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My First MillionMillion Dollar Businesses with 0 Employees
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55 min read · 11,174 words- 0:00 – 4:30
How Steph plans to become a billionaire
- SPSam Parr
This is awesome. Ben texted me or like Slacked me while we were doing this, and he goes, "Steph's been, uh, spitting fire for the last 50 minutes." So this is badass.
- SPShaan Puri
[singing] About to see my first a million. Got to the safe and it's filling up. Got to the bank, it's not big enough. About to see my first a million, million, million. My first a million.
- SPSam Parr
What's going on? Um, what's up?
- SSSteph Smith
I'm good. How are you?
- SPSam Parr
I'm good. All right. You're back. Shaan is on a family vacation, and you are the sub, and I think it's a good sub. So you sent me this document, uh, that we're gonna, we're gonna go through a ton of stuff. There's so much stuff on here. How, uh ... Is it, are you... Is this like a list that you've been keeping for months or is this just you made this just for this?
- SSSteph Smith
This is part of a list I've been keeping for months. I, uh, I keep this list in my Evernote that just every time I see a new idea, whether it's from like a newsletter or something you guys talk about on My First Million that I wanna respond to, I just have a running list. So this is probably like a quarter of that bigger list.
- SPSam Parr
What? This is 15 pages.
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
How many words? Like, just what we have here is like 10,000 words.
- SSSteph Smith
We should share this, I mean, at least parts of it, 'cause we're not gonna get through all of this.
- SPSam Parr
This is amazing. I, if I was you, I wouldn't share this. I would charge people for it. This is good.
- SSSteph Smith
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Um-
- SSSteph Smith
I mean, there's definitely things that I'm excluding from here, you know. You don't share the ones that you actually wanna build.
- SPSam Parr
You, uh, so you told me one time that you want to become a billionaire.
- SSSteph Smith
I think I want to. We'll see if that actually happens.
- SPSam Parr
Well, I said who cares if it happens or not, but you said that's what you wanted. Do you, um, what are you gonna do to become that?
- SSSteph Smith
I mean, I feel like if I ever become a billionaire, we're gonna talk hopefully about Tyler Perry later. It has to come from building something on my own. I need to have equity in something. Like, you don't become a billionaire from working for a company and buying ETFs.
- SPSam Parr
Well, there's a few examples, but the likelihood of becoming a billionaire is slim to none. The likelihood become, of becoming a billionaire be it by being an early employee somewhere is much slimmer of that subset, but it's possible.
- SSSteph Smith
It's definitely possible. Um, should we talk about these companies of one, which I feel like are kind of anti... not anti-billionaire, but a different approach to building?
- SPSam Parr
Yes, and I actually don't think they're anti-billionaire. I think you can become a billionaire this way, but just so people know, so this is Steph Smith. Steph, you work at The Hustle. You basically helped me start Trends, and you ran it for a while, and you still kind of run it but you also do like a bunch of other different projects. And you have this Gumroad book called Doing Content Right. Is that right?
- SSSteph Smith
Yep.
- SPSam Parr
And it made like 150 Gs in the first year or something like that, right?
- SSSteph Smith
Yep, exactly.
- SPSam Parr
And you are the ty- So we, we aren't like really partners anymore, but I felt like when we r- when you ran Trends, I viewed it a little bit like a partnership, so I've worked with you pretty closely for a while. Now, now that, now we're just friends, but, uh, is that al- is that all accurate? What am I missing?
- SSSteph Smith
I think so. Yeah, I, uh, I build stuff on the side for fun, taught myself to code a couple years ago, and now I also have a podcast. So if people like what they hear here, um, it's called The Sh*t You Didn't Learn in School. That's my little plug.
- SPSam Parr
And you are very... You and I are similar in that there's like... It's kind of like Shaan. Like there's like this, this like overlap of things that are very, very similar between us, but there's things that are very different in that what you're different about is that you sweat the details, uh, like crazy, and you're pretty technical in the sense of like... I really think it, just you're just smarter than me. Like, you can just figure things out.
- SSSteph Smith
[laughs] I don't know if that's true.
- SPSam Parr
Like, you, you can just, you can just figure certain things out. So your research is actually typically more like in depth and technical than my research, and I like that.
- SSSteph Smith
Thanks. I mean, I don't know if I actually sweat the details. If anyone knows me closely, like if you were to ask Cal, he'd be like, "No, she's like a mess." So I appreciate that I come off that way.
- 4:30 – 8:00
BuiltWith.com, Levels.io, and Ugmonk.
- SSSteph Smith
I think are both completely solo founders. I know Peter certainly is. Um, but there are a couple others. So have you heard of Ugmonk?
- SPSam Parr
Well, hold on. So BuiltWith, so people know, BuiltWith is like maybe one of the most impressive ones here, but not the, but one of. BuiltWith is like, it's like a... I think they have a plugin as well, but it's a website. You go to builtwith.com. You enter in thehustle.co. Let's say you wanna... You, you see something on our website that you like and you wanna copy, and you're like, "How'd they build that? What plugins do they use?" What, whatever. You use BuiltWith, and they make money because, uh, they like... What do they do? I think they like sell people's data or something.
- SSSteph Smith
I'm not sure actually. Let me look this up because I know they get a crazy amount of traffic. Look, they've got plans on their site. So they've got a basic plan. Don't know what you get with it, but it's $295 a month.
