My First Million - Frame Breaking Businesses: From Pomegranate Juice to VPNs

Episode Date: September 1, 2022

Episode 357: Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) talk about four businesses that change the way you think about what they do... from VPNs to pomegranate juice and more. ----- Links: * Unclaimed Baggage store * Comparitech * Quinstreet * Highkey * Franklin Mint * Wonderful Company * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. ------ Show Notes: (02:30) - Teddy Bear Law (12:50) - Frame Breaking Businesses (13:40) - Comparitech (21:00) - Quinstreet (31:55) - Highkey / AJ Patel (46:15) - Stewart Resnick ------ Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto * #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

So in like 2012, 2013, 2014, he started a vitamin brand. And it only did okay. And then he started also tinkering with a skincare brand, which it actually did much better. It got to like 10 million or so in revenue. He hired a CEO. The CEO kind of like drove it into the ground and didn't really do that well. And so he started focusing again to his vitamin brand. And he's like, look, it's doing okay.

But who's the best customer of a vitamin company? Dogs. Because this is it. I'm not disparaging him, but like, do they work? Yeah, why not? Like Fugazi, you know, like. Yeah. Welcome to Fagazi, Inc.

We make supplements for dogs. They'll never tell you if it works or doesn't work. What up? What up? Are we supposed to like start with like a catchphrase now? Hey boys and girls. Welcome to the business show where you learn how to make so much money that you'll get taxed out the ass. that's what rich people care about taxes.

If you don't care about taxes yet, you ain't rich. Do you care about taxes? Yeah. I like, I don't, I don't, I'm not going to live my life according to like where the low taxes are. But like, it's like the number two or number three thing that I'm thinking about. So I'm thinking about this whole New York, Texas thing. And I like do the math and I'm like, damn. Like, imagine I got a rent a place for let's just say like 20 grand a month.

Like that's how much taxes I'm paying by moving here versus staying or, you know, whatever it is. Like a lot of money a month. Well, you have a good thing. You could do the like Texas as your main residence and spend four or five months out of the year in New York. So that's not so bad. That's not so bad. But I need to do it with New York and Florida because Texas winter is not like winter. Winter that's desirable enough that you want to winter there.

You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Dude, have you heard about this like the teddy bear law, the teddy bear rule? No, what's that? So I was asking my tax guy. Oh, where you keep your like possessions? Yeah, basically I was like, so what's the rule? Is it six months out of the year?

What does it take to have residency in some place? And he was like, well, there's a bunch of little factors. He's like, but one, he's like, there was a famous case with Derek Jeter, the New York Yankee shortstop. They're like, Jeter wanted, Jeter played for the Yankees in New York, but he didn't want to pay New York taxes. He wanted to pay Florida taxes because he's like, look, this is my home, this is where I live, blah, blah, blah. But you also have an apartment in New York and you play in New York. So you work there. Your home is there.

and your kids go to school there, I think, and so they ended up, it got ruled in court, and they call it, I think the name they call it is the, I haven't looked this up, it's like the teddy bear law. And it's basically like, where would you keep your teddy bear? So the place you would call home. So like factors like where your kids go to school, where are the possessions that you love. It all goes into this like umbrella to be like, where do we actually think your home is? And actually, when I first heard this, I was like, wow, that's really like subjective for like a ruling or a law.

And actually it's one of the laws I kind of agree with. I actually think that that is more like how it should be done, which is like, dude, what's the spirit of this? Do you actually live here? Or do you just like stay here for exactly six months and one day every year? And I have to, you know, I don't actually know where you are at any given time. But if, you know, if you're working at a place, your kids go to school there, all your possessions are there, all your friends are there, your family is there. Like, that's where you live. As an avid listener of Dateline, one of the easiest ways to catch the husband who kills the

wife is like three weeks before he either bought like, you know, a trash bag and like a shovel or he Googled like how to dispose of a body. And last night I found myself Googling and I was so embarrassed to do this. So I went to an incognito window. I was like, I can't Google this. Like they're going to know that I killed her. Yeah. And it was like how does the state that you're visiting know like if I'm renting and I didn't even know what to Google by the way. I was trying to figure out how to phrase this. But if I live in Texas, how does New York even know that I'm there if I'm just renting a place? Dude, that's so funny. You said that. I did the same thing. And like, my queries sound exactly like, does the IRS really know? It's like somehow

that's how it's like formatted in my search. Like I went to Google with like a real deal. Dude, Google needs to understand italicized. Really? Yeah. Like the asterisk and everything. It's like, There's one browser that's just like, hmm, this guy's only ever incognito. And he's either looking at porn or taxes. Like, what's this guy's life like? Right? Because like, basically it's like, you know, I'm trying to Google like when you get, you know, if the IRS does this to you, is that like jail or just a fine?

Yeah. Are we bringing a rule or a law? Right. Are taxes a recommendation or a requirement? Well, what I learned Google, Googling this was the IRS and I it makes sense but I didn't even understand it. IRS is for federal. So like, but I pay my federal taxes no matter what.

But I'm like, okay, so then how does the state of New York actually know that I was ever here? And I'm trying to like figure I want to, I'm Googling that to follow the rule. But I am curious. And I was like, to be clear in case they also listen to podcasts. I'm Googling this, A, for a friend and B to enforce the law on my friend. Because I'm not here for anything else. And I was just curious. I'm just curious.

I'm like literally, how does the state of New York even know that I exist? I'm the same way. I have the same way. We're all go down this rabbit hole. Then I'm like 30 minutes in. I'm like, why am I even looking for this?

This is not applicable at all to me. But I'm like, I just want to know how it works. Like I'll be like, when you keep the receipt, does anybody ever go read the receipts? Like, you know, what actually happens?

