My First Million - 9 drunk ideas that sound stupid (but are secretly genius)

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

Business Ideas Database: https://clickhubspot.com/erhy Episode 849: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ), Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) and their producer Arie brainstorm 9 business ideas that are genius.   — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (2:07) IDEA 1: Reverse vacations (6:03) IDEA 2: Rap battle + UFC fight (13:18) IDEA 3: Giant claw machine (20:39) IDEA 4: Butter dispenser (27:32) IDEA 5: beepers for kids (35:35) IDEA 6: Mexican Benihana (40:01) IDEA 7: bulk custom gifts (44:10) IDEA 8: Slop Stop (49:06) IDEA 9: Take your roommate to work day — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton (joinhampton.com): My community for founders. Average member does $25m/year. Many of the guests are members. Get after it...apply: http://joinhampton.com/mfm — 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 - Shaan uses Mercury across all of his companies. you can too: http://mercury.com/  Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., Members FDIC • I run all my newsletters on Beehiiv and you should too + we're giving away $10k to our favorite newsletter, check it out: beehiiv.com/mfm-challenge My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano /

All right. If you're out there, raise a glass. We are doing a favorite of this podcast. One of the favorite episodes, the people demanded it, the people begged for it. This is drunk ideas. 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. The premise of drunk ideas is I have a lot of business ideas that are awful. And if I came to the podcast, and I told you the awful ideas were great, you would think I'm dumb.

So we created drunk ideas where I could take my bad ideas and under the guise of alcohol, you know, more things go. You laugh it off. And so these are ideas that are half-baked. They're a little silly, but there's a nugget.

There's a nugget of something in all of these ideas, right? They're not just completely silly. So that's drunk ideas. We've done this a few times before. I always love doing them. I beg Sam to do it. I don't know if Sam loves it as much as I do, but I'm like, dude, you ready for one?

I've got like 20 ideas in the hopper, and he's like, all right, fine. You're like the funny guy, but also, is it true that you actually keep a running list of this? Of course, yeah. Like in my Slack, I just write the ideas and I write a drunk idea. So then when the time comes, I just search drunk idea, and I got my whole list filtered for me already. What are some, okay. I think that's in atomic habits with that system I just described. I think that's the featured case study.

How long is that slack and who is in it? And are the other people in it? Like, dude, shut up. Yes to the last one. I don't even know what the first two questions were. Also, producer Ari is actually not producer Ari today. Co-host Ari today. Ari, how does it feel?

We brought you out of retirement back onto the pod. Back by popular demand. Is that the phrase? I don't know. Actually, no, it's like back by like assistants. We were like, Sam, do you have the ideas? And Ari's like, for example. And then she set a great drunk idea.

No, no, no. That's your idea. You have to bring that to the table. So now she got dragged onto the show. I've got a couple, Sean. I've got a couple that actually are pretty awesome. But you want to go first? All right, I'll start. Let me give you a little diagram. All right, let's make a visual for all our visual learners out there. Sam, this is you normal routine. Monday through Friday, Saturday and Sunday. You do whatever you do. You have a certain level of productivity, a certain level of happiness, a certain autopilot that you go into. Now, when you want to relax and you want to be less productive, more relaxed and more happy, we call that going on a... I don't know. What am I saying? Break? Vacation, correct.

So, all right, so that's called going on a vacation. So you could think of that like the pen moving down in productivity but up in other factors like relaxation and enjoyment. Now let's go back to our baseline. Now, Sam, when you want to be way more productive, for a week. If you want to kick ass for a week, if you want to truly lock in, what do we call that? Is there a word for that? I think not. And so I'm going to pitch you my first drunk idea, which is reverse vacations. It's basically a lock-in camp. You take a week off of your normal routine, but you're not going to relax. You're not going to sit in a cabana at the beach. You're going to lock in. And you go to these essentially like professional penitentiaries. And you You go and you lock in.

You are literally locked in. You set a goal. You were given like robe, like a new clothing. Like you're wearing like a track jumpsuit, like a maybe not like full like prison garb, but maybe like an Adidas track suit, I'm thinking. And something that just changes your identity. You're not normal Sam. You are here on a mission.

You are here to do a thing. It's not, again, it can't be luxury. We're not trying to get you to relax. This is David Gagins. It's playing like kind of like on the ambient sound. You know, there's just pull up. bars in random places. Yeah, ice baths everywhere.

You're eating slop. We're not optimizing here. It doesn't, your health doesn't matter here. This is actually like a, not a wellness retreat. You should feel a little unwell by the end of this. But you know what you're going to do? You're going to lock the hell in. And we're going to give you something to brag about.

It's going to have a little bit of status to it. That like, it's kind of like people when they sign up for a marathon or an Iron Man, you know, what's the first thing they do? Is it train? No, it's tell friends that they've signed up for an Iron Man. And so similarly, I need this to be a place. place where you're pseudo-bragging, like workaholic style of how hardcore you are. Like, there's no way to tell people you're being hardcore about your projects right now.

And I think we need the reverse vacation. What say you? I think that you came out hot. That's a 9 out of 10. I just watched this YouTube video of this guy and the title was, I spent 11 days walking in the mountains in order to break my iPhone addiction. And it was pretty amazing. And I'm so on board with the, uh, with screen a day.

stuff, but also with the reverse vacation. I think this is fantastic. Have you ever had any buddies who have gone to the silent meditation retreats? Have I ever? They don't shut up about it. Yeah, they saved up all they're talking to tell you about it. Exactly. Like that's like a, it's a extreme way to do the kind of like self-introspection. But I'm just shocked. There's no, where is the extreme way to go be super productive? You can do it in fitness, right? You can go put yourself through a really hard fitness challenge. There's high rocks. There's Iron Man.

There's other marathons. There's plenty of ways to do it in fitness. But what about work? Like, why is there only normal work with deadlines and whatnot? But there's not like a place. There's not like a way you can opt in and go be hardcore for 48 hours or 72 hours, something like that. That's pretty awesome. I dig it.

I give that a 9 out of 10. This was inspired by one of Sam's original drunk ideas called hostage, which was a guaranteed weight loss program where he pulls up in a van, takes you hostage doesn't feed you for two weeks and you will lose the weight guaranteed or you money bad. All right, let me give you a related one. Hey, I want to tell you about something pretty cool. We have a database of all of the business ideas that have been discussed on this podcast.

