is I think he has an affiliate scheme where like if you buy something that he recommends he gets a cut and also you pay $50 right there's a pay wall yeah so you basically you request a Report you can get some information free if

you want like you know the full report or whatever you pay 40 45 bucks 49 bucks or something like that for a free for an annual membership to this app so you can continue and by the way when I shared this I knew it was a wall and people were like who the hell would pay for this and I was like in that camp at first and then I start clicking around the website and I'm like oh my God my towns here right and it says it Might be dirty but I can't see the results

unless I give them $50 and so like I understand why it's actually incredibly valuable but I mean look at the numbers so it's doing let's say uh 40,000 a month now in Revenue so 40,000 a month so basically a half a million bucks a year and but if you do the math 45 bucks if it's a you know $45 subscription you know he's only got a few thousand subscribers to this thing so it's not like it's it's not like Everybody's paying for this but a small number of people really care about the quality of water

and are willing to pay to get the information and he structured it and so what he did was he started off with all the free reports then when he you know couldn't get the free reports or wanted to test more things he's uh or wanted to verify their reports he'll do his own independent testing but it's very expensive it's like you know Couple Grand to do independent testing of a Product to find out does it actually lineup so he's slowly doing them one by one as he gets more money and he said you know we

live in a world where we think we live in abundance you could walk to Target Trader Joe's you'll find 20 different protein bars 30 different Waters but the problem is most of it's filled with toxins none of it is actually healthy so my mission is to build 100% independent platform to test products and provide healthy Alternatives and I think this is kind of awesome right like I think this is this is kind of amazing and the way that he's growing this thing because you might wonder how does he get customers for this is he just

does Tik toks that go viral so check out this video so it's a video about like liquid death right here right and so he'll post this video Tik Tok just very simple green screen over a product and he's talking about how um you know I used to think This is really healthy but actually it's full of chemicals and blah blah blah if you want more if you want to figure out which products are actually clean use my app and um this video will get you know a million plus views and it'll drive a bunch of

PE bunch of attention and it actually go and then drives people to download the app and go ahead and and uh and sign up so very simple way to to test this to to drive traffic to this product and it's something you can do Over and over and over again apps like Tik Tok and Instagram reals to a slightly lesser extent YouTube shorts to a lesser extent you can just once you find a format that works you can literally repost the same thing and the algorithm is just going to say yep humans like this and

it's just going to keep serving it up to a lot of people even if they're even if they don't follow you and so when people have figured out these like simple formats That work they just copy paste and post the same 90% of the same video over and over and over again and I know several people that are building multi-million dollar businesses doing this I'm so turned on right now this is the greatest thing dude this this guy so he shows his Revenue uh on Twitter which is pretty cool so Oasis metrics over the last

28 days monthly gross revenue he shows his 25,000 and he shows his churn he shows everything I I actually predict this Could to be a significantly larger product than I think it many tens of millions of dollars or even more the reason being is the way that these review websites work is you typically have to hire a lot of Freelancers in order to go out and write all of the articles but if you're just using data to like organized as a table it's way more profitable also he's getting early in he's getting in early on

a trend I think this water thing is Still tiny tiny tiny compared to what it's going to be like in the next 10 and 20 years I think he's on to something life-changing for himself yeah absolutely all right so a lot of people watch and listen to the show because they want to hear us just tell them exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business and really a lot of people who are listening they have a full-time job and they want to start something on the side a side Hustle now

a lot of people message Sean and I and they say all right I want to start something on the side is this a good idea is that a good idea and again what they're really just saying is just give me the ideas well my friends you're in luck so my old company the hustle they put together a hundred different side hustle ideas and they have appropriately called it the side hustle idea database it's a list of a 100 pretty good ideas frankly I went through Them they're awesome and it gives you how to start them

how to grow them things like that gives you a little bit of inspiration so check it out it's called the side hustle idea database it's in the description below you'll see the link click it check it out let me know in the comments what you think okay so I promised you I would tell you about a company that's hidden in plain site that is using free selling free information and making hundreds of Thousands check now I want to tell you about one that's making millions and then we'll go to the hundreds of millions okay so

the millions one and we've mentioned this once before but it was years ago so I want to bring it up again if you've ever been to a company's office and you walk into their break room or their maybe their their kitchen where they have snacks you'll always notice on the wall that there is this poster and our eyes just glaze over it We don't ever look at it looks just just like a looks like you know when you're on an airplane and you see the safety thing in the the seat back in front of you

it looks like that but it's on the wall and this is a labor law poster and the reason that your office had it is the reason that all offices have it it's required by law that you have to post this in your your employee you know break room or or open area and these labor law posters they update every year So you have to get a new one every year and they're required by law okay so that's the that's the good news the bad news is you have to buy them or do you and so

here's the the interesting thing about this business there's a couple of companies that do this I I I don't have all their their names and information here but uh I remember finding one that was like based in Minnesota and what the guy was doing was he's just all he does is print labor law posters so what what They'll do is they'll mail you a letter to your business and the letter looks a littleit scary and it says hey if you don't have this poster up you are in VI violation of California labor laws right now

and you must have this up it is a is a requirement by law it costs $45 take this box send this back to us we will send you your poster and you do that you send it they send you the poster you put it up on your wall you forget about you move on and this is a Private company that sends that letter correct now the thing is these labor law posters are actually free you could just go to your State labor law website you can get the labor law posters but companies have realized that

using this sort of like awareness tactic tactic making it easy sort of scaring the hell out of you is a way to make a couple million dollar a year on super high margins because all you do is printing the same poster single skew single Product one one product a year and you just send it out to businesses and they then they fair I'm on I'm on the government's website and figuring out how to order the poster for free is actually hard of course of course just like filing your taxes is a little bit confusing and

