2 Trends Hidden in Plain Sight (+ $1M ideas)

27:02They try to be up-tempo. Yeah. True crime, 150 beats per minute. Dude, already innovation, white space. You know what I'm saying? For zone two workouts, I only listen to Solved Murders by Parcast. Oh, I got to go do a 60-minute run? Turn on Solved Murders. That's 60 minutes of, like, we're going to get through two 30-minute episodes, and I'm going to learn about some crazy murders. But they're kind of slow, right? So, like, what if somebody created a higher energy? All right, so here's my brainstormer. Can I give you some pitches on my brainstorm? This was my five-minute brainstorm before the podcast of what would I do?

27:33Because it's one thing to say there's an opportunity there. Great podcast already. How I would do it. But Sam, do we settle for great? I don't know about you. Great doesn't get me out of bed in the morning. I mean, great's pretty good to be. Honestly, it'd be a huge compliment. I'd be greatly flattered. I'd rest on those laurels. But all right, here's the brainstorm. So white space in the true crime space right now. First, okay, the obvious one. This is not that fun of a one, but YouTube. So most of these that started, they were just audio-only podcasts like Serial. They were inspired by Serial.

28:12They were podcasts. And most people thought podcasts were all audio. YouTube came out recently and announced that a billion people a month watch podcast content on YouTube. So if you're a podcaster and you're not doing YouTube, where are you at? And if you're listening to this podcast, and you're not subscribed to us on YouTube, where are you at? That's what I have to say. Go find my first one on YouTube. All right, but so the first thing is go all in as a YouTube first podcast. Even Crime Junkie, she started off heavily in audio, then started doing video just as kind of an add-on. If you go watch their video, it's like, you know, started off really scrappy and now it looks a little bit better.

28:46And then when she raised this money, she's investing in like a full video studio to do this like for real. But the format is actually pretty great. Have you ever listened to her podcast? It's basically, she sits on a couch with her friend. But unlike most podcasts where it's two equal hosts or something, they're going back and forth. It's her explaining to one friend what's going on with the crime. And her friend is like active listening. She's like sitting there. And asking questions. Nodding her, mostly just nodding her head and being like, ooh. And then like ask a clarifying question when the listener would have one.

29:17So smart, by the way. That little thing is so smart because most content gets better the more you narrow it to an audience of one. If you're writing, write to one person. If you're doing a podcast, like this podcast works well because we kind of do that too where instead of saying, all right, listeners, we'd like to tell you about some great businesses. It's like, dude, Sam, have you seen this? You're like, no, what? I'm like, check this out. And it's that vibe that actually works well, the podcast. So that's a little bit of the secret sauce, all right? I gave you three of Colonel Sanders' nines.

29:46Yeah, I was going to say that. You got spices there.

29:51last week last episode it was leveraged I just broke your brain what happened it was leveraged to the tits now it's I just gave you three of the kernels nine spices that's fantastic I gave you a quarter kernel there I was gonna say something and you that was great I nuked your brain alright my bad oh I was gonna say with this podcast like I did not know that you were going to bring this up and you didn't know I was gonna bring the other thing up So that's like a little bit, that's how it works. Yeah, we surprise each other. And intentionally, right? We could say, let's share notes, let's do research, let's be prepared.

30:24But that makes for a work podcast. We surprise each other because the show is - You need a reaction. I want to tell you something. I want you to react. I want you to riff for real. And then I want you to surprise me. And that makes it fun for us to do. So she does the same thing. She basically tells the story to her friend. Her friend says they're active listening. She started off just taking existing shows and now has like a team of 10 journalists that do original reporting. She now has another show called The Deck where she works with local cops and they give her access to evidence and they try to actually solve cold cases.

30:56Awesome. Isn't that insane? That's the greatest. She is basically the Mr. Beast of true crime. Like when you see how she just took a very simple idea and took it very seriously and she scaled it up. It's like, yeah, why not? Why not have her own journalist? Why not scour the country for stories? Why not partner with the cops? Why not build a studio? Why not have a hundred employees? Why not turn this into a full-on production company? She just kept going with the very simple idea, right? Mr. Beast's like, what if I gave away$1 ,000? What if I gave away$5 ,000,$10 ,000,$100 ,000,$1 million,$10 million?

