477: Million Dollar Business Ideas Free For The Taking Part 2 With Nick Loper
You're listening to the MyWipeKitter.com podcast.
The place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners
and Dell deeply into what strategies are working
and what strategies are not with their businesses.
Now, today I'm thrilled to have Nick Loper back on the show
for the third time.
And last time I had Nick on was back in episode 429,
where we gave out a bunch of million dollar business ideas.
And this episode was so popular that I decided to do another round.
Here's another set of side-elsals
that you can start right now to make money right now.
But before we begin, I want to give a quick shout-out
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Now onto the show.
Welcome to the Mywifequitterjob podcast.
Today I have my friend, Nick Loper, back on the show.
And Nick is the host of the extremely popular podcast,
Side Hustle Nation,
where he breaks down different ways to make money on the side.
And last time I had Nick on,
we basically gave out 17 million dollar business ideas
that you can start right now.
And because this episode did so well,
Nick and I are back at it again.
And today, we're going to make a video
about how to make money on the side.
And today, we're going to go about even more
a million dollar business ideas for free.
Now Nick, welcome to the show.
And since you're the guest, why don't you go first?
Now I want to kick off this list.
One of the cool ways to kind of just get your
idea-generating juices flowing is to go to sites
like ExplodingTapix.com,
which is like kind of like Google Trends,
but it feels a little more curated.
And when I was on there recently,
one of the exploding topics that popped up to me
or kind of like got the light bulb going for me
was Core Web Vitals.
This is Google's metric of how user-friendly your site is
in terms of page speed, user experience,
a bunch of other factors.
And so if Core Web Vitals,
then the chart is up and to the right.
Like lots of people looking for information
and assistance around how do I improve my Core Web Vitals score.
So a couple of different paths that I see
this potentially going as a side hustle
as a business idea.
The first is learn these skills yourself.
Watch the YouTube videos,
become educated on this.
Maybe you start on Fiverr.
I'll help you improve your Core Web Vitals score,
$50 or $100,
like kind of a low ticket service.
You learn on the job, you improve your skills.
Second path would be to partner with somebody
who already knows this stuff
and then go be the marketing arm.
Start the product-type service around this
where for a flat fee will optimize your site.
And then because it's kind of a moving target,
like they always are changing,
what goes into this Core Web Vitals score,
you have a lower monthly recurring service.
Like well, make sure you're always up to date
with the latest changes here.
So that's idea number one for me.
This Core Web Vitals,
and I was inspired by a search on ExplodingAtopics.com.
I'll tell you this, Nick.
When I was messing with my Core Web Vitals,
and for everyone listening,
this is essential for ranking your website in search.
I painstakingly did this all by myself,
and yes, I would have gladly paid a service
to help me with that, for sure.
Yeah, it's a pain.
And it's like, you know,
they give you all this technical language,
and even then they tell you,
well, here's your recommended action
as a basis of this lower score that you got,
and you're like,
I don't know what to do with that information.
Like, you're still speaking a foreign language, Google.
So, yes.
I think of the opportunity.
Google's horrible at this.
They use all this technical jargon
that just confuses people.
So yeah.
Great idea, Nick.
So mine is something that I've been actually
just thinking about for a very long time.
It's not technical.
It's basically a service that holds you accountable.
And maybe this is because I do this with my kids
like every single day.
Did you do your homework?
Did you work on this?
Did you make any progress on your project?
And I found that,
so I've been teaching a class for like over a decade now
on how to start an e-commerce store.
And what I find is that people,
it's not because they aren't smarter,
anything.
It's because they need someone to just hand them,
not hand them,
but just to ask the question like,
hey, did you make progress?
Did you actually do what you told me
that you were going to do this week?
And the service could be as simple as,
hey, you just received a text message
like once a week asking you a few
accomplished the goals that you've set the previous week.
Yeah, that could be an easy one.
I'm surprised when I see some of these,
even just membership services,
where there's not a huge level of,
you know, content added,
where, you know,
we tend to think it's content creator.
Well, if I'm going to have a membership,
it's got this huge library of content.
It's like, no, sometimes the membership is just like,
show up and I'll pin you with this accountability message.
Like, you kind of know what you need to do,
but, you know, just to have somebody
kind of looking over your shoulder,
even in a virtual way.
I think that could make some sense.
And my next one kind of plays along with that,
and we've witnessed the power of gamification.
I'll give you the examples.
My son, my oldest son is in first grade.
And, you know, he reads a decent amount,
but we just got done with a month of what they call
the eager reader program at school.
I don't know if your elementary school has had this for your kids.
But, you know, all of a sudden,
now it was a contest.
And he was reading to sometimes three hours in a day
because it was like being quantified
and measured against his classmates.
And so my idea, so Google or Apple rather,
is coming out with their augmented reality glasses.
It's like, how do we gamify some
of the bigger challenges that we face as a country,
as a planet, like with obesity and environmental problems?