Turbo Tax and others have made a you know they they turn the button into bright shiny green buttons instead of small gray buttons that you don't know which one to click right so There is a tremendous amount of value in simply either aggregating and structuring data and making it available for people or helping you just comply without you know having to figure out how to comply and U you know maybe the $50 tax is worth it every year as your subscription but that's what these companies do so labor law posters a way to make millions

of dollars selling a product that's free and a business again that's hidden in plain sight and I bring This up because one of the great things about this podcast that I hope we do for people is that you will go from a mindset where success seems rare and hard to grasp and you're sort of thinking what is it I need a great idea and great ideas are rare they're hard to find to a mindset of everything I see in my life every object in my view it's not there by accident that is that sign is

there for a reason that cable is there for a reason somebody realize you needed That and they created that once you realize that you realize oh my God business is everywhere this is a business this is a business this is a business business and then you realize Wow all I got to do is figure out one of these that seems easy right it's like in a Jar full of Skittles picking one it doesn't seem that hard and that's what you know I I think I hope to to sort of achieve by bringing up these businesses

because not only are they clever little Business models but it just points out that your eyes are just glazing over million dollar opportunities everywhere you walk because they are literally everywhere you go into a parking lot look at the ground somebody painted those stripes and when you go look at it you go you can go ask the owner of the real estate say who paints the stripes for your parking lot they'll say oh we use these guys you go talk to them you say wow you just paint straight lines in Parking lots that's what you

do yep how much money do you make you know is this a small business oh you did s Million last year Revenue no profit oh my God right and then you you realize oh my God there's somebody who makes $7 million a year profit painting white lines on the on the road dude I when I first moved to San Francisco I lived with this guy he was one of my roommates and he was a piece of crap but he was telling me how he was making hundreds of dollars a Month because apparently the Church of

latterday saints Mormons they you can order a Bible for free on their website I guess but they like it's like Legion and they'll like come and hand deliver it but they'll like try to like you know convert you to their faith or whatever and he created an online store selling Bibles for 20 bucks and somehow raped on Google and he just went and took the person's information and put it into the morbid's website and on his website They're like you know we hand deliver Bibles or something like that and it was like oh that's hilarious

and I I remember this guy and I was like this is a horrible scam that's amazing uh but it was very funny he was making like $500 a month uh doing this that is so funny oh my God that what happened to that guy I he's one of those guys you know how like you have these friends and frankly you and I are those people maybe where They're like do hacky [ __ ] you have those friends it's like dude do you remember how we met yeah where it was like you do this hacky [

__ ] and you're like this is going to go one of two ways like it's going to go the right way or the wrong way miles was the wrong way so like he like kind of disappeared he probably got in trouble for a crypto scam um what's the uh yeah it was like it was crazy but like on his about page he was like why did my why did the Person who delivered my Bible want to talk to me and his his think said yeah they tend to do that Mormons loved it so like it

said like right like just expain how like you're G to get hand delivered by these Mormon guys uh what's the third one okay third one um here's a product that is used I believe billion times a day it is a product that Time Magazine said is in the 50 things that made the world economy work do you want to take a guess what This is it's a hard one I know this is this is pretty fun uh do you have one or two more hints like many great inventions it was invented maybe 20 years before

it actually got used so somebody invented this thing they're like this is cool but how do we what do we use it for they couldn't find a use case and finally they found a use case oh I I'll give you another example um every time you buy a product you use this product I feel like I'm doing those annoying riddles where it's like I'm I'm awake at night but not during the day what am I like you could sit on me but not take me with you all right I'll end the suspense the answer by

the way is a chair what is that it's a barcode so oh that's cool do you know the story behind the barcode no all right so let me give you a little history lesson I know you like history so uh barcode is invented by these two guys Norman Woodland and Bernard silver And these guys are inspired by morse code they realize that wow mors code is so simple it's just basically it's dots and dashes the dash I think is a like a rest basically and the dot is like you know the sound and they're like

could we create another system that's like that maybe a visual system so they create a system actually looked like a circle at the time so it was like a circle and they're like oh look with thin lines and thick lines we can create like an Basically an infinite number of unique tags for something and they're like oh this is great they patent it but it's not really a good use case for it and then people try to use it for a couple things you know they realize oh you know what we could do we could