- SPSam Parr
Oh, I know what you get. You get basically, I believe you sign up, and it tells you, uh, people's... So it, it crawls all these websites, and it tells you what type of features they have on their website and what type of plugins. And I think you pay money, and it'll say, "We have the emails or contact information of all types of people who use blank plugin," and you sell a plugin that is complementary to that, therefore pay money and you can now target them and advertise against them or s- or things like that.
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah. They charge... So their basic plan is $3,000 a year. Their pro is 5,000. Their team is 10,000. There's a cool little trick they have on their pricing page. If you go to it and you hover over, they have like technologies, keywords, and they have these little gifs that they're actually like showing what you would get with the product. I've never actually seen that before, so that's a cute little hack.
- SPSam Parr
And it's built by basically one guy in Australia. Um, all right, so what are some of the other companies?
- SSSteph Smith
Okay, so I was gonna call out Ugmonk. So this one's not as big. I actually don't know exactly, um, how much they're making, but it's a really simple e-commerce store. They started just selling really nice T-shirts, which sounds like, okay, like there's enough T-shirt stores out there. Um, but this guy, Jeff Sheldon, he focused on just really high quality shirts, and then now he's moved into almost, like, productivity stuff. If you... Are you in the dock?
- SPSam Parr
I'm looking at Ugmonk. So when I go to Ugmonk, I see, like, a pen holder, and I see, um, like a, a, a to-do list. A, like a... It's, like, cute, well-designed, like, pen holders. Which doesn't sound neat, but it... honestly, it looks pretty sick.
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah. It looks surprisingly sick. If you go to... Let me... If you click in the dock where it says look at this, if you click that, that is his setup, and he, he's, like, one of those builders who I think has built a little Twitter following as well, and he just has this beautiful desk setup which is, like, the perfect ad, and I-
- SPSam Parr
Oh, I've seen this
- SSSteph Smith
... can't say-
- SPSam Parr
It looks awesome.
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah. I never thought I'd want to go and buy, like, a $100 to-do list, but I, I think I'm gonna buy one.
- SPSam Parr
Yeah, I... It's just, like, cute, easy to use, like, mid-century modern stuff. Yeah, I'm on board. How much revenue does he do?
- SSSteph Smith
I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure he does several million a year. He gets over 200,000 page views a month, um, and I... he's been going at this for several years. So I know he makes enough to have left his full-time job several years ago, and he's grown a lot since then, so I'd probably-
- SPSam Parr
Wow
- SSSteph Smith
... say a couple mil.
- SPSam Parr
Wow, that's crazy. All right, that's a, that's a good find. It's just one guy? He's the only employee?
- SSSteph Smith
I think so. I mean, he's cer- he, he probably has some staff now that he's been growing, but I, I'm pretty sure he doesn't have a big team.
- SPSam Parr
All right, what's next?
- SSSteph Smith
All right, Carrd is actually one guy. He might have contractors, but Carrd, C-A-R-R-D.
- 8:00 – 11:30
Carrd. About.me. Unfold. Media kits.
- SSSteph Smith
I've built sites with Carrd. People probably recognize Carrd or ac- they've almost certainly been on a site built by Carrd. Um, and it's built by this guy AJ, and it's doing $1 million a year AR. I think he actually just raised money now, so I think he's kinda going for, um-
- SPSam Parr
Did he really just raise money? I would love to invest in this.
- SSSteph Smith
[laughs] Yeah, he raised money earlier this year. He was, like, big in the indie hacker community, and then I think he posted on Indie Hackers this year, like, "Look, I'm, I'm gonna raise money. I'm gonna, you know, really go for it." But he... it's kinda crazy. 2.5 million sites have been built on Carrd.
- SPSam Parr
Wow.
- SSSteph Smith
And yeah, I- he hit Carrd said-
- SPSam Parr
So Carrd i-
- SSSteph Smith
... like, a million AR.
- SPSam Parr
So it's a free platform for building simply, uh, for building simple, fully responsive, one-page websites that can do anything. Um-
- SSSteph Smith
Yes
- SPSam Parr
... I actually think... So there, there was this company called, um... You remember About.me?
- SSSteph Smith
No, what is that?
- SPSam Parr
About.me. So go to About.me. Uh, that's the URL. Um, you don't remember that? You're... I'm just a little bit older than you-
- SSSteph Smith
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
... which, which is, like, then that few years probably makes a difference. Because About.me, when I was just getting started, was considered, like, the pre-eminent builder in this space, and they made... It, it was a one w- page website where you can explain stuff about you. And it was started by this guy named Tony Conrad, I believe his name is, and he's this cool-looking dude who, uh, is also an investor now. And he sold it, uh, after only two years to AOL for, like, $40 million, and it was bootstrapped. You see About.me? You see how it's, like, basically the same thing?
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah. It reminds me of... You've heard of Unsplash, right?
- SPSam Parr
I love Unsplash.
- SSSteph Smith
So... Or sorry, I'm not thinking of Unsplash. I'm talking about Unfold. Unfold is this app that basically, for Instagrammers, it adds different... Like, it allows you to kind of piece together pictures for your Instagram story. But they also started these, like, one-pagers, um, where basically... 'Cause all these Instagrammers, they're like, "Oh, I need my link in bio." Linkin.bio is also a site like that. But Unfold, um, was sold to Squarespace, I think, like, last year or something. I don't know for how much, though.