Like, if we could, you know,
do you remember the cigarette ads,
or the stops smoking ads, like from the 90s,
where like, you know, each cigarette is like 14 minutes
off your life or something?
Like, if we could have in our field of vision,
as we're choosing between, you know, different menu items
at the restaurant, well, you know,
the stake is minus 14 minutes,
and the salad is like plus 15 minutes or something.
Like, some way to gamify these decisions where we,
we kind of inherently know the right path to choose,
but we don't, because we choose, you know,
whatever feels better in the moment.
So I'm trying to think of that, you know,
how to gamify, like, health in a way,
that would have wide scale adoption
and actually spark some change there.
So a funny story is Fitbit.
When my wife and I first got a Fitbit,
we joined this group of our friends
and we would have weekly contests
on who would have the most steps for the week.
Yeah.
And my wife does not work out at all.
And she ended up getting like 35,000 steps in one day.
Wow.
And that's a lot.
That's a lot of steps in one day.
Yeah, she's not tall.
That's like 10 or 12 miles.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And to win the contest, that's what she did.
So this gamification totally works.
And if it works in fitness,
it can probably work in health.
You just kind of find the right metrics.
Yeah.
So I used like the My Fitness Pal app,
often on to track meals and stuff.
But it's kind of a pain.
Like there's a lot of friction involved.
And so if there's a way to make it more seamless
and more integrated into your date,
like without having to open a nap and log in.
I don't know.
Like all that stuff kind of makes it more of a pain.
So maybe there's something coming down the road
with the glasses or the future augmented reality dashboards and stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So my next one has nothing to do with tech also.
It is rent a garden.
Now here's a problem that we've had.
Like my wife and I always wanted to start a vegetable garden.
The problem is we plant these things in our backyard
and they inevitably die.
Mainly because we don't have the right conditions.
But we really want to start this garden
and start eating the food that we grow.
So what I thought of was,
if there was a place that just had nice soil
and they maintained everything for you, water the plants,
and just made sure it had sunlight.
Yeah.
If you could plant your own seeds there
and harvest your own crops and that sort of thing.
They would just make sure your plants would live.
That would be a lot of fun.
I think that would be a great service to have.
We'd be all over it.
Yeah.
It would have to be somewhat nearby to the neighborhood.
You wouldn't want to be commuting half an hour
to go tend to your plants or anything.
But I can see that working.
Yeah.
I mean, they would tend to it also for an extra fee.
Okay.
You could start a business where you would take care of the plants basically
and they would have the fun of watering
or they could come and take care of it also.
Yeah.
This is us every summer as well.
Like, well, you know, at the end of the summer,
here's our $17 tomato.
Like, great.
I'm glad we just didn't go to the store and get this.
But there's some pride in cultivation there.
And we've seen a couple.
There was one near my apartment in college,
kind of like a community garden where,
I don't know if they charged rent per each row of the thing,
but you could see people out there gardening.
And actually our neighborhood, HOA maintains one too.
They call it the neighborhood P patch,
where you can go and have your own little plot.
But it's, I don't think they're going to maintain it for you.
So maybe that's enough charge.
I was just thinking about this,
because we just got back from Japan
and a lot of the restaurants that we ate at
actually grow their plants right there.
And there's a lot of farm to table here in California also.
Yeah.
We had a hard time finding vegetables
that weren't temporarily fried in Japan.
That's like, yeah, that makes sense.
Okay, so that's number four.
Rent a garden.
If you're new to the show,
you found it awesome.
Thank you for tuning in.
Now you might be saying, hey, hey,
this is, this stuff is really interesting,
all this side hustle stuff.
And you might say, look,
there's 550 plus episodes in the archives.
Where do I start?
Well, if you're not, because here's what you do instead.
You go to hustle.show,
answer a few short multiple-choice questions.
And I'm going to build you a personalized playlist
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So that's hustle.show.
Thank you for discovering the show.
Hopefully you find your custom playlist over there.
Number five for me is what I'm calling
the Kids Summer Program Aggregator Site.
So what we have learned is that, you know,
during summer break,
and I'm very much of the position,
like, you know, the, what's the book,
like 18 summers or something,
like, like, this is time off for the kids.
I'm like, really grateful to have a flexible schedule.
But like 10 weeks off consecutively,
that's too much for both parties.
Like the kids get tired of us.
Like we get tired of them.
And so, you know,
but it's really disjointed.
And so this would require a lot of local knowledge
on what different summer camps and programs are available,
when the registration dates are,
like, to pull all of that together,
would be hugely valuable for parents.
And it's just, it's really disjointed,
like, registration times happen.
You know, some of them are in March.
Some of them don't happen until the end of April.
And it's like, well, you know,
how are we going to balance this out?
And some level of, like, calendar visualization
would help too,
as we ended up having to, like, you know,
print out a physical thing, like, try and block off
the weeks that we wanted to be off,
to travel, to go hiking, to do whatever.
