My First Million - 2 Trends Hidden in Plain Sight (+ $1M ideas)

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

Episode 686: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk about the two trends that could make you rich in the next 12 months. — Show Notes:  (0:00) Trend: Fleamarkets (20:03) Trend: True Crime (26:05) Business ideas brainstorm (43:52) Fyre Festival update (48:27) Shaan's dad's travel hacks — Links: • Brimfield Antique Flea Market - https://www.brimfieldantiquefleamarket.com/  • First Monday Trade Days - https://www.firstmondaycanton.com/  • Rosebowl Flea Market - https://www.instagram.com/rosebowl_fleamarket/?hl=en  • Goodwill Finds - https://www.goodwillfinds.com/  • MFM Vault - https://mfmvault.com/  • My Favorite Murder - https://www.myfavoritemurder.com/  • Hunt A Killer - https://www.huntakiller.com/  — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com  • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents. • Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies! Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

Screw Nick Huber talking about RV parks and storage units. We're going to be talking about flea markets. That's what I think is going to happen. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On a road, let's travel, never looking back. I want to talk to you about a topic.

And I think this is a topic. It's my passion, this topic. But it's also, I'm going to bring it up because I think it's A, a trend. And that's what we're about. and B, it's sort of a prediction. I think I have a prediction here, and it's going to be interesting in the next five and ten years, okay?

Sweeters, denim, tobacco. Yeah, you're in the ballpark. Media. Yeah, we're in the zip code. We're definitely the newspaper industry. We're in the zip code. So years ago, this doesn't matter to you because you're not from the South,

but if you're above the age of 30, a lot of people here probably remember this TV show American Pickers. Did you ever even watch that show? Never watched it. Okay. Two guys who go and buy junk and they tell the story of the junk. And then we would...

I went from storage containers or that's a different show. That's a different show. But again, same ballpark. But basically they would drive around the south. They would knock on old people's homes and say, can I come and look in your barn? And they would find old, cool stuff, tell the story of it,

clean it up just a little bit, bring it back to the store where I worked and we would resell it. That's basically it. That's all it is. But we would have lines out the door because at the time, this show, we were, it was like David Letterman was number one and like American Pickers was number two in terms of the most watched shows on TV. There'd be days where we would sell. I'm not exaggerating a hundred thousand dollars in American Pickers T-shirts because all these guys would come in and want to buy anything that was American Pickers related.

How much revenue do you think that store did overall? I would imagine, uh, $10 million, one location. one location. Big store or just like a normal shop? It was so small that we had a script to let people, people would come in and be so disappointed at how small it was because they would think it was like this big, like, because the cameras made it look huge. Sounds familiar to my life.

I do had a script. So it was like a tidy store, but we killed it. But I experienced something that, but the thing was is that it was all like hillbillies. It was like redneck hillbillies from like Alabama. For some reason, the picking culture, it's all like hillbillies in like rural Alabama. Like how you said for some reason. Yeah, I don't know.

Like because they like old shit or they like the reuse stuff. I don't know. It's just part of the culture. But this weekend I experienced something that has totally changed my worldview on this topic. So there's this thing called Al Fargo's Marketplace. And I went to it the other day. Click this photo that I'm highlighting right here. So the story is basically it's these four guys.

and they look like they're 24 years old, and they started organizing this flea market in New York City, and they host it at this place called Newhouse, which is like the hipper version of WeWork. So it's this weird combination of urban New York stuff, but flea markets, which are historically like old people and southern heritage, like it's not like a New York cool kid thing. It is now, though.

All right, can I just describe what I'm seeing? So describe what you see and who you see. Every photo looks like it's taken with a Polaroid, even though we have like 4K cameras. Everybody has a beard and a bald head. So a lot of hair on the face, no hair on top. I mean, the style is eclected. There's a DJ. It looks like, is this a party in a Goodwill shop?

Is that what's happening? Dude, it's a high-end vintage flea market, and it was packed. And I'm 35. I was the oldest person there. all the guys are dressed as girls and all the girls are dressed as guys there's a lot of weird stuff going on and when you and they're all wearing it's all like 24 year old single guys wearing suits and ties I went there with my daughter and it was just me and her I was I felt like I was the oldest

person there no one had children took your daughter to this we were just like hanging out for the day and I like I was like let's go to the fucking flea market and it was like Adam Sandler and big daddy yeah dude we more we wore matching sweaters we were we were the hit We made the Instagram of these guys. But they built this flea market and it was packed. It was like, I was like regretting bringing her because I was like, dude, this is way too packed.

And I can't even get around. So we didn't even stay for that long. But it kind of got me thinking about flea markets because I think that like, have you noticed that by the way that like millennial hipsters have just disappeared? They're just gone. They're no longer a thing anymore. Hipsers have just like, where they go? Do you have a theory?

These are the new hipsters. Young people who wear like nice clothing like this and are into vintage. This is the new version. Who is doing this? There's like a branding genius. Look at these posters. This is just so well done. Like how do you turn?

This just shows you can make anything. Anything can be done anyway. You can make a sandwich gourmet. You can make a sandwich terrible. You can make a flea market cool. And you can make a cool thing, feel like a flea market. Like, this is all, this is so well executed as far as the branding goes. It's unbelievable.

Like this thing, the Instagram looks like a magazine. This is unbelievable. But here's the thing. This is why I'm bringing this up. It isn't just these guys. So go to the Instagram. If you're listening, it's called Al Fargo's Marketplace. And look at the photos of whoever you see that's a stylish young man,

click their tag, click their profile. Tons of them, tons and tons of them have a lot. 100, 200, 300,000 followers. And it's these, like, young, 23-year-old guys showing off their outfits. And the engagement on these Instagram handles is insane. So I'll give you an example of one. Or do you see one right there? I'm trying to find it.