Or like, you know, there's this Twitter account. I love called How Stuff Works or something like that. I love it. And today they posted a thing of like, it was like, how luggage gets loaded into an airplane. So there's a guy in the back of the airplane

and then there's like a conveyor belt shooting suitcases out of and he's stacking it like a perfect Tetris grid. And I'm just like, I do, I love this account because it's always these these things where I'm like, dude, how does the world actually work? Like I, you know, I know I give them my suitcase, but what happens after that? And it's like sort of the same thing with like either taxes

or like I'll Google just like, you know, rich people don't pay taxes. But how? Like, you know, like, what are these loopholes that I hear about? Are there really these loopholes? Like, are like, you know, universities have this endowment. What the hell are they doing with that? And I'm just like always trying to get to the bottom of like,

I want to have like an actual understanding of what's going on. And I feel like I have so little understanding about so many things on earth. But it's so funny that you brought that book. I actually wrote, I'm like doing the thing with Maven again, the ideation boot camp course. And I started talking about the book that I had as a kid. called How Stuff Works. And there's another one where they just like split like a power tool into two.

And you just see like a picture of like how a school bus like operates or whatever. And I'm like the reason why researching, which is what you and I do for this podcast is cool, is because whether you like it or not, America and the rest of the most of the world is, you know, guided by capitalism and commerce. And so like if you understand how like a business works, just like these books show you how like the luggage guy works, then you kind of understand like what's possible and what's not possible. Why laws are the way they are. why art is the way it is.

Like you can, it's not just money making, but it's just like the earth. Like just how the world and society. And so I actually was just writing that yesterday. And I totally agree. And I think that's why like studying businesses is cool. And by the way, like I think most people do this for science. They're like, you know, why is the sky blue? And like there is an element of that.

I'm talking about just like, here's a perfect example. We'll use the luggage one for example. It's like, question, what happens if you just never pick up your suitcase or like, what happens if you just simply like I see those bags over there that say that they're waiting for someone to come get them what happens if they don't like is this just going to pile up forever you want to know what happens of dr mario and then yeah i do know i'll say yeah i'll tee it up for you then there is an answer and it's actually kind of fascinating for somebody who goes and digs in and says like okay but then what then what they're like a kid like well why do they do that and why do they do that and why do they

do that and then you get to what's it called unclaimed baggage or whatever it's called like that was that the name of the company so basically the hustle wrote about it so if you Google like the hustle unclaimed baggage. There's a company in like rural Alabama. I think it's Alabama or Arkansas called unclaimed baggage and they sell 300 million dollars a year worth of unclaimed bags and they it's like a huge thrift store. You know right and uh and same thing with like the uh the shampoo at a hotel like you know I use this thing once what do they do with it? Do they just refill it and give it to the next person? I'm curious what do they do? It's like oh actually there's the whole company that recycles these. They take the half used shampoo.

poohs from hotels. And they tell the hotel, hey, we'll pay you nothing for it, but we'll come collect it for you. We'll take it off your hands. You can't give that to the next guest. And then they take that. And then they have like a basically a way to repackage and resell those. And their brand is around lessening waste on earth. And they, that company does extremely well. And so you actually find companies at the end of all these because again, this is like a giant little business ecosystem just in the same way that like, you know, there's plankton that eat stuff off the whale's head or whatever. It's like, you know, basically there's, a little business that's going to solve every one of these edge cases all around the world, right?

There's a person whose job it is to do that thing. And if you keep going far enough, you'll, like, find those little nicks and crannies. Well, which is a perfect segment for what I want to talk about today. Because here's what I want to, I'm going to give you a bunch of example of things that I'm calling frame breaking businesses. So like things that I've discovered that have changed how I thought about stuff. And there's a story. And by the way, today I was thinking, I was like, today's my leg day because I'm putting you on my back and I'm carrying us for this episode. I've got a, I've got like a side note, by the way, my mom yesterday while I work out with my mom sometimes.

And she was like, Sam Parr's legs. She'll just cause you Sam Parr, full name. I love it. I don't know if she knows that's like to your first and last, but Sampar's legs. Man, he's got strong legs. And I was like, yeah, he's great. And she's like, I was just looking at it. at his legs in the last video, the Mr. Beast video, because you were wearing like shorts on the

couch or whatever. I was just looking at his legs. I didn't hear anything. I was like, all right, mom. Hey, Sean's mom text me. I'll send you some more picks and I'll send you some pictures of my legs. I got you. It's genetics. People comment on my legs. It's just, it was I was born that way. So thank you. I appreciate the love though. All right. So basically, the reason I thought about this was because Dig. So there's this website called Dig. It's actually not that popular anymore, but if you're above 30, you probably know it.

Dig and Reddit were competitors. And for a long time, Dig was kind of beating Reddit. But they were both like the whole like front page of the internet type of businesses that had like tens of millions of monthly uniques. And Kevin Rose, the founder of Dig, was on the cover of time as like Meet Silicon Valley's new Wonderkin. The guy who

is 28 years old and worth a billion dollars or whatever, he was like the Mark Zuckerberg, like the next Zuckerberg. And Dig ended up not actually winning this battle. And they're currently for sale. And I linked to their financials. Someone just sent this to me on Twitter. So it's not like I got this through.

Like I didn't like sign up for a service where I had to agree to confidentiality. But someone just sent this to me. Right. You signed to FDA, a full disclosure agreement where you're like, I will put this on blast if you send this random shit to me. Yes. Anonymous Twitter account. That's exactly what happened.

Someone just sent it to me. I didn't ask questions and I just looked at it. But I'll give you like the overview. The overview is that over the last year They had 27 million users So what's that? Two million a month Which is not a lot

The hustle gets more than two million a month Just on our website And we don't even try to get traffic on our website So two million a month Their revenue Slam on dig Nice. Keep going

Okay so Their revenue For the year Was something like A million or like 1.3 Or like it was like 1.2 1.3 Nothing.

Shit. Dig which was supposed to be like, you know, a great website only like, uh, 80, 70, 90, 91,000, 44,000 a month in revenue. Horrible. Crazy. Crazy. Certified small boy shit. Yeah. Yeah. And, but here's the thing is that this rep, this, this discrepancy, we're going to call it the gap. The gap between how much we talked about them and their prestige and like, you know, the accolades that they get as, but from, but the the gap between where they actually are in reality, that gap is huge. So instead, I'm going to swap it and we're going to have some frame breaking companies

and we're going to talk about the actual good type of gap. And I want to show you a few businesses that people don't talk about that are actually phenomenal and really interesting. So I'm going to give you the first one. The first one, we maybe talked about before, but I was looking at Michael Bisbing. Michael Bisning is a YouTuber for MMA. and a VPN company sponsored him. And I thought, that's kind of strange.

