My First Million - 3 Blue Collar Side Hustle Ideas From A $40M Founder

Episode Date: January 1, 2024

Episode 536: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) talk to Sam Rattner about selling his first company for $40M in just 18 months and the blue collar side hustles Sam is investing his cash in.  No more small boy spreadsheets, build your business on the free HubSpot CRM: https://mfmpod.link/hrd — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (4:30) Door-to-door snow plowing (7:00) $40M in 18 months (14:30) Riverboat casinos (25:30) Vending machine mafia (34:00) $5b UberWater (43:00) Shaan's blue collar fellowship (47:30) A better Google Shopping (52:30) Never pitch twice (1:00:00) The value is in the duck calls — 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 Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Try Shepherd Out - https://www.supportshepherd.com/ • Shaan's Personal Assistant System - http://shaanpuri.com/remoteassistant • Power Writing Course - https://maven.com/generalist/writing • Small Boy Newsletter - https://smallboy.co/ • Daily Newsletter - https://www.shaanpuri.com/

Can I just read you the menu of shady gaiters? Would you guys be interested in that? Yeah. Be very interested. Tell me all the variations of tater tots. You mean Gator Bites? Taterbytes or the ultimate tater tots or loaded tots. For me, 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. All right. We're live. We have got Sam Ratner. By the way, Sean, I don't know Sam that well. I think you think that I know him. Well, yeah, because I don't know him.

So I'm like, how does this guy get here? He's here because Ari talked to him on the phone. We do these pre-calls. And same, I got to say, like, out of, I don't know, every 10 pre-calls we do with people that we don't know, 8 out of 10 are kind of like, hey, probably not a good fit for the pod. She talked to you, and she was like, you got to have this guy on. So I don't even know what you did, but you did something. And you have some kind of story or energy or ideas that she liked.

Yeah, basically what I know about you. is, by the way, you're like shockingly young. How old are you, 27, 26? Yeah, I just turned 27. And what I know about you is you had this company that was a sports betting site. You sold it for around $40 million to Fubo TV, like I think before it even launched. But you've also done all these other strange things. Like, I think you bought, did you buy a riverboat casino or a river boat? Like you bought a bunch, like you're into a lot of really strange things. And for such a young person, you've done like a lot of odd. I mean, just the fact that you've done a startup that you sold for a lot of money, that's already impressive. But even amongst the impressive people, you've done a lot of

strange and unique things, right? All right. So let's start with that. You drop out of college and you start a company that you end up selling for, can you say how much you sold for? Yeah, it's $40 million. Okay. So you drop out of college, you build a company, you sell up for $40 million. At that time, you must have been pretty young. How old were you when you sold? 23. Okay, great. So 18 to 23-ish, what was the idea and how did you make that happen? So I had gone, I was actually at the University of Missouri for a year. Nice, Missouri. So I was at Missouri.

Enjoyed my time there. Was not for me, though. Always wanted to kind of start a company. When I dropped out, I didn't really have the exact plan yet, but I did always play a lot of online poker. I was very active. I was the kid with 12 monitors playing online poker in the dorm rooms. So I kind of knew the community a lot and started hearing whispers, of them legalizing, you know, gaming nationally here in the United States, you know,

lifting the federal ban, if you would. And I thought the market would evolve, shouldn't evolve much differently than it does overseas where it's very part of the culture. You can bet when you're 18, sometimes 16, you're betting, you know, at the arsenal game inside the stadium. But here, there was like a stigma to it. You know, if grandma says she buys a lottery ticket, you know, you're like, you don't think anything. But if she says she took the bear's spread, you're like, oh, grandma, what the hell are you doing? So I thought if that would be the case, I just sat down. and essentially just wrote out for hours how I thought the market would evolve.

And my conclusion was that there will be early players. You'll have draftings and Fandle. They have audiences and fantasy, but that it really would end up being dominated by either the brick-and-mortar casino companies or the media companies, which is now just playing out with ESPN and stuff. And to date, all the technology had been built overseas because it's been around for 50 years.

But it was built in the early 2000s where you had like these desktop, applications to place a bat. And then to get to mobile, they just like compressed it into a mobile experience. They didn't like rebuild it. They didn't rebuild it native iOS. It didn't have any good API functionality to have ticketing and merchandising and these other things. So I said, what if we just, what if I just rebuilt all that and then called these big

companies and said, hey, don't white label this garbage from Sweden, you know, and pay some huge rev share. What if we just do a deal? Can you pause that for a second? So you're describing what sounds like a pretty sophisticated process. You're like, I heard that there's this inflection that maybe it was going to get legalized. So I started thinking ahead of that. And then instead of just jumping right in with my two dumb friends and starting to build a product,

I wrote down how I thought the market would evolve. And then I realized that my good go-to-market would be to kind of undercut these rev-share competitors with a mobile first product on the platform. Dude, you're like 18, 19 years old at this time. You know, I couldn't figure out how my night was going to evolve, let alone how, how market was going to evolve. Like, was this your first rodeo? And why were you so good at it at that time?

So in high school, I ran a snow removal business, which natural pivot. Natural pivot. And so I had been, you could call in business in a very rudimentary way. We were plowing driveways. But we had hundreds of houses. I kind of knew how to build a business. And when I realized, although I learned a ton, I'm like 15, I'm learning what insurance is because some woman slipped on salt.

I'm learning how to finance, you know, trucks to get plows. So I kind of had this business sense. And by the way, when you're talking about plowing, you're not talking about shoveling. You just said financing trucks. Yeah, like the plows. You put on the front of trucks. Got it. Okay.

Yeah. So you were sophisticated. You were going door to door to get these customers for your snow business. Initially, it was me and a good friend of mine, Ilya, who's now David Doberk's right-hand guy, Ilya Federovich. We went to high school together. I went to Vernon Hills, which is where they went. So I and I built the snow removal business.

and we'd be like at used car lots negotiating for plows essentially but what i learned from that how much were you making back then 15 and 16 years old i think we did like 50 60 grand for the winter or something like that so and i couldn't drive that was a big problem illy only had his permit i didn't have a license so we couldn't really get anywhere there was no uber or at least we didn't have debit cards so like we'd like walk to like mundleyn which is like the neighboring town to like go look at the plows it was complicated. But what I learned from that is you could scale that business and actually do really well from a cash flow perspective because candidly, most people don't want to be in that business or they're like 60 years old and they've been just driving the same truck for the same couple

commercial lots. But what I learned is there's no value. It can't scale that well, that large. And I was just always interested in like, how big can I make something? And I had that itch to do that. So then I thought, well, if it's easy, there can't be any value in it. If anyone could just get into it, well, then there's inherently zero value long term, like big, if you want to build billion-dollar businesses. So when I thought gambling could be big, it would have been very easy to be like, oh, we're going to have a fantasy site that is slightly different and you can pay to play and it also includes NASCAR or something. And like all those things, just to me, it's like, eh, how does that get to 500 million in revenue? I don't see it. I'm not interested. So I knew I had to

really sit down and think, how will the market evolve? And then I literally just looked at what are the pieces of this evolution that because it's such a headache or capital intensive, no one will ever want to touch. And then because of that, it should actually end up being a slightly less capital intensive because no one wants to do it. And then you have value. It was my thought, essentially. And when you dropped out, was that a easy decision for you to go do this gambling company? Was it hard? And basically, how did you live? Because I always wonder, this, when people drop out of college, you're kind of college is a very, it's a bubble that's like, Here's your bed.