31:26What if you stood in a tiny circle? What if you stood in a big circle? What if you didn't have to stand in the circle? What if you had to lay down? He just keeps going with these ideas and takes a very simple idea, but takes it more seriously than anybody else. So I feel like she's done that. She's coming to Radio City in New York in May. Should I go? I would totally go to one of her live events. yeah you should go um why not it's like a huge tour she has a huge tour you're gonna become a very big fan of her let me i found something that when i found it i go oh sam's gonna love this and i'm like the mama bird and you're the baby bird and i'm about to puke in your mouth with something you're gonna love peter chernan when he met her here's what here's the quote he said about her because he invested 40 he met her at a part of a tv show pitch and then was like just like wow this woman is really impressive and told his guy, go find a way to invest.

32:18And he like flies to Indiana and like, like hounded her for this investment. So here's what Peter Chernin said. He said, I find her uniquely impressive. That's a good one. And he's good, right? He's been around everyone. I find her uniquely impressive. What a, what a subtle, but like powerful compliment from a guy who's met so many interesting people. And I think her and Pat mcafee are both in indianapolis that's like they're they're like in a form like the indianapolis uh podcasting like mafia two dots make a line so um check this out okay so here's the other white space here ready black true crime not a lot of black podcasters doing true crime are you a follower of black youtube or black twitter i am a i'm a card-carrying member of black culture so yeah i'm a part of like is dj vlad the greatest youtuber of all time one of the greatest journalists of our time of our era yeah you're getting the wade brothers to like dish on like what it's like or like club shay shay with cat williams again dude how about club shay shay getting like a hundred mil i think that was i think before trump on rogan or maybe even including i think club shay shay and cat williams is the number one most downloaded youtube video or YouTube interview of the year.

33:35Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's insane. Are there not more of these, like these true crime shows geared towards that audience? There's only a couple. And the very first one was called like Affirmative Crime or something. I was like, nah, that's a bad name. This is not right, right? Like this has happened in comedy podcasts. Like comedy podcasts started with a lot of like white comedians in LA. But now there's like so many really funny, you know, just two guys hanging out, two black comedians hanging out type of podcasts, sports podcasts, et cetera. I think podcasting started off pretty homogeneously white and true crime.

34:07Even just the way it comes across is a little bit like… Midwestern white woman. Serial kind of was in that lineage. I think she used to work for NPR, right? Something like that. And so it just feels very produced and almost… Like New York elitist. Exactly. Exactly. And it needs to be more country grammar. it's like somebody who listened to a lot of nelly growing up they all like a lot of those guys have like that ira glass like uh today's episode yeah this american life yeah yeah you know what i mean that cadence is so good yeah all right so that's a cool one well by the way world's worst impression to be good at ira glass this was the only time that was ever gonna land for you um all right next one is comedy times true crime.

34:59So I think a lot of the true crime podcasts are very serious. They're heavy. They're trying to be mysterious. Creepy. Makes total sense. You get why I do it that way. I think there's an opening for somebody to do true crime, but just with a comedy angle. And not to toot our own horn here, but we did this a little bit in the business space. A lot of the business podcasts, a lot of the interviews, a lot of the podcasts were, it was just an IQ contest. Everybody just wanted to be the bigger know-it-all than the other. It was very dry, informational. And, you know, being you, this is kind of how we talk when we hang out.

35:35And we just didn't filter ourselves that way. And it's not that we're, like, compared to comedians, we're not funny. But compared to most VCs, we're pretty funny. Yeah, so the bar's low. And so the bar is low also in true crime. There's nobody funny in true crime. So if you're even moderately funny, you're the funniest true crime podcast. Let me as a... Am I talking out my ass? Are they actually funny ones? No. Well, you're not off. But you're actually right. And I'm going to give you one piece of evidence that you're right. So we are called MFM. I have gotten like hate mail from women who are like, you're not MFM.

36:08The real MFM is My Favorite Murder. So go to myfavoritemurder.com and read the headline. Yeah, we're not even the most famous. We'll never be the most famous MFM podcast. Yeah, it's my, have you heard of My Favorite Murder? Have people like said like, you're not really MFM. I've never listened to it though. Is it humorous? It looks like it. So go to the website. The headline is A True Crime Comedy Podcast. Okay. And listen, it's hugely popular. Got it. It's hugely popular, but I actually have a bone to pick. Dude, they're talking about like Ted Bundy killing people and they're like, isn't he hot?