And then the week's like, okay,
hey, go play soccer for a few hours
over here during this camp or something.
I love this idea.
Summers are always a major source of stress
for this family here because of the summer camps.
And they're like all over the place.
Some are really expensive.
Some only last a week,
some last two weeks.
And yes, if there was a service where I could just say,
hey, pick me three camps that span this time period
and it automatically sends me to the son of forms
or even signs up for me.
That'd be fantastic.
Yeah.
There's the next level of AI there.
Just do a for me.
Exactly.
I mean, these are all great services
that can easily be done, actually,
without any money to start.
Yeah.
You know, it's funny how all these ideas that we've come up
are just based on things that we recently had to go through.
So I just mentioned that I got back from Japan.
And there were just some ethnic foods over there
that I wish were in the United States,
but they are not.
So what I just thought of literally last night
when I kind of flew back,
was to start an ethnic foods monthly box.
All right.
So basically you just,
hey, I want a box of cool stuff from Japan every single month.
And you just send that same box to a bunch of people.
That can be really scaled easily.
And you can just cover countries
and it gives you an excuse to travel
and expense it also.
I like that.
Would you focus solely on one country
or would you say,
we're going to travel the globe.
Over the course of 12 months,
you're going to have 12 different countries sent to your house.
I think I would start out small
by just focusing on one country.
But there's no reason why you can't focus on many countries
and that gives you an excuse to travel as well.
Yeah.
Somebody was doing, I want to say,
somebody was doing this for Canada.
And it was like the Canadian gift box.
For people living in the States,
they didn't get certain products.
Or I want to say actually a listener of the show
was doing this for Hawaii,
where their business was based on travel and tourism
in 2020 that completely went away.
It's like, well, how can we bring the islands to our customers?
If they're not coming to us anymore,
we could send them these subscription boxes or so.
I like that. That's kind of a cool one.
I think there's definitely some validation
that's already been done on that front.
I'm playing the curation in the marketing game
on the ethnic foods monthly box.
So for number seven,
let me pitch you this.
So did you know that laughter may actually be a key to longevity?
So this is in the National Institutes of Health.
Participants in a multi-year study actually in Japan
reported those participants in the study
who reported laughing more frequently lived longer
and had significantly fewer instances
of cardiovascular disease
than their non-lapping counterparts.
So how do we make laughter like a daily vitamin?
And it would even be the first to admit,
like, okay, this is probably not going to cure cancer,
but I am pretty sure you're going to feel happier,
you're going to feel more grateful after a good laugh,
after a good chuckle.
That's why I'm proposing the laugh reminder app,
which will pin you at least once a day
with a funny video, a funny story,
a clip of somebody laughing,
a bonus point if it's a friend or a family member
with a great laugh.
And the inspiration for this,
actually our youngest son,
who has had just this amazing,
uncontrollable giggle,
like ever since he was, you know, a baby,
and he still has it, you know,
he just turned five and he's like,
you know, let's check.
Do you still have your gigs?
Like, okay, yep, they're still there.
And, you know, we'd go back
and watch those videos of him as a baby all the time.
It brings back all this happy memories.
So I think this laugh reminder app could be sold
as a key tool longevity
in just a general gratitude practice.
So with this laugh app,
be composed of your own videos
or curated by somebody else.
Yeah, I think you could upload your own,
or you could, you know,
if you have a famous celebrity laugh
or something,
you could probably have a few of those,
you know, stocked in the app,
but then you could upload your own
to make it more personable.
Nice.
I like that.
We all need to laugh a little bit more in this world.
Since we're talking about apps,
here's one that I just kind of recently came up with.
I'm going to call it Steve Bot,
only because it's my own bot.
But I was just thinking about something
that I'm going to do with my classes.
I'm going to upload all like transcripts of all my videos,
all my podcasts.
You should do this too, Nick.
And then you could just have people pay
to talk to the bot.
And because it's all of your stuff
and all of your content,
it's just like asking you that question personally.
So, for example,
in my class, right?
Let's say they have a question on e-commerce
or something like that.
They would just ask the bot.
And then based on how you've trained it,
which is based on all the videos that you've already given,
you get the right answer.
You could also do this with your kids.
If you could somehow program your bot to be like you
and all the answers that you typically say,
like, hey, Daddy, can I go eat some cupcakes
right before dinner?
It just says no.
Yeah.
This is something that you're actually building out
for your content library.
I am building it out.
So, I'm transcribing all the videos and everything.
And I'm going to try to train a bot
to answer quick questions for me.
That's kind of cool.
Is it a white labeled of a kind of a customer service app
that already exists?
No, it's not.
You have to use the chat GPT API
and you just feed stuff in.
But, you know, it's basically creating
a robotic clone of yourself.
And it's entirely doable today.
That is pretty slick.
Yeah.
Hundreds and hundreds of podcasts episodes
to go back through.
And we do get some of the,
even in the Facebook group,
somebody just asked, hey, there was a guy.