- SPSam Parr
Man, I think that these one-page website builders are actually really cool. So there's this other business I almost invested in. I think it's called the mediakits.com or .co. I believe it just called Media Kit. And all they did was built a really slick website builder where you could create your media kit- kit and send it to people, so. And, uh, whether you're The Hustle or you're just an Instagram person, you just had this, like, uh, thehustle.co/mediakit, or, like, you know, um, stephsmith.com/mediakit, and it was that... Your media kit was on there. And that sounds, like, not that important, but it's kinda like DocSend. So DocSend, if you don't know what DocSend is, DocSend is basically, all it is is PowerPoint in the cloud but email gated, so you have to enter your email, and then you get all types of information. So it, you use it when you are creating a pitch deck and you wanna send it to investors so you know who has it and, uh, and who views it and how long they've used it, and it's basically that. Um, so anyway, Carrd is pretty badass. That actually might be one of the highest potential businesses you have here, I think.
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah, and I mean, he actually runs Carrd as a subscription business, so that's 1 million ARR, and I think it's probably way past that today. I think you're gonna like the next one, though. Go to, uh, this nextepisode.net. I think it's actually next-episode.net. It's the... It's such an old site. I think the guy's been running it for 15 years. Um, and if you just open it up, you'll, [laughs] you'll get a sense of how the UI hasn't caught up to where we are
- 11:30 – 18:30
NextEpisode.net
- SSSteph Smith
today. But it's amazing, 'cause this guy's been running it for 15 years. Guess how much traffic this thing gets.
- SPSam Parr
I'm looking at it on Similarweb. This is crazy. So what is this called? So next-episode.net. What is this?
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah. It's a site where basically... Like, there's no way I would think that a site like this would still exist, but people use it, um, that basically helps you track your TV shows, and it's a little bit of a community. So I, I think, I've never used it, but, you know, people watch The Bachelor, they hang out on this site, and they find other people who watch The Bachelor and they talk about it. Um, but it's kinda crazy how much traffic this site gets.
- SPSam Parr
This is awesome. And so here's why I know this is a big business. So if you go to Similarweb and you look at the traffic- The estimated monthly traffic is 3.6 million uniques a month. That's decent. That's not, like, the best, but it's, like, really good, particularly for one person. But if you go to traffic source, it says that 80% is coming from direct traffic, which basically means that there's a lot of people that are just typing in this URL and going there on a consistent basis. And if you do that, you probably can have a huge business, and it looks like they have got, um, a premium, which is only $2 a month. But, uh, how big is this?
- SSSteph Smith
So I don't know exactly how big it is, but he's been running it for 15 years, and I know he's definitely... I, I found him on Hacker News, one of those posts that was like, "Hey," like, "who's a solopreneur who's doing this thing on their own?" And he's like, "I've worked on this entirely on my own for the last 15 years." So...
- SPSam Parr
What? This is crazy. Good find. I can't... Wait, so who, what's this person's name, do you know?
- SSSteph Smith
Uh, let me send you.
- SPSam Parr
Here he is. I found him. Nico- Nikolay.
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
Wow, this is a good find. How much revenue you think he does on this?
- SSSteph Smith
I don't know about today, but I'm assuming, like, if he's getting that many million page views, and he- he's been working on it for 15 years, I'd say, like, maybe a million a year. What do you think?
- SPSam Parr
Yeah, I would agree with that, and it's probably mostly all profit.
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah. Well, I mean, he's literally the only one who works on it. Um-
- SPSam Parr
And there's no costs
- SSSteph Smith
... in one of the, the posts on Hacker News, he's like, "Yeah, I started it for myself because I couldn't find such a tool back in the day." And, um, basically, he's, like, avoided hiring other people, um, because he doesn't want to, like, scale through hiring.
- SPSam Parr
Um, all right, what else we got?
- SSSteph Smith
So there's a ton on here. There's some... There's one called Hostify by a guy named Riley, who basically, um, you know, has scaled that to, like, a million a month in a year or two. Um, there's some good stories from back in the day where apparently SurveyMonkey was doing $19 million in revenue, um, with 12 employees. So not a one-person thing. But Plenty of Fish is another example where they were doing apparently $10 million, and the guy was by himself. He might have even been part-time, so that's kind of a crazy story from back in the day, too.
- SPSam Parr
How did, how did, how do you know this about SurveyMonkey?
- SSSteph Smith
So it was posted. It was actually... You posted about BuiltWith a while ago, I think, and then I went through all [laughs] of the comments of you basically, you were like, "Can anyone tell me something more efficient than that?" And, um, this guy named Trip posted, "Yeah, SurveyMonkey was doing 19 million with 12 employees." Um, and you asked him if this was documented, and basically, someone else commented and was like, "Yeah, Trip's too modest to say this, but he actually invested in SurveyMonkey in 2009, so he probably knows the numbers."