So hundreds of episodes, the team at HubSpot went through. They pulled out all the simple, relatable, interesting, profitable ideas that we have brainstormed and they're all available for download for free. Just click the link in the description below. Thank you to our friends at HubSpot for sponsoring this podcast and put into together this free resource for you guys. Back to the show. Sean, have you guys, and Ari, have you guys ever seen, like, the meme or a video or in real life of like a ripped black guy doing pull-ups like in the corner of a busy street and just looking yoked?

Yes, love those. Did you ever want to monetize that? It wasn't my first thought. I'm curious. So check this out. I just, Rolling Stone, did an article in this thing. And it didn't get picked up a lot, but it's, it was so cool. You took that as validation? So it doesn't have a name, but it's very similar to a UFC event. Okay, it just starts with just, first of all, there's just people kind of hooting and holler, just screaming in the background right now, this is to start the video, but there's guys doing pushups, watts, dips. Okay, so what am I watching? This looks like a rap battle, but they're just working out instead. Exactly. So check this out. There's no name for this. There's only a couple

post about it, but there's this whole community of people, and I've followed them on Instagram, and they're obsessed with calisthenics. This one guy, he basically, I think he changed his name. It's like Abu. He went to prison. He got into calisthenics, and he got out, and he decided to turn it into a competition, and it's exactly like a rap battle meets a UFC fight. And so basically, there's, looks like there's a hundred people in a room, and they are all crowded around a very small circle where there's a pull-up bar. There's like an area to do... There's a guy doing a walk-out like a UFC fight, right? He's coming out with his own.

And he's got like a character. He's got like a mask on and like a cool looking chain. His name is extra money. So it's extra money versus calisetics the prince. And it's basically they are the final, they're the main event, but leading up to it. So it's like 150 people, they go in this room, and they are surrounding this little circle area.

And there's an opener where like some guys are doing like cool tricks on the pull up bars and showing how strong their abs are. Then there's an undercard where there's two guys going after it and they do a battle and they do face-offs. They do what they like have music walking in and they get face to face and they're talking trash to each other and people are betting on it and they're throwing money at them and they're hooting and hollering at them and shit. And then there's a final battle and it's like I think it's like 70 pull-up. I have it up here. The battle set is what they call it, which is a great game. 100 burpees, 50 muscle ups, 75 dips and then 75 squats with a

65 pound dumbbell. How great is this? And then there's just and there's, and there's, and there's, and like they're enclosed like a rat battle circle or like an Indian wedding. Yeah. And there's no, I don't think there's a name for this, but there's this entire community of people who are into this. It's like, it's like in mostly cities that these guys are doing it. And they do it sometimes on like the weirdest objects that they can find like a street pole or something like that. And they are jacked to the gills. They are just, they're just like ripped.

And this guy, Abu, I think that's his name, he turned it into a competition. I don't even think it has a name, but 100% this could become a thing and be all over the country. This is the coolest thing I've seen this week. How great is that?

The name is great too. Last Man Standing. I feel like that's a... Is that what it's called? I think that's the name of the video. I don't know if that's the name of the video or the name of the competition. I think they should just call that the name of the competition.

This is actually pretty excellent. It reminds me... I mean, it has elements of one of my favorite films. It's not a foreign film, but it was a little foreign to me. at the time, which was the Kimbo-Slicse backyard street fights. You know, but this is like the like more good for you version of that where you don't feel like so dirty at the end of the whole thing.

So this is really great. I just want to say that to all the combatants that participate. I can totally see this being a thing. It's kind of made for content. I'm surprised this video is not more popular, meaning, you know, I don't know if a lot of people are going to attend in person. but the whole thing makes you want to stop and watch, which is, which is cool.

It's the best. They have nicknames. Do you remember XFL? Remember, he hate me? So for the young guys listening, when Sean and I were like eight years old, there was this thing called the XFL, which was an alternative to the NFL.

By Vince McMahon, Trump was a part of it. They were trying to compete with the NFL. And they all had great, and they did like a bunch of, like they allowed like celebrations. And they also had funny nicknames. So the jerseys oftentimes didn't have people's last name. One of the most famous guy, it was called He Hate Me,

because whatever he hits people, they hate him. And this one, they're a spec nasty. There's extra money. There's all these, like, awesome names in the calisthenics world. This is so good. I saw this, and I was like, this needs to be a thing. You know how offices name their meeting rooms? I think I found one for the Hampton office that you're in right now.

I think you're in Specnasty. Yeah. Like pit juice is right down the street. Yeah, exactly. So I like that. Another less good one that I actually am training for. And this is similar to something you had talked about. Go to, there's another link that I sent.

It's called apexathletofficial.com. Oh, dude, I saw this. Is this the idea that I've been begging for, like the combine, but for, I was saying for youth athletes, but it looks like maybe it's for adults. Yeah, I guess for anyone. But it's like, you know, like over the hill dads who like want to stay in shape. And the tagline is like finally something to train for. and I'm actually training for one of them.

So I got a coach through the... It's great, right? It's... So basically this thing... I think that doesn't say that on the website, but I think it's hilarious that you called it their tagline. It says it all over their Instagram. It was like finally something to train for.

And this guy Tim started it. And it's basically... They're doing competitions all over the country. And it's very similar to the combine. It's a little bit different. It's like run a mile, bench press 225, deadlift, sprint, 40 yards, broad jump, vert. And I think that's it.

and they have like a leaderboard and they have like records and they do I think a dozen or half a dozen events a year. I'm signed up for one in December. I hired a trainer through them. It's pretty sick. This is awesome.

Tim, good job with this. Tim, I would love to talk to you and party with you on a youth version of this. I think youth sports is the place to go for something like this. But this is really cool. So you go, you do the vertical leap, a 40-yard dash,

Deadlift, bench press, run a mile. You do all these in a row? Like a day, like a couple hours. Gotcha. Yeah, that's very cool. Okay, I like that idea. I mean, I don't know which one's your idea. I think the last man standing one's technically your idea for this.