36:45Like they're talking about, you know what I mean? It's kind of weird. Like they're talking about wanting to like get with Ted Bundy. So I'm basically like, you know what we should do? Someone should have a coffee shop with Wi-Fi. And you're like, hey, go to Star Wars.

36:59But you're right. Look, it's like, you know, had you developed the theory of relativity and never even heard of Albert Einstein, I would still say you're a genius. A few other possibilities here. True romance. So I think there's an opportunity to do a true crime style genre, but spin off into, combine two very popular genres, true crime and romance. We've talked a lot of the past about like how the most read books and the most voracious readers are reading Daniel Steele, Fifty Shades of Grey style romance novels. And I think somebody could do true romance as a podcast genre. Hey, quick message here, because you know that feeling when you send a wire and it actually works?

37:44No friction? Well, I've used Mercury for years now, and let me tell you, it just works. And that's why I use it for not one, not two, but eight of my companies. From credit cards to invoices, I have everything in one place. There's no janky dashboard. I'm never told, please visit a local bank branch. None of that tomfoolery. And a few months ago, I landed a big client. And the first thing I did, I sent them a clean, branded invoice. Boom, deal closed, cash in the door. That's the kind of banking experience I want. And that's why I use Mercury. So if you're running a startup and you want banking that feels like it's built in this century, well, go to Mercury.com and get started in minutes.

38:17Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Bank services are provided through Choice Financial Group, column A, and Evolve Bank and Trust members, FDIC. One of my favorite true crime podcasts, they have a series called Killer Couples. And it's all about lovebirds who go out and commit murder. Maybe you should have done this brainstorm because I don't really listen to true crime. I listened to two seasons of Serial and fell asleep to a few true crime podcasts. Serial is like the JV team now compared to what's going on now. All right. I'm on board with killer couples. What else you got?

38:51I mean, I feel a little bit discouraged, but I'll just finish out because quitting is the only thing more embarrassing than what's happening. Wait, hold on. Speaking of true crime, I do think that there is this weird, like when I, we did this one like bit with the hustle about romance novels and there was like these crazy weird genres of like, first of all, romance novels are like a massive hit. And then, but there's like women who want to like a romance novel about a military guy. But there's like, take it a step further. There was like women who want to have sex with werewolves. Like, you know, what was the, what was that Rob, that movie that shit called?

39:23what was that thing the robert patterson the the twilight twilight like there were some weird like undertones of like bestiality with all that stuff right uh but so i think that there's always a niche for uh yeah but you know my the bone i have to pick with this what nobody likes hairy dudes as a hairy dude out here where where's that where's the appeal what you just said like werewolves but not just hairy guys. Yeah. You need to get rebranded as a wolf. I got so excited when I heard that werewolves were a thing for women and then just did not translate whatsoever. gray hair guys have rebranded to the silver foxes.

40:02Yeah. You know, we got to do something for the hairy backs. I heard somebody say this the other day. They were like, oh yeah, I had this like salt and pepper thing going on. They're like, yeah, it's a lot of salt though. I was like, that's the problem. I have to look. just salt okay so last thing games do they make games so there's that one board game do you remember what it's called it's kind of a mystery like board game subscription series catch a murder catch a killer hunt a killer hunt a killer I think when we talked about it I think it was doing 30 million a year in revenue yeah tens of millions a year in revenue I think that this woman instead of touring she should be creating board games she should be creating a game that's in Target in Walmart on the shelf and it's a true crime card game or board game that people can basically solve these cases together cooperatively.

40:55Or it's some kind of like mafia where one person's the game master and the other people are trying to figure it out. I think take a game mechanic like that but apply these true crime things and use your brand as crime junkies. I think somebody should be partnering with True Crime Broadcast to build those out. Hunt a killer, I think it's called. My whole perspective on games, got completely changed. We hung out with the guy, Elon, at... He's coming on the podcast, by the way. We're doing it. What was it called? Killing Kittens or something? Exploding Kittens. Exploding Kittens. It's a card game, but board game, I guess.