He was doing, you know, tutoring
or it was helping people learn based on
neuroscience principles.
Like, who was that?
And it's like outside of my brain.
Like, people probably aren't going to know who that was.
It's like, oh, I think that was William, you know,
from this episode.
Like, here's the link to that.
But yeah, if there was an automated way to do that,
or it could like somehow plug in those keywords.
Like, yes, this is the one you're talking about.
Yep.
Steve Bot.
All right.
We'll put that down as a number eight.
Number nine is actually a service that already exists.
And this is called Pod Reacher.
It's a podcast repurposing service
of taking somebody's library of content
and translating that into Twitter threads
into short clip videos,
into other assets for social media.
And so this is founded by Jacqueline Schiff,
who reported revenue of $420,000 in mid 2022,
which he posted on Starter Story.
So I think this is kind of an example of a business
that catches a rising time.
Like, as more and more people are podcasting,
but podcast discovery still remains a really challenging problem.
Well, how can we take the content that you're already creating
and help you get some more mileage out of it?
And so her service helps you go out and do that.
And I think there's probably some similar services
that exist.
So I think that's kind of one to think about,
I guess the broader framework of catching a rising time,
but then the specific example of this repurposing business,
like helping people get more mileage out of the stuff
they're already doing.
Is it humans or is it AI that's curing the content for you?
I think it's humans at this point.
Okay.
So they literally go through all of your episodes
and pick clips.
Yeah, I think so for everything.
Nice.
I like that.
I like that a lot.
Maybe it's AI at this point.
I think it definitely started out in humans
because she's been in it for a few years.
Okay.
Cool.
I like that idea.
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Now back to the show.
All right, here's another idea.
And again, it just so happens
that it's because Easter just passed.
And so my friends,
they throw these elaborate Easter egg hunts.
A friend bought a bunch of lottery tickets
and cash, candy, and everything.
And you put together 2,500 eggs
and hid them around his property.
Wow.
And had a whole bunch of people
over to do these Easter egg hunts.
So my idea, and again,
it can be for any occasion,
the Easter just happened to be the only one that I came.
But a service that basically stuffs these eggs
with whatever you want
and then literally just hides them around your property.
It's basically an eager Easter egg party thrower.
Okay.
Because it's very tedious to do all that stuff.
And these parties are a whole lot of fun.
They're just paying the butt to set up.
So basically a party thrower for Easter in this case,
just because it passed.
Yeah, I'm packing all of these eggs individually.
Yeah, that takes a lot of time.
2,500 eggs.
There's a local mega church by us.
And their sign was like, 60,000 eggs or something.
Oh, my God.
Oh, yeah.
That's okay.
Very seasonal business.
But that could totally work.
And you know, parlay into one of the ones
we had like luxury picnics or something
was one that we profiled a couple of years ago.
I was like,
there's lots of, you kind of, you know,
go from one holiday to the next to the, you know,
go to the next seasonal thing here.
It might be tough, especially if you're like,
oh, I got three orders.
I was like, oh, it's supposed to stack, you know,
10,000 eggs in one night.
I got to go hide all these things.
But one thing that I love, like all of these,
or almost all of these are born from like personal
pain points or challenges.
And that's really where a lot of business ideas come from.
You know, necessity is the mother of invention in some way.
Where it's like, oh, you see something,
and you observe something.
And it's like, just a slight twist on that.
You know, how would I spin that to be my own thing?
So the Easter egg party service as number 10.
And another one, actually, that came from pain points.
And you mentioned like the AI bots was trying to plan
an annual, you know, friends giving trip for us.
So you've been probably 15, 16 years of doing Thanksgiving
with the same group of friends
that we started doing with in California.
But now they're in Michigan and we're in the Northwest
and trying to be like, well, where do you want to meet?
And we go, okay, our criteria is we want to meet somewhere
warm in these dates.
And, you know, but the hours that we have spent
on different flight search engines and trying to find,
well, what's it cost for them to fly?
What's it cost for us to fly?
You know, where do you want to stay?
What do you get there?
It's like, it's just nuts.
It seems like a computer ought to be able to solve this
so much faster.
And like, look, here's the criteria.
Here's where we're coming from.
Here's how many tickets we need.
Just find an option that isn't obscenely expensive.
And let's go to town on that.
So I'm in same thing for, like, reward travel.
So that's kind of like the group, you know,
the group travel angle, but really the reward travel, too.
It's like, look, can I plug in my bank?
And maybe something already exists.
Can I plug in my bank of ultimate rewards points?
Can I plug in my MX points, my capital one points,
my United Miles, my whatever?
You know, all of these different accounts they have.
And you tell me, like, the optimal use for it.
Like, hey, we're thinking of doing something in Southeast Asia
in the spring, or we're going to Europe at this time.
Like, where can we go?
How do we get there?
How do we get the family there?
And the optimal lakes.
And all these little hacks, like, well, if you have a layover here,
you can have a free connecting flight and all this.
And it's, you know, it can be really tedious.