So I just Googled, like, what's a good VPN? And maybe I'll start buying a VPN. Basically, a VPN. If you're in America and you want to, like, tell the internet that you're in Europe, you use a VPN. Or if you're in, like, North Korea or one of the Koreas, whichever one would this would apply to. And you want to act like you're in America, you use a VPN.

That's a, that's a, that's a, or if you just want to like, just search the web anonymously and you want to Google stuff about taxes. And that's what the VPN just wore. And so I Googled Best VPN, and I came across this website called CompareTech. That was kind of intriguing. So I linked to it. Do you see Compaertech.com slash VPN? So I started reading it, and I was like, this is kind of an interesting site.

And I looked them up on similar web, and they get millions of views. And I scroll all the way to the bottom, and I notice that they're based in England. And the thing about England and the UK is that if you are a UK company, name all the things you love about England. maybe the T, maybe you like the queen, and you like the fact that all companies' numbers are publicly available. Yes, a lot of people don't know this.

But if you are a company in the UK, I don't know what the threshold is. It could be as low as five. It could be as high as 10 million. And you do over 10 million in revenue. You have to, there's a thing called company's house, which is a very British name. It's like they're, I don't know if it's like their IRS

or something like that where you can go and log in and see all these financials. from privately held companies. And I was curious about this little website called Compare Tech. So I went and looked it up on companies' house. Can you see what their financials are? Do you have it up? I don't have it open.

No. Okay. So I'm going to pull it up. And I linked to it down there. It said financials. Basically, oh, fuck. The link broke on me. But basically, their revenue for the trailing 12 months was $12 million.

And their profit was $10 million. and this little old website that just reviews VPNs. I'm sure it's more sophisticated than what it looks like, but it's not good looking. It's not like doesn't have like the best design. And I believe this website ended up selling for like $200 million. And I think it only gets like a million visits a month.

It sold last year or six or 10, six or 12 months ago. Interesting site, right? That's crazy. It was also only started in, 2015. So sometimes I see these sites that I'm like, oh, wow, this thing gets so much traffic and they just send clicks out to whatever. Basically, their business model is they write about which VPN to use and then they link you to the VPN and they get a kickback from any, whichever link you

click of the 10, they'll get a kickback from all 10 for, you know, some, some dollar value, right? If the VPN says, cool, every customer's worth $300 to us, we'll pay $100 to anybody that refers as a customer. And so these guys will do, you know, some numbers. like that. Normally, when I see those like really high trafficked sites that sort of just look very basic, it's like, you know, this was started in 2004. And I'm like, well, okay, props to you, you had the foresight to know that like very early on in like the, you know, the internet days or Google's days, somebody was like, I'm going to start reviewing credit cards. I'm going to start reviewing VPN providers. I'm going to start reviewing what email software is best. And they made what email

software is best.com. And like, you know, they rake in six million dollars a year, you know, 90% profit margins, something silly like that. And like, you know, the person has spent the last 15 years trying to figure out, you know, the meaning of life because they won the business game already. And so that's normally what you see. But 2015 is like pretty new for a site like this. It's pretty new. And here's their financials.

I went and found them on company's house. In 2021, they did 15 million in revenue and 13.2 million in profit. The year before that, 10 million in revenue, 9.5 million in profit. That's crazy. This is crazy, right? Right. Yeah, I'm a big fan of these now. By the way, do you ever, do you play with SEO a lot?

Because growth tactics are like martial arts. It's like you could be a black belt and jiu-jitsu and know nothing about karate, right? Or you know karate and you're nothing about taekwondo or judo. You don't know how to do any grappling and any throws. And that's how I feel about growth channels. It's like I've spent a lot of my career figuring out virality. I've spent a lot of my career figuring out paid marketing now with e-commerce, things like that. The thing I've never touched is SEO.

Dude, I know. I'm like an absolute novice on it. I know SEO like an Ivy League architect knows about construction. Like maybe I can have a conversation with a construction worker who's going to build my project and like kind of know. But like I'm not going to be able to reference like which rivet to use. And you could kind of lie to me sometimes that I wouldn't exactly know if you were or we're not. Right, right. You put me on the job site and I'm going to ask for some gloves because I don't want to hurt my hands. Yeah, I'm just going to, everything's going to be called a monkey wrench. So like I don't entirely understand SEO. But I do believe it's the maybe the best one. Like it's like if you nail it, I think it's the best thing to nail or one of it.

It's like that that seat in the office when Dwight's like, you know, trying to ignore Jim and then Jim's like Dwight. They're doing like a job. Which bear? Yeah. Which bear is. best. He's like, that's stupid question. And he's like, well, there's basically school. Yeah. Well, there's basically school, two schools of thoughts here. Wrong. Yeah. That's how I feel about like, you know, is SEO best? It's like, I don't know, is a brown bear best or is a black bear best? Right. Like every every one of these growth channels is like has something awesome and then something terrible. And the one you're in, you know it too well usually and you're like, this thing is awful. I wish I could just go on Facebook and spend money and get to spend a dollar, get $2 back. And the Facebook. guys like, oh my God, you can get free traffic on Google. And the Google guy's like, holy shit, this thing grows virally. Wow. What is that? And so I think there's no best. I, yeah, I would

agree. And by the way, this site Compare Tech, it was sold for, yeah, it was sold for over $100 million. I believe this year in 2022, for like 150. Give me, give me another frame breaker. That's a great first one. All right. Another one. A company called, can I give a PS here just in case something good happens. A PS is with the Milk Road today we run our business model is newsletter ads and I had asked Ben I was like Ben if we were going to sell a product

our own product instead of advertise other people's products what would be what product would work best? What bear is best Ben and he was like VPN dude he's like we should just launch our own VPN fits the audience you got to come up with a better name though we just have to buy an existing

VPN and plug in our distribution and so if anyone does a VPN they want to sell me. I'm happy to either buy one or build our own. Yeah, you got to come up with like some cute branding like VP Nope. You know what I mean? Like you can't track me. You know, like you got to come up with something cute just like you do with Milk Road and Silk Road. I think we got to just get get rid of VP and that's just to whatever. It needs to be like, you know, whatever, Mysterio or like, you know, some like, you know, secret juice. And it's like, oh, I use secret juice. I'm on board with that. I use don't tell, don't tell, you know. Yeah, just call it don't tell mom. All right, the next one.