For drunk ideas. Actually, it seems like it's their idea. Yeah, it's the idea. I think what you're saying is more of this. Yeah, yeah. That's valid here. Ari, what's you got? I've got an idea that I'm going to run by you.

what's more profitable than casinos? I do not know. Church, I don't know. I'm thinking casinos for children. I love it. Are you coming in with pure Dr. Evil? Okay, go on. So have you seen one of these?

It's a claw machine, arcade. Yes. They have one in my town. And there's probably, it's just like this small space, the prey has about 150 claw machines in it. And it's token base. So you're like, it's not real money. Yeah.

Super colorful. They're using like toys that kids go insane for like Nitos, loboos. It's, it's absolutely insane. And is there no other games besides claw machines? So it's like just pure claws? It's claws. And it's those like totally rigged, like try to cut the three. red and get like a 50-pound laboo-boo.

Looks like one of them has like the punch machine. Yeah, exactly. We're just like, you try to get the thing to fall off the edge. I went to one and there was probably 15 people, 15 parents in there. And they give you a shopping cart. So they're setting the tone. Like, you're going to be in here a while. Dude, that's genius, actually, to give you a box to fill up.

I've never found a box. I didn't want to fill up if handed to me. Did your kid win anything? So they do a good job of like, I think the odds are better than like your typical grocery store claw machine because you do like you see other people with things in their carts. TBD how long they'd been there, how much they paid for that ultimately.

But I mean, of course, like the toys they're giving away, the machines that have the most like put out are probably giving away toys that cost 30 cents. And it's basically your average. like $2 a game. Is this, like a go? Like, how do you compare this to Chucky Cheese, right? So Chucky Cheese, similar idea.

Go play games, get tickets to get a prize at the end. This is like the game is to get the prize. Like, to get the prize is the game. Are there other differences between these like, what are they called gotcha arcades? Gotcha, yeah. Because it is just like a casino. Like you go in, there's only one thing to do.

Like, Chuckie Cheese is like fun. You can go play in the ball pit. So is your idea just, hey, check this out? Or do you have a twist on this idea? Because I have a twist for you because we're teammates. Oh, go for it. All right, Sam, you want to go first? All right.

So my partner Joe helped fund this idea and didn't take off. But there is another guy in the space that it did take off. But basically what these guys did was they got a small warehouse and they put hundreds of claw machines in the warehouse. And they turned it into an app where kids or whoever could download the app and watched the camera and they could control the claw machine and whatever they won, it got shipped to them. And it was called like winner, winner. And it didn't work out. But there's another company called claw e. It's the word claw and then e. Yeah, they're big. I think they do like 30 or 40 million

in revenue according to the Financial Times. And they have like 400,000 reviews on the app store. So what I like about what you're saying, Sam, is in one way, they decrease the friction, right? Because you just play from your bedroom. You just be on your phone. You don't have to go anywhere. on the other hand though you know there's this sort of delayed gratification right and there's uh you know you got to wait for things to ship to you that's not great so i'm thinking we go the other way here you know like um carvana have you ever seen where you the carvana buildings where it's a tall vertical thing and it's essentially a car vending machine so you go there's no car salesman i don't think you literally just buy the car and then it gets dispensed out of this like gigantic car

vending machine. Yeah. And it was very, like, striking. Like, if you're driving on a highway, you would see one of these. It's like, what is this like Lego Tower of cars? And it would be a Carvana. And so it had that kind of wow factor. Have you bought a car from there?

Well, no, I'm not a dummy, but... Dude, I did. I've bought and sold cars here. I thought they were going to go out of business because they bought my car or they gave an offer for the car, you know, set unseen, and I shopped it around. And all the dealers were like, yeah, they, pay like crazy high for cars to sell it to them. And it's pretty crazy to buy a phone, buy a car on your phone. So it's pretty awesome. So you got one out too? You sold and bought?

Yeah. Yeah. When you bought, was it like a car vending machine? No, they brought it to our house. Oh, okay. But it's a crazy service. So I'm a big car vanda guy. I don't know how on earth they make a profit, but it's amazing. So here's the idea. I think claw machine, but just scaled up Mr. B. So, like, don't you ever go shopping, like, in your downtown? And you're like, how is the store open? Like, how many people are buying candles from here? Like, how could you possibly pay the rent? So we find one of those, and we just replace the building with a giant claw machine.

So it's a claw game, but the claw is huge and the prices are huger. They're real people. Finally, something for people like us or whatever you said, the tagline was of that other thing. So it's like a claw machine, but the thing you get out is, is like, you know, a PS5 is the smallest prize you could get. You know what I mean? There's like a baby grand piano in there. There's like, you know, a small golf cart that you could get out of this thing.

And so you just entire like a family trek bicycle with the buggy in the back. Like you just, there's just huge prizes. But it's the same odds. But it's like, you know, 10 bucks ago, right? You got to, you got to spend some to get some. And I just think that would be a spectacle. And I think people would want to see people doing it. and I think you could fake it until you make it with these types of things.

So I'm a big sucker for lines. If I see that there's a line to a place, my brain just automatically assumes it must be great and worth it. Yeah, or if it has a sign that says the world's greatest, like world's greatest coffee, I stop every time. Yeah, I'm like a personal Guinness book, like, tester, who's like, I'll tell you if it's the greatest or not. And when I went to go visit you in New York,

New York is like the king of this. By the way, the best ice cream I ever had, Cafana in New York. that was unbelievable ice cream. That was true. They actually did have the best ice cream. But most places just had crazy lines. And in New York, I went to one place and the guy who owned it fessed up. He goes, yeah, for the first two months, I just paid people to stand outside. He goes, we just fake the line for the first two months. He goes, and now we've had a line for two years. And I was like, wow. So I think you could do that with pretty much any of the ideas we've said so far.

Why would he tell you that? What? Why would he tell you that? Did you ask? He knows I'm a guy who would respect the hustle, right? Some people hear that and they judge you. I hear that and I adapt you up. Well, you judged them as being awesome. I hate when people say, don't judge me. You know, do you not want me to judge you as being amazing? That's pretty cool.

All right, great idea. How much did you spend there? I gave each of my kids a $10 limit. Wow, all right. Wow, see, they're for 12 minutes. How long did that last? It was about four and a half minutes. All right, Sean, what do you got?