I feel like the robots might be a better operator for that stuff.
Well, we plan these trips.
The hardest part is actually settling on a time,
rather than the planning of logistics.
Like, the logistics is one thing, but yeah.
So we just plan, like, every year we try to plan
with between four families,
and between, like, everyone's kids' activities
and work schedule and all that stuff.
So we use, I think, doodle, is that still around?
My wife uses doodle, I think, to figure out the times.
And then you're right.
What's going to work for everybody?
Yeah.
Yeah, when that's going to work.
And then, yes, then we have this huge thread, usually in WhatsApp,
where we're trying to decide, like, the most optimal way
and where to hit.
So we started basically just going on cruises as a result,
because it's just too much logistics-wise
to plan one of these trips.
Yeah.
It's a challenge to crack that code.
And it's like, yeah, we want to keep this tradition alive.
But, you know, there was an easy button thing.
It's like, yeah.
It was cheaper for us to fly to London than it was to fly to Mexico,
or something.
It was like, really?
Well, I guess Thanksgiving isn't a holiday over there.
So maybe that explains it.
But at the same thing, like, oh, if we fly out of Toronto,
it's better than flying out of Detroit.
It's like, you know, just weird, weird little things.
You know, the computer could optimize.
You know, I'll run all these different scenarios
and see what it's going to make the most sense
of trying to line up all these dates.
And you're having somewhat flexible dates.
It's like, you know, it doesn't have to be set in stone.
Like, if we shift it a few days, like, hey, that's fine by me.
But yeah, that's the, that's on my wish list,
the AI travel tool for rewards tickets or for group travel.
Here's a physical product idea that I just got traveling in Japan.
It rained on one of the days where we were there.
And just the way we travel, like, we each have backpacks
and then, like, you know, I had to get my phone out,
look at maps to figure out, like, the railways and everything.
But while it's raining, it's really hard to have a free hand.
And it just so happens, I was walking on the streets of Shibuya.
And I saw this dude with this, like, umbrella attachment
sticking out of his backpack.
So he had his hands free.
But it was like, it wasn't like a product.
It was, I think he had, like, taped something together.
And I was like, that's ingenious.
Oh, okay.
What if there was just some attachment or special backpack
or harness that you could have where you just kind of, like,
stick in your umbrella and all of a sudden,
you're walking around hands free in the rain?
I see it.
No one has invented that yet.
Have you seen anything like that?
I haven't.
Yeah.
But yeah, the product licensing bills go off.
The private labeling bills start to go off.
Hey, somebody ought to be able to make them.
Yeah.
And there's a physical product idea.
Again, this is just based on your own experiences
and the problems that you have in everyday life.
I think those are the best ideas that you can possibly have
for any business.
Yeah.
Take Steve's class and start the backpack umbrella business.
That's like the number 12.
I like that one.
Yeah, especially for commuters.
Yeah.
Makes a lot of sense.
Even just taking the dog.
Especially, right?
Yeah.
Where it rains nine months out of the year.
Yeah, I'm taking the dog out and like, I go get the mail.
And then he does his business.
And now I'm like, I got no hands.
I'm holding the umbrella.
It's all, yeah.
All kinds of awkward.
Even just like a harness kind of a thing.
Yeah.
You don't have to be in a backpack per se.
But like the harness umbrella.
He used to make the little umbrella hats.
We used to have these up in the mountains.
They're silly little things.
But no, I think that's totally a doable thing.
Let's see where that's 12.
Number 13 for me is kind of like friend proximity notifications.
And so it seems like like if you're in Japan, for example.
And you know, some long lost friend just happens to be in town at the same time.
Or somebody that you know happens to live there, but you didn't realize they live there.
I think it would be really cool to, you know, have some way to facilitate those chance encounters
that just missed because every time I travel, I feel like I get a note afterwards.
Like, dude, you were just in Florida.
Why didn't you, why didn't you text me?
You're like, hey, you were like, we were just there at the same time.
Like, I didn't know, man.
You know, so something like that.
I think would be really, really cool because like those types of experiences on the ground
when you've been able to meet up, either with people locally or shrink the city in some way.
Like those are really, really powerful.
Even in, especially in other countries, but even traveling domestically too.
I love that idea.
And I want to say there was an app at some point that did something similar to that.
Because I know my wife has a group of people that where she shares her location with,
just in general.
So they know who they are.
I think your idea would be a little less intrusive, right?
Like, you don't know exactly where they are.
But you have a small group of friends where you just want to keep track.
If you just happen to be in like the same area or country as them, right?
Yeah.
Like, where were I trying to think of an example?
Like, if I'm traveling for a conference and it ends in the flight doesn't leave until five o'clock,
it's like, I got to know somebody in town.
And I think that would be helpful to just say, and you'd have to have opt-in permissions and all that.
But just something to tell you, because Facebook, you know, used to do this,
like, hey, I'm traveling to New York.
Like, who do I know who lives in New York?