Quinn Street. Have you heard of Quinn Street? No. All right. Google Quinn Street and go to their website for me. All right. I'm going. And tell me like what the...

My guess is, I thought this was a fashion brand. If you told me nothing else. But, okay, I'm guessing it's not. All right, Quinn Street, I just see a guy, and it says, where performance drives digital. And then there's like another stock photo. And this guy... Accessing high intent prospects.

This guy is a horrible stock, like these guys... aren't ugly enough to be like a stock model. They're not good looking enough to be like they look like they're like out of like a like Spanish or like geometry. Tellumundo. Yeah. Like they just look like just normal. You know, it's like it's they're so normal that they don't even look.

Why does your skin have like, you know, normal people wrinkles and blemishes? That's not right. Stock photo. You need to be perfectly airbrushed. Right. Is this the founder? It looks like the founder. I don't know.

I don't know who the founder is. but it's like a simple-ass website that's not good-looking. I'm going through the slideshow. This slide show is hilarious, dude. This looks like, you know, Meredith from the office. That's what I'm saying. They're like so normal that they're not, that it looks silly. So this company, I'm going to explain what they do.

I'm going to tell you how big they are. So what this company does is they used to own, and I don't know if they still own these sites, but I'll tell you what they still own now. But they used to own websites like directory of schools.com or campus, corner.com or learning and life.com or find the right school.com. Just like these like boring websites that don't look that cool. And when you Google Ohio insurance, Ohio auto insurance, they come up number one. You enter an information and they sell that information to the highest bidder for

insurance people. This website, it's like ugly looking. It's simple looking and you like a lot of people would disrespect it. They made about 600 million in revenue last year. It's publicly traded. It's publicly traded. It's publicly traded. is that's crazy right this is this is another frame breaking company like they have if you click their about page on quinn street they're about or one of their forms like it doesn't work like it's like it goes to like a 401 like it they don't have it set up dude okay you know when you meet someone and you're like i can't tell if this person is absolutely a genius or if they're completely idiotic or if you're in san francisco you see somebody walk into a fancy restaurant

with like a hoodie and like you know they're like wearing one albert and one crock and you're like all right this person is either homeless or a billionaire right like that's like a pretty common situation in san francisco that's how i feel when i go to websites like this i'm like these are either the biggest dummies on earth and don't because i can't i can't understand what they do right their website is full of pages it just says like performance are our product or something like that's like going into a video game and like you talk you bump into one of the stock characters that just like it's like oh hey didn't see you there hello and it's just like keeps repeating on loop some random shit that doesn't make any sense.

That's their website. So these websites, they're either like absolute money printers or it's like, you know, someone's aunt who's got some dream of like, you know, being successful and they're never going to make it because this makes no sense. I can't tell. And now when I get to finally, then I see the key money tab. Investor Relations. If you got an investor relations tab on your, on your website, like it's working, right?

Like, you know, put in the Bill Clinton clip where he's like, I did not have relations with that woman. That's how I feel what I see the investor. Relations tab. I know some shit's going down. That's hilarious. Our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot? See, most CRMs are a cobbled together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM. Our software is the best. HubSpot, grow better.

It's kind of, this whole website and this whole brand, it reminds me of like a fourth grade classroom with like the, like, you know, like teamwork and like each letter, like it spells a certain word. Do you know what I mean? Or like, uh, it's like, uh, it's like, Teamwork. T is for teamwork. E is for everybody. That's what this whole website looks like, but it makes 500, 600, 600-ish million in revenue. Market cap isn't very great because it's a leaden company. Those typically just don't have good market caps. But it's just crazy. They just ignored all the unimportant stuff. Like how good does their website, their like public-facing brand website look and they only focus on just the results, I guess, and they own all these other websites

that don't look so bad and they clearly get results. But it's like a really interesting company and it's another frame-breaking business where they just don't give a shit about the things that most people care about. And it works. It's effective. So I recently met two guys who run a business like this and they've run three other businesses like this and exited them. I'm going to share, I can't share the story now, but I'm hoping one month. from today, I can share a kind of crazy story about them. So I'm just going to put that there. A teaser for a future. One month from today, you know, there will be a crazy story about these two guys. I might even have them on the podcast. I don't know yet. But this is insane. This is a Sampart special.

How did you find Quinn Street? Where were you? What was in the, what VPN and private browser did you have open when you were searching for this? Two ways. One, a guy named Jackie Chu, who I like, just tweeted at this, tweeted me this a while ago, and I just saved it. And then number two, Joe Spieser, my partner in a bunch of stuff, he told me he used to work with them. He owned an ad network. And he was like in the early 2000s. Like, I worked with them. They basically, right now they do car insurance and things like that. But they used to do University of Phoenix. So University of Phoenix, they would, you know, they owned all these school websites. You would Google like, what's a good online degree? They figured out that. And this web. But these guys look unsophisticated. They are not. They're very sophisticated. They like know how to get traffic to websites. They know how to do SEO. Like they look like a fat guy who like it trains jujitsu.

Just like just like you talked about like, oh, this guy, he's good. But then he like, you know, can like put you in a headlock, but in three seconds. That's what these guys are. And so anyway, I found it just by goofing around and talking to people. This is crazy. So they own insurance.com, insure.com, carinsurance. dot com, card ratings.com, money rates, bank tracker, M1, and modernize home services. And then they partner with way more.