All right. Next idea. Okay, Sam, do you cook much? Saldomly, sometimes. If you do cook, you ever cook with butter? Love butter. Tons of butter. Tell me, let's get a little detail.

Tell me how you butter up. So are you, you take the, are you a stick guy? You're a spray guy? What are you good? Definitely not spray. Agreed. What's it called the Irish? Irish gold.

Irish gold. Or whatever it's called. Kerry gold. Carry gold. So you, you, you, slice. Yeah. You drop in the pan, it starts melting.

Did you put too much? Did you put too little? Well, you're a pot committed to whatever decision you just made. You put too little. Now you've got to have ketchup butter where you're trying to catch up by adding more, but now you've got two butters melting at different rates. One's going to start, right? That's a problem.

Put too much. Now you're just a butterball. Pans. So that's a problem. You've got to nurse the thing. You're sitting there swirling. Well, I saw something and I'd like to show this to you. And you're going to think that.

this is a stupid idea. I can tell you that right now. Isn't that the point? Well, the secret point is I think I want you to like these ideas. But I want to just explain this thing. So you're going to see this video. You're going to think this is stupid. It's a person who is putting a stick of butter. She's melting it. And she's putting it in an empty deodorant canister. This way, she's going to roll out the deodorant, aka the butter, and put it on the pan.

So she's doing it on the pan. She's doing it on her toast. she's just rolling the butter like a deodorant stick. Super easy. No mess. Control your volume. Spread evenly. Tons of dispensing problems solved. Now you might think, again, stupid idea,

but I'd like to draw your attention to the numbers in the corner. 2.8 million people have liked this video. 27,000 people have commented on this video. They love it, they hate it, doesn't matter. It grabbed their attention. It's a very attention-getting product. And I just want to point out that

in the comments, if you go study the comments of this post as I did, and I ran a sentiment analysis and, you know, crunched the numbers. Yeah, yeah, it was pretty advanced statistical stuff. I don't want to, you know, make you feel dumb by telling you everything that I did, but I will tell you one thing that I found. There is a non-zero number of people who are like, oh, I do that. I've been doing that for years. And I don't know if you've ever seen, you've ever seen a diagram of what's called a happy path?

Do you know what a happy path is? No. Is that the thing where someone walks across the, the grass and diagonally. Exactly. Like somebody paved a sidewalk to walk to someplace, but then everybody wants to walk a different direction. And so many people want to walk a different direction that they, basically, it forms a trail

and it's a trail of evidence that this is actually what people wanted. That's what I found. I found a happy path here. I think that people want a new form factor for this. And if you think that's silly, I'd draw your attention to something else very cool. Have you seen the new vacation whipped cream sunscreen? Yeah, those guys are. wild. I've not seen the, I don't know about the new one, but I've seen a company called

vacation that makes whipped cream sunscreen. They have a new version. There's, yeah, I think I mean, I think I explained it pretty well there. Um, so basically they have this new form factor for sunscreen where they do it in a whipped cream bottle. This thing's taken off. It goes viral every time on social media because it's super fun. You spray it. It looks like a dollop of whipped cream. And it's just a more fun way to apply sunscreen. Um, my kids in their school right now is I was swim team season. The most popular form of sunscreen was like a makeup brush powder. So you just like powder the thing and you just like rub their face with a brush because kids don't like when you sort of have to put sunscreen like cream on them and rub it in. It kind of bothers them or the

spray goes everywhere. So form factor changes, underrated, butter in a deodorant stick. Make the butter that way. Make the butter a roll on butter. And I think you have a pretty killer innovation in the butter aisle. The butter aisle is pretty, pretty stale. There's not a lot going on there. We got salted and unsalted. That's pretty much all we have. There's like a, we talked about this a long time ago, but there's like a consistent pattern of New York places that go viral for like six months. And it's where you take a food and you do, there's like four categories. It's like you take a side food and you make it the main thing. So like instead of cookie dough ice cream, it's just cookie dough. You take, uh, it's just cookie dough. You take, uh, it's.

like a normal food and you make it a different color, like a rainbow croissant. Yeah. And then the third one is you take like a thing and you make it really large or really small. Like the, what are they called? Like Melissa's cupcakes. I forget what they're called. Like little bitty cupcakes. Yeah.

Tiny food or gigantic food. Yeah. Like a 10 pound burger. Yeah. And we had, I forgot his name. The guy who started Grooons. Chad. Chad.

Chad was awesome. and he was like, kept talking about like different forms. And he made it almost sound like, well, I just took athletic greens and I put it in gummy because it's easier. I just changed the form. Right. He didn't say that. We said that.

And he was like, I'm not going to say that, but yes. But that is 100% true. This whipped cream stuff, another great. I mean, that is great. Just it's, I don't even know. I bet you, I would imagine that this vacation sunscreen stuff, it's just fine. But the fact that they like put it in this weird form makes me want it. And it looks delicious.

Right now, one of the biggest trends is. liquid vitamins. I don't even know why it's a trend exactly. You have to store it in the fridge. It doesn't taste that great. But some people want it. So like Mary Ruth's, she's built like an empire on liquid vitamins right now, row, row nutrition. They're selling, they're doing like, you know, millions and millions of dollars in revenue by just changing the form factor from vitamins are gummies and pills. Nope. Now they're liquid that you store in the fridge and you drink cold because different people prefer things to different things. And it also gets attention. It gives you a reason to buy at RTB.

By the way, I think I realize why I like drunk ideas so much. Because some of them are like legit. No, I think it's because it's like a challenge. It's like, how believable can you make this terrible idea? It's like, you know, debate club where they're just like, you have to argue, you know, it's not your real opinion. They just assign it to you. You're for this or against this topic.

That's what this episode is for me. It's like my debate club practice where it's like take any idea and figure out a way to make it sound like half plausible. Yeah, until you're like given the worst topic ever. I remember in debate class, they had to give me the stuff that like capitalism is bad or something like that. And I'm like, I'm going to fail. I can't do it. You start talking, you rip your shirt, Hulk Hogan style, then you just come out in favor for it because you just can't do it.