41:29And I don't know what... We'll wait to see if he's going to reveal anything, but shockingly large. Numbers are bananas. He's also like, yeah, of the top five most popular games in the world, we make number one, two, four, and five. Yeah. It's like, damn. It was amazing. how successful that is and i was like i should start a game company uh he he felt like a he felt like a 12 like he had the excitement of like a 12 year old like he was so into like games and making people smile via these games that i was like 100 this guy's the greatest in fact that was my takeaway i was like oh my god i wish i was doing this this is so cool i could do this yes and then i saw how truly joyful he was about making the games not not being successful at it but the doing part and i was like oh that's different than me i don't have that i just want the i want to have done it he yeah you want the result he like was showing us this game and it was like half done and he had a pen that he had written in like different points on the cards like he was making the game as he was going and he was like wouldn't this be cool let's like let's change the game to this like he was doing it in real time and we were playing the game it would be like you know playing poker and he's like did you actually we should come up with like an ace an ace means Yeah, he was like rapid prototyping on us.

42:42Did you see what he pulled out of his pocket while we were playing that game, by the way? Just total side note, unrelated, but it was so funny. What was it? He's trying to read a card and he can't read it. He needs his glasses. And so he whipped out a pair of glasses, but the glasses had no sticks. It was like a monocle for two glasses and he just rested it on the bridge of his nose and started reading it. And I completely couldn't pay attention to the rest of the game because I was just constantly trying to figure out, is it going to fall off his nose and what are the physics of this? How does this work?

43:12I think they're called readers. He had readers on it or something like that. Is that a thing? Is that a known thing? Like modern monocles? It's like at Walgreens. You see them next to the checkout. You know what I mean? It's like the spinning thing. But they don't have sticks? Sometimes, yeah. Arms? Is that what they're called? I've been sleeping on this train.

43:37I'm amazed that this woman is potentially doing$45 million a year. I don't know if I believe it because that is so shocking, but we should see if anyone's listening and can get us in touch with her. I would like to talk to her for the pod. That would be fun. Yeah, Ashley Flowers. Very, very impressive. How old is she? 36. She's young. Wow, that's crazy. Isn't that crazy? She's my age, dude. That's crazy. I could be her. She could be me. We could trade. Isn't that crazy that like, you know it's it's now we're like yeah that's obvious uh but seven years ago to be like i'm gonna start a crime podcast and that's gonna make me a billionaire that's pretty wild to think because she potentially might be a billionaire if after another you know five or ten years because of this that's absolutely wild and we called it so we're right and we deserve all the credit no we didn't call it it was identified early on by us as a likely outcome all right uh do we i have a bunch more but i think we're we're it's time to wrap so maybe we call it i think we should call it wait wait what before we go did you see fire festival 2 he didn't listen to our advice

44:50so billy came on our podcast right after he got out of jail prison prison yeah he um i love that where that's like you know other people get like authors when they have their book tours we get like the post prison we got shkreli we got billy we get them we get them first right out of prison and um you told him you what did you tell him you gave him some advice he didn't listen he basically was like explaining all of these ideas for his the business that he like he owes money so he has to like earn he has to earn not just a little bit of money he owes a lot he was like 27 or 30 million dollars a lot and he was like i'm gonna start this festival uh we're gonna do like this other festival and we were just like you know maybe you maybe don't maybe you should maybe you should maybe i think you shouldn't do that i think that like maybe you can there's a lot of things you can do because you're famous but you know a fire fest too maybe you shouldn't do that and he's doing exactly that so he's doing Fire Festival 2.

45:56Is that what we said to him on the pod? Did we say anything else? We told him, you're crazy. And he was like, he just saw the potential. He was like, what if we did it right this time? So, article came out today. It says, Fire Festival 2 is off to a rough start again. Days after the tickets go on sale, which is allegedly taking place on Isla Mujeres, an island off the coast of Mexico, the local tourism board claims they have no knowledge of this event. The director of the tourism board says, we have never had any contact with any person or company about this. For us, this is an event that does not exist.

46:34And then if you go to the location that they list for where it's going to take place. So I don't know if you have Google Maps, Andy, but if you open up 21 degrees, 12 degrees, 30, you do all that. Just here's where the event is taking place. Take a look at this. In the ocean. Firefest 2. the location in the middle of the ocean where there's no land also uh the most expensive tickets are 25 000 like he you know how we've joked about uh entrepreneurs who have just taken what has worked and they just like say like all right uh you sold all this candy bars just do the same thing now but for uh a Reese's peanut butter cup style product right he did that so he must have exported the code for that old website and he just put a number two on it and now he's doing Fyre Fest 2.