track um train containers you know we're always wondering where those containers are where in the route that they are and if they ever get unloaded so they put a barcode on the side of a train container And it works great everyone's really excited that's working great for a second and then the problem is trains are outside they get dirty and as soon as any dirt gets on the thing it ruins the barcode so they're like this is bad idea take it off scrap it and then they try it on some second thing doesn't really work

either and and basically for like I don't know a couple decades or something nobody's using barcodes at the same time in another part of the world Um you get the invention of the laser and the laser gets invented the laser is a really great way to scan something that that becomes interesting but but they don't really know what they're scanning why what are we scanning this for lasers have multiple uses but that gets invented and then in the third part of the world three things come together the thirdd part of the world is grocery stores

are having a really tough time because they are trying to stock Inventory and they're sort of by hand keeping track of all the inventory they have think about this in a store there so many units it's taking so many hours of Labor and then if any customer checks out it's so slow because okay every item you have I got to punch it into the register exactly what this is I got to either remember the prices or I got to write this in and then I have to keep stock of the inventory levels it's a pain

in the ass so they create do do you Think that like when w so Walmart was invented created founded almost around this time do you think that a barcode is one of the reasons like would that have prevented companies from scaling is just the operational so Walmart opened their first door in 1962 this was now 10 years later so 74 uh is when this starts to happen they they're hitting this problem it's too slow too much labor too expensive so they create the ad hoc Committee for the uniform grocery product identification code and they go

into the lab and they're like all right we need something they find this technology there oh remember what's that guy Norman always talking about that goddamn barcode what if we use that what if we use this laser and they come together and they create the barcode and they change the shape of it instead of the circle shape they change it to the rectangular shape that we all know and Love today and the first barcode ever gets scanned as a pack of wriggley's gum in 1974 and so and they're like wow that just took it knew

the price it I took me one second and it's deducted my stock level by one oh my God that's this was magic and so you know this is like the blockchain getting invented right it's like oh my God how do they convince all of the manufacturers to put this on their thing they just like rally around retailers demand it so the retailers are Saying this going to they're they're the ones with the hair on fire problem right they're spending all this money and time on labor so they say hey if you want to be in

our store you got to start adding these things to your product and and so for a manufacturer you're like oh if I want shelf space which is the most important thing for me oh great I'll happily stick this this on here and so they're all working and where do but the problem is where do they get the code And how do I make sure that your code is not the same as my code right like what what's going to prevent that well we all got to go through some Central thing that's going to you know

give us the barcodes that I can use for my product to make sure nobody else can use it it's like reserving namespace or a license plate it's like how do I get my my exact license plate that nobody else is GNA have and there became what's known today as gs1 gs1 is the nonprofit that issues These barcodes and keeps track of who owns the barcode space and to get barcode space you got to pay but again remember every store has standardized on one thing so if you want to be in a store or you want

your goods in an Amazon warehouse for example you now need to use their system which means they have infinite pricing leverage and they charge a [ __ ] ton for these barcodes and so and is that gs1 who's charging gs1 so gs1 let me tell a little Bit about this this nonprofit you can go look them up because they're nonprofit so last year 8 $81 million in Revenue uh barcode sales makes up 90 93% of this and again a barcode is nothing it's literally like a just a set of lines that they're selling for $90

million a year and um they now have $46 million of assets that they've just been stockpiling the CEO makes $3 million a year the CFO makes a million dollar a year the SVP of community engagement Which God knows what that guy's doing making $800,000 a year this might be the job of all time he happy hours yeah exactly like what do you do um and they you know they stash $30 million in overseas places like the Caribbean and Central America and all of their expenses pretty much half of their expenses are they like staff salaries

lobbying against the QR code is there like a barcode QR code like Lobby where they're just fighting each other I think QR codes are just a type of barcode uh they're just a threedimensional got it okay or 2D sorry um so yeah that isn't that crazy though that this this nonprofit now has half a billion dollars in assets just selling barcodes and any retailer anybody who's ever had to like get your products you know you let's say you want to sell on Amazon Amazon says you got to do this it's a racket you end up

just having to pay whatever they demand in order to to Get your products on the shelves do you know how like there's been a lot of cool movies lately there's been a cool movie on the guy who created Blackberry I think there was one on the person who helped create Tetris and then there was another one for the person who helped create the Pop-Tart these like kind of cool like product creation stories go uh I wonder if is there an interesting one here somebody's just sitting there is like what if podcasts were movies and Then

they just turn like every episode of like acquired or how I built this into a documentary dude well this guy Bernard silver like that that this is actually a way more interesting story than uh I would have thought because this is something that changed culture it changed it changed so many things like it you know we talk about in flections and how like you know the iPhone was invented which had all these ramifications including a GPS being There which now means that Uber has the ability to exist and then there's like Milli a million examples

of that this is one of those inflections where like this barcode helped create let's say a or made a Walmart possible or made this other thing possible which like literally shaped a history and and this is actually really fascinating stuff yeah exactly uh so so this is just a it's a space that you again you don't think you don't even think this is like Like a you don't think where does this come from where does this little thing come from and again it doesn't come from nowhere somebody creates it and then that person who creates

