4 profitable startups from the founder of exploding topics

0:00beauty of it you build the audience the world is your oyster as you know like once you have the audience it the product's the easiest thing to do I mean even if you don't want to create your own just promote other people's ADHD apps like but the point is everyone's trying to go they go right for the product they're going okay I want to make an ADHD chair they're forgetting the most important part and the opportunity in this space is to create the brand so when you think of I need help with ADHD I want to do something about it I go to Julius and that's the

0:29brand associated with this growing huge market and you don't see very often a huge growing Market without a go-to brand and that's what we're [Music] seeing we're we're going straight into it yep Brian Dean on the podcast I think this might be the best ever episode of the 150 episodes or what ever I've done in this podcast you're literally calling me from your couch yeah it's more of an intimate uh episode we're getting we're just going right into it it's already the best episode it's only like 20 seconds in so all the pressure is off now totally yeah we wanted to invite you into Brian Brian's

1:20home yeah that's what we're going for production meeting we had before is H what we talked about exactly all right man we're getting into it so you are the trend God that I'm just gonna I'm just GNA call you that that's what I'm gonna do okay not gonna argue with that you might even call yourself the exploding topics God all right and so I was hoping that you can come on and you can share some of the most interesting Trends topics and ideas and you're a listener of the Pod so you know what this audience wants uh Brian what do you got for us yeah the first idea right off the bat is

2:02one that I would pay for it's a take my money situation is an AI content updater so there are a million and one tools for creating content with AI there's you know content writing tools there's uh tools that do outlines there are tools that rewrite your content there are tools that'll take your long form video and chop it up into shorts but what real Publishers need is help updating their existing Content Library so for example with exploding topics we have maybe like 500 blog posts which is nothing compared to most Publishers and even that we have trouble keeping up to date we have about uh you know one and a

2:49half full-time people constantly updating this content and they're going in they're saying okay this stats a little bit old or this isn't really as relevant anymore or there's a link that's broken or there's a source that's more recent we can use and they're doing it manually so if there was a a tool that could go through existing Content Library find areas that need to be updated and actually go into your CMS and update it it would be a GameChanger what do you think you can charge for something like that I would say this would be something you'd want to go more Enterprise for sure like starting at a thousand bucks a month

3:26because anyone who has a small con if you don't publish that much or have a big Library it's not that valuable because you can do it manually you can just use spreadsheets and have a couple staff members do it that's what we're doing now but let's say you have 25,000 posts you're like Tom's guide or something you it's and it's insane to even think of doing that manually but you need to to keep the stuff up to date because it's about technology so I would say you're starting at like th000 5,000 10,000 you know that big Enterprise contract level and if you were to start something like this okay so this is a

3:59great idea I see the need I actually I would pay pay definitely a few thousand doar a month for something like this uh how would you go about like actually starting this like what do you do what okay what's next the first thing I would build it for myself so I'd be my own case study to start with um and it's one of the those business ideas are usually in my opinion the best because you're you you're using it yourself so you can see what needs to be added what doesn't need to be done where does it mess up where is it good where is it bad

4:33so first thing would definitely be building a beta that I test out on my own site or a different property that I own to get the nuts and bolts out um and then from there I'd probably do manual Outreach and just be like you have this massive Library I'm seeing a bunch of posts that haven't been updated in three years we have software that'll just go in use Ai and give it some the updates that it needs what about charging per update instead of going monthly there's this monthly subscription fatigue I feel like a no-brainer offer could be like per update what do you think yeah I love it

5:08yeah and better expansion Revenue too because with the tier system it's hard to get people to move up from the different tiers you can I mean it's not possible but there's friction there you have to lock out a feature or lock out a number of seats the person has to click a button they have to then uh you know decide on the next plan and I don't know if I really need it or should I just wait till next month but if you just do it where you know it's the first 10 updates are free or five updates are free and then $1 each additional update

5:38per month then that that's actually probably better and have you seen anyone doing this no but I haven't looked like super extensively but I haven't seen it feel like you would know yeah I kind of yeah I feel like I would have come across it because I've had this idea since I started the exploring topics blog got big you know with you know we got like 650,000 visitors a month and I'm thinking how and we're hiring all these people to update I'm just like how can we automate this so I have my radar set to find this and I haven't seen anything out there for this Brian this

