1 profitable startup idea hiding in plain sight

0:00my take on this is that every person has a ignorance tax that they have to pay down so no matter what your goals are there's a price that you have to pay to learn to get to your goals quicker and by living in San Francisco New York some of these places yes it's might be two times more expensive to live but you will just by as osmosis pay down your ignorance debt way way way faster [Music] J cream is back hey time to sip time to sip you haven't been you haven't been on the show in like three weeks so you're just like super super electric about it

0:53I was so sick I got covid got that bat flu right in my brain and it just really messed me up it stopped me from being sharp there's nothing more scary as an entrepreneur especially if you're running your own businesses than your brain moving slower than usual I think I don't know if you've ever had something like that where you get it you get sick or something happens and you become more stupid no nothing my my brain is never slow and is never stupid it just hasn't happened ever yet that's just the standard uh speed for you right I just take a a sip and I'm back I'm back back where I need to

1:32be well you Americans right and I was really thinking about that this week you Americans are all like you've got this Zin stuff yeah I actually don't know if it's a patch or if it's chewing if it's a chewing gum no Zin is the rage in in in America it's basically like a it looks like a um piece of gum and people put it like on their lip it's just like it's a ni [Music] thing it's a little bag that you put up here yeah oh okay a lot of people in uh the Nordic countries use that too but not for productivity because hey guess what nobody from Nordic companies is

2:13going to be watching or countries is going to be watching this show for productivity ain't the thing but uh yeah I was thinking I was literally like maybe I need to start taking some of these powerful concoctions of stuff that Americans take to get work done um but yeah in the end I just ended up waiting till I didn't have Co anymore but I do have some fun topic I I do have one main topic for you today I think it's like I when I saw this and I've been looking into it for a couple of weeks I was thinking okay your audience a couple of

2:43people in your audience are going to be smart enough and hustle enough to take this and actually turn this into a business um and it's based on I was so I'm in a couple of different entrepreneurial groups and one of the groups I was in I was listening to the call last week again I was like out of my head with Co just like slow sweaty whatever but I was listening to this woman and she was getting help with a with a marketing challenge she was talking for a while and eventually I was just like I'm really sorry do you mind if I ask you how much your coaching

3:15program costs and she said oh yeah yeah it's $38,000 per year and I was like what the [ __ ] what do you how and the reason I was so shocked is because what she's selling is she's selling a program it's not an online course it's like a kind of one-year program of coaching to teachers who don't want to be teachers anymore and who want to transition out of that career into being something else and then I was like okay wait a minute there are a lot of different careers that people are in and they probably don't know that they can take their skills and turn them into

3:50something else and get a different job a lot of people get burnt out from teaching a lot of people realize like from their perspective when it's too late that they actually don't like it and it's a super super popular thing for people if you look at it so I started Googling it then I looked at her website maybe I shouldn't I don't know maybe I shouldn't tell people about her specific website on this uh thing because I'm sharing things from within my entrepreneur group that would be maybe get me kicked out of that group but she spend she there there's a couple of companies that do something like this

4:24for example there's if you just start googling t teacher transition uh new career there's one called teaching transition Academy there's things like that and these are super high ticket programs where not not all of them are high ticket some of them are lower ticket but where essentially you know a team of people will help you figure out what you can do next and what I love about it is that this is something that so I run a company called ajn smart.com we help people become facil facilitators and we realize one of the most powerful things that we do is we help people go from where they are which

5:05is usually like product management ux design project management to something well more like facilitation which is what they specifically want to do but looking at this I was like you could literally take almost any job like nursing uh teaching I still think is really underserved I was looking at it you could even look at Consultants who go and work at Mackenzie and then realize they don't like it you could also look at things that are getting like laid off like product managers really think about how could you actually help this person get in and especially if they're later in life maybe they don't they already have a

5:42family maybe they're already kind of locked down to where they live how could you actually find something that could help these people a program that could help these people or could you figure out an easy thing that they could retrain themselves on and honestly that can be a Killer Business and I was just shocked shed when I was talking to her and she was like [Music] $38,000 Teachers Pay $38,000 usually spread out over the 12 months but I was completely shocked that this was I I I honestly expected her to say maximum $3,000 maximum hey everyone if you're anything like me you've got a ton of

