This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it

0:00like what makes this business really great for other people who want to create uh businesses with tiny teams is number one you lock people into an ecosystem number two the customer service is just exceptional number three family business number four it's niche it's not for everyone and they went after like the Tony Robbins of the world and then last but not least it's a dope name [Music] so there's something different about us today we are wearing suits why are we wearing suits Greg we are wearing suits today because we are introducing a new award for the industry the entrepreneurial small business business bootstrap industry and what's that award that award

1:05is the tiny team award and what does that mean it's an award we're going to give out maybe once per month maybe once per quarter who knows maybe once per lifetime maybe once per lifetime so like zero consistency at all listen audience don't expect any consistency here it's an award we're going to give out to a company that has a a team of less than 10 people but that is very special it's like a company where you you've maybe used their product or you've maybe seen their product around but you didn't really know that it was just a tiny little team behind it so it's a tiny

1:44team doing something big and special um that you may or may not know about they're they're like flying under the radar that kind of thing you know you think they're bigger than they are but they're smaller yes yes exactly you think they're going to be bigger than they are but then it turns out you think it's like a 100 people but then it turns out to be two people yeah and and it blows your mind and you just you can't believe it you're like what how's that even possible yeah and it's super cool as well because they're often like family-owned businesses or like it's a couple or it's

2:22like a brother and sister or it's like two high school friends um and I just think that's like a nice heartwarming kind of story as well or just lovers just some lovers just lovers yeah it could just be just lovers you know that's it we just keep it like that all right let's dig in all right so the first tiny team award for the startup ideas podcast 2024 goes to King flip chart yay okay but I don't know I don't know what I don't know that business at all good good good good okay so King flip chart if you go to any Alex Heros video um if you've ever seen like videos of

3:13Tony Robbins on stage if you've ever seen any basically any public speaker using a flip chart on a stage this flip chart if you look closer has a little stamp on the bottom right hand side and it says King and this is because they are using a company called King flip chart which literally is two people doing one thing and that is they make the world's biggest flip chart okay and a flip chart flip chart meaning one of those things uh where you're just like kind of like a whiteboard it's like literally like a a stand with really big pieces of paper on it that you can write on and

3:58then just turn them over the next piece of paper a flip chart and and how well do you think these guys are doing honestly I don't know and I've reached out to them to see if there's any way I can like get that answer I don't know the answer to that question but the flip charts are very expensive and literally every single person in the personal development space is using them look at any Alex Hermos video uh where he's like every second Alex Heros video he's standing in front of two two of these flip charts and the paper refills which are specific to these flip charts cost

4:35$100 for one paper refill and we're a tiny company like my company's very small and we're using like four to five of these paper paper refills per month so anybody who buys one of these flip charts is using that paper and essentially paying a monthly subscription to keep doing their events and using these flip charts and they do pens so I'm looking right now they charge uh for the the king flip chart exclusive set it's 1315 plus taxes and that in that includes um the foldable and portable flip chart I think it probably includes uh a few refills and stuff like that but I didn't realize it would be that

5:25expensive yeah it's it's expensive because it's like completely custom made and the weird thing about it is so I started seeing this flip chart on stage and the exact same thing happened to me I was like oh man I need a flip chart that size and so so I started looking for a large flip chart and eventually I was like what like looking at all these different flip chart companies and like most companies are not like Standalone flip chart companies they do all sorts of other things and eventually I went back to the video that I was watching and again I think it was like I think it

5:57was Alex Heros or Russell Brunson or someone like that and I zoomed in and I was like King what is King and I figured out it's a twers company working out of Italy and it's a sales and marketing expert uh and a like a Furniture designer I think uh working together they're I believe a couple and they are the people who personally respond to you when you message them on the website so we had like an emergency two weeks ago because we were running an event at our office and we ran out of the flip chart paper and they're like no problem we'll like expedite it to you and it's just so

6:39nice to have this as like the most personalized experience ever and I just love I love the Simplicity of it it's like we make a flip chart what else do you do nothing the end I also I also recommend people go to when you go to their website if you go to the team of King flip chart and we we'll put this on the YouTube video it's just a picture of um T Zana and Sandro just like looking deep into your soul yes and it's it's perfect and they just talk about like you you start reading the about the team and you really get a sense of like who these