6:13is what I'm talking about this this is such a good idea yeah this is a take my money situation and the best part about it is that it's a it's a no-brainer offer for the right customer if you reach out to a smaller blog and doing $49 a month you're going to be in a world of pain with this product but if you go to the bigger Publishers that have at least and it's easy to find you're you're literally your leads are sites that have more than x number of pages on the site and assuming those are that's blog content and you just cold Outreach and

6:48say I not and I noticed you have these posts that are out of date we just built something that can update them or if you want to go crazy here are you know here's the updated versions that our software created for you you know let me know if this is something you you'd like to automate sh don't tell anyone but I've got 30 plus startup ideas that could make you millions and I'm giving them away for free these aren't just random guesses they're validated Concepts from entrepreneurs who built hundred million plus businesses I've compil them into one simple database compiled from hundreds of conversations I've had on my podcast but the main

7:33thing is most of these ideas don't need a single investor some cost nothing to start I'm pretty much handing you a cheat sheet the idea bank is your startup shortcut just click below to get access your next cash flowing business is waiting for you I like it I like it so dude this is just I like it there's nothing more to say yeah I have literally nothing more to say do you want my next idea I guess that's the as a host I thought you would just like ask but no I'll just I'm gonna I'm gonna make it weird I'm just gonna try to make it as weird as possible all right great

8:13so my second one is definitely not indie hacker business this would require some cash so I don't know if that's against the rules Greg uh it depends how much cash how we I think you like this idea though hold on just tell me how much cash are we talking uh in the million probably so no you know Millions is wait wait no Millions is in one to two million or yes get started proceed so do you know Factor 75 no I do not they're are like a meal service that there are these like pre-prepared meals that you buy they sponsor a bunch of YouTube channels and

8:53you basically say okay I'm vegan or I'm keto and they deliver let's say seven meals a week and you warm them up and they're ready to go and they deliver them to your door these are huge right now this meal service but the problem is they're the meals are like not the highest quality they're about 10 bucks a pop 11 bucks a pop my idea and something else I would pay for is like an Uber black of meal delivery where we're talking $50 to to start and it's Chef prepared meals Super G May and it's essentially like what you get with a private Chef without needing to have a

9:34private Chef come to your house because my buddy has a private chef and I go to his house and she makes these amazing meals and I'm always like oh I should hire her but then I'm like I'm gonna have someone come into my house and cook in my kitchen and I'm playing fortnite with my friends it's weird but why would I do that and I don't want to order a meal that's like 10 bucks their margins you know how much does it cost them to make they're using like the lowest quality ingredients possible I'll pay 50 because it's what I would pay for a nice meal out for a chef

10:03prepared meal it's not made to order like that's the thing about Factor 75 but you can tailor it to your dietary restrictions gluten-free or what have you so for me that would be another take my money situation I was uh I had a hot dog the other day in C in Quebec and the hot dog it was like I don't know 79 cents Canadian which is like 40 I don't know 45 cents us and I'm like halfway through it and and I'm like wait wait wait a second if I'm paying 48 cents for this they're paying 10 to 15 to 20 cents for this I probably shouldn't be putting

10:44this in my body and I feel like that's kind of e even these you know these meal planning services like even if they say it's dope for you and I just I don't buy it at 10 yeah the same that's what I'm saying so I would pay 50 even if it was the same meal I'm a sucker I just don't want to think you're getting like I don't want to think I'm eating something that cost them a buck to make yeah um I might as well get a Hungry Man meal for that so why not get a nice so it would be highend and it would come at like you

11:17know with Uber Eats it's like some guy gives it to you in a paper bag here you go this would be presented almost like an Apple product you open it up and it would be like beautifully presented it would be this whole like culinary experience at home because even during Co I remember a lot of really nice Michelin star restaurants started doing Uber Eats because they were closed and they were figuring out ways to do this so it's not totally unprecedented to pay this much for essentially a delivery meal but you have to order from Uber Eats this would replace those sort of prepared meals that come and you put

11:51them in the fridge and then warm them up when you want but they're going to be like 50 to 75 bucks a pop and it's going to be like lobster and free range chicken chicken and grass-fed beef and and stuff like that and so you warm it up yourself right you put it like in the oven yeah or the microwave or microwave but no you wouldn't want a microwave no no and oh for this thing no no dude no this would what what do you what are you come on you're not a barbarian Brian you're right I am I guess because I thought of that I must