But yeah, give me an example. So go to, the handle is Denny 6, 2, 3. So I'll post it in here. Dude, what a big day for Denny. He had no idea this was going to happen for him. So look at Denny. All right. Denny.

wow, cowboy hat, Flair, just, he's wearing Chris Saka's shirt, but the rest is fantastic. All right, 112,000 followers. He's a digital creator, a menswear blogger, content creator since 2008.

Oh, my God, he's been in the game. He's a creative director. Is this a, what flag is this? Philippines? What is that? I think it's Puerto Rican, but I bought this sweater from Denny. Denny was a vendor at Al Fargo's.

You bought that sweater from Denny? I bought it from him because I want to be part of this trend. And so my point here is, amongst young people, this is a huge hit. And if you click around on these guys' Instagram, you know, there's this joke about whatever the Silicon Valley nerds are doing in five or ten years is going to be mainstream. This is the New York Cool Kid thing. This is like walking around Soho and seeing what people are wearing. This is it. And it's happening right now. And I have two ways. I think this is going to be a big business.

Okay. Is your take that flea market, if I understand you correctly, you went to this cool flea market, I can't even call it a fleet market. You went to a party in New York. No, it was a flea market. Okay, it was mostly a party, happened to have some good. It was a fleet market with the DJ. You took your daughter, it's hilarious. You're saying flea markets are a bigger deal than most people realize, especially people like us who live on a computer. And then are you saying there's an opportunity here? Are you saying somebody's going to build the crumble cookie of flea markets? What's going to happen? I think two things are going to happen. I think that there's a massive, like, PE opportunity here. I think flea market. I think

Fleet markets could potentially be the new RV park, and you could purchase them at a real estate valuation. I also think that there's a huge amount of male, well, female as well, but male, like, fashion influencers, and that's like a hot trend. And I've spoke to like 10 or 20 of them, and they're all fucking broke. All of them are like, I wish I could just pay my rent with this. Right, right. I think this business is a beautiful business. And these El Fargo marketplace guys are a really good example of how it's done well. And I think that they're probably, not savvy when it comes to business. They're more like artists and that there's something really interesting here.

So you're saying this Rose Bowl flea market, 20,000 visitors, 2,500 vendors per month. All right. So basically, based on that, 20,000 visitors paying 12 bucks to enter. The vendors paying $150 to be there. They're making $600 grand per flea market, which happens once a month? Once a month. But you're forgetting like so many other things, like table rentals, chair rentals, things like that. So about $7 to $8 million in revenue you see from this one flea market, basically.

I think it's even more. And I also think the other point that I'm going to make is that it's pretty like, it's obviously very old. So there's this one called Brimfield Antique Show. So do be a favor and go to their website. So Brimfield is a flea market that gets a million people a year coming to this festival, which is huge, right? We're talking like Coachella-sized stuff. scroll to the very bottom. So if you want to contact someone,

you go to the very bottom and tell me what it says about Jody. Oh, Jody, J-M-J-J-Y-2 at AOL.com. Just send her a note. If you want to learn, this is an event with one million customers. If you want to learn more about it, email Jody at AOL.com. That's what it says at the very bottom. Go to Jody's LinkedIn.

I looked her up on LinkedIn. Can you click Jody's LinkedIn? Where is it? It says, look at Jody. Jody's great. Jody's, her name's Jody Young. She is the owner of this business with one million customers. Jody looks lovely.

Jody looks like a nice woman. Jody doesn't exactly look like what I think is going to be a younger generation of people who are interested in this topic. You're saying the owner, the owner of this business, these types of businesses is going to look different in 10 years. And I would say that they're. probably not the most. Choose your words wisely. Answer listening. They are probably not the most uptight operators. That's what I would say. They're probably very passionate about this. And sometimes

when you're when when passion leads, maybe you're leaving, you know, dollars on the table. That's what I'm saying. And I believe that in the next couple of years, screw the R, Screw Nick Schubert talking about RV parks and storage units. We're going to be talking about flea markets. That's what I think is going to happen. All right. Bold prediction. I really like this, by the way.

This is a San Park special. I'm out of applause for the Sam Park Special. Cool find on the trend. Cool find on the underrated business, flea markets, how big they are. Wow, they're kind of stunning in terms of like the visitors that they get. I like how you wrote at the bottom. and AI ain't going to fuck with this. Yeah.

This is part of the thesis. This is a good, like, private equity roll-up thesis by you. Good job by you. Yeah, and it's, thank you. Thank you for that, condescending, patronizing. Good job for you. You like that for me. Oh, good job by you.

That should be a real compliment. Amongst young people, dude, they buy a huge amount of vintage clothing. Something like, I saw some crazy stat where it was something like 80s. 80% of Gen Ziers regularly shop for secondhand clothing. And so you have companies like D-pop. Have you heard of D-pop, Sean? Yeah, it's like a second-hand marketplace, second-hand app. Dude, they have 80 million users.

And then there's Poshmark, and then there's Grail, and then there's like 10 other ones. These young people are buying vintage and second-hand clothing at like alarming rates, not alarming, but you know what I mean? Like surprisingly high rates. And have you ever seen like Thrift Halls on TikTok? Have you seen that? I've seen a lot of things on TikTok.