7:19people are why they why they're doing what they're doing it just feels so family business and I feel like the trend around like the Amazon modification of the internet this is like the anti-trend around just like this feels like you want to support this business 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

7:59could 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 why 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 absolutely and that's exactly what I do as well like for me once you buy one king flip chart first of all you're

8:38locked into the ecosystem right you can't find you you'd have to Custom Design uh or have a company custom design that paper size for you because it's humongous but the other thing is I just want to keep supporting them they're so nice it's just such a humble uh like tisana is the person who we talk to um when when we are when we need new stuff um and honestly one of my biggest challenges right now coming up in the summer is when I'm traveling around and I don't have my king because I don't want to bring it onto the plane what I'm going to have to do is

9:13literally buy a new one and have it shipped to the location that I go to and so I'm like super locked into the king universe and they're just such a tiny company I just I just love it it's they deserve this tiny team award which we need to make a little logo for so they can put on their site they deserve this prestigious very prestigious award hey we're wearing tuxedos here that's right exactly so congratulations uh I know you've been you've been wanting this uh from the day you've been born t t tana and Sandro so congratulations and just from like a uh framework perspective I'm trying to think so like

9:57what makes this business really great for other people who want to create uh businesses with tiny teams is number one you lock you lock people into an ecosystem number two the customer service is just exceptional yes number three family business number four it's niche it's not for everyone and they went after like the Tony Robbins of the world so then you look it in you're like I want to be a king too you know I don't I want to be a king Tony Robbins is a king and then last but not least it's a dope name King flip chart King flip chart it's so it's just what I love about it is they've so

10:39you can buy flip charts from anywhere right you can go just Google flip charts and I'm sure there's a million of them on Amazon but they've locked themselves into this world of like direct response marketing and personal development where they basically now and and all of the testimonials on their website I'm sure way more people have think flip charts but they are focusing on the people in the personal development space and it just keeps it keep yeah it's it's like a niche within a niche because it's not just that it's we're just doing flip charts it's we're just doing flip charts for the personal development onstage

11:20space which is just so cool it's a flip chart that's big enough to be on stage that's what I think is so unbelievably specific and about it and it like what are like theal station style things where you think that 3M has already cornered the market so 3M is the company that makes posted and all of these other things like where and I actually have one of the 3M flip charts here it's hidden in the background here but this thing is like pretty expensive as well but King flipchart came along and was like What if it's the biggest though you know yep I love it I love it I'm I I

12:05just love it I love it so that's award number one I I've got a tiny team award I want to give out all right I'll lift it up again so for the second tiny team award ever to be given sip to that uh stardew Valley oh my God what a great I don't know if you want to beat that up but what a we didn't know which ones we were going to bring to each other that is such a great one do you know about the story of stardew Valley I know about the story of story of stardew Valley and I have it on here and have way too many

12:44hours on it so stardew Valley is a farming game started by a guy by the name of Eric not sure how to pronounce it Eric Baron or Eric Baron I don't know if he's ital you know maybe it's just the Italian flip chart got to me so it's the flip chart family again it's the son of the flip chart it's a it's the son of the flip chart Dynasty yes so for for the purpose of this award we're gonna call him Eric Baron he's the oneman developer behind $300 million of earnings of stardo Valley so stardo Valley started um I think he started building it in 2011 so

13:32it took a while it took a few years but basically it's this farming game um and he was the sole developer for the game and Not only was he the sole developer he was the sole designer he even crafted the music for the game that not many people know that and it was this really cool concept where you know so many games the trends were first-person shooters uh MMOs uh killing people fighting games he did the complete opposite and uh created this like calming farming game and he what I love about the whole story uh besides that he's a tiny team and he did it I mean amazing that he

14:17create you know created $300 million of value by himself is the fact that well he just basically went against all best practices and all Trends and just said like this is going to be a really cool game I want to go and put this out here and you know people said that it should be $60 he started charging $15 and you can even get stardy Valley now for as cheap as $4.99 so his his you know I just I love people who have a POV and is just like this needs to exist plus I'm a tiny team chef's kiss so congratulations Eric bar beron very very good one very very good

15:03one okay so you know before the episode we didn't discuss how many awards we're giving out uh so I'm gonna give out another Award right now uh another tiny team award staying in the video game Space uh I don't know if you've heard of the magazine called a profound waste of time have you heard of it no I have not ah ah I'm very happy to hear that so in the video game space there is a magazine called a profound waste of time uh the guy who does it is a guy called Caspian Whistler and Caspian whis Whistler is the person who not only is like figuring