And you get this reasonable list of friends actually ended up connecting with an old college classmate,
you know, through that a long time ago.
Like, dude, do you still live?
Yeah.
I'm right across.
I'm in Hoboken.
I'm in New Jersey.
Like, I'll meet you.
Yeah, let's go to the bar.
And so, like, that was really cool.
And, you know, kind of gotten back in touch, like, as a result of that,
almost chance encounter where I was just sitting around in Central Park after the conference ended.
Like, I got to know somebody around here.
So, I think something like that would be cool.
I like that idea.
I like that idea a lot.
Here's one that I just came up with, again, from my Japan trip where I just got back from.
So, we were walking around the streets of Kyoto, and we didn't know which restaurant to hit.
And Yelp actually doesn't really work there that well.
Yeah.
And the way we decided which restaurants to eat at were the ones that had the longest lines getting in.
Right?
It's kind of like this social proof thing.
So, what I was thinking.
And I just recently had a friend who opened a restaurant.
And he was like, man, I'm so nervous.
Like, what if no one shows up?
What if there was a service where you could just pay people to just hang out outside the restaurant
to make it seem like it was really crowded because social proof really matters for everything in life.
Not just restaurants, but any service or physical location where you just want a lot of people to create a lot of buzz and that sort of thing.
You just create a service and you just send some people out there and they just hang out.
They could just hang out in front of it to make it seem like it's really lively.
Yeah.
And then that way it'll track more people there.
Yeah, create a crowd.com patent pending.
Great.
Yeah.
I wonder if that URL is available.
Yeah.
I like that.
Yeah.
That would be really cool.
Because we had, here's the only profile of the same old line dudes where they got paid to wait in line.
And so, like, having people, you know, paying people to go and wait for the next iPhone release or the next Nike release.
Something like for you, like, that's totally a thing.
It's like, well, could you gather a bunch of these people together to create some buzz for your launch?
It means the same thing for your upcoming book launch.
It's like, how do we generate enough momentum in the first few weeks that it sticks on the charts?
And then I start to reach outside of my current audience and other people start to go out and buy the thing.
So, yeah, totally.
Yeah.
I mean, it could be as simple as just, you know, you hire the service.
And then you give out, like, free food and just have people stop by or free snack or something.
Just incentive.
They hang out for five minutes and then they leave or something like that.
Yeah.
I mean, it's the same idea of launching a product on Amazon.
Like, I expect to give away or sell at, at cost, you know, the first, you know, the first order of this product just to generate, generate sales and reviews.
It's like kind of the same idea here.
Yep.
Yeah.
All right.
That's number 14.
The social proof service.
Create a crowd name pending.
Number 15.
So, you're a frugal guy.
Your family have eye bonds?
No, we don't.
Don't have eye bonds.
So, this is like, you know, over the last couple of years, lots and lots of buzz around government backed.
Eye bonds, inflation, matched securities.
We're paying at the peak, like, nine point something percent.
We're talking about T-bills.
We're T-billing and chilling.
Is that what you mean?
Similar.
But it's like, I don't know.
It's a different, it's a different thing.
Where it's like kind of a fixed interest rate for six months.
I don't know.
But the interface is awful.
Like, I've had so much frustration around this.
So, I create my account.
It goes through fine.
I try to create an account for my wife.
So, you've kept it buying 10,000 of these every year per calendar year.
And so, I go to create my wife's account.
It flags it probably because, you know, it registers like the same IP address or something.
It's like, okay, good on.
Uncle Sam, for having some level of internet security.
Even though people are trying to give you money instead of take money away.
I don't know.
So, we have to, like, go to the bank and, like, get something not notarized,
but signed by the bank manager.
It was, you know, this horribly tedious process.
The interface is awful.
You can't, like, type in a password.
You have to, like, click it on this, like, virtual keyboard.
Anybody who's done it, like, knows what I'm talking about.
So, I don't know if this is even possible or feasible.
But, like, is there a way to layer on top a better interface for Treasury directs?
Because there are, there's examples of people doing this in the trademark world.
Like, trademarkia is the example, like, the USPTO, the Patent and Trademark Office website.
Their search is kind of sucky.
It's like crappy looking interface.
Like, so these guys, later on top of that same database, you know,
just a better user experience.
And so, my idea number 15 is a better interface for this Treasury direct website
to make that a little less painful.
Interesting.
We always get our bonds and bills from our just, like, a trading company.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, so this one, yeah, you couldn't buy it through Fidelity.
You had to go, like, through Treasury direct.
And that was where the friction and the pain came from.
Yeah, I see.
Yeah, because for our Treasury bills that we just buy through Schwab,
because that makes it more liquid.
Otherwise, you actually have to hold them to maturity.
Yeah.
So, but even that interface is actually kind of confusing, also, if you don't know what you...
I mean, I just literally learned how to buy these Treasury bills recently.
Because it's kind of not that intuitive.
Yeah, it's not.