47:25It's the same thing. What did that guy's wife say instead of I told you so? It was, this had a bunch of predictable outcomes. What's the line? This was identified early on as a likely outcome. Yeah, you called it. This was, this is insane. I don't even know how he's allowed to leave the country. Yeah, it's not good. But hey, listen, I'm an optimist. There's a chance. There's always a chance. Here's some other great quotes from this article, by the way. We tried. Billy took to Instagram to address the concerns. Here's what he said. Fire Fest, Fire 2 is real. We have incredible partners leading the festivals.

48:06They're in charge of all logistics production operations. There's no way they would ever take on a fake festival. Right? No, he didn't say the right part. And then And the next thing he says is, the tourism board responded. The organizers did not even bother to approach the authorities. It's very strange because anyone who organizes events knows if you're going to hold an event, let alone a massive event, you need municipal authorization. I think they thought they could just announce it, see if it got traction, and then ask for permits halfway down the path. It's a bit naive. McFarlane responds, we have accommodations.

48:42Is that really what he said? That's what he said before. Yeah. also there's you can buy tickets on his website for up to$20 ,000 but there's a great way to accept your money as a user but they don't list any bands, it's a show right? so that's the other part here at this point no talent has been announced for the festival, however McFarlane responds we have talent artists, athletes and other performers are on board so did I ever tell you about the time my dad I went on a trip with my dad and I learned the power of just being absolutely delusional the negotiation it wasn't even not even a full negotiation it was I mean it wasn't a negotiating situation we were at the airport and my dad is cheap and so he doesn't want to pay to check luggage in oh yeah so he just like bought the he got his bag that's too big to check in and stuffed it and then they're like you want to check bags?

49:42He's like, yep, just that one, like the free one. And then the lady, this like poor little lady from Singapore Airlines behind the desk was like, sir, like you'll need to check that one too. And he goes, no, no, I'm carrying that on. And she goes, sir, it's too big. And my dad responds, no, actually it's too small. Not even, not even though it's, it's not, it's not too big it's okay he says it's too small which makes absolutely no sense to anyone in any situation there's no such thing as it being too small and by the way she just kept saying i think it's over the limit and he goes no it's too small i checked it's too small and it worked she let him on the plane and we got it on the plane at the plane they're like sir it's not gonna fit he's like you need to check it up front here because it's free to check when you're up there and he got it for free and he just kept doing this on the trip we were trying to get into this like Like, he's like, oh, let's go to the Four Seasons.

50:36They have this, like, the New Year's festival. Like, they're doing this big celebration there. And we're, like, driving up. It's, like, all these signs. Like, you must be a resident to attend. I'm like, Dad says we have to be staying here. We're definitely not staying at the Four Seasons. So, like, we can't do this. We should turn around. He's like, no, no, no. It's going to be fine. It's going to be fine. It's going to be fine. And we're like, what do you get? There's a guy at the front, like, the gate. He's checking everybody. Like, what room? Give me your ID. All this stuff. and um so like my dad just goes up and he just pulls up and he goes so what do you need to see some id or something and the guy just goes no it's good you're fine go ahead we got in and i was like wow somebody i tweeted this out he goes delulu is the salulu and i've been saying that for the last two days my kids they know i'm just delulu is the salulu if you got a problem I got a Solulu for you Delulu is the Solulu who said that I tweeted out this long thoughtful thing and this guy just responded with that Delulu is the Solulu and I was like this is amazing that should be the new small boy stuff I don't have any tattoos but I did it's up there it's a contender my kids names and that dude that seems like a cute thing like a Gen Z woman would say on a true crime pod that just like we stole MFM you know we're gonna steal that one too thank you that is now ours yeah sorry i wish i could remember who said it i don't know your name um this is a good podcast because i'm exhausted from laughing that's how i know i had a really good time yeah let's do it again sometime all right uh great show see y 'all out there have a good night that's it that's the pod i feel like i can rule the world i know i could be what i want to i put my all in it like my days off on the road let's travel never looking back

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