The agency that makes $100m+ a year in profit, The best industry to be an entrepreneur in, The problem with podcasting today, Why Casper, Allbirds and Peloton Are All Struggling, and Liquid death checkmate

0:28Okay, so here's the story. Everyone has different tastes. But let's say they basically manage influencers in this space, and they're making these influencers on the low end, maybe they're making like 20-ish, 30K a month or so. On the high end, they might be pulling in 200 to 300 grand a month. Those are the higher end ones. And they basically just hire you a bunch of VAs to handle the chats for you and manage the process. And I think they take like a 50 % cut or something like that. And they do the marketing, I'm assuming? They do the marketing as well. Now, this company, I don't have exact numbers here, but it's basically doing, let's call it$20 to$25 million a month or so, right?

1:06And so let's go on the lower end,$20, so that's$240 million a year, 50%. We can mark it down a little bit more, but that's still a lot of profit per year, right? Yeah, but how do you know that's profit? How many team members do you think they have? That I don't know, but my friend, YPO Buddy, who you also know as well, gave me the numbers. and he doesn't want to reveal who the company is. But I'm just like, dude, there's always different ways to do things. But also keep in mind, things like this with Sora and all that, maybe not that much OnlyFans in the long term. Dude, and it's so funny because entrepreneurs these days try to make money and stuff like, oh my God, I'm going to create the next chat.

1:46It's a hustle. Yeah, and they're trying to innovate. That kind of stuff is hard. And I always talk about the best industry to be an entrepreneur in is the boring, ugly stuff that no one wants to touch. Yeah. Trash. We have a mutual friend, Devin, who's in HVAC. Dude, whether the economy is good or not, you need either heating or air conditioning, right? Depending on the season. People fix it. If it's winter, whether you have money or not, you're going to make sure that your heating works. And when it's summer and it's 100 degrees in your house, you're going to make sure that your air conditioning works.

2:16We need clean water. People are looking at clean food. People are looking at better sleep. Now it's like the basics. Dude, you know what's hilarious? I look at the Forbes 1000 or a rich list every once in a while. And there's this guy in China. I forgot his name. I don't know how to pronounce it either way, but really smart guy. He's one of the richest people in China. You know what industry he's in? Is it appliances? Water. Okay. What's his name? No joke. I don't know. I don't know how to say it, but he's on the Forbes list. Yeah. Forbes, China, billionaire, uh, water. Let's see if it pops it up.

2:48There you go. Uh, Zhang, Shan, Shan, and I do apologize for mispronouncing your name. That's racist. I can say it because I'm Chinese. But anyway. How do you say the name correctly? Just send it to me. Z-H-O-N-G Zong Okay. S-H-A-N S-H-A-N is the last name. S-H-A-N Shan So How do you say it again? My bad. Zong Tong Tong Or zhong Tong Tong Shanshan Yeah, whatever. That's worth$65 billion from bottled water. Have you heard of Hire before? The appliances company in China? Okay, they are huge. They're basically about to go bankrupt and then the culture was terrible. But now they have like 4 ,000 business units within the company.

3:37And three or four of the business units are publicly traded companies. They build like smart refrigerators, smart appliances, and they're number one. They like were in the outhouse and now they're up in the penthouse. That guy has a book called The Startup Factory and it shows their entire process on how they went from nothing, pivoted, pivoted again, and pivoted again. What's the dude's name? I don't know. Just search for H-A-I-E-R. That's the company. H-A-I-E-R. I-E-R? Uh-huh. I'm assuming he's on Forbes? Probably. I don't know. He's rich. The guy used to be a government worker and he became a CEO of this thing.

4:13Hair? Hire. Hire Smart Home. Uh-huh. Did you type market cap? Oh, they're publicly traded. I don't know. Are they? I don't know. I don't know. Let's find out. It looks good. They'll start at Factory. Everyone go pick up the book while Neil finds the more information on it. Here's Smart Home, LTD, Yahoo Finance. I'm not going to do well with the currency exchange. Market cap in CNY, 213 billion. CNY to USD. Let's check this out. So 213. Their market cap is$29 billion USD. That's massive. Yeah, it's pretty good. But it just goes to show you that people doing boring things for a long period of time.