- SPSam Parr
Wow, this is amazing. I've heard this, I've heard rumors about SurveyMonkey doing this. This is crazy. This is so cool. So did I tell you about how... I told you about Craigslist, right? So The Hustle, our very first office, it was this apartment. It basically, it looked like a town home, like a s- like a typical San Francisco town home, but it was zoned as business. And on the bottom was this, uh, was a piano teacher. In the middle... It was like a three-story town home, but they, like, divvied it up into apartments. So the bottom one was a piano teacher. The middle one was this company called Nugs.net, and Nugs.net sells... It's, like, a marketplace where you can trade m- uh, like, Phish and Grateful Dead, like, CDs that you recorded at their concerts. And above that was Craigslist, and Craigslist moved out, and we moved in, and this was in 2016, I think. And which means Craigslist, at the time, the landlord told me, he goes, [lips smack] "They were making around $300 million in revenue, and they worked out of this little office." And this office was so small. It was basically a three or two-bedroom apartment. And he was like, "There was basically, like, 14 people here," and that was the, the whole company. And they were so cheap, Craig was so cheap that the rent, the rent I was paying was, like, 500, and I split it with my friend Sieva. But so the rent for the whole place was probably only $2,000. So they were paying two or three grand in rent for this place when they were that big. And they were so cheap that in the lease, apparently, it said, like, "Toilet paper is provided by landlord." And every once in a while, uh, I think his name was Ishmael, he would forget to... Uh, or Emmanuel. Eman- I forget. It was, like, this old Jewish guy. He would forget to put the toilet paper and replenish it, and they wouldn't pay the rent. They go, "Until we get the toilet paper, you're not getting the rent." And, uh, they... And additionally, Craig worked out his... I, I used, uh, Craig's room because it had a kitchen table in one of the bedrooms that he used as his desk. It was, like, this ugly kitchen table that was, like, his desk, but it was really heavy, and they couldn't move it, and they just left it there. And that was my desk for a long time, was this, like, weird kitchen table, and that was out of the Craigslist office, and that's how scrappy they were.
- SSSteph Smith
Dude, I love that. So I mentioned Peter Levels before. He's a friend of mine from Bali. He once tweeted about this, so I don't feel bad sharing it. But he used to walk around with this... Like, you know those bags that you get at a grocery store, the, like, plastic bags that are, like, a dollar?
- SPSam Parr
Yeah.
- SSSteph Smith
So you'd think that some guy making, like, a million bucks a year all profit is gonna, like, upgrade his lifestyle. He would carry his laptop around in one of those bags, and, like, that's it. And you'd see him walking around in flip-flops and a T-shirt, and you'd be like, "Dude, like, respect." 'Cause, like, you, you make a lot of money and everyone knows that 'cause you have that open page. But he's, like, walking around with, like, a grocery store bag as his laptop holder.
- SPSam Parr
That's stupid. That's very stupid.
- SSSteph Smith
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
It'd ruin your laptop. Um-
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah
- SPSam Parr
... all right. What are some, what are some other smaller ones?
- SSSteph Smith
All right. So I wanna call out a couple. These are actually, uh, also some people I know from Bali. So it's, it's kinda cool when you live in a place like Canggu because you're just running into people just like this. So one of them is this thing called Banner Bear. Um, so if you click on the link where it says Banner Bear, that's their open page. So a lot of these people also create these cool open pages like, uh, the ones from Nomad List. But I wanted to show you this one because if you scroll down, if you're on the page, do you see the modem, the motor [laughs] I can't even say it, The MotoMeter?
- SPSam Parr
Yeah. What is this? So I'm looking at basically a pic- pictures of motorcycles-
- 18:30 – 22:15
The MotoMeter
- SSSteph Smith
can see his MRR, and it's pretty impressive. He's at around an AR of 300,000. I think he only started this, you can see, in sometime in 2020. Um, but he kind of rethought the open page and he was like, "You know what? I just... I don't wanna just show my revenue. I wanna show people, like, what I wanna spend this on." So he loves motorcycles, and he has, like, these different goals. So, like, if he hits a certain MRR, he, like, unlocks a new motorcycle. Um, and so I thought that was just like a kinda cool, cool little thing. And you can see, just like Peter, he, he shows all of his data. Like, you have the number of trials per month, uh, his churn, um, obviously the- the MotoMeter, his GitHub commit activity. So I think that's pretty cool 'cause, like, I think years ago there were some people showing their, like, open revenue, but now people are kinda like rethinking what they can share.
- SPSam Parr
What the hell is Bannerbear? This is so cool looking. What does it do?
- SSSteph Smith
So basically, I think it's like... It's basically like an API for generating images. So do you know how, like, we u- we could've used this at Trends, honestly. Do you remember we would run events, and we'd have to, like, go on Fiverr and, like, you know, it would kind of... It would... It wasn't very expensive, but it'd take some time, and you're like, "Oh, man. Like, we should just have, like, an image template for all of our events, and it has, like, a certain background, a certain theme." And so he's made it possible to basically generate images based on certain inputs. So, um, you don't have to, like, go and hire a designer to do that. You can, like, auto-generate images. And so some people use this for, like, social media, right? So you have, like, a certain theme that aligns with your brand, and you're just, like, adjusting, like, all of your blog posts to, like, use Bannerbear instead of going and hiring a designer to create an image for each one.
- SPSam Parr
This guy's site is beautiful. He reminds me of... How do you say that Peter Levels guy? Is that... Is it Peter?