You buy it at the discount and then they give you the full face value at maturity.
Like, it's a weird way that they do it.
Right.
It's almost like I needed a glossary, too, because I didn't even know
what all these terms meant.
You would think it'd be a lot easier to buy, but it's actually not that straightforward.
It's not.
T-Bill and a chilling.
I've never heard of that.
T-Bill.
I'm San Dogen.
He just came on the podcast and used that.
I was like, hey, I like that a lot.
I'm going to start using it myself.
Nice.
Risk free return.
Cool.
Okay.
So, here's my next one.
And again, this is based on a personal problem that I have.
My kids are a lot older than yours now, Nick.
But when they were younger, we used to buy Lego sets like every single week.
And so, we have all...
Like, if you look at our house, we have all these Lego kits that are half built,
half broken, just lying around the house.
And my wife actually gave me this idea.
The other day, she was like, hey, I wish there was a Lego separator and organizer service.
Will you just send them all the stuff that you had that's half built or half broken?
And they just separate out all the Lego's, put them in nice bags and organize them.
So that maybe someone else can use them or maybe you can use them or your kids can use them to build something new.
So instead of having these half built things lying around the house.
Yeah, so the kits have gotten all mingled.
And like, what do we even have?
Do we have all the pieces for this thing anymore?
So trying to rebundle them in a way to make what was originally sold?
Well, what I was thinking was you separate all the bricks and then they just have these manuals
where you decide what you want to build next.
And then they just kid it for you based on your existing Lego's and send it back to you.
Oh, okay. That would be really cool.
Yeah, because we've got the other problem where some stuff has gotten mingled.
Like, Britain is very organized.
And so a lot of the kits are still in these individual zip bags where if you want to rebuild that thing,
get all the pieces should be in here.
But some of the other ones have gotten mingled into just the general Lego bucket.
And it's kind of frustrating.
You're probably not going to build this one again.
So could we put that on eBay?
Could we donate that?
Donate like a thing.
If you're going to put it as a kit and half the pieces are missing, that's not a great experience for the next person to have it.
So having this organizing service.
And then kind of what you're describing is like, could you build something new?
Like, given all the pieces that you have, like, oh, you know, our library.
And then maybe there's the AI element to it.
Like, oh, you could actually build this tyrannosaurus if you have all these pieces or something.
Yeah, I mean, basically repurposing what you have into something that's useful.
And right now we all these random bricks.
Yeah. You don't know what you can build.
It's just kind of lying around and taking up space in the house.
And then you step on them and then you curse.
You know, it's just not pleasant.
We came across this site.
It was kind of a Lego inventory site.
We're allowed you to input the kits that you had.
And it would total up, okay, you have 30,000 total bricks or something.
And then it would tell you, like, how much the retail value of those kits.
And you're like, oh, God, you know, that's a lot of money in Lego's right there.
And it would tell you what your global percentile was.
Like, oh, you're in the top, you know, 25th percent of Lego users or something like that.
And so that was kind of a cool service.
But to be able to input, maybe it's kind of an offshoot of a similar service.
Like, well, if you have, you know, kits A, B and C.
Like, did you know you could combine those and build this thing?
And here's the instructions for that. I think that'd be cool.
I'm sure Lego would be against it because I'm sure they're banking on people just buying you kits each time, right?
That's fair. But they've also been open to kind of a community submissions.
And like, because we had built, we built one.
It was like the Saturn V rocket.
And it was like three feet tall. It was really cool.
And it started out as just a Lego fan.
You kind of built this thing and submitted it.
And they're like, that's really cool. Let's turn that into a kit.
And sell it. I don't know if you got like licensing rights or anything from that.
But it was, you know, they, they, at least from the outside appearances, they seem to encourage that kind of community involvement.
Cool. Yeah. No, that'd be awesome.
Yeah. All right. The Lego separator slash organizer service slash repurposing service for idea number 16.
Number 17 for me is the centralized affiliate program database.
And so this is a pain point for me as an online business owner trying to figure out a does this company or brand that I like have an affiliate program.
And if they do what networks is it available on? Is it in house? Is it direct? Is it private? Like, how do I find that?
And so that centralized database would be really, really valuable to say, look, you know, it's available on these three networks.
You know, take your pick, who do you prefer to work with or what are the rates on those different networks?
Or just, you know, does it exist? Yeah, or nay, if not, you know, okay, that's fine too.
But just that it's surprising that that doesn't exist. And I understand it would be a huge pain to maintain.
But that would be, that would be very valuable for me.
What would be valuable for me is one service that I'd sounded for for all my affiliates.
Kind of, I don't know if this is what you were getting at.
But right now I have like impact partner stacks, CJ a whole bunch of these other services.
Yeah. I just wanted all consolidated on one dashboard, one payout.
And if there's one company that could work with all the smaller networks and aggregate.
So I just get paid by, you know, one company because literally, at least for me, I have like maybe 20 or 30 affiliate companies that I work with.