Here's the bathroom. Here's the library. You know, this is your place. And then when you drop out, you're like, out of the system. You're neither at home nor are you in school. So what was,

how was the dropout? It was definitely, my parents were not thrilled, as you can imagine. And when you go home, it's like, when you grow up, you're my son,

I love you. And then when you turn your teen, you're like that guy in the house. You're like, what are you still doing here? So I went home and lived with my mom. although I essentially, I went to Starbucks every morning and worked until from whenever they opened, 5 or 6 a.m. until they closed at 7. And then I'd go to Lifetime Fitness and there were no yoga

classes after 8. So I would work in the yoga studio upstairs at Lifetime. And they had free coffee, free all that stuff. So I kind of had like an office. And it kind of got to the point where I started leaving my stuff as like a setup in the corner. And I think a lot of, I think the instructors thought like, oh, that's someone else's class. And it was just like my laptop and monitor and computer. So I worked out a lifetime for like three, like a year. And it was cheap because, you know, lifetime, whatever. I was under the 28 age.

So I'm playing like the reduced thing. And I would just kind of work all day. So I lived at my mom. How'd you fund the company at that stage? Come on, Sean. Credit cards, baby. I essentially. What happened to that snowplow money?

Oh, yeah. We had some cash from that, but essentially like, I knew I needed, I knew you literally, you kind of have two options. If you don't have tons and tons of cash saved, you essentially, you can work a part-time job. I was unwilling to do anything but spend every waking moment on the business. So I didn't want to do that. And so I kind of just went and opened credit cards. And I've always been a zero backup plan guy. I purposely failed every final before dropping out.

So going back was not an option because I'd be going back at like 23 years old as a freshman. So I'm always a put it all in the line and you will figure it out kind of guy. And purposely failed your finals? Yeah, that's what I say too. So I came home when I dropped out, I came home. You know when you like you come home a little early and it's like you're surprising your parents and you're like, oh, like, did you finish early? I came home early enough where it was kind of too early for them to believe that I had finished finals. So what that essentially meant is I didn't show up to the finals and I got zeros on all the finals.

So going back was now out of the question, which removed the debate with my parents because they kind of said, well, he can't really go back. You ended up selling, did you sell the company? I was looking at the site on Web Archive. You sold the company before it even launched, right? Yeah. Like 18 months. Is that right?

Yeah. Yeah, about. All right. So who contacted you? How did they even know that you were up for grab? So what we had was essentially every component to a gambling platform that you could want. So we were an authorized gaming operator of the NBA Major League Baseball. I just willed my way into convincing the leagues to do a deal with me.

Candidly, I think they thought I was like kind of crazy and kind of cool. And they're not used to cool and crazy. They're used to like Disney. So they were like, okay, we'll do the deal with you. So it was like these. We'll explain that. Yeah. I would think if a 19 year old's like, yeah, I'm going to go become an authorized gaming

operator for the NBA, I'd be like, yeah, it's not really going to happen, man. So what's your other plan? So how did you do that? Yeah, they would offer you an internship instead. Yeah. We had a couple things.

We, at that time, we did raise a little bit of capital, and it was from some venture funds in sports, media, entertainment, that the leagues knew very well. So they were like,

okay, this could call this six months ago. He sounds kind of crazy, but now it seems like there's this article out. The people that invested in them, 76 Capital, also invested in a bunch of other companies we have deals with. So there's some significance there.

We also, they were very familiar with our lawyers because our lawyers represent ESPN and a lot of other people. So you kind of just have to put the pieces in place that kind of give them some gut feel to he's not just crazy. He's crazy and he has some people that we know. And so at the time, it was like draft Kings, Fandul, MGM, Barstool. And then like us. And the league was also.

like a little carefully like, can we like, we'll do this with you. Just don't tell anyone right now. And we don't really want to put out an article. But we kind of want to do the deal. We think the platform's cool. So we kind of had all these assets. We were an authorized gaming operator of those leagues. We had market access, which I can get into, which is the licenses. We were through compliance and mostly all legal states. Now back then it was 17 states or so. Now it's 35 plus, I think. And at the time, if you wanted to be in the gaming business, you have to go through regulatory compliance. Most public boards of directors, have no interest in going through a regulatory process.

They have to disclose their financials and all these things. And they also didn't know the business enough. You can be a big public company, but if you want to have a book in Jersey, you have to go down to Atlantic City and sit in an old room with regulators and lawyers and convince them as to why they should give you the license. And so it was just like this old school process that they were unwilling to go through and we kind of spent the money and went through the pain of building the platform, getting it through compliance, getting the licenses, getting the deals.

and we knew that what we really wanted was an existing audience in sports. Even if we went and raised $100 million, I think Drafkings at the time spent $100 million on corporate travel a year. So $100 million wasn't going to move the needle for us to go to market without any users. So we started talking about a joint venture with a handful of companies. And at the time, Fubo TV had just gone public. They put out a proxy. They wanted to be in the gaming business.

And my phone rang. And it was Fubo TV and they wanted to talk about a deal. So, which and so they, they bought you for, I think I read the SEC filing, so like, just about close to 40 million. What, what did you do with the money? I have it. What do you mean? Well, I mean, that's a, that's a lot of money for anyone to get, particularly for a 23, 24 year old. What'd you invest it in? I'm mostly in the market. And then I have these small, random, crazy investments that I feel

really good about. But I'm mostly in the market. I'm pretty long. Here's why I'm long in the market. If I want to do other things with the money, I'll simply take a loan against my portfolio and then take the risk. If you sell the stock, now you have a taxable event, you get less than, like, if you wanted to put a million bucks into something, you can either sell a million dollars and have some huge taxable event and a headache to deal with with paperwork. And then you invest. And then if it goes to zero, you're screwed. Or you take a line of credit against your portfolio, say in an index fund like the spy. And if I need a million, I'll take a lot. line of credit. They keep a million two is collateral. And then I get to take my million

dollar shot anyways. And if it doesn't work out, all I got to do is wait. And in eight years, I'll have the money back because the stock would have doubled anyways, you know, given what the interest rates are pretty low when you take a loan against like that. So I have most all my money for the most part in the market. So yeah, I was down like during COVID, like millions and millions and millions of dollars. But like if you're never selling, then it just doesn't really matter. And if you don't need it. Like I kept what I needed in cash, like whatever. But other than that, I'm pretty in the market. But that's where your story gets out of

kind of interesting. So like, all right, selling for that amount of money at the age of 23, pre-launch, that's, that's, you know, 1% to 1%. That's pretty wild. But I read that, you know, when I already talked to you, and I read in our notes, I read that you bought this riverboat. What the hell is that?