- SSSteph Smith
Yep. Mm-hmm.
- SPSam Parr
He reminds me of that. This guy looks like an artist.
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah. I mean, I think what's cool about all of these folks is, like, they do the whole stack. Like, I guess you have to as a company of one. But they do, like, the marketing. They do the design. They do, um, the development. And what's cool is that, like, because they're not necessarily experts, quote, unquote, in these spaces, like, they're just kinda hacking it together, I find they're actually a lot more creative, right? So they're, like... They're not, like, constrained by the marketing degree that they had, you know, before. And so Peter is, like, another example where he's... He pretty consistently does pretty cool things on marketing or on Twitter. For example, recently he, like, instead of paying $10,000 for ads, he's like, "I'm just giving $10,000 away to, like, someone who retweets this," and it got like 11,000 retweets, which obviously is, like, much more than he would've spent on ads.
- SPSam Parr
This... And this website, Bannerbear, it was launched in, uh, 10 of 2019, so let's round up to be 2020. So let's say it s- started in, in January of 2020. That means it's what? Two years old?
- SSSteph Smith
Yep.
- SPSam Parr
It's growing pretty well. Does it say his growth rate? I mean, this could be pretty... This could be a g- really good business.
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah, and, and, and it's just him. I think he, like, might have hired, like, a part-time customer service person, but yeah, it's going really well.
- SPSam Parr
Wow. This is amazing. How big do you think this could get?
- SSSteph Smith
I think pretty big, because it's actually, like... You know, it's one of those niche problems that you're like, "What?" Like a, "You're gonna create a product that auto-generates images? Like, who needs that?" But then you actually think, like, wow, every company that has a blog has to generate all these images en masse. Every company that runs something on social media. Like, I think the reason it's working is it's actually, even though it seems like a niche problem, it's, it's a problem that most companies have.
- SPSam Parr
Wow. All right. You wanna do... You wanna pick a couple more?
- SSSteph Smith
We can just call out, uh, one more, which is, have you heard of Headlime?
- SPSam Parr
No. What's that?
- SSSteph Smith
So Headlime-
- SPSam Parr
How do you find, how do you find all this stuff, by the way?
- SSSteph Smith
[laughs] Well, like I said, I combed through some of the threads that you posted before. But Headlime, Bannerbear, Nomad List, like, these
- 22:15 – 26:00
HeadLime
- SSSteph Smith
are all people who were nomadic. And I think it's a, like, the indie hacker community and the nomad community overlap 'cause they're both kinda, like, rebellious in a way. They're like, "I don't need to live in one place," or like, "I don't need to raise venture capital." And so I think there's an overlap there. And so, yeah, most of these guys are people that I used to, like, co-work with in Bali.
- SPSam Parr
Wow. Okay. So what's Headlime?
- SSSteph Smith
So Headlime is-
- SPSam Parr
That's a great name
- SSSteph Smith
... a super, super simple app. But, um, Danny, the guy who built it, built it in, like, a couple months, and within a year he sold it for seven figures. So all it was is it was using AI to generate, um, kind of like landing page headlines or copy. Um, and so if you look at the landing page, it kinda looks like a much more complex product. Um, but it's actually pretty simple. And, um, if you've heard of copy.ai, I think there's, like, s- similar elements to it. Um, but basically-
- SPSam Parr
Oh, hey, look. On the website of Headlime, they used my name. They're writing it here.
- SSSteph Smith
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Wait, really?
- SSSteph Smith
I was gonna say, I just noticed that. You must have seen this before. Maybe you sent it to him.
- SPSam Parr
I've never seen this. This guy's using my name. I've never... That's so funny. Is he trying to tell me to use this?
- SSSteph Smith
I don't know, because I also don't know. Like I said, he sold this, so I don't know if he put that there, if the new founders put it there. Um-
- SPSam Parr
You're... Wait.
- SSSteph Smith
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
You're see- you're seeing my face and name on this website, right?
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah, yeah, totally.
- SPSam Parr
God, that's so funny. Why is my face on here? Whatever. That's cool.
- SSSteph Smith
Uh, yeah. Well, this is just, like, a super simple one where it's like, I love... It's, like, perfect example of, like, just being scrappy, building something. He exited seven figures within, I think, eight months, which is pretty crazy. Um, and yeah. I just, I think one theme is just, like, these people find, like, a niche problem that isn't, or at least seems niche. They solve it. It has to be an existing problem that people want solved. I think the thing that a lot of people do wrong when they're trying to, like, do their, like, own little startup is they look for things that, like, don't really exist. But these are, like, perfect examples where it's like, oh, of course people need sites to, like, house their, their work. Of course people need, like, nice T-shirts and productivity stuff. Of course people need, like, landing page copy. So I think that's the, like, one learning for me.
- SPSam Parr
How did this guy build this?
- SSSteph Smith
He built it in the open on Twitter. So he just coded it, and he would like keep giving updates, and then I think he launched it on Product Hunt. Like, pretty classic launch strategy. But I think it kinda blew up after Product Hunt-
- SPSam Parr
And it-
- SSSteph Smith
... and then he sold it.
- SPSam Parr
But it's just built on top of that GPD3 thing?
- SSSteph Smith
Yep.