Some of them don't have their own program. Some of them are using a network.
Yeah. So like sometimes you don't get paid and you got to keep track of each one of those individual companies.
It's a pain. Yeah. I really just joined that service for sure.
So I've been using one kind of aggregator dashboard, not not for payment processing, but at least tells you what you earn.
It pulls in the majority of networks. I don't think it does Amazon.
You have to import that manually, but call affluent.io, which is owned by impact, I think.
And so they, they pull in, you know, through APIs like, you know, 15 or 20 different networks and dashboards into one, at least for reporting.
And they send you an email like, hey, you made this much yesterday.
So that's kind of helpful where I can kind of start to see trends over time and they'll give you summaries.
But yeah, trying to keep track of all these different payments.
And you know, hey, what's going on? I'm going through that right now, actually.
Like, hey, you guys still owe me money from like September. Like what's going on here?
And just having to keep track of that. Some sort of dashboard that would give you some more easy visualization into that.
I think that would be helpful.
Yeah. Nick, do we have time for one more?
Of course.
Okay.
This is an idea that I got because my kids are always asking me to get a pet.
Like they want a dog, they want a pig, they want.
But they're not really aware of how much trouble it really is to take care of a pet.
So what I was thinking was if there was a service where you go and you take your kid and then they just walk you through all the pain that you have to take care of a pet.
And just basically educate your child how hard it is.
That would be really valuable for me.
Because then they would know, you know, whether they want to actually commit to this or not.
Or just a place where you can just learn how to take care of various animals and just have them choose.
And that's the whole purpose of the business to discourage your kids from getting that pet.
The pet discouragement service.
Disweight, you know, not persuading, but the dissuading service.
Yeah, because our friends are volunteering with, you know, the future guide dogs service.
And so it's like, under that same idea, like, hey, look, there's a lot of responsibility.
Here's a way to practice taking care of a dog, like for short term periods, you know, they'll come and stay with them.
But, yeah, it's like, it's a super cute puppy.
I don't know how well it's working on the dissuading side of things, the pet discouragement service.
Yeah, I'm going to put that down as number 18.
Number 19 for me, this one came to mind as I was buying Girl Scout cookies from our neighbor.
And it was, it's all very modern these days.
You know, it's like scandalous QR code and it redirects to Sophia's, you know, personalized checkout page.
And so I think I got, you know, three boxes and it was 18 bucks.
But the missed opportunity for the Girl Scouts.
And maybe the side hustle opportunity for people listening is the shopping cart roundup plugin where, you know,
hey, would you like to round up your order to 20?
Like, we'll donate the rest for you.
Would you like to round it up to 25?
We'll donate the rest for you.
I think that was a missed opportunity for the Girl Scouts just to make it a nice round number.
Like, I'm already feeling good about making this purchase.
Like, I could, they could have gotten more out of me.
I didn't necessarily need more cookies in my life.
But they could have gotten a little bit more out there.
So they're in the realm of Shopify plugins.
I think that may be an opportunity for certain businesses.
I like that idea.
It's actually similar to, there's this grocery store.
I can't remember which grocery store I saw this at.
But during checkout, you can donate your change to just some organization with the clickable button.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, yeah.
Like kind of round up.
I think GoDaddy does that.
You know, that's a way for a lot of years.
Yeah.
But something online.
For Shopify.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'd make that thing for Shopify.
Even it doesn't have to be necessarily a charitable organization.
Although that would make more sense.
Like, round up.
I don't know why you would just give a for-profit company like more money.
Yeah.
Just, you know, round up your order to, yeah, to donate.
Beside hustle, nation, charity.
Yeah.
Just funnel funnel a little bit out there.
It may be that my theory, whether you know, Safeway was doing that.
It's like, okay, we'll collect this cash from customers and it will make that deposit.
So we'll get some sort of write-off benefit from that.
And so that was kind of my theory.
Like, oh, we'll look like a good Samaritan or a good corporate responsibility
because we're making these big donations.
But like, really, we kind of crowdsource that from a bunch of customers.
So that was my understanding of how that might work.
But I don't know.
But that was number 19 for me.
Anything else on your list?
No, I think we've pretty much covered it.
Okay.
Yeah.
I think that's a good, a list, a good place to stop.
Do you remember, at the end of the last episode that we did on this,
you proposed what we kind of called the zombie apocalypse consultant.
Remember this?
Yes.
I remember that.
Yes.
And so actually had a listener reach out.
This was Dr. David Powers.
He reached out from RuggedDadLives.com.
He, you know, kind of like recently sent me an email with like the hand raised emoji.
Like, hey, apocalypse consultant.
That's the event.
So this guy is a Marine Corvette.
And he's actually board certified in emergency crisis response.
So I just wanted to give him a shout out here as a potential worst case scenario resource.
So RuggedDadLives.com is his site.
Nice.
I'll have to go check that out.
I'll introduce my wife to that site for sure.
Hope you enjoyed that episode.
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