It's wild. By the way, that's a really great source for info is talk to people at ad networks. Yeah, they know everything. People who like work at Google Cloud or AWS, they know everything. They see everything. They know who's making money and who's not. They know who's getting traffic and who's not. And like, if you ever wanted to go figure out your next gig, go be like, yeah, I'll be

janitor at this like mobile ad network or I'm going to go be janitor at a WS. My payment, all I need is like login credentials into the dashboard. I'll be a account rep for high value clients and therefore I need that list of the high value accounts that we have and you basically just mine that and you're like, all right, which one of the, you know, who am I going to copy? Right, right. Dude, there's a website. Like going to a, going to a barbershop and you see like the number.

He's like, I'll take the number 12. The fuck boy fade, please. Yeah, the line on the side. Exactly like that, please. Do you guys do eyebrow lighting bolts? No? Yeah. Okay, fine.

I'll take the number 12. That's so funny. Dude, all right. The next one is in your world. Not just because he's an Indian guy, but because he's an E-com guy. Come up with some. reason, come up with some reason that it's not just that.

I don't know, man, Indian entrepreneurs, you guys are taking over the world. I'm sure you guys all are part of the same tribe. You know one another kind of. There's only a billion of you. So this guy, all right, so I was looking at the Inc. 5,000 list. Of all the list, that's the only one that, like, kind of matters. It's still, you could still game in. Does it really?

Dude, I see this all the time. I see the random ass some digital agency that I've worked with that does nothing, like, nothing special. They're like, we're a three-time ink 5,000. winner. I'm like, well, you can still gain it. You could still, it's supposed to be based on revenue. And they're supposed, so I don't trust ink anymore, but I used to. And when I did, like, okay, let's, I click the link for 2022. BlockFi is number one. BlockFi basically just went out of business like three months ago. So I think that tells me everything I need to know

about you and your goddamn list. They had already written the story though. Greatest active athletes, Bill Russell. Like, he just passed away two weeks ago. Like, I'm They're like created the list and someone who works here like, hey, we got to remove block five from number one. And they're like, huh, seems like a lot of work. They're like, look, I don't make up the rules here. I just think them up and write them down. According to us is 245,000 percent this year. It's like, yeah, you forgot the negative sign, dude.

They're like, but it's like, it's so far away. Way, the computer. I don't know where my charger is. That's what the 8,000 is to go to their office. No one knows what the charger is. We can order one, but we would need our computer to do that. I guess I could swing my best bond my way home. Yeah, but they're like, oh, it's happy hour.

Jackerys, have you ever been at a, have you ever been at like a company happy hour? And like, you'll hear news that something really, really bad has happened. And had you heard about that during the day, you'd be like, livid. I'm going to act on this. Yeah, I'm going to fucking kill some boy. Like, this is livid. And then you hear about it like when you're laughing at happy hour. You're like, huh.

Yeah. And like, that's like what happened. You know what I'm talking about? You've ever been at like a company happy hour? Do you like hear bad news? And you're like, oh, fuck. We used to do ours on Friday. It was called the Friday Wine Down and it was like wine and cheese and like whatever.

You know that office. You guys. So it seemed like a bunch of wine and cheese types of guy though. I know, but the office before I joined, the office was pretty, you know, adult and mature and like sophisticated people and then I joined, I started hiring people that would sleep at the office. And so like it became this crazy culture clash. We ended up ending it.

But it was so funny because it would be like Friday, you look at the numbers like, well, still don't have product market fit. I guess. All right. Let's just head over to the office bar. Just drink for a bit. Like, oh,

servers down's like, how much traffic you think we get on the weekends anyway? Yeah. One guy would go back to his desk to like fix the thing or like, they'd check their email like, oh, we got to go to fix this. And then everybody else would be like,

sort of watch them walk away. Be like, all right, if he looks like he's having trouble, I'll go too. Like, no, don't.

That's how you're talking. It's just the voice of like, well, let me know if you need anything. I'm sorry, dude, I was looking at this 8,000, which apparently just bullshit blackfine. I didn't realize. I saw BlockFine was number one. I didn't realize that that was the company that like went out of business. So, yeah, the list is kind of null at this point. It doesn't really matter.

But I saw it. someone who's number six or number seven. It's called High Key. It's like a keto cookie business type of thing. And the guy's last name, I don't know if it says it on this list, but this other list I was looking at, it was Patel. And they used his real name, but I was like, wait, I think that sounds like AJ Patel, so who I recognize.

And High Key was like six or five. Do you see what it is on the list? Yeah, it's number five or six, yeah. And they grew by 41,000%. I think that just means 41x, right? So like, if it was a million there, do 42 million now or 41 a million. Yeah, again, these numbers. My new favorite word, Fugazi. Have you ever heard this word? Yeah, it just means like

fake, right? Yeah, but I'm all about the word Fagasy. I feel like I can own this corner. I don't know anyone who says it. And absolute pleasure, absolute treat say that word. Yeah, Fugazi. It's like, well, it's like the most popular line in Wolf of Wall Street. Fugazi, Fugazi. Yeah,

just carry the 12. You know, like I just can't do this type of map. So this guy AJ Patel, he started this thing called High Key, which I would imagine is in the 30 or 40 million range. But listen to this guy. So he's probably in his later 30s, probably 35 or 36. So in like 2012, 2013, 2014, he started a vitamin brand. And it only did okay. And then he started also tinkering with a skincare brand, which it actually did much better. It got to like 10 million or so in revenue. He hired a CEO, the CEO kind of like drove it into the ground and didn't really do that well.

And so he started focusing again to his vitamin brand. And he's like, look, it's doing okay. But who's the best customer of a vitamin company? Dogs. Because this is it. I'm not disparaging him. But like, do they work? Yeah.

Why not? Like Fugazi, you know? Like, Fugazi, you know? Welcome to Fagazi, Inc. We make supplements for dogs. They'll never tell you if it works or doesn't work. Yeah, you know what I mean? It's like, what's that memory loss game where it's like brain teasers?

You know, brain dacety or brain acid. It's like it's like neurosity. No, no. Yeah, it's like having like like a like an ad campaign towards those with amnesia. Like does or or with like Alzheimer's? Like does it work? Yeah, maybe. So that's like what like these vitamins for dogs are.