And that's one of your crazy investments. And you also were looking at vending machine business. This is wild to me that you would do this. Okay. So when you're in the online gaming business, everyone who's in it, for the most part, is like the old Trump gaming people. All the regulators are the same. One time we got a document and they had still, they sent us the wrong copy because my partner,

Scott Boutera's name was when he was president of Trump. So they sent us a Trump entertainment resorts form. Like, the regulators never change. So while the business is techy, you could call it, the industry is not. So everyone you meet has been in this casino business for 50 years. And I stumbled into this riverboat because, um, To get a license, unlike a cannabis license where you can just apply as a dispensary, you have to get what's called market access.

And you are sub-leasing the licenses from the ones that have them. And the only people that have them are the brick-and-mortar properties. It's kind of like if you, it's weird. If you wanted a grocery store, imagine if you had the sub-lease from Whole Foods, like a license, that they have the entry. The reason that's the case is because, you know, we took land from Native Americans. We allowed them to have casinos on reservation property. then all of a sudden in 2018, the government goes,

we'll just legalize online gambling. Well, then they were like, well, no one's going to come to our properties anymore because they can just log on draft kings and you just screwed us. So you should give us the license and then we'll sublease it to them. So they did that.

And then MGM and Caesars and everyone went crazy because they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we're the biggest tax revenue drivers in the country besides oil. So if the tribes are getting them, then we get them, fast forward. Everyone got them. Riverboats counted as properties, brick and mortar properties.

And before land-based gaming in the early 90s, everything was on the water because it was illegal. And it started in the early 40s and 50s, because all the trade happened up and down the Mississippi, candidly, mostly through St. Louis. And people would just like truckers pull over on the highway, people would pull over their vessels, and they'd have makeshift card games on a barge,

and then all of a sudden it transformed. Well, I don't think that, like, a guy like Sean doesn't know this, but I grew up at St. Louis. And so when you say you're going to the casino, we actually wouldn't use the word casino. So we would say, let's go to the boat. go to the boat. And all the, they're not, some of them actually are like boats.

Yes. But a lot of them are just like properties that are somehow floating, but they're not, I guess technically they're floating, but they're like not really a boat. It's like the, the boat is this like massive parking lot and then they built like a building on top of it. But when I was younger, we would say, we're going to, let's go to the boat. It's essentially a structure built on a barge is really what it is. But there's no engine room. It's just floating there. It's like building a house and then shoving it out into the wall. and tying it and you meet the state standards. Yeah.

So I was talking with a buddy after I leave Fubo, and he was showing me this picture of his grandfather in Atlantic City. And in the background are these riverboats. And he said, you know, what happens to these things when they're done with them? And I was like, what do you mean? He goes, well, like, where do they go? And I was like, I don't know. Like, I have no idea.

And so I hang up with them. I'm like, where do they go? It's kind of interesting. I'm unemployed. I don't have much to do. So I emailed the general counsel of a casino company that we had done a license deal with at Fubo to get the license in Iowa. And they were a riverboat property. And I went to it a couple of times.

We had to go, set stuff up. And I called the general counsel. And I said, hey, Bill, I have a question for you. Your boat's really old. I heard you guys are thinking about building a property on the land. What are you going to do with this cruise ship you have sitting in front of the property when you're done with it? And he goes, well, you know, when you couldn't build brick and mortar properties, There was a market for him.

They'd sell because they were just operating casinos like any other property. But he goes, now no one wants them. So they kind of just end up in junkyards. And I was like, you're got to be kidding me. He's like, no, these things are unbelievable. I go, you'd just scrap them. And he goes, probably who would ever buy them? And he just bought, they had just bought two casinos in Baton Rouge that were both on vessels,

but operating still, which they do in places like Baton Rouge or Kansas City and stuff. And I said, are there any near? because I'm in Chicago, he's in Iowa. I go, are there any near us? And he goes, Sam, if there are any boats near us, I wouldn't have bought them in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And then, like, almost like a movie, I'm hanging up the phone. And I hear like, hey, Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam, and I'm like, Bill, what's up? And he said, we don't know where it is, but we think somebody, somewhere in Iowa has the catfish. And he was talking about catfish bend, riverboat casino. And I said, what do you mean someone has? He goes, well, they built a property like 20 years

ago and no one knows where the boat went. I'm unemployed. I'm kind of like into this kind of stuff. I have nothing to do. And I was like, okay, I have somewhere to be at like noon. It's like 10 o'clock. I'm going to give myself an hour and a half or two and try and find this boat just for the pure fun.

And if not, I'll never think about this again and we'll call it a day. And so first I called every junkyard in the tri-state area in Chicago and Iowa. I'd call. There was this place I remember in like Des Moines or somewhere. And this guy answered. I'll never forget this. And I said, hey, quick question. Who's the oldest guy at the junkyard?

Who's been there the longest? And they were like on speaker and they're all yelling like, oh, it's Ricky. Everyone grab Ricky. Go get Ricky. And this Ricky guy gets on the phone. And this was like, I've been on the phone for an hour with junkyards. And Ricky's like, catfish? He goes, I would never forget if catfish ban came through this junkyard.

We've never seen it. So I'm like, all right, Ricky. So I hang up. I talked to 12 Rickies. This boat has not gone to a junkyard. It is not in a job. And I thought to myself, if they brought it down somewhere out of Illinois or Iowa and it got junked in Missouri, so be it. I can't call every junkyard in America.

But we're going to move forward assuming it's still a thing. So I found, I remember one time I got a ticket on my uncle's boats and wave runners and chain of lakes. And if you don't pay it, it ends up in the fishing and gaming or like the fishing and hunting ticketing site. So I was like, all right, whoever is goofy enough to buy this thing or have it, definitely got like a moving violation or something. I mean, this thing is a cruise ship. It's not like a corolla. So I said, let's assume they have a ticket and they haven't paid it. So I went to the site and I sat there for an hour and I just clicked through hundreds of pages of tickets.

But you don't even see the pictures of anything. It's just the entity name or the person's name. And so I'm looking for like a random entity, like some kind of sign. And on like 194, page 190 something, I see like CFFB, whatever it is, LLC. It's like an acronym. And I kind of go past it. And then like I thought to myself, I was like, catfish. Ben, River, Boat Casino.

I go, that kind of fits. And I clicked it. Boom. Big vessel moving violation, $22,000 ticket from the company that bought it at auction. And then I read the court filings. And essentially, Catfish Ben built a brick and mortar property, left the boat to rot. Kind of like Icon left the casino in Atlantic City to rot, knowing that the city would pay for it to get cleaned up.