I've seen a lot of things. That's one of them. I've definitely seen that. It's a huge thing. If you're like, type in Thrift Halls on TikTok, I follow so many of these people on Instagram. It's like a really common thing. And so my whole point here being,

young people are buying this shit up, man. They're buying these secondhand clothing, this secondhand clothing like crazy. I'm just looking up Goodwill's numbers. So Goodwill's revenues. Last 10 years. starts at 4.8 billion, 5.7, 5.9, 6.1, 6.3, 7 billion. Pandemic goes back down to 5.5 billion. Then it goes 7.5 billion, 8.2 billion, and 9 billion projected for the last year.

And if you go to, what's it called? Is it called Goodwill Fines? So, GoodwillFinds.com, they have their own, like, online marketplace where they auction off, like, a handful of the, like, nicer things that Goodwill collect. and people love it. I've bought a couple things from there. I think Ari said she buys stuff from there. It's getting really popular. I want to make sure I get this down for the record. What are you saying is the like someone could do or someone should do? So there's, so what I'm saying is that flea markets are a recession-proof business in a highly fragmented industry and they last for many, many decades and they're hard to disrupt once they work well. And also that young people are buying vintage clothing and are into flea markets more than other generations. And then what I am

saying is I think that there is a roll-up opportunity or what I would do is I would work with some of these broke, like passionate fashion influencers. And I think I could create, if I, if that was my thing, a really awesome flea market business. Can I give you one other random idea? So I used to live in Indonesia. In Indonesia, they do this thing that I've never really seen here, but I really liked it. So you don't want to mall when you go into a food court. So in America, you go to a mall, there's a food court.

And what's the experience? You basically, like the business model is you walk in. There's nobody there to like serve you. You just go and you pick, do I want a slice from Sabaro? Do I want a sandwich? Do I want some fried chicken? What do I want? You go, you buy your one.

thing and you go sit down, right? Did I capture it accurately? Yeah, and it's like, and there's a guy handing samples, I'm going to try all the samples, and we're going to sit in kind of a nasty chair and just like eat this crap. So in Indonesia, the malls in general are a lot better, but the one thing that they do for their food court is a little bit different. When you walk in, they give you like a wristband, almost like it's a Coachella or something like that. And this wristband is basically your way to buy anything you want. And the way they design the flow, it's almost like an IKEA. you walk around and every booth has like cool stuff and they're like it's not super low quality food it's still obviously faster right but it is everything's like branded kind of well the food like

the people who are working there like you can tell it's like more a little more upscale and you basically you start you start with this tray and you just keep adding different little plates from the different vendors onto your one tray right so you have an empty tray and you're going to grab a small bowl or plate from all the different boots that you want to try something from And at each one, you just tap your wristband so that the system knows what all you've picked up. But it doesn't feel like you're spending money. It feels like you're like opening a door. You're just having it.

Here's my key and give me my thing. This is amazing. You sit down, you eat. And at the end, when you leave, you put your tray down and you scan your badge and they tell you the damage. And you pay for it on the way out. That's awesome. I've always thought that American Food Court should steal this model. You spend way more.

And it's just a more fun experience. Like paying at the end once you've already like, you know, had the. a little like, you know, amusement park of food type of thing is pretty cool. I wonder if somebody could do a similar thing with thrift or flea markets. And so the thing I'm imagining here is like, remember like Spartan race or Tough Mudder, how they turned this like thing that seemed like work and kind of hard into something that was fun, a bit of an Instagram opportunity. They turned like an individual rate, like a, when you race, you're by yourself,

you're into like a group fun activity. Exactly. So a social, fun event that you're planning. It's basically a party. I think you could do the same thing with the flea market. So I think what you could do is you could basically arrange it, whether it's a race or it's a one long path. And if you do the wristband thing or you basically,

as soon as you join, you get 10 tickets, you get 20 tickets, 30 tickets, whatever it is. And now you just have tickets you have to spend. Right. So instead of the goodwill problem, which is you go and you're like, should I get this? Should I not? Blah, blah, blah.

Like up front, you just make a commit. I'm going to find 10 things. here. And then it's about just finding the most fun 10 things you could find at the event. And you go and you collect, you fill up your card. You can always get more tickets as you go. And then by the end, you walk out and you've got this new outfit. So like you literally would have a photo at the start and a photo at the end because you put it on. And you basically do like a makeover on a, you know, Saturday afternoon with your friends. And you all end up with this like fun photo at the end of you guys dressed up. That's fantastic. Is that not a great

experience? It's a fantastic experience. And also just, for some reason, scanning things with my wrist is for some reason, like, more fun than pulling out my credit card. Do you remember that, didn't you invest in a company that was creating software so, like, Patagonia could sell secondhand coats or something? I didn't end up getting to invest in it. I really wanted to. It's called. I think North Face used it because I almost... It's doing well. I almost bought a North Face coat, and they call it, like, reworked, where you, like, mail in your old coat and you get some type of credit, and then they, like, repair it, but it kind of looks funky and cool and like guys like me could buy it. Yeah, I think the way they call it,

the term for this like movement is re-commerce. So you have e-commerce, but then you have re-commerce, which is when you sell that secondhand thing again. I can't find that name of this thing. That's sad. I really wanted to use it. I think they're doing well, by the way. They've got a bunch of like big brands. So what they were doing was they were saying, hey, they would go to a brand like us. They'd say, hey, a lot of people are already reselling your items on these other platforms and Facebook groups and whatever. And they actually sell sometimes out of markup or sometimes, you know, they just, you know, it's a slight discount, but they're used goods. Why don't you just make a central place on your website for people to buy, you know,

already loved items? And so what you would do is customers could just upload a thing and you basically create your own little marketplace on your website. They power it with the software. And when somebody, and then they don't have to wait for a buyer. So they could just put it on the thing and get basically store credit for it. when somebody buys it. And so you could, you were giving store credit, which is going to get them to come back,

and the other person's getting the item, which they were going to get by anyways off platform. Makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I almost bought something the other day with someone using their software, but they didn't have my size. So that's my,

that's my big. The website was called treat. The company was called treat. T-R-E-E-T. That was the name of the company that was doing this. I still wish I had invested in this thing. This thing's great. It's awesome.