- SPSam Parr
Wow. All right. That's amazing. Wow, I cannot believe it. Good find. Um, you wanna try something else?
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah. Let's talk about just a couple of these. So another thing that I did, which kind of overlaps with what we talked about, is just, like, sites that have a surprising amount of traffic. So sites that you're like, "Wait, really?" Like, "There's no way." And then you look it up and you're like, "Wow, I guess like, you know, 20 million people a month actually look this up." So one of them I wanna show you is called Glitchn Deals. Have you heard of glitching?
- SPSam Parr
No. What's that mean?
- SSSteph Smith
Okay. So you know how, like, of course, e-commerce is popping off. A lot of companies have e-commerce sites. N- not all of them have fully functioning e-commerce sites, so sometimes they glitch, right? So sometimes an airline will, you know, show a, a flight for, like, 20 bucks that was really meant to be 200. Sometimes, you know, there'll be something that's a dollar, and it's, like, really supposed to be 100. It's just, like, a decimal place error. And this happens all the time, right? And apparently, according to the law, like, if you advertise it for a certain amount, like, you have to sell it for that amount. So there are all these sites that basically look for glitches. And I f- found this out because I was at, um, my partner's, like, family home for Christmas last year. And I remember his aunt being like, "Hey, do you want, like, a podcast mic?" And I was like, "I don't... Like, sure. I, I don't know. [laughs] Like, why,
- 26:00 – 40:30
Sites that have a surprising amount of traffic - GlitchnDealz.com, FoodTimeline.org
- SSSteph Smith
why do you..." She's like, "I've got 30. Like, I just have to give them away." And I'm like, "What do you mean you have 30?" And sh- I guess she found a glitch in one of these groups. And yeah, like, she just got 30 podcast mics that, like, she, she got for free. So-
- SPSam Parr
Wait, free? It was free?
- SSSteph Smith
In that case, it was free. Most of the time it's just, like, a crazy wild deal that the company didn't mean to do.
- SPSam Parr
I, so, like, I need to buy... I'm trying to up my game and get that garage fridge. You know what I'm talking about? That garage fridge.
- SSSteph Smith
[laughs] Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
It's like it sto- it's like it can store all my meat.
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
And so I, uh, on here they've got a $25 garage fridge. I need that freezing.
- SSSteph Smith
No way. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Yeah. And, uh, that's how you know you make it, when you get a garage fridge. And, um, they have one for $50. And it looks kind of complicated to use, though.
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah. So I have to say, I've never actually glitched myself. I think it's one of those, like, rabbit holes that, like, the same way people go and, like, try to, like, enter sweepstakes, I think it's, like, a similar phenomena. But there's a ton of people doing it. So this Glitchn Deal site gets four million, uh, page views a month. But it's only been around for a year. It started-
- SPSam Parr
How do they find the deals?
- SSSteph Smith
... in December 2020. I think they must scrape them, or they have 'em... At least, I think it's actually a separate glitch site, but has... They have a Facebook group. And this Facebook group has 342,000 members.
- SPSam Parr
What?
- SSSteph Smith
And guess how many people post a day in this Facebook group.
- SPSam Parr
How many?
- SSSteph Smith
250-plus posts a day.
- SPSam Parr
That's crazy.
- SSSteph Smith
Today, when I checked, it had 262 posts, and it was like, it was, like, 11:00 AM. So... [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
So I'm not that surprised because when we do giveaways for The Hustle, we'll do, like, a T-shirt giveaway. And, like, these websites, it's like a circular... Like, they all, like, copy each other. And it's basically, like, Midwestern-y stay at home moms mostly, and they love giveaways. And, like, one time, we've, like, were giving away stickers, and I saw one of them post this on, like, a forum. Uh, like, "Hey, there's this newsletter called The Hustle. You just gotta share your referral link and dude, they'll send you stickers. I just got mine." And there was hundreds of people commenting on it, like, talking about different strategies that allows them to get more referrals for The Hustle so they'll get their T-shirt or their stickers or whatever. People, look, like, this demographic, it's mostly women I've noticed, and it's mostly, like, uh, stay-at-home mom types. They love this sh*t.
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
They love these deals. They love free stuff. It's cra-
- SSSteph Smith
They love... It's like a, it's like a challenge for them. 'Cause I remember asking his aunt, like, "Why did you do this? Like, you don't [laughs] need 30 podcast mics." And she's like, "I just wanted to, like I just wanted to, like, win," almost. And I think it's so interesting that so many people are doing this, 'cause like you're saying, it's, it's, like, a crazy amount of people who are, like, who probably don't need this stuff, but are like, "I'm so stoked that I got, like, a gas grill on clearance"-
- SPSam Parr
Yeah
- SSSteph Smith
... even though they don't need a gas grill. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Like, we, we were giving away, we were giving away, like, stickers that said The Hustle, and it's like these ladies, like, they don't care about business or tech. Like, they just didn't, they, they didn't care about our brand, but they just wanted it just because it was available to get, and they felt good. Uh, yeah, it was crazy to me. What else we got?
- SSSteph Smith
Okay, so let's go to Nugget Comfort. So if you wanna click on that. It is... It was actually something shared in the Trends Group a while ago. I don't even know how to explain what these are. They're basically, like, cool children's pillows. But they're children's pillows that you can basically make into, like, different shapes and forts. And it was just crazy to think... So Nugget was, I think, started relatively recently. I'd say in the last year or so. I think they had some mailing list for a prior product before that. But they made over four million in sales, uh, in a month with zero ad spend. So I think this just-
- SPSam Parr
Nugget Comfort was doing, is doing over four million a month?