it now has you know something they can charge for and there's business everywhere so it's so funny that this episode is accidentally turning into a theme a theme of things that you don't really think about but how they became a thing um I have actually an example of one of those can I tell you it yeah go all right so in the 1960s in Hawaii started to become common I think it was because of like one hotel where your employees were allowed to wear an a Hawaiian shirt to work on Friday because for the most

part you had to wear a suit to work you know like dressing formal was how business people operated all of the time and this whole Casual Friday idea it sort of started getting popular in Mainland America where like in the 1980s HP was Like hey everyone you can wear a Hawaiian shirt to work on a Friday which was a big deal because they employed tens of thousands of people so it was like a it was kind of like a statement but in reality up until the late ' 80s and early 90s virtually everyone wore suits

to work all of the time however this executive at Levis so Levis had just launched Dockers and Dockers were khaki pants up until then khaki pants were almost considered uh you know if You look at like the history of of of fashion like suits were considered like the that's the standard that's what you do khakis were basically casual Weare even though now we don't look at them as casual that's what they were they were casual Weare and Levi creates Dockers because they want to the Khaki business but still people are like this is too casual

we can't wear these any other time except for Saturday and Sunday and so this marketing executive at Levis Has This brilliant idea they print up 40,000 pamphlets that explains to HR professionals here's this new thing called business casual and casual Friday and here's the rules of this holiday or this like new tradition it was just an eight page pamphlet and it said it didn't promote Levis or Dockers though but in all the photos you'll see like a picture of someone wearing jeans and it is like a Levi's logo or you'll see a picture of someone

wearing khakis and You just assume that it's Dockers and so this thing takes off it works so they we got to read this though a guide to Casual businessware ideas for dressing professionally at work and then it basically shows like pants Jeans like it's showing like options ideas for it and then is there a uh rules for it so what are the rules that they said yeah it says don't wear like tattered jeans but they should be nice new jeans right or like like they can't Be stained or what else does it say uh SLE

no sleeveless no tanks oh man I mean discrimination baby steps baby STS we're going we're going from Suits to khakis like you know like it takes time I mean should we guns out Wednesday do you think we can make this happen I I I well I'm actually got to talk about that in a second but so it's a good avoid lingerie okay fair enough um save athletic wear for after workor and don't forget to check footwear opto Sandals are gross no no it just says not appropriate yeah it's a great little pamphlet so they sent

this out to literally 40,000 HR Executives um and they even go as far to create an HR hotline so if you work at uh IBM and you're like you know I actually don't know protocol for like our open o our sandels allowed or like whatever I could call this hotline and I could ask the inventur of Casual Friday hey can Sydney wear like open are shoes allowed to or Are toes allowed to be seen even if like their toenails are polished like whatever like you can like ask these questions and it takes off and Casual

Friday officially becomes a thing and so it literally shaped culture and it was all because Levis was like we got to sign these guys up we got to start selling uh some of the stuff and like back then it was kind of the American Apparel industry was a little bit in a rut they weren't doing that Great and this changed everything and so people started buying Dockers buying Levis because this movement of Casual Friday totally picked up and it got me thinking this is like some pretty brilliant marketing I call this marketing you can call

it cultural shift marketing or tradition hijacking and so people who have like found little traditions and they blow up the tradition or they blow up this idea and then they say and by the way if you want To buy in this idea we just so happen to have the thing that can make your life a little better and so there's a few other examples of this that I can I can present to you so the first one is the beers so they're a diamond company they've been around I think for hundreds of years actually in

the 1940s they ran this campaign called The Diamond is forever and it was this idea that like diamonds are special because up until the 1940s diamonds were special but they Weren't nearly as special as we think they are now and they also came up with this in idea which is they're like this campaign they come up with how much should you spend on a diamond and they said roughly two to three months of your salary which is like outrageous but that alone is like what that campaign is credited as helping shape the diamond industry they

even ran further campaigns that said on certain anniversaries you have to get your wife a diamond um Another one is breakfast being the most important meal of the day Cog invented that idea and so like we grow up now we tell our kids you have to eat breakfast it's the most important thing kogan Ed that prior prior to that people didn't always think that right two other ones are baby showers and and wedding Registries so baby showers weren't a thing until Johnson and Johnson started running ad campaigns think you have to have a baby shower

if you're pregnant or If you're uh Macy's came up with the idea of wedding Registries they said um you're gonna get married you gotta people gotta buy you all this stuff and and and in fact you don't want people just to buy you random stuff because what happens if they buy you the same stuff that you already have or two guests buy you the same thing like that's ridiculous you have to create this registry at Macy's so you can register and then finally spring Cleaning is another one that really wasn't the thing until Lysol came

up with this idea of spring cleaning wow dude these are great I love I I I don't know if other people get as fired up about these I get so fired up about these I think because it's the same idea as a while these businesses are hidden plain side you know this object just didn't just get here someone made it come here all of these occasions these these sayings these these holidays they Didn't just pop up out of nowhere somebody made them happen and when you find out that it's some marketing dork it's some marketing