This is great. So that's my big pitch on flea markets. I think, oh, and by the way, there are one or two PE guys in the space doing this. I think there's like United FleaMarkets.com or something like that, but I think you're going to see more. So this is my prediction and also my opportunity spiel. Okay, I like that you made a prediction because the next thing I'm going to tell you about is a giant, I told you so. But nobody likes hearing I told you so. In fact, there's a great tweet that went viral over the last week.

this guy, Matt Lasky, tweeted this out. He goes, my wife just taught me the professional way to say, I told you so. I saw that. It's so funny. You say, this was identified early on as a likely outcome. Yeah. I'm going to be using this a lot. So let me just say that me and Sam identified this early as a likely outcome.

And what I'm talking about is true crime podcasts. Okay, so this doesn't sound like the sexiest thing. But do you know what the most popular podcast in America is? Joe Rogan, I would say. Correct. Do you know what the second most popular is? I would have guessed like Caller Daddy. Okay, great. Also would have thought it's some famous personality podcast. Like the opposite of Joe, like Joe Ruggard for women.

Yeah, exactly. It's actually crime junkie, a podcast that was started by a 36-year-old podcaster. And here's the headline. This 36-year-old podcaster is making $45 million a year of profit. $45 million a year. It's insane. And where is she based? That's the crazy part too. Indiana. So let me tell you the story here. So this woman Ashley Flowers, she's working at a normal day job, and she grew up loving like Agatha Christie stories, you know, like sort of these mystery crime stories growing up.

In fact, so much so that she joined, maybe volunteered at this place called Crime Stoppers, like local crime stopping, you know, organization in her town. And it was supposed to, you know, just help people report crimes to one central place. Now, to promote the organization, she volunteers and says, hey, what if I create a weekly radio show called Murder Monday? And she does it, and she realizes like, hey, people kind of like this. Like, they like Murder Monday. This is working.

And she's just doing this, again, for fun, volunteering on the side of her day job. And then she hears the Serial podcast. It comes out. And it, serial becomes this phenomenon. And she listens to it and she says, oh, that's cool. What if I do Murder Monday type of, like, my radio show that I'm. just doing for my local org, but what if I did it as a podcast? And she jumps in. This is back in 2017. She records, she comes home from her day job, records her first episode, uploads it,

and off to the races. Now, here we are later. She's got 65 employees. Her business just raised $40 million from Chernin, has valued the company at $250 million, and it has a reported or a rumored $45 million of EBITA per year, which honestly sounds a little high. Something's on. The valuations off or? Exactly. It's only 5x, but I don't think that's... And why would you raise money if you're making $45 million a year in profit? And the valuation is likely more true than the rumored profit number.

But whatever. Let's say, I think, I think 20 million would be a very real number at the low end here. Insane. She herself does two, she hosts two podcasts herself. She's the producer of the shows. She sells the ads. She closes the deal. She's touring all around the country, all around the world.

She was working 15 hours a day, now down to 10. hours a day. She's got a little three-year-old daughter. She has racked up 500 million plus downloads in the last five years. Just insane volume. That's ridiculous. Do you listen to True Crime? I listen to a bit of true crime. So, okay, here's the I told you so part of this. If you go to the MFM Vault, MFMValt.com, which is a place where you can go find old episodes and you could search. So I just went on to MFM Vault and I just searched True Crime because I know we've been talking about this. Guess when the first time we talked about this is, just like guess the year? I don't know. a year and a half ago?

So that would be like 2023? 23? No, 2020. Five years ago. And it was an episode where Lance Armstrong popped by the office and popped into the podcast while we were recording.

And you and Lance Armstrong are talking about your favorite type of podcast and you both love true crime. And you guys are geeking out about true crime. Sam and Lance Armstrong, the greatest cyclist of all the time. Like Michael Jordan, Michael Phelves, Tiger. A guy who owns a bike.

And Lance Armstrong, the greatest biker of all time. Talking about how we live. Same, same. Yeah. Like, what do you like to get scared by it? Like, that's the conversation. Exactly. And we started talking about true crime.

Then we talked about it again in 2023. We talked about Parcast. You had brought up that this guy had created this true crime podcast network, 16 shows. And he sold it to Spotify, like $100 million in cash, $50 million in the earn out. What was his name, Max, something? Something. And then we talked about it a few years ago.

We talked about law and crime, which was this media company that was dedicated to true crime stories, as well as like just reporting on actual court cases that were going on. And it was also acquired for more than $100 million. And all along the way, we've been talking about how true crime is this thing where there's this underrated appetite, more than you would think for. this. We had Mr. Ballen come on. Mr. Ballen comes on, and he talks about how his content is all about telling strange, dark, mysterious stories. People just love this shit. And we've been talking about it. And every year that we've been talking about it, it sounds like it's too late. And every

year we talk about it, another nine-figure company has essentially started or grown during that period of time. And so even now, now that this is still like, you know, super established, I still think there's a ton of opportunity here. And I want to brainstorm this a little bit with you. I'm totally on board with this. I am a huge fan. My new one is the Law and Crime Network on YouTube. And whenever the Didler comes about or there's like a new crime, like Pete Diddy's like a lube stuff, I was watching that like,

like what's the Luigi, Luigi Manjani? Like this is like a gift from God for the for the true crime people. Like I've been obsessed with all of this stuff. Like learning about freak off parties, learning about, you know, like, deny, what does the Luigi say? This is like when LeBron James enters the draft. This is like, oh, we got a new hot prospect. We got Luigi.