12:22be so I mean I don't know if you need one1 to2 million doll to start this to start this idea yeah maybe not I just usually it's more than you think so I usually go up so what whatever number first pops into my head I usually double it um so that's where I came up with that that number I thought it cost like 500k so probably double that because of all the stuff you know that doesn't come to your to your head I mean to test this idea isn't going to take $1 to $2 million if you want you could do it yourself I mean you

12:57could do it in your house I invested in the company that went out of business that did that here in uh in Lisbon where I spend most of my time they started a atome Uber Eats basically home-cooked Uber Eats and they partnered with different homecooked chefs and they would make a meal for you on demand at their house instead of at a restaurant and they would ship it to you so I have some experience in this world and I know that the the challenge with that business is the delivery on demand element where you need need to make it now someone sends an order you need to

13:31be like at the ready ready to go and if you're not a restaurant or a ghost kitchen it doesn't make sense that's why I like these prepared meals because you can do them at a massive scale and just ship them out all right I like it I don't you know we have a we have a thing on this pod do I sip this idea or do I spit this idea I don't like it sip is I like I I sip the test of it but I I don't know at scale if I love this idea like operating this in like 50 ities to me seems like a mess but I do think that

14:02maybe this is just a business where it's in one or two cities and it's not crazy to do a few million bucks per city is it no if you just New York San Francisco Yeah Austin a couple of those Tech cities where people will have have you know more money than cents like me who will just pay 50 bucks for a meal that someone made that's you know you're picturing them in a white like with white gloves making this thing yeah suckers the sucker Market really yeah um that they'll pay for it because I'm at the point where I like cooking but I'm a little bit like I don't want to have to

14:38cook every night and the the challenge is Uber Eats is like a mixed bag I don't really enjoy the whole experience of like ordering waiting for it so these meals sound like a great thing but again 10 bucks it's not as bad as the hot dog but it's the same idea and there's no don't look at me like that Brian I saw you look down on me I'm not not Jud you are judging I see I see you okay if it was like a dollar man come on but anyway the idea is that you the reason that I like it is that in most markets there's

15:09an option for a higher tier whether it's cars software gyms there's usually a market for this higher end version of that thing but I haven't seen it in this in this space yeah I also if I was doing this I think the trend Around clean eating I'm sure you're seeing a lot of that like everything's clean people are just using the word clean it's like clean is the new healthy you know in the 80s and 90s people used to say oh that's healthy now people say oh that's clean yeah um so I think if you ride on that Trend like clean meals I think that could be

15:46really interesting and I also think handwritten notes or just stories you know people especially suckers suckers love stories they do they can't get enough of them but you're right I can imagine opening it and you get a little note from the chef like I hope you enjoy it doesn't have to be for every meal CU you're setting these in bulk right like a week or seven 10 20 30 meals at a time so one note from the chef that says hey uh I hope you enjoyed these meals we made for you this week Greg you know Chef Greg I think that would go a long way for getting those suckers to share

16:23on social media I have you ever seen Lost in Translation the movie a great movie Gray movie Incredible movie highly recommend so that movie they're in the Park Hyatt in Tokyo so I was there recently and I'm having breakfast and as I'm sitting down for my my first breakfast when my first breakfast in Japan uh the chef comes over and he puts down a plate of uh mateline cookies um these like French cookies that he talks about that his mom used to make and now he makes them and he comes from Paris and the whole story and I'm like melting I'm quite literally melting uh and and then I pick up one of

17:14the cookies and of course it's like perfectly hot temperature and he was like that's the way my mom used to like it that story like productizing that in this there you go that you know huge margin in in that yeah for sure man yeah that company that I invested here was called Mama food they did that and it definitely helped add that element of personal touch but it's just logistically was difficult but yeah they did that they would have in your like when you ordered from instead of going by restaurant you go by Chef so you go for like Chef number one oh this lady she's from Bangladesh and this is her

17:49meal she made back in the day or her mom made for her so it had that little bit of story um element to it you have another idea yeah yeah so the the other idea I have if I don't know if you'll like this one how many ideas do you have you said come to with some half-baked ideas two to three I think I I've I have to check my notes I have my notes uh written down I wrote a bunch down so the other one I have is based on a lot of trend data we're seeing we're seeing a bunch of Trends in the ADHD space