4:54I think he's been there for 30 plus years or so. I bet you the water guy has been doing it his whole life. Yeah. So the founder of it is called Z-H-A-N-G. I'm not going to even try to pronounce his name anymore. I'm just going to butcher it. Zan. Last name R-U-I-M-I-N. Yeah. Anyway, main point here for everyone. Main point here for everyone. do something boring, do it for a very long time, do it consistently, don't get distracted, and you're going to be able to build something pretty good. And it doesn't matter which industry you're in. I will say, however, that you want to do something ideally that has longevity too, right?

5:32That's kind of what we're talking about too. If it's been around for the last hundred years, it'll probably be around for the next hundred years. That's known as a Lindy effect. But the best thing about it is like, dude, people need their clothes washed. People need bedsheets. People need carpet, right? They need cups to drink out of. They need water. Like they need chairs to sit on. We take for granted so many things in this world from business. And it's like, oh, who wants to make furniture? It's not cool. Well, we all have furniture. Eventually you're going to end up needing it. If you're by a home or you rent a place, like it costs money.

6:05Someone's making and they're making a crap load of money doing furniture. Dude, look at Ikea. The Ikea, are they publicly traded? I think they are. Either way, the founder of IKEA was one. But he was one of the richest people. And his family was too. But then he set things up in a specific way to decrease his net worth, but I think pass along the money to other people so you would avoid taxes or something like that, right? Hey, that's what we all want to do for our kids, for our family. By the way, Neil and I have an agency owners group called the Agency Owners Association. All you have to do, just go to marketingschool.io slash agency Once again, it's marketingschool.io slash agency to learn more.

6:45And now back to the show. Dude, did you, did I talk to you about this one? That the problem with podcasting today? No, what is it? Let's talk about this briefly. So I think this is a big problem. Like when you think about it, you probably don't listen to three hour podcast, right? Three hour, four hour long podcast. So like, you know, Joe Rogan, Lex Freeman, Chris Williamson, all these people. Right. And I, uh, there's another one diary of a CEO. So they're all doing these long form three to four hour podcasts. The problem with these podcasts now, and there's a couple of people talking about it.

7:14It's like, you start to like, they're interviewing this guy, this guy's 60 years old. And this guy is like an astrophysicist or whatever. And then all of a sudden it's like, Hey, what do you think about dating? It's like, what? This guy's like 60 years old. What do you know about dating? So the problem with these, like you just start to stretch them so long. You start to talk about a bunch of nonsense. Right. And it's just like, okay, maybe just talk about what you're good at. And maybe it's 60 to 90 minutes or so. It's a good conversation about that. And that's it. Right. I think I did a podcast interview recently.

7:40We got to about an hour and 40 minutes and I was like, am I going to try to stretch this to get more clips or I'm just going to end it? I was like, yeah, no, I'm just going to end it right here. So thank you. Good episode. But I'm confused here, right? So people are going really long with their podcasts and it's creating a lot more listens by far. It's creating. No, it's creating more listens. But there's also this, there's only so much talent, right? Like you start to interview all these. It's like the same circle because you want to interview people that have a large following too, right? Or like big authors.

8:07but then like people start to contradict each other too. So like you might say, oh, you should sleep nine hours. I might say you should sleep eight hours. I might say you should take this, you should take that. And then like, then people just don't know what to listen to anymore. And it's like all the same guests over and over. That's the problem. The problem is if everyone's following a certain formula, then it's all going to be the same thing. But that's also the problem with AI. If you look at AI, they're just regurgitating content. They're just taking what was already out in the web and creating stuff from it.

8:34I get you can put in prompts and have a video created that's new stuff, but the quality isn't there yet. I think if you want to stand out with podcasts, like for example, the reason we stand out for this one is because daily we've been doing over seven years. I thought about it this morning when I was driving here, this podcast has been around longer than your kids have been alive longer than this podcast started before you got married. Right. It's like podcast has been around before I even started dating my wife. Exactly. Oh, well, yeah, that's true. How old is this podcast? Eight years now? Seven, eight years, something like that.

9:01Yeah. Yeah. I've been married for like five ish years. Yeah. So probably close to around the same time where I met my wife. Yeah. So anyway, point is, I digress, but the point is, um, you have to have an angle and you have to stick with that angle. For example, the long form podcast I do, if that's 60, 90 minutes, two hours, sometimes I just focus on business marketing and personal growth. I don't talk about like, even though I'm into like health, fitness, longevity, I don't talk about my APOB. I don't talk about all these things. It's like, I just talk about what I'm comfortable with. Dude, but you had an angle in everything, not just podcasting, even in your marketing or even in business.