It's sort of like being a defense attorney. My sister was a defense attorney and she had like had to like defend them. I'm like, how on earth do you do that? That seems so hard to be able to just like defense when you know it's guilty. That's us right now. Hey, let's take a quick break. You know that feeling when strategy is done, the brief is written, everyone's aligned, and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content?

That someone is usually you, and it's due tomorrow. Well, the Breeze assistant from HubSpot can help. It works right inside HubSpot. You can draft campaign copy, blog posts, emails, all in your brand voice, all using your actual customer data. So you don't create just content. You create content that converts. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.

All right, you seem like you're itching to say something. What do you got? All right. Have you guys seen this? Go to go to tin can dot kids. Oh my God. I've heard about this. So tin can dot kids. Can you explain this? Everyone is sharing their numbers for their kids. So this is like a, it's a landline, but it works through the Wi-Fi. And you can like pre-program numbers in it. This is so awesome. So it's super safe to use. physical phone, right? It's a physical phone with like a punch numbers.

Swirly cord. That was always fun to play with all you're on the phone. Look, they feature it right on there. Twirl that cord. Okay. So speaking my language. But this reminded me of a time a few years ago where I was like, you know what? I'm not, I'm going to get rid of my smartphone. And what ended up happening with that was that I was like, okay, well, now I need a Garmin, a GPS. I need an alarm clock. I need to get a camera. You have to unbundle all of these things. So when I'm looking at this, I'm like, okay, so these kids can reach each other at home, but how are you going to catch them? So I was like, how about beepers for kids? I love how some entrepreneurs right now are trying to ride the AI wave. And Ari's like, I'm going to ride this tin can wave. Not a lot of people surfing this tin can wave right now, but I see the future.

By the way, a little stat on this. So the thing costs like $10 a month. as a subscription to use. And they say they've sold hundreds of thousands. They just raised, they've raised a total of $15.5 million. Oh, I'm looking at it now. To grow the business.

So you buy the phone for $100, and then it's $10 a month to be able to call non-tin can phones. So, okay, free to call other tin cans, 10 bucks a month to be able to call normal people's phones. This is awesome. The school in Kansas delivered free tin cans to 200 plus families and students.

it's a it's like kind of riding the trend of getting kids off of smartphones as you said and it's super like viral like looking product like it makes you kind of stop and the name is great and stuff like that yeah they keep selling out have you guys seen um what's the little radio sean that i have at my house tony's tony there's tony's is one and then the other one is called like yodo is it called yodo okay uh it's like a little box and there's cards you buy the cards for ten dollars and Cards are sort of like a CD album where you like one card, we'll have an album. We have Beatles, we have Frozen. And then you can also record your own. And you put it in this box and it plays music and it's screen free music. It's so good. And I think that business is doing north of 100 million in revenue. It's music, but it's also like nighttime stories and things like that. They do a little bit more too. And you could also record your own. So I actually recorded like or we had grandparents record a story and we put it on our phone and then the phone can then

be attached to a card, and it's, like, it's absolutely amazing. This business is so good. But, Ori, I think your beeper idea is genuinely a good idea. I don't even, I mean, I almost feel like, are we going to need to edit it out of drunk ideas and put it into a main episode? Because kids love, like, my kids love anything they could take with them. In fact, it's the bane of my existence that anywhere we want to go, they bring, like, so much junk.

It's like, he's bringing his Pokemon book collection when we're going swimming. It's like, you don't need a binder full of Pokemon cards. It's completely irrelevant. go on to a doctor's checkup and they pack like a backpack of junk. And so they like having things with them. And they like wearing things. They like, you know, if you give them like a bracelet or a necklace or a chain or whatever, they like that type of stuff. We got them like a fanny pack. They loved a fanny pack. Like they kind of just like having their own stuff that they can bring with them when they go out. And so the idea of a clip on beeper. I know for a fact my kids would love

that. Now the question is, what do you do with it? Who beeps them and what is going on? And So, like, you know, because if I'm with them, you know, they're never really alone, right? But kids are not really, like, by themselves where I would need to page them or beep them to get them to, like, do anything? This, okay, this actually is one of the things that I think is going to be a future trend. So this is TikTok research that I'm quoting here. By the way, how old are your kids are you? Mine are nine and seven. Okay, so they're more away from you more often than mine.

I'm not, I got, like, you talk to. Yeah. So she was saying this woman, this, like, TED Talk lady, was saying, that the statistic was like, 60% of parents won't let their kid go to the next aisle over in a grocery store. And my thinking is... Are you a 60 or are you a 40? Yeah. I'm a 40. I was trying to convince my kids to walk home from the bus.

To go get the groceries themselves. Charge it. I think there's going to be a backlash. I think there's going to be a trend later. Oh, like free-range kids. Free range, more independent. unreachable, but still reachable. I think you're 100% right.

I saw a TikTok that was like this woman. She just said free range kids. And I immediately was like, yes, what is that? I need to know what that is. I'm already like, I vibe with whatever that philosophy is. And I know I'm over parenting. So definitely, I don't even know where to start, but I'm in line with that philosophy. It'll be a counter trend to like a lot of parents instincts.

It's just to like over, overparent everything. Overcoach, over control kids. And it's exhausting for the parent. and it's kind of exhausting for the kids. And you raise like a more fragile kid is the idea when you do that. Versus like letting them build a little independence. Are you 60 or you 40? Grocery store?

I probably would not let them go and I. Well, I mean, they do. So like, but I'm not like trying to let them just wander around by themselves. What about walking to school? No chance. No chance. What age? At what age can you, can they do that?

These are tough questions. Wow. I kind of think like a 9-10. I think that's when I would be like... Yeah, agreed. But I still might be like walking 200 meters behind them, you know, for now, for a little while at least.