dork somewhere that was like you know what like how do we spring sales are slow spring sales are slow spring spring Spring Fling no spring clean no spring cleaning it's like yes that's how we're going to get people to buy cleaning products this in the spring I love that I love that just a a mad ad man somewhere in the world Can just shift how people do things there's a great we did an episode with um Craig Clemens about exactly this was it like leaky gut he did he did prebiotics but he didn't talk too

much about that um uh it was was he was talking about the ones that have um like the ones you're talking about like why we eat bacon for breakfast why we drink orange juice right like where orange juice came from and like all these things that today Just seem like I don't know it's just what we do it's just Staples of the of people's diet it's just tradition and it's like no no that wasn't tradition or you know the classic one is toothpaste he talks about how at a certain time about only 6% of the

population brushed their teeth and so when they wanted to increase sales of toothpaste he said well we can't just sell more toothpaste to the 6% of people who already brush their teeth we need to get the other 94% Of people to start brushing their teeth how are we going to do that and that's when he came up with that campaign um not Craig but like Claude Hopkins it was um it was like rub the tongue on the on your teeth and you feel that film yeah one of one of them exactly it was like you

know basically saying take your tongue rub rub it on your teeth you feel that film that's and he and people did that as soon as they read it they do it they stick their tongue there and it's Gross and you're like there's a way to get that off and then you'll have that Hollywood Pearl smile and then people wanted that right and so that created this movement and then by the end of that campaign something like 70 or 80% of people now brushed their teeth in America it was like a huge shift that happened just

off of that one adman that single big idea and I love these I've really actually like toyed with the idea of writing a book about just these the These crazy admin and then the way that they've actually shifted culture yeah and and and that fascinates me as well and like another one is like Wall Street Journal and so they try to like they they they sort of nailed it but they it hasn't PR it hasn't stuck with us but it was the idea of once you graduate college the gift that you get is uh a

Wall Street Journal subscription just like I think Rolex did it was like once you you know president's Club is You get a Rolex if you uh sell if you hit some sales quota right like or you become president of whatever and so I was thinking what other things haven't been hijacked that can be and so I've got a few examples but the first one being friendsgiving so friendsgiving is what like 20s somethings who are single is what they celebrate uh instead of a Thanksgiving with their family they do friends giving in their town or in

the City that they're living in and so I think friendsgiving is one that there's not a clear winner as to who owns friendsgiving but we can make it an entire week of being thankful for your friends and you will do various gestures including having them over for dinner to show your uh how appreciative you are that they are now your friends and so we could sell gift boxes we could sell gratitude journals we could do digital cards we could do all types of stuff and By the way speaking of cards Hallmark is like one of

the inventures of like Valentine's Day Mother's Day things like that uh the other one graduation SE season so turning into a life transition planning or celebrating New Life phases all because of graduating so we're going to call it graduation season and so what do you get for graduation season you get financial planning subscriptions productivity tools career coaching travel discounts that's for Graduation season you said you've thought about this what are other ones that You' thought about oh I mean come on on theot no no no no no no no no like examples of things where

you're like that's amazing that they pulled that off uh like Craig talked about the Otis Elevator one which I thought was amazing did do you remember that so he basically talks about how back in the elevators got invented far before they were used what does that mean so the elevator gets Invented but people didn't want to use them they didn't want to they didn't scared they're scared because there were situations where elevators would just plumet and you just Plum it to your death so it's like okay no thanks and the the consequence of that is

think about it if you don't have elevators you don't have tall buildings right because people are only going to go up so many flights of stairs so like New York was like you know four stories high there Was just no there was no buildings taller than that so cities were kind of limited in how big they could be and this guy Otis ends up creating a um an elevator with automatic braks okay so Otis creates the automatic braking elevator he's like this is it this is going to be amazing everybody's going to buy my elevators

and if you look today by the way you go go to any elevator you'll see a little thing on the wall almost always says Otis um but it didn't Happen right away and he couldn't figure out why he's like this has automatic brakes it solves the problem but nobody believed it and so Craig talks about how one of the techniques that the marketers use is a they have like break the elevator and like film it like getting caught exactly so the world fair was going on and Otis decides to go all in and he creates

this uh show basically so he creates this exhibit where he's got an elevator suspended in the air hanging By ropes cables like they would and he because he had watched Cirus solay he was kind of like inspired by oh wow cir man they're stunts and their spectacles are so all inspiring you can't help but look at it so he said I got to do that so he gets somebody up there and he stands in the elevator and he says ladies and gentlemen I have created the the world's first safe elevator the elevator with automatic braks

and he gets the guy at the top to swing an ax And he cuts one rope and the elevator starts swaying and swinging and it's hanging by a thread now and everyone's gasping in the crowd and he's like Cut the Rope and then the guy swings he cuts the Rope elevator starts to go down two feet and then it automatic breaks and it stops and he says all safe gentlemen and he says something like whatever he says some famous phrase that basically says like Otis Elevator when you're in an Otis Elevator you know all is