6:22design work that you need websites landing pages emails social clets you name it but you don't just want beautiful landing pages or beautiful websites you want the stuff that's going to convert you want the stuff that's going to actually drive value that's where design scientist.com comes in it's an agency that for one monthly price will do all your design work all your copy work all your engineering and do stuff that actually scales your Revenue you don't need a designer you need a design scientist let's go design scientist.com I liked it so much I invested in the business so so what you're saying is there's a bunch of careers that I mean

7:12most careers honestly there people don't like there's a there's a subsection of people who don't like what they're doing and there's an opportunity to get those people to create content to attract those people and then sell coaching and other services to help them transition from what they're doing to what they want to be doing that's what you're saying I think there's a couple of nuances to it that I would focus on if I was starting this business I would focus on people who are who already have kids who are already settled down where they live maybe their kids are just like starting to move out maybe they're

7:45starting to realize maybe this career isn't for me so I wouldn't be targeting anybody like under 45 or maybe like it would be more like 40 and above they'll also have more money to spend as well so there'll be more they'll have felt the pain also of being in the industry that they don't like for a long period of time and so I think that's why teaching is such a an amazing Target like teachers often I know a lot of teachers they get to the certain point when they're like 35 36 37 my sister for example when she was 33 she transitioned into facilitation I think it takes a while

8:23for her them to realize oh [ __ ] like my salary is going to go up really slowly I can already see I already know what salary is going to be when I'm retiring and this is what it's going to be like forever and I think there are a lot of different jobs like that teaching is just one of the most obvious but immediately for me what I'm always thinking is what would I do if AJ and smart failed and one of the most obvious things after hearing the price of her coaching program was well I'd probably look for jobs that people feel stuck in I I do feel like it has to be the pain

8:59that they have to feel is that they're stuck and that their skills are not transferable right you don't want to be getting so you don't want to be targeting like people like you and me who are like full stack marketer entrepreneurs who can kind of do anything you want to be targeting people who spent their entire year building towards one career and their entire life building towards one career and then you can actually help them gain the confidence to move back into the market uh into something different so I think it's it's like a career coach on Zen you know career on Zin exactly that's a good oneliner yeah

9:39and like okay so how do you build this business literally especially if you're not a teacher if I was building this well first of all you would ideally find a teacher as your potentially as your co-founder teacher who's already transitioned out another thing is so literally in one day first I would Google the [ __ ] out of it I would look at all the qu posts I was already doing this today looking at all the qu questions about how how to transition out of teaching looking at all the Reddit posts about how to transition out of teaching looking at all the different things people are doing then I'd reach

10:07out to a lot of the people who've been posting ask to interview them just gather all these ideas then of course I'd look at the competitors I'd look at all the different websites all the different things if if I'm looking at a lot of these they're fairly low quality from a trust perspective I would say they look very salesy and and like bad and so I try to I would just build a more trustworthy version of these things and go content first and who I would make the content with would be teachers who have transitioned out right I'd learn from the people who've transitioned out of being teachers and

10:44build like the best content Hub but yeah I mean you would just then try to I guess it would be some form of Education business coaching business even better if you find like the thing that they can transition into but honestly I think would be a super it would be a super powerful business to at least replace your normal day-to-day corporate salary with and you would be helping people you wouldn't be helping the kids who who you know are in the schools but you definitely fix you want to fix the education system dude you're not exactly fixing the education system but yeah I hear you I will say okay you check this

11:23out so one of the first things that I do whenever I come up with an idea is I go to Reddit and I noticed that there's a subreddit called teachers I was on this exact subreddit today you would be you would be teachers in transition okay so it's it's it's pretty massive uh it's 34,000 members it's actually a perfect size top 3% Rank by size and I one of the things I like to do is I go check the top posts so this month the top post is a post that says in case anyone questions why 50% of teachers leave in their first five years and it's basically these text messages