Or I need the beeper. I need the air tag on them to see their progress and see where they're going, which I guess is the opposite of free range. I'm just sort of like... Dude, I know people... I was out with this... Or we hung out with a couple recently. And you know the nanit, like the baby monitor with the camera? The baby

whoop band? They had one of those things. I don't think it was a nan it, but they had the camera, and it was on their 12-year-old, like, in bed. And I was like, you know, at what age are you going to, like, start exploring and doing some crazy stuff and don't want a camera on you? But it was insane, these people. I was like, you guys, 12's old enough, all right? You're going to see stuff you don't want to watch. So what would be the twist on this beeper thing? So what would they get? So one is, are you going down the path of location tracking or no? No, it's like, okay, so now, just riffing off of the tin can, if your

friend can only reach you. It works the exact same way a beeper used to work. I think I'm confused about beepers. You beep in the number you want to call back. That's the way beepers work. Dude, imagine this. You see a small, you have a tiny screen, you basically can only see like 10 numbers. And so oftentimes the 10 numbers would just be the number you want the person to call back. But if it's your dad, like what I used to do with my dad, I would just type in 911 and he knew to call home. I honestly think I'm going to make this idea I think this is like my daughter if she had if her friend had one of these

and she had one of these and she could send little secret messages basically but like they're obviously innocent because there's only limited things you can really say whether it's like I think you could do voice to text now so I think you could hold a button on your beeper say something into it

and that would turn into text because voice to text is awesome now so like whisper flow I think you could send emojis or whatever but basically anything if they could just buzz each other basically back and forth they would do that all day

they would never stop And the profits would never stop, Ari. It's free. You pay one cent a message, and we just count on the addiction. Today's podcast is brought to you by my friends at Mercury. They make the world's best banking product. I think you know this already. I use Mercury for all of my businesses.

I think I have like maybe seven or eight businesses. We use Mercury as our business banking across all of them. And now they actually just launched a personal banking account. So I have my personal account there. I moved off of Wells Fargo and Chase. I'm just all in on Mercury. Why, I like products that are easy to use. I like products that get me and the problems that I have.

So like very easy to make a joint account with my wife, very easy to spin up virtual cards, one click and I get savings yield. It just has all the stuff that I need in one place. So if you're looking for the best banking product on the market, it's definitely Mercury. I will fistfight anybody who disagrees with me on that. Go to mercury.com slash personal and learn more. Mercury is a fintech, not an FDIC insured bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group and column N.

All right, what do we got, Sean? What do you got? Okay, here. I'm going to, okay, here, oh, I have one that's an AI defense called Slop Stopper, and then I have another one called Mexican Benihana's, which I think you kind of understand the idea. You tell me which one you want. Is Benihana's not Mexican?

What is it? Japanese? Benihana's, what is? It's like Habachi, which is Japanese? I don't know. I mean, they make, like, fried rice, and they toss, like, shrimp into your mouth. So it's not Mexican food. As Japanese are known to do. Oh yeah. It sounds like you want Mexican Benihana. All right. So here's the thing. You know it. Is there so in your mouth?

Yeah, exactly. Chips, dips, gawak canon in the third course. Tell me you wouldn't want the guac cannon. Open your mouth. I'm not opening my mouth. So the best cuisine is Mexican food. I don't even think we really need to talk much about that. It's the best cuisine. The most fun dining environment is chef making food where the table is the stove. The guy's making it for you. Freshest can be. Food to mouth doesn't even hit the plate. Unbelievable experience. Pre-can jokes, magic tricks, blah, blah, blah. You're sitting in a semi-circle. So I think Benny Hannes has already, like, found an optimal food social experience. I think Mexican food has found the ideal food. One plus one equals three. Great. I'm in. Have you, have you seen a fajita?

Just a open casket fajita right in front of you right there. You know, when you bring fajitas to the table, they already bring it in a flaming skillet. Come on, let's make the table the skillet. Marriachi bands entertainment is built in. I already mentioned the Guacan. And I also have one more innovation that I was planning to keep close to the vests. But in the spirit of transparency, salsa lazy river running around the table at all times. Constant motion salsa, just dip as you go.

Were you laughing at yourself? Were you laughing at yourself when you wrote that down? Babe, I got it. No, I was like Salsa Lazy River. That is Primo. Shit. I was like impressed with myself last night. I was like, that is a great...

I mean, that was the cherry on top. That's so good. I mean, I don't even know what to say. That's great. Hanna's annual revenue, 300 to 500 million a year. Have you seen the documentary on Benihana, the founder? No. I read his story before.

He doesn't even like a great story. Yeah, his name's Rocky Yaoki. You know who is, which is great name. They should have called it Rocky Aoki. You know who his son is, is Steve Aoki, yeah. And he was kind of like a wild man. Imagine being Steve Aoki and you're not the coolest guy in your family. It says that he competed in Japan.

in wrestling in the Olympics. And then he was amazing at track and field. But then he comes to New York, and I think he starts like an ice cream truck, which goes okay. And then he eventually starts Benny Hana's, which goes public. And while he's doing this,

he does all these weird competitions. Like I think he was a professional powerboat racer. At one point, he, like, set a record for, like, flying a hot air balloon, like across some distance. And he even got in trouble by the, SEC for insider trading because I think he was trying to like buy back Benny Hanna and he like thought like a bad report was it to come out something crazy like that but he's like this like amazing entrepreneur with a crazy crazy crazy story he passed away at age 69 due to pneumonia accomplished for the

river of cancer and hep C yeah so we like the feel like you didn't need to add the hep C in there it says that his hep C was reportedly because his his hep C came from a blood transfusion after a speedboat crashed under the Golden Gate Bridge. First of all, you did a cover story on this guy for the hustle. This photo you have of him, absolute gangster. Look at this guy. I love this guy. By the way, his quote at the top of this is maybe the tagline for the podcast.

Money's not everything. Just 99%. Rocky Aoki. This guy's awesome, right? Classic. Classic Rocky. All right. Who's got one?

Sam? I blew my load early on, Doug. You had one? It was kind of one and a half. Bro, I was setting the expectations low, and you somehow, you somehow, he came in below the expectation. I've just,

they're just so much lamber than y'all's. Okay, listen to this. So about eight months ago, we did this thing. So with Hampton, we build core group. So it's a group of eight people. Are you doing Hampton ad instead of a drunk idea?

No. That's an incredible pivot. The Trump-esque double down on your part. I'm never saying sorry. We make core groups in different cities. And so if we have like six people in Austin and they need a core group, we have to go out and find like three people that would be a good fit for them.