18:20especially when it comes to products so more and more people are getting diagnosed and self- diagnosing themselves with ADHD and there's a lot of products around it now like for example some trends that we're seeing in that space include ADHD timers ADHD watches ADHD chairs ADHD coaches H ADHD apps um and this is basically a booming Market that people aren't really talking about that much so for me the opportunity isn't necessarily in these individual SKS these individual products it's in no one's creating a the brand for ADHD so anyone that creates that community that brand around ADHD then you can the world is your oyster when it comes to selling these

19:09products you can sell your own you can sell affiliate products you can be you promote other people stuff but I haven't seen that out there my wife recently got diagnosed with ADHD and it's it's it's interesting because a lot of people who are like influencers in this space are saying saying you can use it as a superpower actually it can be an advantage for you and I feel like the first brand that comes out and positions ADHD as that is like we help you take this thing that could be looked at as as a disadvantage and it's actually something you can use to your advantage we'll show you how and

19:44we have a community of people that will help you do it I here's how I would name a product like that so I get migraines and I used to get embarrassed about getting migraines cuz like I'd be doing something and then all of a sudden like my vision would get blurry and it really sucked um and I would get this migraine and then I went to see a neurologist and he told me that this is when I was young he he was like you know he started off the conversation by saying you know you know who else had migraines and I was like no who who he was like julus

20:24Caesar and Julius Caesar did a lot of big things granted I think he probably killed a lot of people um because he was like a general and stuff like that but I mean he he was running Rome you know like he he he he was able to live a successful life whatever that meant uh at that time I think that with ADHD how do you find someone like that um so okay so if I was creating a migraine brand I would call it Caesars or Julius for ADHD who is someone like that that that people look up to and then just call it that yeah that's a good

21:04idea that's a good way to do it yeah that's a good branding the person would have to be you know someone that's not a likeness that's copyrighted or trademark so it' have to be back in the day like that yeah exactly okay so I buy the thesis but what it's not clear to me is what the actual product is but it could be that's the beauty of it you build the audience the world is your oyster you know you don't you can worry about the product later it can be a suite of products it can be start with an app and then be fidget toys and then be a chair

21:37like once you have the audience it the product's the easiest thing to do I mean even if you don't want to create your own just promote other people's ADHD apps like but the point is everyone's trying to go they go right for the product they're going okay I want to make an ADHD chair they're forgetting the most important part and the opportunity in this space is to create the brand so when you think of I need help with ADHD I want to do something about it I go to Julius and that's the brand that's associated with this growing huge market and you don't see very often a huge growing Market without

22:11a go-to brand and that's what we're seeing quick ad break let me tell you about a business I invested in it's called boring marketing.com so a few years ago I met this group of people that were some of the best SEO experts in the world they were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on Google and the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and AI that could help you outrank your competition so for my own businesses I wanted that I didn't want to have to rely on Mark Zuckerberg I didn't want to depend on ads to drive customers to my businesses I wanted to rank high in Google that's

22:50why I like SEO and that's why I use boring marketing.com and that's why I invested in it they're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day Sprint with 100% money back guarantee who does that nowadays so check it out highly recommend boring marketing.com who else like who do you look up to in terms of other brands that have done something similar that they're that they're just amazing at building audience in building brand well in meditation like for example I don't know if you know Dan Harris from 10% he built a huge meditation brand where they were you know meditation was seen as like a woo woo thing that you

23:29did in your garden cross-legged and he was a newscaster who had panic attacks and he used um he wrote a book called 10% happier about his journey from being a skeptic about meditation to uh someone that practiced it every day and then he created an App around that and they have a whole community and a brand so he was able to take that and turn that into a a brand for a specific Niche within meditation that is this like skeptical uh group so that's one that comes to mind has built completely from scratch in a growing space um that's one how about you do you have any Greg that you can

24:07think of the one that comes top of mind is a friend of mine and friend in the Pod her name is Natalie Ellis she started it started off as like basically a meme page called girl boss I think it was called um and she was sharing memes and quotes and stories around female entrepreneurship women L businesses uh and it grew to 6.4 or something million followers on Instagram big you know and once she had that she was like okay what are the things that I could sell templates uh a membership uh you know events uh now she has one of the top podcast one of the