12:02of parents just following up cards cards so bad it's like I'm curious as to the interpretation of the grading rubric right and then there's 213 comments of other teachers being like one of the top comments I don't care about grades quote unquote and proceeds to rent about grades so I think the way to to build this is the way I would build this teachers in transition or whatever in transition is I would actually go and build um the subreddit if it doesn't exist like go and build a subreddit moderate the subreddit I would try to collect as many memes as possible and the memes is how you attract the

12:47audience you just end up sharing memes for teachers nurses you know dentists um that sort of thing get a bunch of you know thousands of followers and from there then that's when you create your high ticket offer and that's when you you know you you sell them stuff and te teaching was just an example because just there's a lot of people in my life who've quit teaching and found it very stressful and and the the stressful part is that there's a lot of fear of leaving teaching and a lot of fear of won't be able to do anything else and what that does is also makes

13:27people stay in something that that's going to burn them to the ground and eventually they end up on sick leave for well sometimes years I don't know if you know any teachers who are in that setup I do and I think that's there are a lot of people that I meet especially older people who hate what they do they absolutely hate it and sometimes people come into our programs and they're so and it wasn't it's not even the intention of what we do at our company but they're so thankful to have found something that they actually enjoy doing and they never thought they would see an

14:01alternative and I never connected even our marketing doesn't even touch on that topic but hearing somebody talk about building this teaching transition coaching business where you have multiple coaches hired don't care what you think about coaching businesses it's just an example but there are just so many people stuck in jobs like so many people stuck when they're 55 in a job they just despise but the fear the fear of not being able to do something else you can really you can create things that are just super valuable for these people but yeah this teachers in transition subreddit is the perfect place to fill yourself up on the

14:44problem teachers have it's mostly negative posts if you look at it yeah and and and basically gossip yeah you know um but it's you know if you're a teacher and you're in the subred it you you you read a post and it's it's kind of like real recognize real you know like I see you other teacher like I've been there we've all been there and if you can get that feeling that's that's basically the feeling that you want a reverse engineer the other thing I thought of is um and I found a couple of examples of this as well again all I like finding examples we talked about

15:18this with the Deep Brown noise thing it's a it's like fragmented scattered all over the Internet tiny little pockets of it but uh paid communities again paid commun for teachers who are still in teaching who are looking for essentially a support group but also maybe looking for a way out and just having like a private space where people can also share things that will help each other have an easier teaching life again this is not something I would personally pursue because I'm not interested in teaching but just watching this other lady in my entrepreneur group running it I'm like holy crap like this is genuinely you're doing a business

15:58that makes money but also takes people from being burnt out and hating their lives to genuinely feeling completely different about their Futures it's just crazy how many different jobs that fall into this category I almost can't think of a job where it wouldn't fall into this category I could even imagine if you want to go to the super high end like the very like the end game of this is what do you do when you're an entrepreneur who sold their company and you're like 40 and you're you've nothing to do anymore because you've nailed it and finished the vid the video game of business how do you transition into

16:37something else I even think that could be a cool thing to help people with I'm not there yet so I can't do it I'm just trying to think okay so what job titles need this the most and I think if you if if you think about some of these positions like teachers or dentists or even doctors doctors even yeah doctors like they spend they basically decide that they want to be these people at age like 1 Architects Architects hate their lives usually often so they might you know in their mind like you know their parents or you know they had an uncle who was a who was a dentist so they

17:15become a dentist and then by the time they're you know in their mid 20s or late 20s or early 30s they're like whoa I don't like being a therapist it's horrible people are just telling me their problems so I think a lot of job titles where there's a lot of studying and prep and long hours that's what that's what I'd go after I mean you could even simplify it down to whatever jobs require you to decide at the age of 18 that you're going to do that job the chances of you actually liking it by the time you're 36 is very low like a lot of the people in