- SSSteph Smith
Yes.
- SPSam Parr
What? If you go to... So here's how I know that they're at least pretty big. You go to their website. So it looks like they're based in North Carolina. You go to their website and you look at car- you click careers, and you see who they're hiring for. They're hiring a senior accountant. So you know that they're, they're-
- 40:30 – 45:15
"Your listicle is my opportunity"
- SPSam Parr
have a business that makes single digit thousands of dollars. You could do this in 30 days.
- SSSteph Smith
Oh, yeah.
- SPSam Parr
Here's what I would do. Here's what I would do. So d- Steph, have you... So we're doing this contest called M- uh, I forget what it's called actually, but people are taking our clips, and they're turning them into TikTok videos, and they're posting them on TikTok, and they're getting tons of views. So the hashtag MFM clips in a matter of, like, I think we only launched it seven days ago, but I forget. It's less than 10 days. Uh, in that short amount of time, that hashtag has around 10 million views, meaning kids have made videos that have 10 million views, um, on TikTok. It's crazy. There's a couple videos. I think there's one video, um, that has, like, 1.3 million views, and then there's a whole bunch of other videos that have about or over a million, and for sure hundreds of thousands. And these guys are killing it. And so the way that they did it, they created, like, a handle called, like, MFM Clips or, like, The Hustles Pod or Hustlers Di- Like, they just, they made these things from scratch. And in literally seven days, a couple of them have a million views. What I would do is create a TikTok page that says, "Craving a chicken sandwich? Don't eat the Popeye ones. Eat..." Because it has this, this gram of fat. They use these types of chemicals. Instead, eat the Chick-fil-A one because it has this. Or, like, "Craving a cereal? Don't eat this. Eat this. Why?" And then you'd be like, "You want more? Go to this website." And you create, like, a Wirecutter style website that does this, and you for sure, for sure can make a, a really good revenue, like, thousands of dollars we're talking, off of affiliate websites, uh, an affiliate website, and then eventually do brand advertising deals. Without a doubt.
- SSSteph Smith
Totally.
- SPSam Parr
I would bet it. That would... And, and that would get popular if you had the right face. You need, like, a, a hip TikToker, young-looking person to do this. It would absolutely crush.
- SSSteph Smith
Totally. I mean, I feel like just the TikTok side of things, like, that's gonna trend no matter what. And then there's so much search volume for this stuff that, like, you'd build up that sustainable bus- business over time. And there's so many queries for this. So if people are actually gonna go build this, I want someone to do that. Go to Ahrefs, go to the Keywords Explorer, enter healthiest food. And then if you go to matching terms, it'll basically give you this, like, list of terms, uh, that are similar. So you can see, like, healthiest food, which we already talked about, but also, like, healthiest taco, healthiest breads, healthiest breakfast, healthiest restaurant, health- healthiest Starbucks, healthiest Mexican food. And you just, like, go down the line and there's, like- How many? There's like hundreds of, of terms already just like seeded there for you. And what's crazy is I was actually pretty surprised to see that the keyword difficulty for a lot of these was not very high. Like I would have thought if someone told me there's search volume for this stuff, I would've thought like, "Oh, someone's already tackled this."
- SPSam Parr
No, no, no, no, no.
- SSSteph Smith
And the difficulty-
- SPSam Parr
I'm l- I just Googled healthiest cereal and like Pure, Pure Wow ranks number one. I can outrank Pure Wow.
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah. Exactly. It's like Thrillist or like Healthline and you're like, "Someone should go and create like a site just for this." And it'll rank surprisingly quickly if you can target the right keywords.
- SPSam Parr
This is just fantastic. The, um, Eat This is, uh... So eatthis.com kinda does that. It's owned by Galvanized Media. So whatever I do is I go to these websites, I scroll all the way down to see who owns the copyright. Galvanized Media is a website that owns like a ton of different stuff. They own Eat This, Not That. They own Travelicious. They own CelebWell and a bunch of other stuff. I would, I bet you I could figure out how much money these guys make. But I, I would imagine like in the $20 or $30 million range if I had to guess based off the website. Um, probably a really good business. Wow.
- SSSteph Smith
And I mean, you can start with healthier stuff and then obviously like expand past that. But that's actually like a surprisingly... Well, I mean, I guess not surprisingly. I think that's a big niche, not so niche niche.
- SPSam Parr
Wow. Okay, let's wrap up with two more things.
- SSSteph Smith
Okay.
- SPSam Parr
So you had something in here about chess and this guy Magnus who... You're, you're like this chess nerd. You're a chess pro-
- SSSteph Smith
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
You're a chess prodigy. You go to, uh, chess.com and you play there. You're, you're know- you're known for being a chess person. You had some amazing stats about this guy. Can you tell me about this?