And so we hired this kid. We came up with this idea because we couldn't find a good service that did this. But we hired this kid and we paid him $100 a person. And he went and he found, I think, 200 people that could be potential fits for that core group. And he researched each person. and we sent the thing we call bulky mail, but that's like a direct marketing term, but we sent a gift that was super customized and directly related to that person.

So, for example, there was a company called like Honey Bekeeping, or sorry, honey bookkeeping. It was like a bookkeeping service. And we sent them like this artisanal, like amazing honey. And we wrote this like special letter just for them. And it's taken about six or seven months in order to get. the ROI data on this, but it was one of our best marketing channels where we, like, made this super customized gifts. The problem was that I had to find a kid who like kind of knew how to do this,

but we were just making it up as we went. And so I think that someone can truly make this a product where you upload your lead list and you make heavily, heavily customized gifts based off the person's social media or their website. That's a great story, good recovery. There was a guy who's doing something called jumbo mail or dumbo mail or something like that. And his tagline was, nobody opens their mail. Everybody opens a package. And I was like, yep, actually, makes total sense. And it was like a big kind of like what you called bulky, like kind of like looking package.

And then you put whatever you want inside. But I don't think he was doing the like full customization for sales. But that's pretty cool. I like that idea. How much would you pay to send those out, right? You have a pretty high LTV product. We are paying $100. per person.

Per person, yeah. That's probably too low for like buying stuff, putting it in a package, sending it out, doing the research, like, that doesn't make sense, right? It'd have to be, like, much more than that. Yeah, I mean, it was just like a kid doing a one-off thing for us. So, like, you probably made... But you had to include the cost of the stuff inside. It could have been $200, but a lot of the gifts weren't expensive.

They were just very relevant. So, like, someone could have tweeted out their favorite band, and it was, like, a vintage T-shirt of that band or something like that. Like it wasn't like, or for the B thing, it was like a $20 thing of honey. But then it was a handwritten letter. And the ROI on this marketing campaign that we did was amazing. It was really good. It was very, very, very good.

And there's this other company called World 50. Have you heard of World 50? No. World 50 is a community for Fortune 5,000 executives. It does hundreds a million a year in revenue. If you go to their website, you will not see. anything about it other than like a login. And the way that they get a large percentage of their customers

is sending mail like really cool letters to executives. And so that's where we were inspired by it. Very effective. Very cool. Ari, did you have one more? Otherwise, I can bring us home. Are you just going to... I also blew my load, so...

You're a load blower, huh? Oh, you're a little different what you say for some reason. No, you had another one. The, the, before Mexican bedihannas. I got several more, but I mean, now it's now it's embarrassing for you guys. So I will graciously pretend that I was also out of ideas. No, tell me a slop stop. Oh, Slop stop.

This is stolen from a guy. I got to find him on Twitter. Basically what he realized is like, hey, you know how AI is making it really easy to do like mass outreach? Mass personalized outreach? It's like, you know, here's an AI sales, SDR, right? Sales Development rep. So they, you know, they scrape email addresses. they email you, they text you, they call you.

It seems like it's from a real person, but it's not. And so that's just going to be like a huge problem in the future. So this guy said, if you can't beat him, join him. So what he did was a very interesting thing. He created the defense. He was like, I'll catch the slop. So he basically, you reach out to him. His AI will reply.

It'll ask several questions. You need to now go research and reply to those questions. And he says, you know what? I'm kind of interested in a call. let's book a call. He books a call. And, you know, it basically like just waste the other person's time right back. And I thought, oh, that's kind of cool. And I thought, he should go further. He should have an AI show up to the call. And on the call, he should ask more questions and request detailed follow-ups that they have to go produce, you know, case studies and whatever else they're trying to sell. And then he should ask for the contract, be like, I think I'm almost ready to sign here and get the contract. Then he'll send back red lines, absurd red lines. Now you're paying a lawyer to have to deal with that. And at the last minute, he just goes to you and never come. back. And I think that is going to be the defense that you need to stop the insane amount of slop you're going to have coming at you from sales reps. If you have any, if you're any kind of business owner, you're just going to get bombarded from all directions. So at the hustle, we sent

so many emails and we would get like tens of thousands of vacation responders and stuff like that in like the company inbox. And I would browse them to see if there's anything interesting. What would have possibly been interesting? Like sometimes people would actually tell us like, like it wouldn't just be, it would be replies, even if we didn't ask for a reply. People would reply back with like interesting insights. And there was this one service. You might remember the name of it. I can't remember the name.

But it was like, hey, it would auto reply and it would say, hey, in order to combat spam, I make emails who I've never talked to. I make you pay me $1 to read your email. Yeah. And it was pretty brilliant. Do you remember what that was called? There's been a few of those. Bologi started one called Earn.

that he ended up selling to coin bits, but the same thing. It's a reverse inbox. So you publicly put out an inbox with a price and says, I'll read a reply to all messages that paid my Vig. It's the only true defense of spam is if you attached a price to everything you had to send. And if you're a normal person, that price could be so low, but a spammer sending millions of emails, so you would make it expensive for spammers,

but essentially free for normal people because it's such a low, low amount. It was never implemented in the email system because there was no micropayments. that's when email and the internet was early on. Now with crypto, you could do it, but it's too late. We've already set up all their systems, so nobody wants to adopt these things. This thing was really cool. I don't remember what it was called,

but I think it was really effective because every once in a while, I would pay a dollar to reach them to like test it. Why mail or something like that? There was like one other one. That's what I'm talking about. It was called something mail. Yeah, it was in their email signature.

It was like, by the way, if you really want me to reply, do this. You know what you should do, by the way? I don't brands do this? When you send up mass mail and then you get like a vacation auto responder, like, oh, I'm back on July 15th. I'm in Aruba. You should just have the AI respond.

Like, how was Aruba on the 16th? So thoughtful, right? Nobody's ever asked you how your vacation was after the vacation responder. What's the, I'm like horrible names are now. What's the name of the company that I think we both invested in that does mailers for e-com brands? Oh, post-pilot? Post-pilot. They're killing it.

They're killing it. People are sleeping on mail, man. And then you and I, you know, we had Alex on. Our friend Alex, Alex Daniels, has a company where he sends like hundreds of thousands of magazines out, which are basically just advertorials for a particular brand. And I know his revenue and profit numbers. They're pretty amazing. It's pretty crazy how much we're still sleeping on mail. Yeah, we use post-pilot for like our e-com brand and we would do like re-engagement campaigns.