Like who knows if it actually works. And he starts growing this company. He pivots from like, you know, normal vitamins to dog vitamins. And he starts growing this thing. And it takes off after a while and he kills it. He gets a $25 million in revenue. And then he sells part of it to a PE company. And he took $60 million off the table.

Then he grew up for another three years and sold it for like $650 million. And he still owned like half of it. So collectively he made $300, $400 million at the age of 32. And this guy isn't in Silicon Valley. He's not in New York. He's not in Brooklyn. He's in Orlando, Florida, capital of Jorts,

George City, USA. You know, Jort City, White New Balance Town, U.S.A. 22 listeners in Orlando, they all just collectively looked down at their lap and came back and nodded. Like, well, facts of fact, baby. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, you know, England or Illinois is the land of Lincoln. Florida's like land of dog the bounty hunter. You know, like, and that's where this, this, he's born in India, Indian immigrant, came over, decided for some reason, Florida's the place, and knocked it out the park and not really well known. And I was just like researching him. And high key is now number six on this list. They grew 41%, 41%, 40,000 percent. So 41X. So if they were doing a million in revenue or 500,000

in revenue, they're doing 20 to 40 million in revenue now. So it's another nine figure and value brand. and this guy's just quietly crushing it. And I love it. And I watched a talk with him. There's this thing. There's this website called Capitalism.com. Dude, I'm reading the transcript of that talk right now as you speak. It's pretty crazy.

So let me just recap. This guy's known mostly for, he sold Zesty Paw, that company for 600 million, I think. Right? It was over. In the transcript, he says, yeah, the public number is 600, but it actually got raised a little bit higher. Wow. And he also has high key snacks. In this thing, it says his first business,

his first kind of side hustle was he was selling, he's like, I played sing a poker. And I got to a million, by the way, I did this exact same thing. That's why this stood out to me. I told you, you guys are brothers, man. You guys are cousins. Now I know the connection. So he got to a million chips. He sold it for 37 bucks. I did this on poker stars. I grinded my way. I accumulated a million. That was my actual first million. It was a million fake poker chips on poker. stars and I sold it for $13. And I tell you what, I've never felt like more of a prostitute in my life. I was like, wow, I just worked so hard for like three months to get the, you know, like just

grinding the free money game. And I got to a million chips and I sold it for $13 via PayPal. And then I proceeded to lose the $13 immediately on the real money tables. And I was like, I never felt like, you know. You just had to go take a shower. I feel dirty. Yeah, I Googled like, can I declare bankruptcy just? out of embarrassment.

Is there some version of that? Because I was so embarrassed at like the terrible trade I had done. He said he did that same thing. And he started doing that as a like as a market basically on eBay. And I think he made like 100 or 200 grand just doing the fake poker chips like buying and selling basically. Which is it's kind of like a kid being good at chess when they're six. Like if you're doing that on eBay, it's like yeah, you're going to.

Yeah, well just here's all my. money, just hopefully you'll figure it out one day. Just get me back when you can. Like, that's what you do when you meet people doing things like that. That's like it doesn't tell. We need this guy on. And I'll give you two. I'm talking to him. I've been talked to him on Facebook. I got him. He's clearly has, you know, he comes from our, he's cut from the same, the same cloth. I don't know what what kind of cloth that is. But it's definitely our cloth. Yeah. We'll assume it's silk. But dude, this guy, he, I started becoming friends with him on Facebook. Never talked to him my life. there's a software that I needed to use.

I don't want to out them, but there's a software I needed to use, and it's like 10 grand a year. And I mentioned to him that I use it. He goes, oh, here, I have an annual subscription. Here's my password. And he's been let me use. It's free, like, $10,000 a year subscription.

So this guy is my guy. I'm mad. Yeah. Yeah. And so, what's the second reason why we need them on here? Because I just Googled his name, A.J. Patel. Now, here's a guy sold a company for over 600 million, sold another company.

He's got he's snacks, he's sitting on store shelves everywhere across the country. Guess what Google puts up in the like, Google thinks I'm talking about Patel, AJ, MD, the doctor in San Francisco. Dude, no matter what an Indian guy does in business, the doctor is still number one. He's still at the top of the ranks.

And so he needs to come on this pod so we can get this guy's SEO up. But it's like, uh, one. What's, uh, Jessica Alba's company, honest? The guy who started that, his name's Brian Lee. He started like that shoe dazzle and like legal zoom. If you Google Brian Lee, like, he ain't coming up. Oh, dude, it's a wrestler.

It's a, it's a guy who looks like Undertaker or like a big show or something. Yeah, like Brian Lee, like, it doesn't matter if you're a billionaire or not. You know, you can't, which by the way, fame is always way better than money. So wrestling beats being a billionaire. But this guy in his talk, he said something amazing. So, like, he hired the CEO to run his skincare brand. And he says, yeah, like, it's stunk. this guy, like, I gave him the reins and I told him to do it. And he totally talked slick to me.

And I thought he knew what he was doing. And it didn't work. And the guy goes, the interviewer goes, well, was it a sad day when you fired him? Like, you must have been hard, right? And AJ goes, no, it was awesome. Firing him was so easy because he was so bad and I felt so great like getting rid of all the dead weight. And I look at business as a living organism. And like I have zero emotional attachment. If someone doesn't serve the business and I'm willing to fire myself, myself or anyone else and I have zero sadness about it. And I saw that and I was like, hell yeah. I call that. You know what I call that? I call that Korean convenience store owner energy. You remember, you remember, here's why. You remember, remember, like, the Rodney King riots like in the

90s? You remember like these pictures of like the Korean store business owners with like shotgun standing on top of their like, they're like, no. Bring it. Yeah, like, let's go. I was talking to like some people I invested in the other day and they were telling me about their business and like how they're like things aren't going that well i'm like can you do me a favor like do a screen share let me see your calendar and like it was totally open and like it hadn't booked a lot like i'm like what i'm like reading meditation afternoon walk you know yeah i'm like dude from 8 a m to 8 p.m it's got to you have to have sales calls set up with prospective customers and like don't give me this nonsense of like oh well you know it went out of business but we learned a lot or like you know like we just couldn't or the things that

that you're suggesting, Sam, they don't scale. I'm like, no, no, no, no, dude. Right now, you need to have that Korean store owner energy where it's just like, if you don't make this work, you don't feed your family and maybe you're going to get deported. Like, you need to have that like, that energy of like, starvation with a side of deportation is how staff likes his dishes served. Dude, you have to have that energy sometimes. Like, of course, like, once things going, well, yeah, you got to get like beyond like scale and all that stuff. But like early on, Call yourself a startup, call yourself. It doesn't matter what you call yourself.