17:58my town in Ireland uh anyone who was smart and good at math was basically told to do civil engineering I I don't think I know anyone who actually does that job now I don't even know what civil engineering means it's like engineering the engineering kind of mathematics behind like stressors on buildings and stuff like in bridges so it's like if you you study civil engineering you're you become an engineer right a civil engineer so what does that even mean I don't [ __ ] know but one of my friends is a video game designer right now I was just going to say the name of the company but I won't

18:37um and he yeah like that's an example of a transition path that not a lot of people who went into civil engineering might know about I mean in the end sometimes it's just about seeing what other people do right sometimes how you calibrate what you want to do with your life is just by looking at someone else and being like Oh yeah like I could do that with my life well it's it's the the power of M mic desire do you ever read that book I've never read that book I think it's a book I can't even say that I'm not even going to try to say it yeah it's called

19:09wanting the power of mic desire in everyday life by Luke Burgess it basically says that even if we don't realize it we do things to to to try to mimic other people in our lives and how we don't have as much like we think that we're doing things we're independent we're human beings we you know if we if we want to be a doctor it's because we want to be a doctor but we don't realize that it you know it's 99% our environment and just us trying to fit in as people I 100% believe that um that's why I also like so we talked about this before I live in Europe

19:52Europe is very laidback um you can see it from the economy but it's like it's super laidback I even live in the country with like one of the best economies in Europe I live in Germany it's so so laidback compared to the US uh from a career point of view and I do have to sometimes just get on a flight like I am in a couple of weeks and go to California just to like you know be in San Francisco be in La hang around with other Founders who are just a lot more focused and successful and like driven than me they're just on they're just on a lot more Z then you are I

20:30didn't know that dude now I know no okay some of not everyone is but I definitely learned uh I learned a lot about Zin in the last few months um yeah Americans definitely uh have a very unfair advantage of having like a lot of chemical compounds going at the same time to keep them very awake uh I don't know what whether I think that's a good thing or a bad thing I just I'm now aware of this but yeah it's there there's also just this energy in the US this energy in places like San Francisco which I then if I'm there a few weeks I do start to mimic it right I

21:14do start to there there's this like Tony Robin says proximity Is Power I think nothing beats it right if I spent more time with you in person I'd become more like you if you spent more time like me in person you'd become way cooler but really it just is that right I it's it's really hard to get away from this proximity thing uh totally separate topic but it's also why I I speak to a lot of entrepreneurs I'm in a lot of entrepreneur groups and one common problem people have is like things aren't working out for me BL and I often ask where do you live like as in do you

21:54live like near where stuff is happening oh no like during Co I moved out into the middle of nowhere and like I've got this amazing house but it's like 3 hours from anywhere and I'm like it's really hard to simulate the proximity thing like you do need to be near stuff physically the energy like I live in Berlin and I live in an area that's super busy and there's a lot going on and it feels it just there's a momentum there's something about and not to say that being in a nice peaceful still place isn't a beautiful thing to have it's just if that's your day today you

22:28will also become more chill you you you start to mimic that environment as well I mean where you look like you're in a pretty chill place right now but you you're often in Miami right yeah I mean the what you were describing being in the middle of nowhere is exactly where I am now I'm in like literally looking at it you know 95 Acres of mountains and there's no one around here I'm in the I'm in Canada and so I live I like to live my life you know from extremes you know Miami is like you're in it and here I'm like you're not in it and sometimes I I

23:07I'm I find it really helpful to dip in and out of the extremes yes so for you you're going to come to San Francisco you're G to get this like dose or injection of silic and Valley into your veins and but you know you're going to be taking your flight home and on your flight going to be wow should I raise venture capital and you're a guy who's never thought about raising venture capital in your life and that's because if you spend enough time in San Francisco you will think about raising around because that's what everyone does there for sure um so you know then then

23:43you're gonna go down to LA and you know on on your flight on your flight leaving La you're GNA be like oh you know I've been I've always been thinking I should really get into vlogging because everyone wants to be famous in LA so I think the hack is you have to write your goals like what are your goals personal career and then cities can help you get to your goals but too much of one city could also you know kind of hurt personal goals or hurt other career goals so I think that you should treat a city as just like um a utility in a way right