Was it effective? Yeah, you bought before. We haven't seen it in a little while. like send a little thing that's like a postcard essentially. And they're super effective. I mean, the ROI, I don't remember off top of my head, it was like five to eight X return on your investment. So it's like it's kind of a no-brainer to do.

It's just like unsexy so most people don't do it. And most people believe it's kind of like, you know, ads don't work on me. They're sort of like, well, you know, junk mail, that's junk. And it's like, no, there's a reason it's being sent to you because people are still getting a return. They would not be spending the money to send this to you if there was no return. I just went to the post-pilot website, and they have an explainer video. And it's you and me explaining what it is.

Okay, you're welcome. All right. One last idea for you. Very simple, very simple, before we sober up and get back to our daily life. By the way, if you like these episodes in the comments on Spotify, on YouTube, tell us, I'm going to read all of them after this. We'll do more. Because I have to kind of, as you can see, coerce Sam into doing these episodes. So I need some ammo to back me up when you do these.

I gave great commentary. You did. You did. You did. In fact, I might have you just pitch this idea. I'm going to give you the name. You got to pitch it. Like debate club.

Ready? Take your roommate to work day. Go ahead. You have 10 seconds. I have to think. Well, you are 22. Your roommate works at home. It just faps all day.

And you decide to get them out of the house and you want to bring them to learn how to be an accountant. It sells itself. Something like that. So, you know, I was thinking about this. Because sometimes we get asked for advice. God knows why. And one of the things I consistently see

is that there are smart, hardworking people that just never find their thing. In fact, if I look at like a lot of my friends from high school or from college, much smarter than me, much more like hardworking and kind of fastidious, they'll stick with things. They're consistent. They have all the elements you need to be really, really successful. But I feel like when you, if you never find your thing, you'll never find out what you're made of, right? You'll never get to your 100% of what you can do. So I think although I'm not particularly

intelligent or hardworking, I did find my thing. And in finding my thing, I got out, whatever juice I had and my fruit got squeezed out. And I only got there through happenstance, through luck. I stumbled into, I met the right person at the right time of the right conversation, got the right exposure, tried the right thing, and I stumbled and bubbled into it. I think people don't really, there's not really great ways. There's no food courts for your career. There's not great ways to go even find out what are my options, what's on the menu, what's possible. So I kind of think if the world had a take your roommate to work day where you could kind of go see what life is like at somebody else's job for the day, it would just broaden the exposure of what you

even see. And you might like get inspired. You might realize like, damn, the place I work is crappy. I need to get like, this is my roommate. They're not like, why do they deserve to have such a better environment? I need to upgrade. So it might just cause you to raise your standards. It might cause you to have new ideas, to discover a new industry, to discover what our new role is like. So I think people don't really have good ways to get exposure to different career paths to ever find their thing. And instead, they're just asked the question, what do you really love? What's your passion? And it's like asking my, you know, four-year-old, what's your favorite food? And he's just only eaten cheese pizza and mac and cheese. He doesn't really even know. And, you know, I got him to

try salmon recently. He loves salmon. He just had no idea. And, you know, you got to broaden the horizons. And so that's take your roommate to work day. I've always wanted, like, Airbnb experiences for different jobs. Oh, you want to go do it for the day? Yeah, because I've always, like, when I see Mike grow, remember the show Dirty Jobs? I was like, I want to try it. So you don't know that show? No, what is it? So I don't remember which channel it was, but when you and I were like eight years old to 15 years old, it was on all the time. And he, it was called Dirty Jobs. He kind of had an Anthony Bourdain energy where he was like this, he was a successful like Hollywood guy, but he like kind of had blue collar energy to him. And he would spend the day with a blue collar

guy explaining how this dirty job works. But it was more like teaching you about life and getting know the character. So it was like a guy whose job it was to clean sewers or do porta-potties or garbage man or work on a farm, whatever, and he would like explore. And now it's sort of become his schick where he has lobbied the government and he's done well where he is getting funding in order to help fund electrician schools or rather he funds scholarships to those things. He's a little bit of an American hero if he asked me. He's like pretty badass. And this show was on forever and it was so good. And I always remember thinking, I'm like, I wish I could explore because I always was entrepreneurial. And when you're thinking of like a new idea, when you think

of a new business idea that's totally outside of your realm, what do you do? You have to like figure out who the person that you need to contact is and then like beg them if you can come and like shadow them or do something like that. Like our friend Austin has a new company and it's related to some type of blue collar industry. And he's like cold email, a ton of them. And it'll go for a day to like shadow them and search for problems that he could try to solve on their behalf. Well, we take your roommate to workday. Appreciate your support for the idea. It's a little wind in our sales.

All right, should we vote for our favorite idea, the winner of drunk ideas, round three or four, whatever this is? I will remind you of the ideas. So I brought reverse vacation, butter deodorant, stop the slop, Mexican Benihana's,

and take your roommate to work day. Sam had Last Man Standing, the Calisthenics Showdown. He had the Jumbo Dumbo Mail idea. And then Ari had the claw machines idea, the Kids Casino, and she had Kids Beepers. And so those are the ideas. I know what I'm voting for. You can only go for one.

Write down what you want. All right. We're going to reveal. Everybody got theirs? Yep. three, two, one. What do you got? You can only see mine.

So, Ari, you voted four? Have you ever seen the look on women's faces when they do the guac table side? I'm going Mexican Vitigana. Mexican Venetianas, yes. Sam, what did you have? Kids beeper. You had beeper. I had beepers as well.

So Ari, you on your first time, came in and just stunted on us. or as what do they say last time you were on you mugged us already came in and just idea mocked us and now and beepers is is ready for action I think we should create this company by the way this is a great idea all right 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 no days off on a road let's travel never looking back all right let's take a quick break I want to tell you about marketing school it has a podcast that is part of the HubSpot podcast network and it is run by Neil Patel and Eric Sue. And these guys are both marketers who are running businesses. And so if you want real world tactics from practitioners who are actually out there in the field doing it, this is the podcast for you.

Check it out wherever you get your podcast.