24:53top business podcasts so um she went from a meme page to millionaire basically quite quickly and uh it started with the brand yeah yeah I mean there's so I mean some businesses start with a product and they do well that way there's no right or wrong way but for me there okay well what's the right way I guess I mean my take is I mean I was joking a little bit but my take is it's way easier to sign up up with an Instagram account than it is to you know build a d Toc product and figure out logistics and and Manufacturing and all that sort of thing

25:39so I think that if you're creating a minimal viable product I always think about it as like the minimal VI product is the Social account yeah for sure I'm I'm with you 100 per. especially because in this particular area the the crowded area is the product area so if you were to create another ADHD chair you're one of like a hundred of those but and you can get knocked off really easily on Amazon if you're a brand then you don't need to worry about knockoffs because you'll say we have the best ADHD chair or we have the best ADHD planner and next thing you know people

26:14are buying it I like it you want to give us one last Brian idea I need to uh check my notes on that oh yeah this is another good I think you might sip this one as the kids say Greg so this is another back to B2B a Content repurposing service so this is another scratch my own itch thing so if you work in uh content marketing SEO for bigger Brands they always even smaller Brands they have content that's just sitting around collecting dust that was published once it's an email newsletter it's a video it was a webinar it's an article it's a a tweet and they never repurpose

27:02that content and for me that's the greatest opportunity with content marketing right now is repurposing rather than creating original stuff from scratch because it's cheaper and it has a proven track record already so in my case for example with exploring topics we have all this blog content and we're starting to repurpose it into videos on the on a YouTube channel that we started so it's so much easier to create those videos because we already have the building blocks of the article we don't have to think and say oh what should we make a video about oh what should it you know what should we start with we go

27:35okay here are the biggest marketing Trends we have a blog post about marketing trends that was updated last week let's turn that into a video or the reverse let's take the video and turn it into a a bunch of shorts and an article and an email newsletter and a webinar or whatever so for me that's another take my money if someone emailed me and said hey you have all this content let's get some more value out of it yeah so Mega you know me too well oh I think uh yeah what I'm seeing is there's a bunch of AI tools that are promising that it's like

28:06give us your content and we'll spit out other formats of it and I just don't think that the AI tools are probably 100% there yet um so I do think that oh so that's one end of the spectrum on the other end of the spectrum is humans creating new content which is like well I don't want new content I've got all this great stuff so I agree I think that there's there's some something in between that is a big opportunity and I think the way to sell it is you do a cold reach out and you're like hey you wrote this post in 2005 I've turned it

28:41into this uh do you like it yes you know and if and then you have to prove yourself on the cold DM basically yeah but I think like you said it's kind of an easy self for it's again it's kind of like the updating idea in the there's a small Market that will 100% get it and most people won't and that's fine because the market that get it that will get it is huge and they have money and they're willing and you're basically saying you know you're selling a dollar for a dime basically you're saying you have all this content you give me this money as a service and then we'll just

29:18get you more Roi from that content you felt obviously you felt good enough to create it once so why not just distribute it eight times in eight different formats and we'll do that for you so for me it's an easy sell easy everything the hard part is of delivery like you s like you said Greg where it's not something AI can do because it does require some Ingenuity in terms of what's the best way to turn this video into a blog post to turn this um you know blog post into a video however whichever direction you're going in because what a lot of people do is

29:48they'll say oh I want to get more out of my video so I'll get a transcript of the video and I'll publish as a blog post they never do well because you need someone to turn turn that into you can take that content turn into a blog post but you need to filter it through the lens of like writing it as if it was a blog post for the first time but even that is so much faster than writing from scratch so for me that that's the IDE another idea that I would happily be shelling out money for how how big is this idea how big could this

30:17get um I would say it Max like if you created a huge agency out of it like eight figures like 10 million cool all right all right there you have it those are my ideas those are really good ideas oh thanks man I spent some time on it I really want I wanted to come prepare I appreciate it it shows thank you for inviting us into your home uh on your couch it's it's it's it's very kind of you yeah hey you're welcome anytime Greg where could people get to know you better uh the best place is probably on X Brian Ean cool well well find you there and uh come back

31:00anytime please we'll do thanks for having me all right don't e any hot dogs okay okay see you later later [Music]