well all Is well you you will be safe and elevator sales take off from there and when elevator Sals take off now buildings can be taller it literally reshaped the way that cities work all because this guy realized that he needed to think out of the box in terms of his marketing and he needed to do something that would break through the noise and it would actually shift culture shift perception about a product in a dramatic way and one tool the tool belt is that Craig called these the hijacks of the human mind the seven

human hijacks and he's like one way to hijack the mind there a spectacle like this does Craig have a book I got to Rel listen to that one does Craig have a book this is after that episode I hit Craig up and I was like Hey I want to write this book with you and we talked about it we both got really excited about it but we're both busy so this might be the motivation to rekindle that project dude the seven hit Human hijacks I wrote the sign up I wrote the intro for it it's

pretty dope I'll read it to you sometime oh that is awesome I'm going to have to go listen to that cuz that was like two years ago and I remember listening to it and think he's amazing can I read you the intro to this book yeah we can cut this out if it's boring but I just want I want to get your opinion on this all right so I wrote this a while back all right it's called Uh hijacks or seven human hijacks Confessions of a billion dollar marketer okay so that's Craig Craig sold over

a billion dollars of products online himself okay so I said uh here's how it goes if you read this book I need you to make me a promise repeat after me I promise to use these tactics only for good and not evil because the techniques in this book not just tactics they are hijacks the same way a terrorist can hijack an airplane marketers can hijack The minds of consumers to get them to buy products they didn't even know they wanted you might be skeptical in fact I think you should be skeptical skeptical of somebody making

such a bold claim but I can tell you that these product these hijacks have been used to sell i' I've used these products to I've used these hijacks to sell over a billion dollars of products personally that's one billion with a B in case you lost count um but rather than convince rather than Let me convince you let me ask you did you brush your teeth this morning more importantly why who told you to do that who told you to brush your teeth in the morning your mom well who told her her mom well yeah

before that who told all the moms to do this it must be the dentist right but wait who told the dentist the answer it turns out is a man named Claude Hopkins because before Claude Hopkins only 7% of the population brushed their teeth sidebar can you Imagine dating back in 1913 nobody brushed their teeth feel bad for Grandpa uh after Claude Hopkins 65% of the population brushed their teeth and Claude didn't just sell toothpaste he literally changed the world he got millions of people to change their daily habits with one brilliant marketing campaign I'll show

show you in chapter two but before I show you how you did it blah blah blah blah and then I go and then the chapters are like how diamonds Became a girl's best friend and blah blah blah like each of the different products that that got you know embedded into culture what are the seven human hij like what are they sounds like I succeeded and got you curious you're going to have to pay $499 get and get the book like is it literally like seven different like tactics or is it sever different examples of tactics

tactics and then each one has example and and You stack them so what he showed was like you know for example one of the T tactics is a spectacle like I told you about the otus elevator so like a spectacle would be one of the seven yeah like uh spectacle is one of the seven but like even the thing about like take your tongue and put it on your teeth so like a um a like a like a magic trick basically it's like the thing you know but remember the thing where people used to that

power band or whatever Those bracelets and they made you like hold your arm and they're like look you see how now you put your arms out and watch I can't push you over right and wow of um that's I forgot what he called it but that sort of magic trick is um is one of the things where it's a it's a demonstr a powerful demonstration right so you can demonstrate on the person themselves you can get them to feel it in feel it themselves in order to to to want to buy a product did Craig

come up With this idea of seven Human been hijacks or did you come up with it on the Pod uh so he he was gonna come on and it was like cool we could talk about your business we could talk about whatever and I was like you know I said asked him one question this a very valuable question I said what's the best talk you've given recently like have you given like a presentation or a talk at all that just like really killed like you could just tell the audience loved It he's like oh dude

I did this one talk inside my company just to get them fired up he's like basically my company is like a giant marketing company and I wanted them to come to work and not just feel like oh we need to raise sales by like 7% this quarter like no like he's like I wanted him to realize yo marketers you don't just drive some revenue or lift sales by x% like a marketer can literally change the way that Society works and he's like so to To get them fired up about that I told them these examples

of stories that they did and then he's like when I was putting them together I realized it's the same set of techniques that they've been using across these eight 10 examples just the same same set of tactics these hijacks that they've been using and he's like that could be cool and I was like yes do that on the on the P check this out if you Google seven human hijacks Craig Clemens the first Post is on Reddit and it says Craig Clemens on MFM talking about the seven human hijacks and how to use them in

your marketing and it links to this amazing post that this guy uh wrote where he lists the seven on R marketing yeah it's so good so one of them for example is he talks about like the act of rebellion so how do you make your consumer feel like they're giving the middle finger To The Man by buying your product so the example he gives us back In the day when um cigarette sales were flat and cigarette sales were flat because basically cigarettes were only smoked by men and so and there was like so was already

super saturated like dude we can't really get more men to smoke they kind of all smoke already and so they realized like the only way we're going to grow sales is by getting the other 50% of the population to start smoking so how do we get women to start smoking at the time it was seen as not Cool it was seen as sort of like um you know it was like a kind of dirty masculine thing to do and so the guy behind the campaign um basically what he did was he used influencers so influen

is one of the high jaacks so he got all of the like uh whoever like the Kardashians of their time were so he got like 30 of all together all at once and was at a time where the big problem in culture or Society was like I forgot if it was like women being able to vote or Was like some other thing where it was like women were repressed in some way and so he got them all to go to this the parade or the fair the the you know the New Year's fair or the