Yeah. Oh, Diddy is here? Oh, my God. We're going to have content for years. Dude, I listened to this stuff on my runs, and I, and I'm all about it. So what do you want to brainstorm? Do you listen to it on your runs? Like, you're just running away from the problem?

Like, what are you doing? I think my hypothesis, so basically with the true crime stuff, it's basically me and 100 million women. It's like 80. It's like 80% women. I think you're into this. And I think that women listen to this from the perspective of how would I get away, like, how would I get out of the situation? And men listen to it from the perspective of like, how would I get away with this? That's like the perspective, I think, that each of the genders listens to these things. Yeah, exactly. It's like American Kingpin. Yeah, my hero. My hero did this. Yeah, so by the way, already, opportunity.

So, you know, when you run, I think most running apps or running, like, music playlists, they try to have a certain beats per minute to keep up, like, pace you during a run, right? They try to be uptempo. Yeah. True crime, 150 beats per minute. Dude, already innovation, white space. You know what I'm saying? For Zone 2 workouts, I only listen to solved murders by Parcast.

oh, I got to go do a 60-minute run, turn on solid murders. That's 60 minutes of, like, we're going to get through two 30-minute episodes, and I'm going to learn about some crazy minutes. But they're kind of slow, right? So, like, what if somebody created a higher energy? All right, so here's my brainstorm. Can I give you some pitches on my brainstorm? This was my five-minute brainstorm before the podcast.

What would I do? Because it's one thing to say, there's an opportunity there. Great podcast already. How I would do it? But Sam, do we settle for Great? I don't know about you. Great doesn't get me out of bed. the morning. I mean, great's pretty good to be.

Honestly, it'd be a huge compliment. It'd be greatly flattered. I'd rest on those laurels. But, all right, here's the brainstorm. So, white space in the true crime space right now. First, okay, the obvious one. This is not that fun of a one, but YouTube. So most of these that started, they were just audio-only podcasts like cereal. They were inspired by serial. They were podcasts. And most people thought podcasts were all audio.

YouTube came out recently and announced that a billion people a month watch podcast content on YouTube. So if you're a podcaster and you're not doing YouTube, where are you at? And if you're listening to this podcast and you're not subscribed to us on YouTube, where are you at? That's what I have to say. Go find my first on YouTube on YouTube. All right. So the first thing is go all in as a YouTube first podcast. Even Crime Junkie, she started off heavily in audio, then started doing video just as kind of an add-on.

If you go watch their video, it's like, you know, start. off really scrappy and now it looks a little bit better. And then when she raised this money, she's investing in like a full video studio to do this like for real. But the format is actually pretty great. Have you ever listened to her podcast? It's basically she sits on a couch with her friend. But unlike most podcasts where it's two equal hosts or something,

they're going back and forth, it's her explaining to one friend what's going on with the crime. And her friend is like active listening. She's like sitting there. And asking questions. Notting her, mostly just nodding her head and be like, ooh. And then like, the clarifying question when the listener would have one.

So smart, by the way. That little thing is so smart because most content gets better, the more you narrow it to an audience of one. If you're writing, write to one person. If you're doing a podcast, like this podcast works well because we kind of do that too, where instead of saying, all right, listeners, we'd like to tell you about some great businesses. It's like, dude, Sam, have you seen this?

You're like, no, what? I'm like, check this out. And it's that vibe that actually works well. The podcast. That's a little bit of the secret sauce, all right? I gave you three of Colonel Sanders, nine. Yeah, I was going to say that's there. That's,

last week, last episode, it was leveraged to the, what happened? It was leveraged to the tits. Now it's, I just gave you three of the colonel's nine spices. That's fantastic. It gave you a quarter colonel there. I was going to say something and you, that was great. I nuked your brain. All right, by bad.

Oh, I was going to say, with this podcast, like, did not know that you were going to bring this up and you didn't know I was going to bring the other thing up. So that's like a little bit, that's how it works. Yeah, we surprise each other. And intentionally, right, we could say, let's share notes, let's do research, let's be prepared. That makes for a work podcast. We surprise each other because the show is, you need a reaction. I want to tell you something. I want you to react. I want you to riff for real. And then I want you to surprise me and that makes it fun for us to do. So she does the same thing. She basically tells the story to her friend. Her friend says they're active listening. She started off just taking

existing shows and now has a team of 10 journalists that do original reporting. She now has another show called The Deck where she works with local cops and they give her access to evidence and they try to actually solve cold cases. Awesome. Isn't that insane? She is basically the Mr. Beast of True Crime. Like when you see how she just took a very simple idea and took it very seriously and she scaled it up.

It's like, yeah, why not? Why not have our own journalist? Why not scour the country for stories? Why not partner with the cops? Why not build a studio? Why not have 100 employees? Why not turn this into a full-on production company? She just kept going with the very simple idea, right?

Mr. Bisse is like, what if I gave away a thousand dollars? What if I gave away $5, $10, $100, $1 million, $10 million? What if you stood in a tiny circle? What if you stood a big circle? What if you didn't have to stand in the circle? What if you had to lay down? It just keeps going with these ideas and takes a very simple idea, but takes it more seriously than anybody else. So I feel like she's done that.