9:36Any content really. Yeah, but even any business model. Look at Casper and Allbirds and Peloton. They've gone crushed. What's so cool about Allbirds? I know you used to wear Allbirds shoes all the time. I used to, yeah. But not anymore, right? Oh, you remember that? Dude, you even bought me a pair of Allbirds. I did? Yeah, a long time ago. Why would I do that? I don't know. You said they were reusable, great for the environment. I should wear them. I don't think I would say something about the environment. You did. You said Allbirds was like a renewable company. or something like that. You aren't trying to pitch that like that's what I should wear.

10:06You're just telling me about the company. It was comfortable. They have a store at the Century City Mall. I'm like, nobody goes in there. Yeah, because no one cares for Allbirds. No. Peloton. I still use my Peloton, right? But it's just like, you know. Dude, so I go to the gym. I go to the gym in this building. They have a version of Peloton. It's not called Peloton. And it's similar. There's an instructor. You just get on it. And the same with their treadmills. What does Peloton offer that's unique now? Other than Edward Norton doing their TV commercials and using his voice. The problem with these companies, Casper, Allbirds, and Peloton, was that their unit economics broke.

10:40Yes. It was just a paid ads arbitrage thing. I'm oversimplifying, but you get what I mean. It wasn't like their products were super amazing. There is no moat around Peloton, Allbirds, or Casper. The products aren't that much better. It's not like Laurel Piano or Brunello. You know what I mean? Yeah, but a lot of those brands are old, right? And funny enough, I think - Yes, but the quality is amazing. I think the brand is your real moat in business these days. Like what separates Fenty from the other brands out there? Well, Fenty is Rihanna. Everyone loves Rihanna. That's why she does well. Fenty or Fendi?

11:16I thought it was Fenty. With a D, right? Fendi. I think it's Fendi. Fenty. I'll bet you a dollar. It's F-E-N-T-Y. Oh, okay. There's Fendi's the other brand then. See, I'm not - Yeah, I just Googled it. Fenty, beauty and skin. That's Rihanna's company. Continue, continue. And then there's also Savage Fenty. There's Yeezy. Yeah, there's Yeezy. But these brands is the real moat. You know, Michael Jordan shoes. What's really good about Michael Jordan shoes versus Steph Curry shoes, which is under New Balance. The quality of shoes is probably very similar. One has a Jumpman logo and the other doesn't.

11:49It's cool. You know, everyone knows Jordan. Everyone wants to be associated with greatness. And that's the brand behind it. And so like these Casper, Allbridge, Peloton, they're really good at user acquisition. But once the ads got harder, the whole model broke. And then because they spent all the time just acquiring new users, they didn't try to build community or build brand. And they got crushed. Their businesses aren't bad. They're not worth billions and billions of dollars as a public-traded company. By the way, have you ever actually looked up Allbirds stock in their financials? I'm looking at Peloton stock right now.

12:18How's Allbirds? Allbirds worth$146 billion of this recording. But I looked this up, funny enough, like days ago. Because that video that you linked in the sheet, I haven't watched it or clicked on it. But I bet you it's from CNBC because CNBC. It's a CNBC one day. I watch CNBC every day or at least on the weekdays. Allbirds, if you look at their quarterly numbers,$57 million a quarter in revenue. It was down 21 % year over year. That may be impressive, but compared to the TAM of the shoe industry, they're really tiny in revenue. On the flip side, right? That's$57 million a quarter. If you look at Nike, per quarter,$13.39 billion in revenue.

13:02That's a massive difference. And you know, they almost died a couple of times too. Nike? Yeah. Did you watch the Jordan movie? No, I read the shoe dog book. What's the Jordan? Air? Yeah. I've never seen it. Is it good? It's good. Maybe that's what I'll be watching tonight, guys. I think it's on Amazon Prime. It's on one of them. Yeah, it's on Amazon Prime. It was free. I know I didn't pay for it. That I know. Dude, Peloton stock down 82 % all time. By the way, separately, 23andMe, maybe we can end on this one, down 92%. It's a penny stock now. 23andMe stock? Yeah, 23andMe just so everyone knows.

13:35That's the thing where you spit your saliva and you get a DNA test. I still have my 23andMe. It's pretty accurate, it's fun. But they never figured out what else they could do. Because once you spit, you don't really need to renew. You don't need to do anything else. It's a one-time purchase. So they couldn't figure out another business model that's recurring. Dude, it was so funny because I looked up 23andMe right now and I clicked on the phone. I'm like, I know her. This is Sergey Brin's ex-wife, I think. Yeah, they dated and then she's - No, no, they're married. They have kids together. Are they?