You're just a convenience store owner. And like some convenience stores, you go there and they have every type of kind bar you can ever imagine. That's where I'm going. Other type of convenience stores, like, you know, they don't have what I want. I ain't ever going there again. You've got to be that convenience store that has every kind bar, every cliff bar, has a stick and it's just grinding and knows your name.

They are willing to call me like, you know, like, what do you want? The usual, that type of, that's what like a lot of startup founders need. And so this guy, AJ Patel, he's got that Korean store business owner energy, you know, that like immigrant hustle. I love it. Yeah, he's great and that's great. And I feel like we know so many people that it's like, I meet with them and I hear them talking. And it's like, oh, let's just fast forward to the part where you write a medium article called My Next Chapter or Our Next Adventure. And then you're going to sign off saying onwards.

Yeah. Like you're a fucking captain of a ship in the 1700s. like, ahoy, matey, your business is failing. Wake up. Do something. Don't just sit there and lose and then go work at Facebook and write my next chapter. I'm so excited to lead, you know, digital, digital ad products at Facebook now for the next two years of my life. Before I go out and do this same stupid thing again.

It's like, wake up, go figure this out, right? Figure out something that's going to work. I don't care what you do. I don't even care if it's bad. But like, I need to see some like some serious action being taken. And realize your shit is not working. And like I invest in startups. And I know that the name of the game is you're going to lose most of your money and only a few are going to like return all the money.

But when I hear like their updates, I'm like, all right, I'm okay with swinging and missing. I'm not actually okay with it. But I know that's part of the game. And it's just a numbers game. But for those not swinging, it doesn't matter if I only invested $5,000. I reply. And I'm like, oh, you're losing and you suck for these reasons. And you need to improve because I give you.

my hard-earned money so you can have a good shot at trying something and you are not trying or taking a good shot and that's pissing me off. And I told some of my other angel investor friends and they're like, well, I kind of feel that way, but I never say that. I'm like, what do you, like, what? What? Why not? Why wouldn't you say this? It doesn't matter how little or how much you invested. You gave your hard earned money to someone to like take a swing. Step to the plate dog, like swing, but don't like give me this nonsense. We have this phrase I use in all my companies. which is that, all right, people are going to make mistakes, but there's two types of mistakes,

and you have to decide when you make a mistake, which one is it? Did you make an error of action or an error of inaction? An error of action is you tried something and you did it wrong or it didn't work or had a bad result, you know, you were trying really hard to do something and you just messed it up. That's okay. That's a fumbled. No problem.

Then there's an error of inaction, which is your mistake was that you didn't do something. You didn't think about something. you didn't anticipate it. You didn't plan. You know, you just forgot to do something. You dropped the ball. And that's the unforgivable run, right? So it's like, I'm always like, number one to be like, bro, no problem.

This was an error of action. That's great. I love errors of action. That's how you get better. And like never feel bad or sorry for an error of action. For an error of inaction, I now have a problem. And so I feel the same way with founders that I invest in. It's like, some of them, I'm like, oh, man, they're just banging their head against this wall.

I will only ever say something to somebody if I feel like if they're making errors of action. When they're making errors of inaction, my experience, I did it twice now. And I was just like, hey guys, like your update makes it sounds like everything's okay.

But like read what you said. Everything is not okay. And like you got to do something. What can we do here? And I like rolled up my sleeves. And I was like helping them with their strategy and their pivot. And then their investor deck to raise money because they're running out of money. And same thing with the other one.

I was like, hey, guys, like this is just not working. Like, you don't have product market fit. You have like two customers after two years. Like, what's going on? And they were like, no, we're really excited about the pipeline. And we think that's, that doesn't, that's not fair. And I was just like, oh, my God, not only were you like not aware of it.

You're actually in denial of it. Wow, this is like, you know, complete waste of my time. And, you know, sure enough, in both cases, they, you know, my like several days worth of like full-time effort to try to help them resulted in. nothing. And so, you know, I now am picky. I'm a little bit pickier where I'll test the waters and I'll see, does this person, if given a dose of reality, do they take it and say more, please, or do they like, oh, I don't want this? And it's like, oh, if you don't want reality, then I don't want to, you know, I was just, it was a mistake on my part. I judged wrong, you know,

my, my check was written to the wrong person here. As the great Dr. Phil once said, don't piss on my back and tell me it's rain. All right. I got one last one. I have an interesting one. So it's like a Billy of the week, but someone who like people never talk about or at least they don't talk about a lot and he's got that gap. And when I say he,

it's actually him and his wife. And his wife is actually the more interesting person. But this guy, a little bit is more front-facing. His name's Stuart Resnick. Have you ever heard of Stuart Resnick? Have we talked about him? I don't know the name,

but I just Googled it. And now I know they do the wonderful company or whatever. So give me his story. All right. So listen to this guy. His name's Stuart Resnick. Him and his wife, his wife's name is Linda.

They're based out of California. And so in the 1970s, he started a janitor business. And he just basically, like, was a janitor at one point, I think. And then he eventually hired a few more and he got contracts with buildings. And once he was in those buildings and had the contracts, he expanded to security guards. And at one point, he had a thousand armed security guards on staff. So he, like, drew this janitor business into a security guard business. And it was amazing.

He got some lucrative contracts to, to LAX and it turned out to be a great business and he ended up selling it and he made a little bit of money. And with that money, he eventually bought the Franklin Mint, which at the time was one of the world's largest sellers of coins, collectible coins. And oddly enough, you know who owns the Franklin Mitt right now? No, no idea. Former MFM guest, Ty Lopez. Does he really? Yeah. That was a joke. Yeah, basically the good job. So basically like, in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and even up to the 90s, like all the Marilyn Monroe coins and Elvis Presley coins, the Franklin Mint. They, they're the ones who started it or who produced a lot of them.