15:46putting putting together this entire magazine and finding all the artists and um figuring out how to get all the interviews in there he's also the person who personally is messaging you when your magazine is like stuck in delivery um and was personally messaging my girlfriend back and forth over Christmas when she was trying to get me the three issues of the magazine um super high quality really amazing interviews from really crazy uh video game developers in there really like uh high-end video game developers uh like the for example the developers who created IO and uh Shadow of the Colossus really I I don't know if you can see if you go to the website a

16:30p.com like it's just ludicrously high quality for one person to go in and actually take on a project of this size it's ridiculously ambitious as well similar to stardew Valley the amount of effort that goes into a project like this and I think what's what this and stard do Valley have in common what the two people who worked on these have in common is that this is absolutely a labor of love where you never know if this is actually going to turn into a viable way of making money but it's almost like an obsession that you that that these people go down and actually start working on these things so my my

17:10third my my personal second but our third tiny team award is going to the a profound waste of time video game magazine uh and how they do each Episode by the way how they how they fund each issue is by uh doing a Kickstarter for every issue so that's also kind of cool so they don't just bring out an issue it get every every single issue gets funded through Kickstarter which is kind of cool this is this is beautiful I'm obsessed with this the covers like the cover art is just absolutely stunning it's like one of those things where you want to buy it and just like frame it

17:47and put it on your walls it's it's absolutely amazing and it's actually one per customer so it says due to demand is not possible to order multiple of the same item in one transaction action uh so I just love like the scarcity of it too um it does feel like very Community oriented like this is this is a really really good one I wonder how much revenue they're bringing in for something like this yeah you can see on the kickstarter Pages how much each uh Edition makes so there's some transparency around that but a lot of the all of the past issues that I bought were not through

18:27Kickstarter so those would be included uh so I guess you could check the kickstarter Pages um like for example there was 100 if we look here to Issue 4 or issue yeah I don't know actually okay it doesn't even matter it it doesn't matter cu the impact that this is making it's so cool it's so cool this is so cool it's so cool yeah this is too cool this is too cool they're interviewing like the members of the Portal 2 Team theater of Silent Hill come on come on shoe in this is yeah it's too much I have them all around my apartment I bought every or my

19:10girlfriend got them to me as a gift but they are so unbelievably beautiful I love them so much all right that a good one than all right I got I got one I got I got another one when are we stopping like is is it just like we're stopping when when it feels like we should stop yeah exactly I'm like I'm waiting for you to run out of ideas and run out of one so that I don't have to have another one you know you're talking to the wrong guy oh man yeah all right so my second tiny team award goes to AJ the founder of card c a r r d are you

19:51familiar with card no I'm looking it up right now so if you go to C rrd Co it's basically these simple free fully responsive onepage sites for pretty much anything so uh card is I I got to know AJ through Ryan Hoover from product hunt so he launched on product hunt he was just like I just need a way to create a onepage card onepage website in a really simple way and I think other people probably want that he launched on product hunt it went viral within that Community all of a sudden as a Onan developer he's doing I think at least a million a million and a

20:39half of ARR wow and and and you know the cost with something like that I mean not very much um and what ended up happening is a lot of causes um like social causes uh started using it and a lot of for whatever reason um like K-Pop Stars started using it so it's just like cool because number one it's cool because he's a tiny team it's him and I think one other person it's cool because it got popular like he didn't really do any marketing it kind of just like blew up from the product T community and then spread to it you know communities that needed it most I think the black lives

21:27matter community used it a lot and that spread to other causes and then K-pop Star started using it and that spread to other people who uh listen to K-pop and I just thought I just thought it was cool that it's just some developer who created um a one page I think website Builders are just cool too like it's one of those categories where it's like people have been building website Builders since the 90s it's like do we need another website builder I guess we do that's what I was that's what I'm thinking about it's interesting probably you see this with your audience I definitely see it with

22:02my tiny audience is that when if I would post something like this you'd have one or two idiots in the comments being like Oh So pointless we don't need another one of these things and the point that you should be when you're when you see something like this something like card what I am thinking is what the hell how can you make something like this differentiated when there's a million different like one page I don't know there's a million different ways to make websites uh also for a very low price so I'm like my gut reaction is to be like why would you need another one of these