14:01Dude, she's Susan - That was Sergey Brin, 2007 to 2015. You know the people that gave Google GarageBase is Susan Wojcicki or whatever, right? Who ran YouTube as the CEO. That's her sister. Yes. She has three kids with Sergey Brin. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm assuming she has three kids with Sergey Brin because it shows that she was married to him, no one else. Yeah, we don't know, guys. Three kids. If you've ever built a website, you know how tough it can be to keep a strong design while ensuring site performance is fast. That's where Framer comes in, and it totally changes the game.

14:34Framer is the design-first, no-code website builder that lets anyone ship a production-ready site in minutes. I recently built a custom landing page in just a few hours. Animations, fast load times, responsive layouts, all without writing a single line of code. It was easy to use, and the end result was polished enough to look like a developer spent days on it. One of my favorite things is that Framer's AI handles translations with a single click. So your site can be up and running in multiple languages almost instantly. And with real-time collaboration, your whole team can jump in and work together.

15:03No issues with versions or miscommunication. Whether you're starting from scratch or using one of their templates, Framer lets you focus on design while handling the technical side for you. Animations, responsive layouts, search optimization, and all the things that matter. Ready to build a site that looks hand-coded without hiring a developer? launch your site for free at framer.com and use code MS to get your first month of pro on the house. That's framer.com, promo code MS, framer.com, promo code MS, rules and restrictions may apply. When I first started my business, the overwhelm was real.

15:35I didn't have the tools to help me scale. If only I had Shopify from the start to handle all the behind the scenes work. Shopify is the platform behind millions of businesses globally from huge names like Mattel and Gymshark to the smallest brands just getting started. The best part about it, it has everything you could need. Say you're ready to launch your own design studio. Shopify has hundreds of templates to create a beautiful store that matches your brand style. Or if you need help with content creation, Shopify's got AI tools that write your product descriptions, craft page headlines, and even enhance your product photos.

16:06Shopify lets you easily create email and social media campaigns to reach customers wherever they are, whether they're scrolling or strolling. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into with Shopify on your side. Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.com slash marketing school. Go to Shopify.com slash marketing school. Shopify.com slash marketing school.

16:34Yeah, they have a son in 2008, daughter born in 2011, but good for her on 23andMe. Let's end it on this one over here. So Liquid Death is a good example of someone that's... So I'm pulling up this LinkedIn post over here. Are they still doing well? I think they're doing well. So get this. So this is... I'm looking at a LinkedIn post over here. And this is from Tian, who works at Coca-Cola. Okay. So she puts a LinkedIn post up. She's like, Liquid Death probably won't sell us the ad on their box. So we decided to put an ad on their eBay listing. So enough with the death talk already. Crank opens something smart, right?

17:10So she... Smart water, right? And so Mike, the CEO and founder of Liquid Death, he posts something. He's like, even the biggest beverage company on earth is interested in our biggest ad ever. And for the record, we would 1000 % sell Coca-Cola the ad space for their smart water brand. Tien Phan, as a four-time award-winning marketer, which is her tagline in LinkedIn, right? As a four-time award-winning marketer, you know the CPM value of running a smart water ad on Liquid Death boxes across the biggest national retailers. And the media attention from Coca-Cola doing this. and the announcement on our Liquid Death social channels of 7.6 million followers.

17:42It's way better than running a banner ad with 0.01 to 0.04 % CTRs, click-through rates, on our eBay page with very low traffic. That is mostly marketing executives. He basically shat on her, right? He's active on LinkedIn. What's the Liquid Death founder's name? Mike Cesario. C-E-S-S-A-R-I-O. But the point is, Liquid Death, they built the brand. Right. That's the difference. It is the real power. You know, our agencies do well because of the staff and the people and the results we produce. But it's also because we built some sort of a mini brand. Nowhere near any of these celebrities, but it's helped us within our own.

18:23There's a mini brand and we're known for like, there's a little quality with what we do. Right. And we've upped the quality of this thing. So it's like, if you want to do good, good stuff, you want to build a brand, just high quality. So, yep. Well, that's it for this podcast. if you want to meet up with us in person in your agency on March 8th, May 8th to 10th go to marketingschool.io slash agency to learn more you can go there to apply there's programs for 6, 7, 8 figure founders of agencies, go there and we'll see you tomorrow