24:25like you you get something out of it um and but I want to say one quick thing which is I also don't think you should be one of those people that are constantly on a flight because if you don't have a home base you don't have like a community that's also just like a terrible way to live I was gonna I was going to push you on that one because I lo I'm I am really trying to build a community in my in my physical neighborhood here in Berlin uh like two nights ago I was hanging out at my neighbor's house just downstairs we're in a like a high-rise building I guess

24:58uh playing the new Elden ring DLC um I'm cooking dinner for Neighbors I I know the people working in the different shops here so I do love to be integrated into my community yeah this is interesting right a city is a utility and this is this is actually this is a totally different topic I guess we're just on topic two there's a lot of I I never I don't post about remote work versus in-person work and cities versus Urban environments anymore more because people go people who are like who've made the decision to like no cities forever get so angry about it like if you now for example had

25:41moved to wherever you are right now and had decided I am now a monk living in the middle of nowhere and I was like cities are a great place to get like this proximity and you'd be like oh no you can't say that for everyone but because you're flexible you can move between these two worlds it doesn't bother you and I think it the objective truth about this is first of all if you're all if you're already balling out of control unbelievably rich and your like your momentum is crazy and your network is insane sure move sell everything leave the city live in the middle of nowhere you don't need any

26:19more money and you don't need any more connections and let's say your purpose is gardening then you do not need to think about this ever again but if you're still on your journey I do think cities are they're not just a place to go have fun they are a utility that you pay for like there's a reason also people are like oh if you live in Berlin you pay this much for an apartment but if if you just move two hours outside you can get a house for that price and I'm like yes I'm not just paying for physical space I'm paying to be close to

26:49people who are doing things that I want to do I'm paying for this energy it's it is actually a service to live in the city I actually heard like someone was commenting someone was posting recently oh Munich is getting so expensive it's ridiculous whatever blah blah blah uh and this other German guy underneath wrote and and everyone was agreeing right and I was also like yeah sure like Germany is getting expensive everywhere is getting expensive and I was kind of in agreement I was like okay yeah everything's expensive [ __ ] this and then somebody rolled underneath it's not your human right to live in the center

27:24of a city like it's it's not a human right to live in the center of an expensive city obviously different story if you live there now you're getting kicked out because of gentrification but you as a you know me as an Irish guy who went to college I have absolutely no right to live in this Center of Berlin I don't by the way it's actually insanely expensive but I have no right to do that so I it's it is a utility it's a service and you're paying a premium because of the services and the amenities provided that's a whole whole separate thing but like for example I know if I wanted to

28:01live in San Francisco where the center of this AI explosion is right now if I was in Ai and I wanted to like basically increase my chances of a successful outcome I'd have to pay the price and live in a place like San Francisco I'm not looking for that but that is really the price of getting the rewards of living in a physical space that brings you closer to all the things you want and I think a lot of people need to change their mindset about that when they're saying I can get a seven story house out in the middle of nowhere it's like yeah you can and you just need to

28:36understand the tradeoff you can do that and that's really cool it's just about understanding these tradeoffs is important am I gone down a Bad Rabbit Hole no no this is great my take on my take on this is that every person has a ignorance tax that they have to pay down so no matter what your goals are there's a price that you have to pay to learn to get to your goals quicker and by living in San Francisco New York some of these places yes it's might be two times more expensive to live but you will just by as osmosis pay down your ignorance tax IGN ignorance debt way way

29:19way faster and the question for you is or or the person listening really is you know at this stage in your life and with the amount of money that you have saved up does is it worth spending an extra $1,500 a month or whatever it is for the premium to potentially get an extra client a month or learn about how VCS work or you know XYZ that's what it is it is absolutely that like a great a practical example of this is talking to someone today who is saying like talking about digital marketing and how do I do this and how am I how do I get calls and like it's

30:00really difficult to get calls and and then I was like I was trying to give advice but then I was like but the truth is how I started was I was in a co-working space in the center of Berlin which was full of startups and I physically talked to them and then I got work like I went drinking with them that like that's the truth and now I could move out into the middle of nowhere and build a career but but it is of course possible to build a career remotely and not in a city it's just the challenge it is kind of like playing on