22:39but actually the correct way to think about this is how is this actually working and this is I'm super curious about this because it absolutely does not appeal to me at all on first glance but like why do you think this works so firstly go on to to Twitter and just put in card and search and sort by latest what you'll see is like every second people are tweeting about their their card websites and I think one of the reason why this works is it's a status symbol within certain communities to have a card oh yeah so it'll say like like when you create a card it'll be it'll be Greg

23:26Eisenberg doc. Co and within certain communities like I mentioned K-pop and and causes it just it's kind of like a flex but why like how did that how did that happen was it an accident or was it cultivated I don't I I I I honestly think that it was organically cultivated like it was it wasn't like AJ you know I think he lives in like rural Tennessee so I don't think he has the most amount of K-pop connections yeah you know um so it just from that product hunt launch I don't know it just sort of spread and they they they they saw the product and and it and it felt

24:11cool and interesting and they like the name in the best way possible when I'm looking at these card Pages it reminds me of geoc cities was it called Geo cities or geoc cities um it reminds me of that sort of retro like if you look at we talk a lot about anti-trends it's like the anti-trend of Squarespace Squarespace is all about like high quality everything's aligned perfectly the templates are beautiful whereas this has this more rugged homemade geoc cities Vibe I wonder if that sort of retro energy is what also makes it work so well I also think that their business model is one of the reasons why it work

24:52so most people most website Builders will charge 10 20 30 sometimes $50 a month uh for access to it guess what car charge is uh zero no not not that tiny well it says it says uh on the landing page that it's a simple free fully responsive one-page site oh actually you're right it is free like you can create for free but if you want like uh if you want the pro features like a c you know uh multiple sites no branding widgets embeds Google analytics forms like if you want to connect it to beehive or convert kit something like that you do have to pay

25:37for the advanced features and it's only yes only $19 per year that's that's pretty very affordable yeah I mean that's what is that it's less than $2 a month um $9 that's like one coffee you know it's it's a tiny amount of dollars per year yeah $19 that's like an espresso you know $19 is like half an espresso yeah $19 that's like a water isn't it yeah yeah I'm happy you started talking about that because the comment section is going to be like so upset and people people are so get so upset about the prices of things but at but $19 is like the price it's only the price of like a

26:26small glass of water it's like for for Dan water it's about $19 you know I I think what we should do you know people don't watch every podcast I think what we should cultivate on this podcast is a sense of being really out of touch with the rest of society and when we see something like um oh the the Apple Vision Pro is only $3,800 like price of a coffee totally don't like don't say it's a joke and just keep doing that until people think we're viciously out of touch totally I like this I I like that a lot yeah I mean $3,800 to be completely disconnected from

27:11reality and for the price of a coffee it's a no-brainer yeah dude I like coffee what does that it cost approximately I mean I'm sure it's within the ballpark of $3,800 right right yeah it's in the ballpark right with with tip it's around $3800 [Laughter] hey does your audience know both of does your audience think we're both fully wearing a tuxedo or do you want where do they think it ends yeah I mean I I think they know where well are you wearing what are you wearing underneath there I don't know we just have to think about it you're gonna have to guess in the comments you have to guess in the

27:51comments I mean I was thinking about putting on pants but then I was just like what is the point yeah can you see this ghostly happening behind me yeah what is happening behind there like your I hope your editor does like one of those crash zooms whenever that happens like stuff's just moving around in the background Wow that's scary okay you did you just give your tiny business award yes to card yes I give the tiny business award to card.co congrats I love that I have another one all right we'll go will we do another one I'll do one last one okay I'll do one last one so I think there's

28:31a an area we haven't gone into yet and it's patreon businesses uh like really small uh patreon businesses and I want to give an award to a patreon business and again like maybe this person wouldn't like it to be called a patreon business because it's uh he's a really amazing artist but I want to give an award to Bobby fingers uh if you go to YouTube and search Bobby fingers uh my favorite video the best video I've ever seen on the Internet is called Jeff Bezos rowing boat if you watch this whole thing and don't think it's the best YouTube video you've ever seen something's horribly wrong with you

