Insane Trends the Past Decade and Why They Made Money

Level 2 - Value Investor

Welcome Avatar! Assuming you’re not licking your wounds while Trump disrupts global supply chains, we thought it would be a fun idea to explain why certain trends popped the last decade. This is a wide range of topics and the underlying theme is the following: Fear sells better than Pleasure and Sales is just the transfer of emotion.

None of these topics are related in terms of industry, they are various forms of the same concept. Somehow, a new sucker is born every second to purchase MangoSteen, Raspberry Ketones and some new five minute workout routine that guarantees six pack abs.

Part 1: Cross Fit and Tough Mudder

These were two trends that peaked around 7 years ago. Not sure the exact day it peaked financially but you get the idea.

CrossFit: This as an all out workout plan where they force you to try and hit a personal best daily. This is a disaster. The reason it sold so well? People expect linear and constant improvement every week/month. This is only possible for beginners (newbie gains) but eventually you have to go to periodization schedules.

Anyone who has played a sport at a decent level (draw the line at Collegiate), knows that you go through the standard load, recovery, peak phase in any sport. If you try to simply up the intensity and volume every week, you end up injured and certainly won’t set a personal best by going all out every day.

Tough Mudder: This was a mini spawn off the Cross Fit crowd. Essentially, the founders realized that a ton of people attracted to CrossFit were white collar workers. They are used to environments where they are being yelled at for meaningless ticks on excel bar graphs.

For anyone who as worked on Wall St, Management Consulting or at Law Firms, you know that a large chunk of these guys went to private schools and got cut from the Junior Varsity Golf Team. They are not particularly athletic.

Kaboom! Enter Tough Mudder, a way for them to feel like they are hard core military people and specifically target their fear of not being Alpha Males.

End Result

Unsurprisingly, Cross Fit isn’t great for your health long-term. Might work for a newbie for a few months but the end result is typically a significant injury. People go in, see fast results and say “It works for me” then a few months later they tear an ACL or some other significant injury (shoulders were pretty common and those are quite difficult to heal).

Tough Mudder was a smaller cohort and was a bit less damaging. People just trained for an event that made them feel like men. Crawling through mud pits and climbing walls made of rope. The profit margins on this must be enormous. A simple 5K obstacle course required $100+ just to enter. Outside some cheap shirts and some cheap event items, the cost is pretty minimal. Good business model.

Combo emotional pull of the two was: 1) need for instant results a human greed condition and 2) making men feel like they are in the military or at war since they spend 60 hours a week in front of a computer screen.

Part 2: Kardashian Mega Biz Model

There is no way to replicate it but it was insane to watch unfold. In a sentence, Kim Kardashian made Middle Eastern women sex symbols.

This is an insane accomplishment, before her rise to fame you didn’t really see an obsession with Middle Eastern Women. During the 2000-2010s (rough range since they are mega famous now), this exploded and it became common.

If you see it through the same lens as we do, you now understand that they were monetizing the Taboo culture of being forced to wear abaya, hijab, niqab, and chador.

By primarily going for rappers/artists/sports stars it created a mass appeal element. Said a different way, if Kim Kardashian married a tech nerd would she be popularized? Hopefully we can all agree that the answer is: No.

Creating contrast with rappers/athletes + an extremely Taboo and conservative culture, it tapped into the human psyche of wanting something they can’t have.

The vast majority have a scarcity belief and taboo/weird fetishes as it relates to all of this. They monetized like mad.

End Result

While she’s not as popular as years ago, the ability to create a new sex symbol was powerful. Can’t think of anything more powerful than sex as a selling point. If you want more proof just ask Elon Musk! People talk about values and personal responsibility, but the traffic on OnlyFans shows a different story. Look at what people do not what they say!

In case it needs explaining (it shouldn’t) the whole vibe is the fear of being caught with a girl who should be in a veil in a strict culture like Islam.

Part 3: Holistic Health Boom

Pretty extreme trend. This has been amplified post COVID era. Don’t really mind if you are pro or anti-vax it’s not in our wheelhouse. The part that is? The undeniable fight against Big Pharma. A large cohort is now obsessed with everything being natural.

If you want a pure insanity level of this look at the trend for at home birth.

The COVID spike there is undeniable as people became interested in this topic when hospitals were overloaded. Since then it has remained at a pretty elevated level.

This doesn’t make a lot of logical sense. If you want to deliver a baby naturally you can just do that within a secure hospital. Nothing prevents you from doing that. In a scenario where there is a complication/emergency you’d be in big trouble with potential loss of the mother, child or both. The conclusion is that there has been a significant loss in trust.

End Result

You can probably gather we’re not exactly fans of this idea to the extremes (risking death), but do think there is validity to the extreme power healthcare has over our lives. Many of you know we utilize private doctors for HRT as an attempt to maximize life expectancy.