She's coming to Radio City in New York in May. Should I go? I would totally go to one of her live events. Yeah, you should go. Why not? She has like a huge tour. She has a huge tour. You're going to become a very big fan of her.

Let me, I found something that when I found it, I go, oh, Sam's going to love this. And I'm like the mama bird, and you're the baby bird. And I'm about to puke in your mouth with something you're going to love. Peter Chernin, when he met her, here's the quote he said about her. because he invested 40. He met her at a part of a TV show pitch and then was like, just like, wow, this woman is really impressive and told his guy, go find a way to invest.

And he, like, flies to Indiana and like, hounded her for this investment. So here's what Peter Chernin said. He said, I find her uniquely impressive. That's a good one. It's good, right? He's been around everyone. I find her uniquely impressive. What a subtle but, like, powerful compliment from a guy who's met

so many interesting people. And I think her and Pat McAfee are both in Indianapolis. They're like in a form like the Indianapolis podcasting like mafia. Two dots make a line. So check this out. Okay, so here's the other white space here. Ready?

Black true crime. Not a lot of black podcasters doing true crime. There's a couple. Are you a follower of black YouTube or black Twitter? I am a card-carrying member of black culture. So yeah, I'm a part of... Like, is DJ Vlad the greatest YouTuber of all the time? One of the greatest journalists of our time of our era.

Yeah, getting the Wade brothers to like dish on like what it's like or like Club Shay-Shay with Kat Williams getting off. Dude, how about Club Shaysay getting like a hundred million? I think that was, I think before Trump on Rogan or maybe even including, I think Club Shaysay and Kat Williams is the number one most downloaded YouTube video or YouTube interview of the year. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It's insane.

Are there not more of these, like these, like, true crime shows geared towards that audience? There's only a couple. And the very first one was called, like, affirmative crime or something. I was like, no, that's a bad name. This is not right, right? Like, this has happened in comedy podcasts. Like, comedy podcasts started with a lot of, like, white comedians in L.A., but now there's, like, so many really funny, you know, just two guys hanging out,

two black comedians hanging out type of podcast, sports podcasts, etc. Like, I think podcasting started off pretty, homogeneously white and true crime, even just the way it comes across is a little bit like Midwestern NPR woman, right? Serial kind of was in that lineage.

I think she used to work for NPR, right? Something like that. And so it just feels very produced and almost... Like New York elitist. Exactly, exactly. And it needs to be more, you know, country grammar.

It needs like somebody who listened to a lot of Nelly growing up. They all, like a lot of those guys have like that Ira Glass, like, today's episode. Yeah. And this American life. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean?

That cadence is so good. That's a cool one. Well, by the way, world's worst impression to be good at, Ira Glass. This was the only time that was ever going to land for you. All right. Next one is comedy times true crime. So I think a lot of the true crime podcasts are very serious. They're heavy.

they're trying to be mysterious creepy makes total sense. You get why I would do it that way. I think there's an opening for somebody to do true crime, but just with a comedy angle. And, you know, not to, not to tutor our own horn here, but like we did this a little bit in the business space. We, you know, a lot of the business podcasts, a lot of the interviews, a lot of the podcasts were,

it was just an IQ contest. Everybody just wanted to be the bigger know-it-all than the other. It was very dry, informational. And, you know, being you, this is kind of how we talk when we hang out, and we just didn't filter ourselves that way. And it's not that we're, like, compared to comedians, we're not funny.

But compared to most VCs, we're pretty funny. And that, like, has worked for us. And so the bar is low also in true crime. There's nobody funny in true crime. So if you're even moderately funny, you're the funniest true crime podcast. Let me as a, so. Am I talking out my ass? Are they actually funny ones?

No. Well, you're not off. But you're actually right. And I'm going to give you one piece of evidence that you're right. So we are called MFM. I have gotten, like, hate mail from women who are like, you're not MFM. The real MFMFMFM is my favorite murder. So go to My Favorite Murder.com and read the headline.

Yeah, we're not even the most famous. We'll never be the most famous MFM podcast. Yeah, it's my – have you heard of my favorite murder? Have people like said, like, you're not really MFem? Yeah, yeah, I've seen this. I've never listened to it, though. Is it humorous? It looks like it.

So go to the website. The headline is A True Crime Comedy Podcast. Okay. And listen, it's hugely popular. It's hugely popular. But I actually have a bone to pick. Dude, they're talking about like Ted Bundy killing people. And they're like, isn't he hot?

Like they're talking about, you know what I mean? It's kind of weird. Like, they're talking about wanting to like get with Ted Bundy. So I'm basically like, you know what I should do? I should have a coffee shop with Wi-Fi. You're like, hey, go to Starwax? Right. But you're right.

Look, it's like, you know, Had you developed the theory, had you developed the theory of relativity and never even heard of Albert Einstein? I would still say you're a genius. A few other possibilities here. True romance. So I think there's an opportunity to do a true crime style genre, but spin off into, combine two very popular genres. True crime and romance. We've talked a lot of the past about, like, how the most read books and the most voracious readers are reading Daniel Steele, 50 Shades of Gray, style.

romance novels, and I think somebody could do true romance as a podcast genre. One of my favorite true crime podcast, they have a series called Killer Couples. And it's all about lovebirds who go out to commit murder. Maybe you should have done this brainstorm because I don't really listen to True Crime. I listen to two seasons of Serial and like fell asleep to a few True Crime podcast. Serial is like the JV team now compared to, you know, what's going on now. All right, I'm on board with Killer Couples. what else you can.