So he didn't have to pay for it. They then said, all right, you have to move it. We'll pay for the fees. But you have to auction it off. and so he auctioned it off in an anonymous auction to a marina construction company in northern Iowa who does a lot of work with the Army Corps of Engineers fixing submarines so I thought to myself,

ooh, they probably want it for the engine rooms and stuff. But all I had was like an entity name and it was like random. And I called a buddy in Iowa and I said, hey, what do you know about this XYZ enterprises or whatever? And he said, what are you buying a boat? And now I've been on the phone for two, hours trying to find this thing. I got like phone in the year. I'm like notes from Ricky at the

junkyard. And I was, I dropped everything. I like, whoa, how'd you know I was talking about a boat? And he said, that company, he goes, they fix everyone's yachts. I was like, no way. So I called, like, their websites from the 90s. The phone number is floating like at the bottom of the website. And I just, and I just called. And I said, hey, is, I did what I do with it. I go, who's the oldest person at this company? And they put this like 90 year old man on. And I said, I've got a crazy question for you. And I swear to God, he cut me off. And he said, tell me you're looking for the catfish, baby. And I said, do you have it? And he was like, yeah, he goes, I have it. I've been looking at it every day for 20 years. I said, wow. I said, no one knows you have this. Like,

why, like, no one knows where it is? And he goes, yeah, like, you know, we're quiet, like, whatever. And he said, why are you calling me? What do you want to buy it? And I think my wife heard in the other room. And she looked to me like, you are not buying this thing. And I kind of smiled. I'm like, I don't know, maybe. And he's like, well, why don't you come see it? And I'm like, okay. So long story short, I drove, you know, to Northern Iowa and I was sitting there in a quarry. He had planned to use it for parts, became too cost intensive to get the engines out of the engine room. And I persuaded myself to buy it. But what's the game plan here?

Well, okay, so here's the plan. It's, first of all, It's 40 it's three interior stories all connected by elevators the things a full blown casino vessel It's 40,000 square feet of some of the most unique real estate ever when you walk in you think you just walked into Las Vegas with Elvis Presley the walls the floors When I bought it all the blackjack tables all the crafts tables so first I was like could be a movie set Could I mean I know the gaming business maybe I could open up a casino Or maybe I'll turn it into a restaurant or nightclub or something like that so I had a some loose ideas, but nothing like in place. So I bought the thing, had to deal with the Coast Guard, all this stuff, and spent about a year

going down the path to open up a casino. Long story short, there's not many river boy licenses left in America. So, you know, I was meeting with the chairman of one of the largest gaming companies in Goa, India. He controls Goa, which is like Atlantic City on Western India side. They have a bunch of vessel casinos. Long story short, became too cost intensive to get it there. But he introduced me to a deal in Southeast Asia where we had the deal on the one yard line.

Long story short, some of these countries in Southeast Asia are pretty corrupt. And they made a big ask. And my lawyer said that ask is not happening. We're not talking about this anymore. So now I'm kind of more pivoting back to, you know, partnering with someone to open up a really cool restaurant or entertainment venue and move it down south, somewhere like Florida or, you know, Nashville, Cumberland River or something like that. what did you end up paying for it? I might want to tell you that off the pod. Over or under seven figures?

Can you say that? Under. Under. Under. Under. This seems like a crazy thing to be working on when you are able to build websites for free or with just your time. But you've done like, you're kind of interesting in that you can root out these really off the

wall ideas because you did another one with vending machines, didn't you? Didn't end up doing it. But yeah, so I, everyone was talking about vending machines all over Twitter. Vending machines are the next gold. I'm like, okay, what's what? Well, we had a guy who like, we were joking about this last episode. We had a guy who like, was like, dude, I'm making 15. So we talk about, you know, like big $100 million, billion dollar ideas. And then we had this guy who was like, I'm making $10,000 a month on vending machines. And for some reason, that interests everyone because when you're 13 years old, that's like, vending machines is like one of the things that you're fascinated by.

And so, yeah, we, I don't know if we helped to make it popular or we pounce on it because it was already popular, but we saw that too. There's a chance I heard about it on the pod. I don't even know. But all I know is there was like, maybe it was a year ago or so. There was like this 30 day rush of, it was like, vending machines were like crypto or the next AI. Everyone in the world won't have vending machines.

So I was like, all right, it seems like a terrible business. So why does everyone want this? And it's like high cash flow. Like I get it. But similar to ATM business, you have to go there. It's physical. You have to replace product. I was like, eh, that can't be that interesting.

But like anything else, I always go down this path of like, before I say no, let me do some diligence. And I'm on like some one of those sites, Biz Buy Sell or one of those type of sites where you can buy a company. And there's this rural company in the middle of nowhere, like Lewiston, Idaho, not even Boise. Like Lewiston. There's nothing there. and it did when I looked at 20 companies and they all did about the same margins, whatever they were,

I don't remember now. This company did like three times the margin. I was like, why is this company so much better? Either they're lying and fidgeting these numbers or something's going on. And the broker convinced me to go. So I flew into this remote airport in Lewiston, Idaho.

And I drive 40 minutes to this like warehouse. And we open up. And it is this like full blown operation. I have pictures. I have like so many pictures of they had hundreds and hundreds of vending machines that they didn't even have out there yet, that they have stocked. They had more inventory. You thought they like ran a hospital. There was so much inventory.

And I was like, okay, this is a bigger business than the numbers I saw. And so I said, there's no way that the numbers I read is this business. And he goes, yeah, they own five regions. And we listed one of them. But if it was a right person, we'd probably sell them off. And I said, okay. and I was trying to ask a bunch of questions, and he kept just saying,

you just have to go out with, God, I'm spacing on his name, Roger or something, whoever owned it. You just have to go out with him, and you'll know why. Everyone loves vending machines. I said, okay. So I spent all day in Idaho in the pouring rain,

and we drive around Lewiston, Idaho, and I realize there's no grocery stores. There's no convenience stores. There's no fox-trot coffee. They rely on vending machines. It's FedEx District. distribution centers. It's like this is where they build all the turbines that go on the propellers for the fields. It's like, it's like, you know, the workers part of America. And everyone's lunch break, they just go to the vending machines and a warehouse will have 50 of them.

Snacks, cold food, hot food, everything they eat is out of vending machines. So I said, oh, like every meal of the working day is coming out of a vending machine. And so then when I dug into how the business works, usually you're buying a contract from Coke or Pepsi, and you're obligated to sell their product. They give it to you for a rate and you have to use their machine. Well, those are on like five or 10-year deals. So then during diligence, I asked them to give me all of the contracts with Pepsi and Coke

because what I knew is that this local library or this local warehouse, they don't want to have to deal with getting new machines. They don't want to deal with that. And so it would be disruptive to the business. So I realized that all of his contracts with Coke and Pepsi were expiring soon. And I was like, well, the only reason the margins aren't absolute insanity is because I have to pay a dollar 20 for Freeto's and I can only sell them for two bucks. But what if I got an alternative to Freeto's and bought it for four cents and then sold it for two? And now the margins are insane.

And so I looked into like the legality of like, do I need to renew with Coke or Pepsi? And the answer was no. I need to get new machines, but there's companies that'll finance them. So I was like, what if I just buy this company? Wait for all the contracts to expire. Renew none of them and then go in without Coke or Pepsi. Now you have a little bit of a distribution headache because they'll bring them to Lewiston, Idaho.

But Louisdon, Idaho, there's all these like discount stores to buy product that. So it could work. And near the end of diligence, I had just kind of had the idea to start my next company and I came to the conclusion of I don't want to end up having to move to Louisden, Idaho because I bought a vending business and I need to save it. And so, while I think it's an unbelievable opportunity, I chose not to do it. How big do you think that could have been?

It was 5,000 machines. Yeah, but in dollars, what do you think it would have done annually? I probably wouldn't have made like, I don't know, a million two a year, a million three a year. But I'd have to run it. I felt like I was going to have to run it for two years or maybe a year and then hire someone. But the other thing is you're dealing with physical stuff. I need to pay drivers to go to the things.