The emotional tug is pretty much in your face: Fear of the System

Our assumption is this trend continues. Anyone who can offer life extension products and at home person personalized care will see significant traffic for the foreseeable future.

Part 4: Gambling/Sports Betting

Long Degeneracy. Still bullish on this general trend but it has picked up pretty dramatically the last 10 years.

The emotional pull is painfully obvious: Get Rich Quick just need one Parlay

As a note, “just need one” is probably one of the best signs of coping. You’ve probably heard that in real estate when someone lists their offer way above what it is worth on the market. “We just need to find one buyer!”, horrible strategy of reducing demand to the point of searching for needles in haystacks.

If you were an affiliate or know anyone who worked as one… You know that there is a new crop of people looking for fast and furious ways to get rich. Casino/Gambling offers will print in the foreseeable future.

End Result

Gambling is one of the highest forms of emotional pull. If you do it for fun, you’ll find yourself on the edge of your seat if you wagered a measly $100 on a game. Gets out of hand quickly.

Emotional pull is the forever human condition of wanting to get rich overnight. Lotteries will be around for generations.

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Future Emotional Pulls

Now for some fun general predictions. If you look at the current world environment you can see some mega trends: 1) rich and poor divide, 2) decline in high-paying white collar professions - number of seats and 3) large number of people with no families - single forever.

This means the following pulls will be prevalent for a long time: 1) need to retain status, 2) high paying professionals seeing a -50% drop in their income with no recovery in sight and 3) people in their 40s stuck in perpetual adolescence + suffering from loneliness.

Answers to all of these:

• VR/AR: Since Tech is deflationary, in 10 years, people will spend practically all of their time in front of some sort of screen. Your online profile will be more important than you in person profile. Also a good temporary cure for loneliness

• Substitute Goods for Upper Middle Class Specifically: At this point, even upper middle class people are forced into substitution goods. Go through the list of items you would personally get rid of and write down the replacement. Boom, that’s the industry you should be in. We mentioned a few on the paid stack which are growing like weeds currently

• PEDs: With competition for jobs that pay $300K (not even $500K+ anymore) reaching a boiling point, you’ll see a big wave of performance enhancing products. Could be brains could be muscles. Same direction

  • On this note, we’ve seen a large number of high paying MDs/Directors on Wall Street get cut and on the beach for 12-18 months. Many end up in new seats that are down 30-50% on average (total comp). As a rule of thumb in this industry after 1 year it’s -30% or more

• Middle Age Activities: We all watched as pickleball went mainstream due to older people moving from Tennis to Pickleball as a social gathering of choice. The noise pollution aside, you’ll likely witness a similar trend argeting people in their 40s. Creating mixers for the perpetually single will grow at a rapid rate. That random Cougar bar is going to be a regular bar/wine venue in about 5 years

• Odd Financial and Wage Gap Relationships: Expect to see more younger guys dating women older than them (in this case the woman has the money). Expect limited access for middle of the road guys since they won’t live up to hype anymore (historically the majority of middle aged men had significant savings, no longer the case)

• Increase in Looks Maxxing: Already seeing this with men on the fringes. Will go up 20 fold for both men and women. 40 will be the new 20. As the marketing angle

• Spirituality/Witchcraft/Superstition: All of this is largely the same group as gambling. Looking for ways to create luck in their personal/financial lives via spells and other gimmicks. Also ties into loneliness as it’s a form of psychology if doing in person spirituality work (think retreats and even drug recovery type events)

In short, take the general trends and see the emotional and pain angle. Not going to say if any of this is good or bad. Rather, the trend/direction is how this all shakes out in the future. Any of these

Trends, Profits and Scale

If we were summarize how businesses make money, without the standard P&L overview it would be like this:

• Find a pain point (not a pleasure point). People want to remove pain more than they want to seek pleasure

• If you find a growing pain point that is a growing market and you’ll be able to spin up something that does $5K a month or up to $20-50K a month

• If you can make it cool or trendy (great marketing like Tough Mudder or really extreme like the Kardashians), you can scale to the millions

None of the above is related to financial spread sheets or logical decisions. In the end 99% of people will make their actual choice based on emotion. The 7 bullets in the below are the mega trends, start there go down the rabbit hole of demand testing:

• Choosing a niche - Source

• Two Ecom Businesses to Start Today 2024 Sept (Source)

• Ad Breakdown - Source

  • How to Rip Ads - Source

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Disclaimer: None of this is to be deemed legal or financial advice of any kind. These are *opinions* written by an anonymous group of Ex-Wall Street Tech Bankers and software engineers who moved into affiliate marketing and e-commerce.

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