30:37hard mode versus easy mode you get the the it's like in a video game you're putting the attributes into Comfort you're putting all your points into comfort and convenience but then the you have like low ability to get leads and build a career and I and I agree I I think all of these options are like people who want to live out in the middle of nowhere like you right now I think that is absolutely amazing as long as you understand the tradeoff and I think a lot of people are convinced by a lot of people who still haven't built their careers yet are convinced by some

31:16sort of part of the media to move out to the suburbs before they get any momentum and then there's like sometimes a little bit of resentment later in life like oh I could have I could have have done this I could have done that and it's like yeah you would have had to pay the city tax to get that to get those things or you have to become a [ __ ] amazing content creator which is hard to do or like a worldclass marketer which is also hard to do yeah I think you could move out to the suburbs or live off the grid if you build a big audience because then

31:52what what is an audience an audience is just puts you at the center of digital gravity yeah and then it's all good because you don't need to be in New York you don't need to be in San Francisco you know you're tweeting and you're getting a million views yes but so I you know if you're starting out or or you just want to accelerate your career I think you want to do both things you wanna you want to do the digital gravity thing and you want to build an audience uh and that's kind of your insurance and also it's your fallback plan for when you do you know you've

32:25been in New York and you hit 30 and you're like I'm tired of this I need out totally totally dude I I want that insurance too yeah who doesn't want that insurance I think it's but it's I know again yeah we've we've gone deeply into another topic but I I would love if some of my friends and entrepreneur friends had not jumped so aggressively on the covid everything is going to be remote Now train and now are like oh it's really weird weirdly hard to get work like yeah it is it is diff it is difficult when you when you are when you didn't get that momentum career momentum

33:07before you went away I think that's the challenge I think there has been this like it's back to your mimetic uh the wanting book I got to read this I think the mimetic desire thing works more powerfully in person it just has more of a powerful draw in person but also godamn it iners stuff's just easier to it's it's it feels like it's easier to start a career when you're in an environment where just other people are doing that too and and you just like for example when I moved to Berlin I just copied one of my friend's careers he was a ux designer we both

33:50studied digital media production and I was just like you you're doing what and like we would go out drinking and I would talk to him about it and then he'd show me his portfolio he tell me how much he got paid and like I'm just like I'm copying you dude Eric thank you so much for letting me copy everything you did I appreciate it dude um but yeah that that [ __ ] would be very challenging to do uh where I come from which is a small town in Ireland um because I don't know if there's a ux designer there you know what I mean a ux designer I don't

34:21know if there's one I don't know if there was one back when I was starting I went down we we we we rabid well that's what we do that's what we do we we burrow we burrow you know that's that's our style how do you split your time between this place you are right now and Miami I'm I'm in I'm in Miami call it seven to eight months a year eight months a year probably and then three three months summertime here and then maybe a month during the winter so that's the other thing I like about here is it's got the craziest seasons of all time it gets to like minus

34:5845° and like snow is like 10 10t um and Miami is like you know the the complete opposite of that it's like hurricane season right now so I don't know I I I like I like again I like the diversity I like uh I find that I work I'm actually more productive up here uh it's a great place to write like think I'm in like a cabin in the woods basically right so it's like so good for writing so good for creativity um and uh that's also just helpful like if I have like 10 blog posts I want to write just fly up here spend a week here and fly

35:41back that's so cool and and you know here's the thing audience if I would spend more time with Greg then I would get more successful and be able to have two places where I live so I just need to spend more time in Greg's proximity absorbing his energy and then just those dollars come flying in that's how it's going to work I think I think we can end it here I got to ask people to like on YouTube If you enjoyed this apparently liking for the algorithm is a thing please like it please like it and uh and then subscribe and then leave us a review on on Spotify and apple if you're

36:24listening there yeah thank you so much everybody appreciate your time time and uh have a good one everyone later should we sip it out let's sip it [Music] out thanks everyone bye [Music]