I mean, I feel a little bit discouraged, but I'll just finish out because quitting is the only thing more embarrassing than what's happening. Wait, hold on. Speaking of true crime, I do think that there is this weird, like, when I,

we did this one like bit with the hustle about romance novels, and there was like these crazy weird genres of like, first of all, romance novels are like a massive hit. And then, but there's like women who want to like a romance novel

about a military guy. But there's like, taking a step further, there was like women who want to have sex with werewolves. Like, you know, the, what was the, what was that, Rob, that movie, that shit called? What was that thing?

Robert Patterson, the, the, Twilight. Like, there was some weird, like, undertones of, like, bestiality with all that stuff. Right. But, so I think that there's always a niche for, uh. Yeah, but you know my, the bone I have to pick with this? What? Nobody likes hairy dudes. As a hairy dude out here, where, where's that?

Where's the appeal? What? You just, you like werewolves, but not just hairy guys? Yeah. You need to get rebranded as a wolf. I heard that werewolves were a thing for women and then just did not translate whatsoever. Look, gray hair guys have rebranded to the silver foxes. You know, we got to do something for the hairybacks.

I heard somebody say this the other day. They were like, oh, yeah, had this like salt and pepper thing going on. They're like, yeah, it's a lot of salt, though. That's the problem. Just salt. Okay, so last thing, games. Do they make games? So there's that one board game.

Do you remember what it's called? It's kind of a mystery, like board game subscription series, catch a murder, catch a killer, hunt a killer? Hunt a killer, I think. When we talked about it, I think it was doing 30 million a year in revenue. Yeah, tens of millions a year in revenue. I think that this woman, instead of touring, she should be creating board games.

She should be creating a game that's in Target, in Walmart, on the shelf, and it's a true crime card game or board game that people can basically solve these cases together cooperatively or it's some kind of like mafia where like one person's the game master and the other people are trying to figure it out.

I think a game, take a game mechanic like that but apply these true crime things and use your brand as crime junkies. I think somebody should be partnering with true crime on broadcast to build those out. Hunt a killer, I think it's called.

My whole perspective on games got completely changed We hung out with the guy, Elon at... He's coming on the podcast, by the way. We're doing it. What was it called? Killing Kittens or something. Exploding kittens.

Exploding kittens. It's a card game, but board game, I guess. And I don't know what, we'll wait to see if he's going to reveal anything. But shockingly large. Like numbers are bananas. He's also like, yeah, of the top five most popular games in the world, we make number one, two, four, and five. Yeah. It's like, damn.

It was amazing at how successful that. is and I was like, I should start a game company. He felt like a 12, like he felt like a 12, like he had the excitement of like a 12 year old. Like he was so into like games and making people smile via these games that I was like, 100%. In fact, that was my takeaway. I was like, oh my God, I wish I was doing this. This is so cool.

I could do this. Yes. And then I saw how truly joyful he was about making the games, not being successful at it, but the doing part. And I was like, oh, that's different than me. I don't have that. I just want the, I want to have done it. Yeah, you want the result.

He, like, was showing us this game, and it was, like, half done, and he had a pen that he had written in, like, different points on the cards. Like, he was making the game as he was going. And he was like, wouldn't this be cool? Let's, like, let's change the game to this. Like, he was doing it in real time, and we were playing the game. It would be, like, you know, playing poker. And he's like, actually, we should come up with, like, an ace. An ace means this.

Yeah, he was, like, rapid prototyping on us. Did you see what he pulled out of his pocket while we were playing that game, by the way? Just total side note, unrelated, but it was so funny. What was it? He's trying to read a card, and he can't read it. He needs his glasses. And so he went out a pair of glasses, but the glasses had no sticks. It was like a monocle, but for two glasses.

And he just rested it on the bridge of his nose and started reading it. And I completely couldn't pay attention to the rest of the game, because I was just constantly trying to figure out, is it going to fall off his nose? And one of the physics of this, how does this work? I think they're called readers. He had readers on it or something like that. Is that a thing? Is that a known thing? Like modern monocles? It's like at Walgreens. You see them like next to the aisle, next to the checkout.

You know what I mean? It's like the spinning thing. But they don't have sticks? Sometimes, yeah. Arms? Is that what they call? I've been sleeping on this train. I am, I'm amazed that this woman is potentially doing $45 million a year. I don't know if I believe it because that is so shocking. But we should see if it. If anyone's listening can get us in touch with her, I would like to talk to her for the pod. That would be fun. Yeah, Ashley Flowers.

Very, very impressive. How old is she? 36. She's young. Wow. That's crazy. She's my age, dude. That's crazy.

I could be her. She could be me. We could trade. Isn't that crazy that like, you know, it's, it's, now we're like, yeah, that's obvious. But seven years ago to be like, I'm going to start a crime podcast and that's going to making me a billionaire. That's pretty wild. Because she potentially might be a billionaire after another five or ten years because of this. That's absolutely wild.

And we called it. So we're right and we deserve all the credit. No, we didn't call it. It was identified early on by us as a likely outcome. All right. I have a bunch more, but I think we're just time to wrap. So maybe we call it. I think we should call it. Well, wait, before we go, did you see Fire Festival 2? he didn't listen to our advice so Billy came on our podcast

right after he got out of jail prison prison yeah and he I love that where that's like you know other people get like

authors when they have their book tours we get like the post prison we got Schrelli we got Billy we get them we get them first right out of prison and um

you told him what did you tell him you gave him some advice he didn't listen he basically was like explaining all of these ideas for his the business that he like he owes money so he has to like earn he has to earn not just a little bit of money he owes a lot he was like 27 or 30 million dollars a lot and he was like i'm going to start this festival uh we're going to do like this other festival and we were just like you know maybe you maybe don't maybe you should maybe i think you shouldn't maybe i think you shouldn't do that. I think that like maybe you can, there's a lot of things you can do because you're famous, but, you know, a Fire Fest 2, maybe you shouldn't do that. And he's doing exactly that. So he's doing Fire Festival 2. Is that what we said to him on the pod? Did we say anything else?