And so from there, he partly that to a couple of things. And now at this point, his company, it's called Wonderful Brands. They own a bunch of really interesting brands. They own landmark wines. That's not that interesting. Teleflora. Do you know what Teleflora is? That's a pretty big $350 million a year business where you call, it's like $1,800. flowers, a competitor. But here's the big ones that they own. The first is wonderful pistachios. You've seen those at the store, right? The second is palm wonderful. You know what palm wonderful? Yeah, palm juice. Yeah, pomegranate juice. And so basically the wife, Linda, she, uh, she's like, you know, I love pomegranate, but there's no, this was like in the, in the 80s. She's like,

there's not really a good pomegranate juice. Let's, let's do this juice. And she goes, you know what? Um, pomegranate, it's good for your heart. It's, uh, what else is it? And she like learns about what it's good for. And she was like, you know, it makes women have like an hour glass figure. Like it like is like good for you and like it's, you know, it makes you feel good, I guess. And so they made, she made the bottle like a, you know, it's like a, if you ever seen it. It's like a signature bottle. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a signature bottle. Well, they own another company that has a wonderful signature bottle called Fiji Water. So they are they also own Fiji, which has a square bottle. And at this point, they're privately owned. They're one of the largest

producers of one of the largest farm owners in America. So they own almond and pistachio farms. And they do $4 billion a year in revenue. And so says in 2018, they were the wealthiest farmers in the country. Yeah. And this guy, you know, the, I believe the wife, Linda, she's Jewish, but she's got this like Southern Bell charm to her. Like she's from like Alabama or something. She reminds me like an old like, you know, Faulkner novel. Like she reminds me of like a character in Forrest Gump movie. And, And, and, but they're based out of California. And then he's got like a little New York vibe where he like kind of comes off as like cool and hit. But they're farmers.

They own. They're, they're, they're, like, have the best brands out there. Fiji is a great brand. And they created these. They're not just acquiring these, right? No, they made them. Yeah. They make these brands and they own way more.

Wonderful's a really good brand. I love wonderful pistachios. And so these guys just kill it. They're just quietly crushing it. And I think at this point, I think they're like 81 or 80, two years old. And I still watch talks with them. And they talk about how they go, well, how do you stay close to their customers? And they're like, well, I just read Twitter all day. And I like read about and like, sometimes I'm like, they're just like us. And so sometimes they just like look at like

what customer. They're like, we use Facebook and we just like skim like our page and we just see like which complaints are actually good and which are nonsense and we reply. And then we make changes. And we just run our business that way. And they're really interesting people. So that's the billies of the week, Stuart Resnick and his wife Linda. Linda. Wow. Yeah, she looks like the type person that would give you a kiss on the cheek and then wipe off the lipstick. Yeah. Yeah. I love those women. They always smell so good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like going to the bathroom at one of the, that, a woman like that's house, it's just an absolute pleasure. There's so many things you didn't know, so many sense, since you didn't even know existed, like you'll spend 15 minutes just trying to wash your hands to get

out of there because it's like, oh, wow, this is, this is like a handkerchief instead of like a, you know, a towel. This is amazing. Yeah, at the end of this, you're going to be an expert on butterscotch candy. Like, you're going to go all about like those little like red, green and yellow candies that like, what the fuck? What are these things? It's like fruit punch candies.

So I love this brand. This is amazing. And by the way, this teleflora 1,800 flowers thing. Why doesn't somebody create like 100 flowers and telephora flowers as just a ghost kitchen on Dors? Dash and on Uber Eats. Like, why is this, does that exist? Like, why can't I just order flowers? I've seen a flower thing when I go on there, but I think it's like DoorDash's

own. I think you could create like either edible and rain. That's a great idea. Flower thing and just partner with local florists to fulfill the demand. And it's like, it's like way better than food. But I know whenever there's like a birthday or something like that, that's my go-to thing now. It's just like, I'm going to door-dash them something, right?

Because it's like, I never play in advance. What do you door-daff some? What's like a good enough? Like I'll do like like the last one I did was like you know like a bunch of boba tea like this person like really likes boba teas so I sent them a bunch of boba or I'll send them like you know pizza and wings or I'll send them a cinnabon and whatever or I'll send them you know a bunch of ice cream or chocolate or whatever because it's like I can procrastinate until 30 minutes before like their birthday you know is over and I could push this button and still be a great friend. So let me do that. That's a great idea. friend machine. Noah Kagan for my birthday gifted me like 200 bucks worth of 16 ounce bottles of Topo Chico from Kofco. And I like that was, it was like a, it was easy. It was like a month and a half supply of Topo Chico. And it's like all I drank for two and a half months or something. It was awesome. Yeah. On your birthday, I tried to see like, is there such a thing as gas station gift cards? But it was tough. It was really tough to find anything. That would work.

Yeah. That's so funny. I was like, can I open a tab in my friends? name at your gas station. He'll walk in from time to time. You guys sell dip and like yeah, Coke zero. You guys sell nach cheese? What are you just the nach cheese foods? If he brings his own cup,

can he just walk out with some hot cheese? That's awesome. That's disgusting. That's the episode. Dude, you really did carry that episode. That was amazing. This is, this is, this entire episode is, is going to be called the Sam Parr Special.

And it's just Sam bringing hit after hit after hit. You want to know those quads to work. You want to know what I'm most proud about? Guess how long that took me to prepare? I think you would be proud if you spent a long time. Like 45 minutes. Oh, that went the other way. It's 1 p.m. now.

We started recording at noon. I block off on my schedule from 11 to noon is my research time. I did all of this in that one hour time. And I even took a bathroom. break and I definitely did some pull-ups. So yeah. Did you like take the limitless pill? How did you do all that in like 45 minutes?

I just got a good brain. I don't know. Yeah. My brain's good. I just was on fire today. I drank a bunch of coffee. Nice. But that's it.

We're out of here.