I need to have inventory. So everything had to be in Lewiston. And I'm like, what am I going to move to rural Idaho? So if that business is doing a million a year in cash flow, what does it sell for? I think they wanted four million for the business, five million. So four times cash or EBITDA or however they measured. So I went to a bank and they wrote up a loan. I was going to finance it.

And then I was like, wait, what if I end up having to move to Idaho? This is a problem. So your due diligence on these things. The reason you're fascinating is your due diligence on these things is pretty in depth. Like most people, myself sometimes included, I will end with like, I'll just do a few Google searches and it kind of ends there. I mean, multiple times you're flying to places and meeting people. Yeah, I mean, I do a lot of times within five minutes. I think we all on the back of a napkin know if a deal makes sense.

But I usually try and figure out everyone else thinks there's a way to make this business marginally better by consolidating and rolling them up. But how do you make it five times better? And then the answer is if there's no answer, I'm not interested because then I would. wouldn't do the deal. So then I only try and figure out how could you make this five times better when everyone tries to make it 10% better. And my thought was when I looked at the line item, the biggest line item, 90% of it was the cost of goods from Coke and Pepsi. I go, how can I just not sell that? Because I can buy a store brand Twinkie in wholesale for 10 times less than I have to buy Twinkie for. And so I just read all the contracts. And then I would call people. I'd call

lawyers that I knew we're in the vending business. And I said, do I have to renew? Like, here's the language. It's kind of like, and they said like there's always this like thought from Coke or Pepsi of like you don't really have to, but they give you the product, they distribute it. It's names that people know, brands that people know. But I thought, in my opinion, people's willingness to buy Fritos wasn't that much higher than a name brand because they have no alternative. Like, right. So that was what I thought they're at the job. And honestly, I could also lower the prices. And those people would have been thrilled. And I talked to them. I'd go in, I'd be like, hey, is it cool if I talk to your employees real quick?

was at like a distribution center. And the guy's like, sure, just like, don't take my vending machines. I was like, okay. And I'd go up and I'd be like, hey, do any of you guys care if it wasn't Freeto's anymore? And then the guy said, well, would it be 50 cents less? I said, sure. They go, I don't care what it is. Freedos are Freetos.

And I was like, huh, interesting. So that's where I think the value in vending is if you're not just trying to build like some big cap. Like, I just wouldn't buy a vending route or an ATM route or anything like that to just try to improve it because I'm a better operator. Like, I think people think they're, like, you can be the best operator in a world, but the business is the business. So that's kind of how I look at those things. Well, I love that you go down these random rabbit holes.

So riverboat, gambling, vending machines. I'm sure you've done more than we've just talked about in terms of thinking about ideas. You seem like you're one of us. You have that switch. It can't turn off. And so regardless of what you're doing, you're always going to be thinking. of ideas, or you're going to hear something, it's going to make you curious and interested,

and you say, well, maybe not for me, but for somebody, that would be actually pretty interesting. Do you have a couple of ideas you could share that maybe somebody in the audience might get inspired by? What are the other ideas, the silver medal ideas, things that you're not necessarily doing, or you're just willing to share? There was another business that would actually be a lot, in my opinion, a lot easier than the vending business in Idaho. I was at about two summers ago. A lot of my friends, you know, they went to Mizzou.

So we'll go to Lake of the Ozarks in the summer of 4th of July or something like that. And the Redneck Riviera, baby. Home of the home of the, the wet t-shirt contest and lost GoPro's at the bottom of, at the bottom of 40 feet of water. That's actually a good business, Sean. If you want to hire divers, there's probably millions of dollars of gopros at the bottom of Lake of the Ozars. So I'm at Lake of the Ozarks, and I hadn't been since I had left college, so it'd been a couple of years. And we needed to get from our Airbnb to, and I'm sure Sam knows this place, the place called Shady Gators. It is, it is the, Sean, if you looked up on Google, shady Gators, I think you would tell me, you're not going, is what you would say.

It's like classic spring break. It says college spring break bikini wet t-shirt contest as it gets. and unfortunately, the bridge at Lake of the Ozarks is on like the far side from where our Airbnb was. And the only way to get there is to drive all the way around the lake. Well, that's like a 50-minute Uber. And instead of that, they have water taxis. And I didn't even know about this. My buddy's like, yeah, just call a dispatcher.

Like they'll send a water taxi. What am I in Venice? I was like, okay. So we call this guy and like seven seconds later he pulls up to our Airbnb in the water and we just get on. And all my buddies were drinking and we're on their way there. And all I can think about is how much is this guy making right now? And I said to my buddy, I said, how much are we paying him? I whispered.

And he's like, it's 250. We split it between the five of us. I go, I'm sorry. This is like a three minute ride, three minutes, tops. And I go, and he just goes around. And so I couldn't help myself. I asked him. I said, hey, do you like own this thing?

And you could tell he like, he was driving it, but he did own it. But he didn't want people to realize. that the owner was driving. He wanted to feel like it was a company. He has the brand on the boat, like all this stuff. And he was like, yeah. He was like, we own it. Yeah, he said we. Yeah, he said we. And so all my buddies are like getting off and they're running in the shady gaiters. And I am just locked on this guy. I go, hold on a second. Hold on a second. I was like, it's $250. It took 90 seconds to get us here. And he's like, he's like, yeah, it's seasonal because it gets cold here in the winter. But he's like, we spew cash all summer and spring and summer. I said,

what does spew cash mean exactly? And he said, he's like, he's like, yeah, it's seasonal. And he's, he's, he's, said, well, I have three boats. And he goes, all I do is I have a dispatcher. And she sits behind a monitor and has like a live feed because they have like some they put like a drone up there with something. So she can see where all the boats are. And she has the GPS. And when people call, she can see their IP address. Because when you call into the dispatcher, it's like some platform that shows you. So they know where people are on the lake. And then she'll load it into their thing on the boat to go where to go next. And a lot of these boats have like GPS. So you just click, except just like you do on Uber and they drive around.

And I'm like, okay. And I said to him, I said, would you ever like raise capital for this business or like, do you need more like, are there more people than you can get? And he said by 10. Well, how much does he make him? Oh, like every boat made him like about 400 grand

of somewhere. He had three of them. So he was doing like a million two. Yeah. And he's from, you know, he built this from nothing. Started with one boat,

used the money to buy another boat. But he doesn't know how to, But he would wait too long because he didn't know you could just go finance a boat. He would just wait until he could pay $90 grand cash for a speedboat. It's like you can just put down $9,000 like a car and you'd have $10 tomorrow. But he didn't know how to do any of these things. So I said if you had money and you had 20 boats, would it be too many boats? And now they're sitting around.

He goes, I could probably fill 10 boats as much as I fill these three. But I don't want to spend the cash. I kind of use it to, you know, I bought a house. We built a lake house, like all this stuff. And so then I was like Okay, that's that precious Mountain Dew money, baby So then I'm like, okay,

what if I, this is also post buying the riverboat before my next company? So I'm still in like the vending mode of like, can I blow up a business like this? And so I called him because we were talking about maybe I would invest in the company. And I said,

Hey, Connor, I changed my mind. Would you sell me this business? And he was like, sell you this business. I was like, yeah. He goes, I never thought about that.