- SSSteph Smith
Well, so if people don't follow chess, Magnus is the number one chess player in the world. But the cool thing about Magnus, I read this the other day, is that unlike many athletes, if you wanna call chess a sport, um, he's actually managed to already, um, kind of build a little business em- empire. So what a lot of, you know, celebrities or athletes do is they focus on like getting paid at the time, but then they really, really struggle to build up any sort of equity in like a product or a brand that they're building. Which as most people know, the way that you, you know, actually accrue wealth is, is through equity. We'll talk about that with Tyler Perry. He's managed to create something-
- SPSam Parr
And, and this guy Magnus, how old is he?
- 45:15 – 52:09
Magnus Carlsen and chess
- SSSteph Smith
He's not very old. Let me look him up.
- SPSam Parr
He's only 31 it looks like.
- SSSteph Smith
He was like, he was like a GM by the time he was like 14 or something. Um, so he-
- SPSam Parr
Wow. And he's like kinda good-looking, or like he's cool looking. He like, it looks like he's kind of charismatic. He's just like, like there's a story here. It's not like he's just good at chess. He's like g- seems like a s- like a, like a, like an interesting person in itself.
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah. He's 31, so he's a, he's not [laughs] old at all. And yeah, there's like videos of him when he's like 12 and they're like filming him at I think like world championships, ships and stuff. So he was really talented really early. Um, and now he's only 31. He's built up a little empire. So not only does he like compete in chess still in, um, I think he streams on Twitch and all that stuff sometimes. But he also built his own little company. It's called Magnus Chess. So if you go to... Let's see what the URL is. Magnus Chess Carlson.com.
- SPSam Parr
Okay.
- SSSteph Smith
Or sorry, it's playmagnus.com to get redirected. Um, he has this plus membership. I don't know exactly what you get from it, but it's $14 a month. And here are some of the stats. Um, basically his company, Play Magnus, already is a publicly traded company. Has 250 employees, uh, four million registered users, and a market cap, because it's public, of $115 million already.
- SPSam Parr
How much revenue does this make?
- SSSteph Smith
So I don't know how much it makes currently, but I mean, let's look it up. It's a publicly traded company.
- SPSam Parr
And it's publicly traded in France I th- or is it N- Nor- I, I actually don't know where it's publicly traded. Do you know?
- SSSteph Smith
So it's definitely in Eu- yeah, it's in France. FRA I think. It's, it's in euros. Uh...
- SPSam Parr
Wow. This is amazing. Who would've thought? And does he own this?
- SSSteph Smith
He owns a stake in it. So he owns, um, not a, you know, not a ton, but he still owns I think, uh... Oh, actually never mind. He owns 85% of the business.
- SPSam Parr
Holy crap. That's amazing.
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
So this guy's... This is amazing. And so do you know what's the sales?
- SSSteph Smith
So it looks like revenue, um, last quarter was 5 million, so he's doing around 20 million. Or actually it's grown a lot recently. So it was only started looks like in 2019. 2020 had total revenue of 20, or sorry, $8 million. But it's, you know, last quarter was five, so it's trending towards $20 million.
- SPSam Parr
Wow, and that's recurring revenue, so that's a subscription.
- SSSteph Smith
Yep.
- SPSam Parr
This is amazing. And he owns 85% of this, so he basically has a, has a 120 or something like that million dollar net worth just off of this.
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah. So it looks like... I'm getting a little confused. There's something called Magnus Chess and then there's something called Play Magnus. So actually I think he owns only 9% of Play Magnus, but then he owns something else, uh, which I think is like a streaming platform called Magnus Chess. But either way, he owns a substantial amount of, of one of them, Magnus Chess, and he's worth several million.
- SPSam Parr
Wow. So we, and we also actually covered chess.com. Chess.com, uh, I think it might be mostly bootstrapped and it gets something like... Have you seen, what's the monthly uniques of chess.com? Have you looked at that?
- SSSteph Smith
It's super high. Yes, I have. Let me pull it up.
- SPSam Parr
Like a, like 150 million I think. Chess.com currently has, uh, yeah, 150 million monthly uniques. And I've heard rumors that it's a multi-billion dollar company.
- SSSteph Smith
I mean, people pay a lot for it 'cause they've actually built in some pretty cool features. So Lichess is a competitor. Lichess some people like 'cause it's more like indie. But chess.com has... Like if you go on there, you can play and then after your game it'll basically say like, "Actually here are all your blunders, your mistakes, and this is actually like exactly where you went wrong." And it's interesting because those are the things people used to pay coaches for. Like when I was little playing chess, there, a coach would come over once a week and he'd like sit down. And I'd go to tournaments, and at tournaments you'd write down your moves and then we'd like study them after. And he'd be like, "See that move? Like..." Do you see how, like, eight moves later, that really hurt you? But chess.com has that basically, like, built into the software-
- SPSam Parr
Wow
- SSSteph Smith
... where they're like, "See?" Like, "That's where you went wrong."
- SPSam Parr
This is crazy.
- SSSteph Smith
Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
This is awesome. Ben texted me, or, like, Slacked me while we were doing this, and he goes, "Steph's been, uh, spitting fire for the last 50 minutes, so this is badass. You definitely have to come on again." Um, and there's, like, way more notes here. If I was you, selfishly, I wanna say don't share this, and we'll do another one in the ne- in next week or the week after. Uh, Ben, what do you think? What do you think about this? What, what, what do you rate this?
Episode duration: 52:15
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Transcript of episode 6p3K9bUS7cU