Macy's fair whatever it was like the the the parade that happens in New York and they all stood on this float and he gave them all cigarettes he said all right when you turn this corner you're going to light that cigarette right when the journalists are all there all have their Cameras pointed at you you're going to light the cigarette and you're going to defiantly smoke the cigarette in front of them and you're going to do this thing that women aren't supposed to do as an you know what he called them he called it he

called the sigs uh torches of Freedom exactly exactly and that's what the the newspapers he so he then put somebody in the crowd where the journalists were and he said that out loud to the journalists who then went And wrote that in their story like they they lit up these torches of Freedom um you see those ladies up there guy those are uh those are uh those are torches of Freedom that's what those are this what jeel needs to do it needs to be like these are Vapes of Freedom that these kids are using oh

look at that guy that's a that's a sex machine that he's using he's he's gonna have sex with so many people because he's using that thing even even that same so then I Think it was like Lucky Strike or whoever their brand color was green and green was like not invogue at the time and he's like yeah the women don't want to buy it cuz these C the box is not fashionable it's like do we need a Rebrand he's like hold my beer don't Rebrand and so instead he got those same women to go to

the whatever the big um like fashion you know like like the Met Gala type of thing and all of them wore green they all wore that same green Color dress and so then green became cool for women like you know basically became in Trend right after that and then you know the sales of that that um that brand went up basically because he he made the color cool and it's kind of just cool to see somebody who can Puppeteer Society in this way I'm I'm summarizing like a 9mon old episode so I might have some

of the details wrong here this Reddit poster said side note a lot of these stories are documented in This amazing book called propaganda yeah that's the bernade book right it's a hard read dude I have wanted to read it but it seems like intimidating what's so hard about it you know these old books that are just like so dense it's not an easy read I don't know I my brain is very simple like a lot of people recommend books to me like oh this is a great book have you read um you know Renee Gerard

like mimic Theory like oh I'm interested to go buy the book and I'm like I'm just too dumb to read this like I'm too dumb do not have the attention span to read something like this I read like the mimic Theory like summary book like what was that one that came out recently and uh it was still hard I still that one I read that that was like uh the the Malcolm Gladwell version of like Renee Gerard and I like read it and I'm like so I want what other people want is that it right

uh like that's the it was I read the whole Thing and I was like I don't understand why this is so many words what am I missing uh and so but I've heard about this book I've I've heard all about this uh book propaganda uh it would be fun to read or at least try to read there's something about books that are like more than 50 years old where their brains were just able to like you know they spoke differently they talk they they talk differently They they they write differently and for whatever reason my

brain can't really process it very well so I kind of need somebody to like translate into modern speak or into like simpleton speak for me yeah I think maybe I'll try and do that this guy uh this seems like a cool book oh the guy who wrote it was born in 1891 and he died in 1995 wow he saw a lot all right let me tell you let me tell you about something that I did so on did you see you Probably didn't see this but on Friday I tweeted that I'm going to Yale's campus

I tweeted that I'm going to go check out Yale because it's like an old historical place and I wanted to like do something interesting for the the weekend something easy on Saturday tweeted it out I got like a lot of replies and it was like kind of overwhelming on what to do so on Saturday morning we just drive up there and I just go to the busiest just like part of the town where I think Like I'll just figure it out when I get there I show up I see a student tour like if you're

a perspective student you know like when you go at your mom and dad yeah and I just like tag te yeah I just like get I just like I just like pop it and like it's pretty funny because it's Sarah and I who I don't think either of us look young enough to be a students and then I've got my baby like strapped to my chest uh well I gave it away yeah so we're just like T we're Like we like just like are in the back of this like student Le Tour listening in and

then out of nowhere this kid I guess he's not that much of a kid but he's like 20 years old he goes hey Sam and I go what's up man he goes hey I I'm a big fan of the pot iist from religiously I saw that you were gonna be here so uh can I show you around and I was like yeah I would love that what are you what are you doing here what are you doing today he's like well I saw that You were coming and I just went to the most busy place

there was and I just hoped that I was going to see you and here you are and so this kid gave me and now I didn't think through what happens after that but it was great and like by the way that's like the third time that's happened and I love when that happens because I like he's doing me a favor of like I would love like a local to like show me around and so he shows me all This amazing stuff so have you heard of Skull and Bones the secret society of Yale where presidents

are in or all that is it legit what what what is it it's quote a secret society but I don't know like how much of a secret it is when there's like a building and like it's like a like it's like a nonprofit with like an endowment so like I don't know like what I don't know what the secret is I don't know like what what secret but it was just cool to like see this Building that I've read about and then we went and saw this old graveyard it's the oldest graveyard in America and