Like, I don't know what it's worth or anything. And my thought process was, what if I can blow this up to 10 or 15 boats on Lake of the Ozarks? And then go to Orange Beach, Alabama. And then start going around America and building up the water taxi business, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. You need to get from Tiger Stadium to Fred's Bar, whatever it is. And then water is the only vertical that Uber doesn't have and Lyft doesn't have. And then I called people, executives, I know those companies, and they said,

it's so difficult. It's so regional, the weather, all the stuff. We don't want to own boats. We have to dock them, all this stuff. But they kind of made a comment like, but we'd buy it if it existed, but we won't build that. So I said, okay, so now I have a willing buyer of this business. So I thought if I could do this, he was taking most of the cash for himself. I would buy this business. I don't need any of the money. So I would take all the money and just buy more boats until I've maximized Lake of the Ozarks and then I would go, you know, Lake Town by Lake Town. And a lot of liability, a lot of logistical things. Definitely think it's worth doing. But it didn't.

I ran all the numbers. I tried to estimate forecast out what I thought this business could do. And I just, I had decided when I left Fubo that the next thing I was going to do, I had no interest in if it couldn't be worth at least a billion dollars in five years. And I thought, if it could be, it was the absolute ceiling. And then you'd have to execute perfectly and hope there's no legal issues and weather and damage. And like all this is a very physical business. So I chose not to do it. But I think it's a big opportunity.

And I think we'll see Uber by some water taxi company in like 2028. I think we'll see that. Can I just read you the menu of shady gaiters? Would you guys be interested in that? Yeah. Be very interested. For the appetizer. Tell me all the variations of tater tots.

You mean gator bites? Tater bites? Ultimate Tater Tots or loaded, loaded tots. For me, I'm going to start with the shrimp happens. That's where I'm going to start. Sam, for my friend Sam, he wants the Brazilian sizzle. Those are the happen to next. This place looks phenomenal.

This place looks like, I think you're focused on the boats. You needed to buy shady gaiters. This is an institution. You know, like, you know, when rich people go by like the Washington Post, This could have been your washbow. You could have bought Shady Gators and be like, I will protect this, this national treasure. Shady Gators will cash flow for hundreds of years to come. As long as there's boobs and there's white shirts, this place will stay upright.

We have to take Sean. Sean's ever been to some of these places. We've got to take them on a tour to Flora Bama down in. Yeah, there's this restaurant, Sean. It's called Flora Bama. They even made a TV show about it. It was like the. Yeah.

I've seen that. I've seen these all through the TV safely while I'm under a blanket. Well, for years, that's where I spent spring break. Florida is right at the Alabama Florida line. There's literally a line like in the ground. And this restaurant is half on each side. And it's where you go for just pure debauchery when you are 21 years old or 19 with a fake ID. These places are wild.

You have to experience a good floor. I had a buddy from New York who, when I bought the vessel, It's in like rural Iowa. And he flew into this private airport because he had to see this thing. And he had never been to, he's, we're like running out of gas on the highway. And he's like, we have to pull over. We have to pull over. He's like flipping out.

And I'm like, we're good, man. There's a gas station in eight miles. And we have like a reserve tank. Like, don't worry about it. Like he's used to New York uvers and like just getting in Uber blacks and like being in the middle of nowhere, Iowa. He was like panicking. He's taking pictures of like gas stations.

He thinks they're like, he thinks they're like monuments. it's like a safari for him yeah yeah yeah this is where people get gas right yeah so so you know what I wish I kind of wish there was a well in general

I'll say this you're like we have this segment on this pod called the blue collar side hustle you're like the walking blue collar side hustle right like all of these ideas you're talking about are so middle America I love it and they're so just you know hustle and ingenuity that I

I love it. And you're finding really interesting opportunities that are off the beaten path. Right. It's like you want to do things that the 99, like if you say, all right, I'm not the smartest guy there is. Maybe I'm in the top 20% of IQ. What you want is within that top 20%, you want to then go look in places where 99% of them don't look because now you're, you know, you're operating in a field of your own.

And it seems like that's what you're doing. I kind of wish this existed nationwide. Because what you're finding is you're finding a bunch of opportunities that you know how you would execute them, but now they're no longer worth your time or the schlep that you would have to eat to do it. You were willing to do it with your first business. But now on your third business, you're not as willing to do that. Peter Thiel did this thing called the Teal Fellowship, where he was like, I'm going to pay kids to drop out of college if they're exceptional and they might create big things.

And out of that came, you know, Figma and Ethereum and some of the, like kind of break through multi-billion dollar tech companies. I kind of feel like there should be a blue-collar teal fellowship where we just go and we we post a flyer in a bunch of campuses that just says, um, sick of this shit, drop out and make millions. And let's just see who shows up.

And it's going to be the person is like, this is probably bullshit, but like, I'm down. What else am I going to do? Go to organic chemistry right now. Like I got to see what's here. There's going to be like eight people at the seminar.

And of the eight, you know, five will leave halfway, through because they think it's a timeshare presentation. And out of the three remaining, there'll be one person who's like, oh, you're telling me that you'll help me go find a business within a mile and a half of this campus right now, that if I just like focus for three years can make me $9 million, all right, I'm in. I'm sitting and I already go to, you know, Boise State or I already, you know, like where I went

to school at Duke, there was just one bar. It was our version of Shabby Gators called Shooters. And if anybody went and bought shooters, it's like, guess what, sir, you now have a monopoly on the nightlife scene of Durham. And every single student will come there. And like this place just hasn't changed. And like, look, if, if the mechanical bull just took Apple pay, your revenue would go up 10%.

Like there's just a bunch of easy wins that can be had just by like thinking about things slightly differently. You know, the example I would give shooters would be cool. During the day, this needs to be essentially like a yoga studio. And at night, it's going to become the nightclub. And now you're going to go from, you know, 10% usage to maybe 45% usage. and that will be a big, that's how you do your 5x. I feel like that needs to exist.

I feel like we need to find the Sam Ratnors that are out there. They're out there right now in every college. And they just need a little bit of inspo, a little bit of ideas and a little bit of mentorship in order to do. Yeah, the problem with the businesses I've found is that if the value is in the fact that it's remotely located, well, then it's difficult because other than finding another Lewiston, Idaho that already has an operating. business and has those dynamics if the town relies on it. You can't scale it out of Lewiston. But the reason I love the water taxi thing is because there's 10 or 12 great water lake towns in America. So I liked that a little bit better. But my concern was when I really forecasted it

out, it'd be a big win, but it would take it would take five to seven years. And I was like, nope, just not willing. Just couldn't. Yeah. So that's always the problem. But for someone who has, I don't know. I don't want to say it. For someone who is only pure one to execute and wants to retire and have 20, 30, 40 million dollars, I think that's a great play. Well, for a lot of people, that's not necessarily where you have to retire, but it's like when you're at zero, $7 million sounds like all the dollars. And then once you have $7 million and you're now 24 and your friends are still paying off student debt and you're sitting there being like, I learned so much and I have financial freedom. I can do whatever I want. They can do the thing you did and go chase down this riverbed for nine months where other people wouldn't think to go do that.