We told him, you're crazy. And he was like, he just saw the potential. He was like, what if we did it right this time? So article came out today. It says, says, Fire Festival 2 is off to a rough start again. days after the tickets go on sale, which is allegedly taking place on Isla Muheris, an island off the coast of Mexico, the local tourism board claims they have no knowledge of this event. The director of the tourism board says,

we have never had any contact with any person or company about this. For us, this is an event that does not exist. If you go to the location that they list for where it's going to take place, so I don't know if you have Google Maps, Andy. But if you open up 21 degrees, 12 degrees, 30, 32, you do all that. Just here's where the event is taking place. Take a look at this. In the ocean. Firefest, too. The location in the middle of the ocean where there's no land. Also, the most expensive tickets are $25,000. Like, you know how we've

joked about entrepreneurs who have just taken what has worked? And they just say like, all right, you sold all this candy bars. Just do the same thing now, but for a Reese's peanut buttercup style product. Right. He did that. So he must have exported the code for that old website, and he just put a number two on it, and now he's doing Fire Fest too. It's the same thing.

What did that woman's – what did that guy's wife say instead of I told you so? It was – this had a bunch of predictable outcomes. What's the line? This was identified early on as a likely outcome. Yeah, you called it. this was uh this is insane i i don't even know how he's allowed to leave the country uh yeah it's not good but hey listen i'm an optimist there's a chance there's always a chance uh here's some other great quotes from this article by the way we tried billy uh took to

instagram to address the concerns here's what he said um fire fest fire two is real we have incredible partners leading the festivals they're in charge of all logistics production operations there's no way they would ever take on a fake festival. Right? No, he didn't say the right part. And then the next thing he says is, the tourism board responded. The organizers did not even bother to approach the authorities.

It's very strange because anyone who organized events knows, if you're going to hold an event, let alone a massive event, you need a municipal authorization. I think they thought they could just announce it, see if it got traction, and then ask for permits halfway down the path. It's a bit naive. McFarland responds, we have accommodations. Is that really what he said?

That's what he said before. Also, you can buy tickets on his website for up to $20,000. But there's a great way to accept your money as a user, but they don't list any bands. It's a show, right? Yeah, yeah. So that's the other part here. At this point, no talent has been announced for the festival. However, McFarland response, we have talent.

Artists, athletes, and other performers are on board. So, do I ever tell you about the time my dad, I went on a trip with my dad, and I learned the power of just being absolutely delusional? The negotiation? It wasn't even, not even a full negotiation. It was, I mean, it wasn't even a negotiating situation. We were at the airport.

And my dad is cheap, and so he doesn't want to pay to check luggage in. Oh, yeah. So he just like bought the, he got this bag that's too big to check in and stuffed it. And then they were like, you want to check bags? He's like, yep, just that one, like the free one. And then the lady, this like poor little lady from Singapore Airlines behind the desk was like, um, sir, like, you'll need to check that one too. And he goes, no, no, I'm carrying that on.

And she goes, sir, it's too big. And my dad responds. No, actually, it's too small. not even no it's not too big he says it's too small which makes absolutely no sense to anyone in any situation

there's no such thing as it being too small and by the way she just kept saying I think it's over the limit and he goes no it's too small I checked it's too small and it worked she let him on the plane and we got it on the plane and at the plane

they're like sir it's not going to fit he's like you need to check it up front here because it's free to check when you're up there and he got it for free And he just kept doing this on the trip. We were trying to get into this like, he's like, oh, let's go to the four seasons. They have this like the New Year's Festival.

Like, they're doing this big celebration there. And we're like, driving up is like all these signs. Like you must be a, you must be a resident to attend. I'm like, dad says we have to be staying here. We're definitely not staying at the four seasons. So like, we can't do this. We should turn around. He's like, no, no, no, it's going to be fine.

It's going to be fine. It's going to be fine. And we're like, there's a guy at the front. Like the gate, he's checking everybody. Like, what room? Give me your ID. all this stuff. And so, like, my dad just goes up and he just pulls up and he goes, so what, do you need to see some ID or something? And the guy just goes, no, it's good. You're

fine. Go ahead. We got it. And I was like, wow. Somebody I tweeted the side. He goes, Delulu is the salulu. And I've been saying that for the last two days. My kids, they know I'm just absolutely. Delulu is the salulu. If you got a problem, I got a salulu for you. Delulu is the salulu Who said that? Who tweeted that? I tweeted out this long, thoughtful thing, and this guy just responded with that. DeLulu is the slulu.

And I was like, this is amazing. That should be the new small boy stuff. I don't have any tattoos, but I did. It's up there. It's a contender. My kid's names and that. Dude, that seems like a cute thing, like Gen Z woman would say on a true crime pod. Just like we stole MFM, you know, we're going to steal that one too.

Thank you. That is now ours. Yeah, sorry. I wish I can remember who said it. I don't know your name. This is a good podcast because I'm exhausted from laughing. That's how I know. I had a really good time.

I'd love to do it again sometime. All right. Great show. See you all out there. Have a good night. That's it. That's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like my days off. On a road, let's travel. Never looking back.