29:14and you're a bad person so Bobby fingers has a patreon account a patreon account what I love about his patreon and what he does in particular is that he's not like a person who's constantly putting out different uh he's he's not constantly pumping out content he puts out like one video every couple of months you have no indication of when it's about to come out and then this video is literally him making a diarama do you know what a diarama is no so it's it's kind of hard it's like a it's like something happens in real life so for example um what's the guy's name in his most recent one

29:59Fabio so there's this I think singer called Fabio and he was on a roller coaster and he he got hit by a bird in the face um or got hit in the face by a bird whichever way you say that around and there's like footage of that there's footage of him coming down from the roller coaster with a bloody nose and he's really pissed off and this guy Bobby fingers he makes like a little model of that moment uh like a moment in time but like a physical model like a sculpture of the moment his videos are like the making of these little sculptures or in the case of the Jeff

30:33Bezos thing he makes a boat which is Jeff bezos's face but a massive working boat and literally the strangest most kind of confusing videos I've seen on the internet the most like painstaking work like we're looking you're talking about a 30 minute video of the making of this Goose uh this diarama of a goose hitting this guy in the face and just like the journeys he goes on while he's making this diarama and the weird things that he's saying while he's creating it and this is like for me a business that could have never existed outside of patreon existing and I think patreon really allows for single

31:22person teams or one or two person teams to monetize just their weirdness and I love that and I think it's super cool I don't know how big Bobby finger team is um I cannot imagine it's more than 10 people but he gets another tiny team award from me in the content category let's add in categories now wow you went there I can't believe you went there yeah content art category wow nich yeah yeah exactly very very Niche so Bobby fingers honestly guys if if you only get one thing from this uh from from this episode please and also something weird is happening I know this is not really

32:06interesting for the episode but I pay for his um patreon but like I can't use it I don't know what's what's happening here so something's patreon if you're listening to this uh tell me tell me what's up with that uh with that issue there by the way like an exam another example who I'm not going to give the tiny team award for but one of the runners up have you seen nice dad's channel yes I have I love that yeah I love it I love that people now can take their weird little hobbies and if they're just consistent enough and just focused enough and willing to sort of

32:44push through this initial phase where just no one knows you you can literally replace your job by showing a 30-minute video of you making a boat uh that's in the shape of Jeff bezos's face and uh you never have to work for someone else again I love that so good how cool is that that is so good that is so cool so cool that fires me up what did you say that fires me up yeah like you could quit whatever I mean you don't already have a job you're kind of like creating your own jobs but like if we just did this award ceremony every week and it's like $10 a week to listen

33:27to I'm just kidding that wouldn't be totally and we make a magazine out of it yes yes um imagine how little money we would make and how annoyed how annoyed we would be all right I'm gonna refrain from one uping you with another tiny team award I think dud no I can't I can't I want I want you to have the last word on this one and we'll do another one of these yeah um here listen think what you should do is maybe someone on your team should make a not shitty looking version one of these and like we send it to the to the people who want it as like a hute

34:08thing totally or we just send them that post it you know that we just you know even so here it is here you go yeah but I think uh it would be uh if if you guys do this um please let me know if you get responses I think this could make some people's day or maybe they don't give a maybe they're like who are you losers how are you how dare you call yeah my team tiny yeah exactly I'm 6 foot three okay I'm huge do you know how large my flip chart is yeah all right well JC this has been fun uh thank you and uh any any parting

34:54words um I'm so sweaty yeah the thing with suits is it really traps in the Heat and there's no uh air conditioning in Germany like in most German I'm in a new building like a new apartment and there's still no air conditioning being built into apartments and like I'm just sludge yeah well they say higher quality of life in Europe but no AC I don't know hard hard hard to uh hard to deal with that one Greg we need to do an episode just this is a preview for what I think we should do as as an episode in the future Europe versus the US when it

35:36comes to entrepreneurship yeah biggest episode ever totally did you see my tweet to to Daniel e yes it's very uh I I I I have a lot to say about that topic and um have you had Peter levels on this podcast yet no he's like really hard to track down we get we got to get him we got we're okay we're going to do here here's live canvas strategy you and me are going to do an episode on Europe versus the US entrepreneurship we're going to talk about Peter level's um European accelerationism uh which is one of his his new kind of movement and his merch

36:15and uh Peter will just have to he'll just have to come on you know yeah he'll have no choice but to come on Peter yeah come on come on Peter yeah all right man dude it's been it's been real I'll catch you later thanks everyone bye bye [Music]