So it's a gateway drug into doing more and more interesting things. What were the other investments? You said you made two investments that were awesome. I assume one of them was the boat. I've invested not a lot because I really am focused on what I'm doing, but I have made some private investments into startups that I try to be as helpful with as I can. You said that you want to start something that can get to a billion in

I assume you meant exit value in five years. You have a new company now. Is that the one that you think is going to do it? So showroom, so when I was at Fubo TV, when I left, we were doing about a billion dollars a year in revenue. Don't quote me.

They're probably, we can find the numbers. I think about 700 million was the monthly subscriptions to Fubo TV. So $59.99. If you buy Red Zone, you're probably near $100, whatever it was. And then 300 million, give or take, was the advertising, which is when you scale a streaming business, it's the whole business.

So I thought to myself, why are these companies coming to Fubo TV? We're big, but we're not massive. So there's got to be a play here that they think there's value here. And what I realized is traditional cable nationwide too expensive, Disney Plus, ESPN Plus, and Hulu, all owned by Disney, kind of around a scale where pricing is probably similar to being national. And we were small enough that if you wanted six zip codes in Nashville, We'd give it to you. And so what clearly the sentiment was from these companies was that it's very hard to get

in front of consumers. Google shopping while is okay for a user is unusable for a merchant because no one's outbidding Calvin Klein for the word underwear or black denim jacket. It's become way too corporate. I think like 80% or maybe 70% of the brands that buy keywords for fashion footwear on Google shopping, I think in their last report. I think it was one of like a few hundred brands. And there's tens of thousands of brands.

So most of them aren't on there. And I was in a meeting once with the former CMO of like a direct to consumer cowboy boot brand. And she made this interesting comment in a meeting. And she was like, yeah, we waste like 50 cents of every dollar we spend on Google. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a second. Excuse me? I like, stop the meeting. That's the craziest thing I've ever heard.

I go, why is that? And she said, because we pay about $4 to own the word cowboy boots and have to the time someone looks up cowboy boots. It's a third grader looking up cowboy boots for their third grade presentation. They need a photo to like cut out and put on their poster. They had no intent of buying $700 boots. So we waste 50 cents of every dollar. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. And she said, and this is the first time I heard this concept. She said, that's why vertical search is so great. I said, what do you mean? And she had been an executive, she was a, I don't know if she was a CMO, but very senior at Cars.com. And she said, people look up Toyota on Google for all kinds of

reasons, photos, videos, they might be looking at Toyota's stock price. But if they look up a Toyota on Cars.com, they're a buyer or they're a seller. There's high intent. You're not just browsing around Cars.com. So I said, that's interesting. So that I was like, okay, so those are really Google's competitors, is all these vertical places to find what you want to find that it has a better experience and more Taylor than just traditional search. So I essentially do what I always try to do. Like in the vending business, I called the lawyers who know the Pepsi contracts. I called as many engineers on the Google shopping team is I could get to agree to talk to me. And the sentiment was, they said, Sam, we want Google flights to be a really great experience

for Google users, but not at the detriment of stepping on the toes of our largest advertisers, Expedia, kayak, they want them to pay and they want them to battle it out. They don't think it's not a good business to be in. They would just rather them battle it out. And battle it out means pay Google to be there. And my conclusion was, okay, could this be done better now? and I was very anti-crypto. Still am.

Don't like crypto at all. Never, never voned it. And so when all this AI start coming out, I had this initial sentiment of like, this is crypto again. I don't believe in this. I have changed my mind on that. And what I realized,

I was like, if I showed you two black t-shirts and one's from Lulu Lemon and one's from Gap, if we remove the brand names, the product descriptions, the actual copy is shockingly similar. It's just describing a black t-shirt. It's really inherent in the sentiment of the brand as to what that shirt is for.

Lulu's shirt is for one thing. Gap's shirt could be an undershirt. Your inability to have like an ongoing conversation with a language model that knows every brand and product in the world would be very limiting. And you'd end up with Google shopping. So what we've done is we've built this huge infrastructure. We have thousands and thousands of merchants, tens of millions of skews that kind of organically come into this dataset.

We've trained a language model to understand nothing besides what's in that data set. And then that can communicate to a user so they can have an ongoing conversation with essentially, think about not just Neiman Marcus or not just Macy's or not just a retailer who picked a couple hundred brands to carry, but you can essentially communicate back and forth with an inventory of every brand in the world. And the reason why shopping's always had these big opportunities is because everything else has been dominated by Amazon or Alibaba. and they have their market share in the like cheap fast fashion sector. But Gucci's not on Amazon. Burberry's not on Amazon.

Every brand at Neiman Marcus, Toccova's away luggage, these companies like they might, people might sell Nike products on Amazon. Nike's not on Amazon. So that's why companies like shoprunner had come along where they're like, we're going to be the Amazon prime for everything Amazon doesn't have. And they scaled and sold to FedEx for hundreds of millions. The founders on our board at Showroom. So there's always been these opportunities in fashion for product discovery.

And I actually think prior to language models, this is absolutely a business that would have been very, very hard to build because you lack that brand sentiment. And so that's essentially what we've built. We're launching the beta here shortly. We have thousands of people on the waiting list. We're really excited. We have revenue share deals with every single merchant in the platform. Those revenue share deals fluctuate between 5% and 20%, just depending on the brand. Nike pays you, you know, a point probably.

but a direct-to-consumer brand is paying for growth. They'll pay you a 15% revenue share all day. You're kind of doing what you did before, where with the betting site, you're like, well, the consumers want this, and I don't know if I can differentiate that. And so you went to the brand side. If a marketplace has two sides, you went to the brand side.

You're sort of doing that with this, where you're like thinking, well, what's the problem for advertisers? But it seems like with these consumer products, the hardest part is getting the consumers. And once you have them, oftentimes you can figure out I don't know if often's the right word

some of the times you can figure out how do you monetize a huge audience are you scared that you're not going to be able to figure out how to get the actual users there because I think inherent in the platform is the transaction so then there's transaction fees the merchants pay revenue shares if you're a consumer platform

for like entertainment social entertainment's become a little bit of a commodity that's why Netflix does these originals but everyone else like Fubo Hulu ESPN Disney Disney, we all just had ESPN and TNT and everyone has the same stuff. And if you're social, you have to increase engagement. But if you are something where there's transactions, well, now inherent in the experience is transacting. And that's where you can really make money.

So that's why I think companies like the social, the ones that get a big audience and then go social, I think it's a huge mistake, like Pinterest, big audience. And then they went like social, not commerce. And to me, it's like, well, no one minds paying fees or having hidden fees into things that they were already buying. People might complain about fees on Airbnb, but they were already booking something. And so I think the value is, can you build a big consumer business that inherent in the journey is a transaction and your product is a 100 times better shopping experience than what they had before? So I always just lean on, focus on the consumer, forget everything else. If the consumer wants it, everything else is noise. You can push it through

and consumers will want the product. I want to ask you about the way your brain works, because I find you very interesting. And we always ask you, I very before they come on. What are some of your strong opinions or life philosophies that you would live by? And you gave us a couple, but I want you to explain them. So number one,

never pitched twice. Okay. What is that? So every investor I've ever had, the moment I pitched them and walked out of the room, called me 12 times, showed up at my door in Chicago, and said,

I won in this round. Same thing with employees. Everyone I've ever, you know, I'm always recruiting. Anyone who's ever wanted to join the company, the moment they wanted to join the company, they wanted to drop everything they were doing to join the company.