I was looking through it and I'm going to explain to you why I'm obsessed with old stuff particularly The Ivy the ivy league so it's kind of like a nerdy thing of mine where I likeed I've been to Harvard uh Princeton Yale uh a bunch of others because I just love like touring these old schools they're just cool we go to this old graveyard and we Saw Noah Webster's grave you know who Noah Webster is have you heard that name dictionary Webster is that him the dictionary miam Webster's Dictionary the guy who invented the dictionary

and I just was like looking at this this old graveyard and next to him was uh Charles Goodyear the guy who created vulcanized rubber which created Goodyear tires and it was awesome it was so cool and I'm actually really envious of you that you went to Duke this like historical old Institution because it was so cool to like be around history where like someone came up with something and they literally invented or or standardized the English language like something that like shapes history and it's still an you know they've still impacted the way that we've

done things and so it was an awesome awesome weekend to like see all this old stuff because it inspired me you know how like when you get behind the computer like every single day and You're like I'm going to do something that just makes a little bit of money sometimes you kind of get these ruts of like thinking small it was very inspirational to like see Yale and see this old institution that has lasted for centuries and how big and Global it was it was very very cool and I want to give a shout out

to that kid I don't want to say his name because he said he wanted to be lowkey but I want to give him a shout out for showing me around that's Awesome most white person hobby ever to go to a graveyard you'll never you'll never see uh non-white tourists hanging out in the graveyard it's not not a not a thing we do dude was awesome it was great so you you saw the Webster's Dictionary Good Year and you're like all right I'm going to come back and podcast what what what was your what are you

going to do what's the move you know it it kind of put me into a little bit of a crisis where like I was asking that but like you know this podcast is definitely part of it you know I don't know about you but I sometimes think like this is like a podcast is not like impactful compared to like we're talking to guys who are inventing robots that are doing X Y and Z or like who are going to the moon but a lot of these guys were authors that I whose like uh whose grave

I saw and I was still inspired by and so I felt a little bit inspiration of that but there Was a little bit of a crisis of like oh man like it's important to do something like that can impact people for for centuries pars thesaurus I don't know just putting that out there see see how that lands I feel like you're good with uh coming up with alternative phrases for things so instead of saying uh you know well not just because I don't know the real phrase and I can't pronounce the word so when I

mumble it just sounds like did you did you get this feeling at Duke where it was cool to be around like old uh like historical things that have lasted for a long time I know exactly what you mean there is definitely a Vibe um and a feeling when you're at something that is not just bigger than yourself but sort of Timeless the problem with Duke and other Southern schools that have this is like you're like oh wow who made you know what what is this it's like this is the slave wall it's like oh okay

never mind Uh it's like what what's the name of this road it's like this is Tobacco Road we had tobacco plantations it's like everything is uh there's like a sort of um Dark Side to a lot of the history there so that wasn't cool but the rest of it is in fact I used to love going to the the chap like the center of Duke's campus is the chapel and I used to go there all the time even though I'm not religious but just the aura the vibe like the vibe of a church is kind

of Unmatched to be honest great and um so yeah I really love really love that here's why I like Silicon Valley and why I like old stuff it's it's kind of similar which is I love thinking about things that we take for granted so for example like buildings that have been there for a long time or that are really large or even just like your streets or institutions like Yale and I'm like how did someone create something that became such an institution that we take it for Granted and we don't even like reflect on like

how this became a thing and Silicon Valley is cool because it's ideally the outcome is that you are creating something in real time that will become an institution like an Airbnb like a Google where it becomes a verb right uh like I'm G you know what I mean and you get to see that happening and I think it's really cool to be in Silicon Valley to see the beginning of hopeful institutions in the in the Making and then ALS also go and seeing the old stuff of like this is how it's done so we just

had Gary Tan on don't you think that YC should just have a campus and it should have this sort of Gothic uh you know old school institutional Vibe and even if they're if they're not going to do it why wouldn't I just go create a campus a small micro campus for YC people free free free room and board so free place to live free food that's healthy and all I do is just cherry-pick investments from people on campus I just get to invest in their companies it would be I don't even need YC to do

this why why wouldn't I do this there's a or even just a museum have you ever heard of the Museum of American Finance it's this thing in New York City where it's like a mu it's like a museum for like the history of finance and frankly it's badass it's awesome and just like a place to like go and like physically Explore all that YC has done it is kind of interesting it's just like Bill amman's loow first what's inside this thing what is the Museum of Modern of what of Finance yeah it's uh it's a

Museum of American Finance so if you look at a photo it's just like it shows like here's what like the stock tickers used to look like and people would stand here and like trade like in the 1800s and then like then it switched to have like to the phones were on the floor you Do this whatever it like tells the history of it and then like important things related to it but it's a museum in downtown uh Manhattan that's cool I like that dude this is a fun episode yeah that was a banger all right

that's it that's the pod [Music]