In my opinion, raising capital is an informative process, not a persuasive one. Within five minutes of us getting on the call today, I think we had some preconceived notions of what we thought of each other, and then within five minutes, I'd say you'd have a 90% cemented view of what you think of the person. And so when I'm pitching, I'm going in, and I'm giving them my full attention,

but I'm informing them of what we're building and what we're doing. and it's one thing if they have legitimate diligence questions as followups or whatever, but I never ask twice because I know that everyone who's ever really wanted to do it didn't need to be asked twice. They loved it. And so I would rather just move on to the next one. And in my opinion, you give them the information. They've formed their opinions. If you're ever trying to persuade them, you're on the wrong side of the table from a negotiation standpoint anyways. And so I just don't pitch twice. I try to be as cognizant if I can that you always want to be respectful of like venture associates at the fund because sometimes by pure volume, if it's like a

big fun like a Sequoia, their principals can't take every meeting. They need some layers. That's fine. And if they have legit follow-on questions, I'll get back on more calls and answer emails, whatever. But I never pitch twice because I know that if I need to kind of sell it again, then they didn't want it. And that doesn't mean that you can't have luck following up and being ruthless about the follow up. And there's those stories where you push it through. But there's thousands of funds, in my opinion, capital is pretty cheap. If you have a great business, you're going to raise the money. And so I kind of just move on to people that are so excited by it that they are willing to get on a phone on Christmas because they know this could be a life-changing opportunity for that.

So that's kind of how I view pitching. You've got this other one that is, I don't know if controversial is the right word, but a lot of people wouldn't agree. So you said, But the potential you see in others is not real. It's rarely potential realized. So take everyone at face value for what they are today. Well, there's one key line in there. You said, it's a mirror of what you would do if you were in their position. So I have thought about, I always have like these.

I have like a massive, massive note list on my phone. And I have these concepts. And I have another notepad of concepts that I haven't really figured out a way to explain it the right way. I always try to boil down this thought I have to like two sentences. And recently on Twitter, I saw someone say this, which is the potential, I don't know who it was, but the potential you see in others is rarely realize it's simply a mirror of what you would do if you were them. I have spent a lot of time in my life trying to, I don't want to say change other people, but I think they have such great potential.

But I always feel like it's like you're dragging a bag of bricks in your backpack to the office. It's like they just, if they don't want it on their own, you just can't change them. And what I see in them is really what I would do if I were them. But it's not what they want to do. And so I'm not saying you can't put an effort to coach people up and make them great members of the team. But that's different than if they want to be there or not. If they don't want to be there, you know, if they don't want to box, they're not showing up to the gym and boxing for 12 hours a day to go beat Floyd Mayweather. They don't want to be there.

And so if you think they're a great boxer and they show up every day, okay, you can coach them. But I just feel like it's a wasted effort and you should take people for exactly what they are. And what do those people love doing more than anything? As much as I love running businesses and building businesses and doing things like this, what do they love as much as I love this? And can I get that task to be something in my business? Because then they're going to do great. But if it's anything other than that,

they're just better off going to somewhere else where they want that skill set. And so I just think that you should pretty quickly know, it's like if you're a trainer or you're a coach, does the player want to be there? And if they don't want to be there, you can be mad that like, oh, they're six, eight. It's like in high school,

when your coach goes to the volleyball team, they're like, Peter, like stop spiking volleyball. Like, you could play center, you know, at Duke. And they're like, hey, I like volleyball. He just likes volleyball. And any time they've ever gotten that kid to say, fine, I'll play in the basketball team,

he doesn't care, he doesn't want to come to practice. He's never very good. And you just don't realize the potential. But his potential, while it looked to you, if you were six eight on the volleyball team, you could be a great basketball player. Peter doesn't want to be a great basketball player. So it just doesn't work out.

So that's kind of like my opinion on that kind of stuff. Let's do one more. You have one on here that I'm curious about. It says, The Value is in the Duck Calls. And I think that's the perfect one to end on here. What does that mean? Me and who's one,

best man in my wedding, Jonah Roberts. I'll give him a shout out, Jonah. He's from Memphis. Sound like he almost forgot his name. Jonah and I were, no, no, definitely didn't really. Jonah and I were in Memphis, Tennessee, in his hometown, and he wanted to take me to the

Bass Pro Shop, which there is like the holy grail. And we're walking around, which feels like ours. And we cannot stop dying laughing. Every single aisle, every product you could ever imagine you'd need for hunting and fishing and the home tools, they have everything. And right when we think we've seen every product that anyone's ever made, we stumble to come around the corner to go to where the back of the store is. And there's this big, almost like when you go to a guitar store and they put all the expensive ones in a room. There's this sign that says duck calls.

And there's like this glass door and we open. And there's like what felt like a hundred thousand duck calls. They've got metal duck calls. Polyester duck calls. They've got stone duck calls. They've got duck calls with two heads. They have different colors. It's like this whole economy of duck calls that we didn't even know existed. And so what I realize is the reason I dig in to the vending businesses and the riverboats and the water taxis is because the value is in the things that no one knows about that are very odd that have these niche ecosystems of communities and the people who love duck calls, trust me, they love duck calls. They'll pay $1,000 for a duck call.

They don't go hunting for fed. They don't go without them. It's like a big thing. They collect them. And it's something I never knew about. And so whenever I hear about something that could be really big and then I hear a bunch people, I go, I've never heard of that. Who would ever want that?

And then I go on like one random brands site in the duck call business. And some random merchant I've never heard before has 800,000 followers and does $5 million a year, that like cements to me that all the values in the duck calls. It's in the things that people don't know about or are too complicated to find or our regional or our niche or one of those things. So I always kind of, me and Joan, I always kind of say the value is in the duck calls. I have a feeling, Sam. Well, first of all, are you going to call your shot now?

So your new business, are you going to call your shot where in five years you're going to, it's going to be worth a billion dollars because what I want to look back in five years, because I think you're good. You clearly have the it factor. You've already done amazing things, but something more amazing I predict is going to happen with you. I don't know when, but is this going to be the one you think? I do.

Are you going to hit your five year goal? Your year and do it, I'd know. Yeah. I would say that would be the goal. I wouldn't, I would not work on it. Every day I wake up. It's like every day you own a building, you're own a stock, you're choosing to buy it. And every day I choose to work on this, I think more and more that is definitely going to work.

And the moment that I think it's going the other way, I will not work on it. So we're going to look back on this December, 2028. And we're going to see if you nailed it. But I have a feeling you're going to do something amazing. And we appreciate you coming on, man. You're awesome. No, thanks for having me. I've been following the pod since you started in 19 when I was, I used to watch your videos out of the Lifetime Yoga Studio.

That's amazing. Awesome, thank you for coming on. You're fun. All right. We appreciate you, and that's the pop. 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.