My First Million: #66 - Life Coins, Amazon FBA Rollups & Going Back In Time

Hubspot Podcast Network Hubspot Podcast Network 4/15/20 - Episode Page - 9m - PDF Transcript

All right.

Quick break to tell you about another podcast that we're interested in right now, HubSpot

just launched a Shark Tank rewatch podcast called Another Bite.

Every week, the hosts relive the latest and greatest pitches from Shark Tank, from Squatty

Potty to the Mench on a Bench to Ring Doorbell, and they break down why these pitches were

winners or losers, and each company's go-to-market strategy, branding, pricing, valuation, everything.

Basically all the things you want to know about how to survive the tank and scale your

company on your own.

If you want to give it a listen, you can find Another Bite on whatever podcast that

you listen to, like Apple or Spotify or whatever you're using right now.

All right.

Back to the show.

All right.

We got a friend of the show here, Jordan Harbinger.

He's one of the guys who's been advising us on how to build this podcast because his

podcast is way more successful than ours and has been around.

He's been doing podcasting for like 12 and a half years, which Jordan, that's got to

be as long as podcasting has existed, right?

Yeah.

I think podcasts have been around for like 14 years or 15 and I've been around for 13

of those.

So yeah, when I started, there were no iPhones, so you couldn't get podcasts on your phone.

You had to use an iPod to play them.

Yeah.

Straight to cassette.

That's how long this guy's been doing it.

So Jordan, I like your show.

I've been binging it while in quarantine because what else am I going to do besides try to

learn something new or improve myself in some way?

And I got to say, I like it because you do the interview style show where you go deep

with a guest.

I was listening to the one with Tony Hawk, which was pretty awesome.

And I got to say, I like that you don't do the kind of surface level, just pity patting

around with the questions or trying to do inspirational fluff where you're just saying,

go, you can do this.

So with that episode with Tony Hawk, what was that like?

Because Tony Hawk's an icon.

How was it interviewing Tony Hawk?

It was great.

He's a really interesting guy, really open and fun and he told some pretty funny stories.

One which was very apropos of what's going on right now is one day he walked into his

agent or some sort of marketing team that he'd hired.

He walked into their office.

This is like at the height of video games where he's making, I don't know, 50 million

bucks off these skating games and these brands.

And he goes in and he says, look, I got this backpack that was made pretty shoddily and

it's got my name and face on it.

I don't want any more stuff like that.

And as the agent, marketer, whatever is sort of nodding his head and understanding, Tony

goes, wait, what's that on your shelf?

And it was a roll of toilet paper with Tony Hawk's name, face, and logo on it.

And he goes, what the hell is that?

And the guy goes, oh yeah, anything we put your name and face on does so well.

We were joking that we could put your face on toilet paper and we'd still be able to

sell it.

And he fired them on the spot because it was clear that they didn't value his brand, which

I thought was a funny story.

He's got a ton of stuff like that that he talked about on the show.

That is epic.

You know, I actually met Tony Hawk.

We went on a trip to Africa, a charity trip together.

And believe it or not, we were halfway up a mountain in Ethiopia where, you know, it's

like this is a mountain village.

And somebody saw him there and they were like, Tony Hawk, you know, that's probably the only

English word they said to us all day.

They identified Tony Hawk on a mountain in Ethiopia.

That's how famous that guy is.

So that's an amazing guest to have on the show.

Even being that famous that you get recognized in the middle of countries where like, nobody

speaks your language and they maybe don't even have skateboards yet.

We were there trying to give people clean water.

They didn't even have water, but then you Tony Hawk.

That's how that's how famous I got.

Amazing.

Awesome.

Well, if you want to hear more from Jordan, we're going to be having him on more and more.

He's a friend of the friend of the house and you should listen to the show.

It's one of the podcasts that I would recommend if you like Tim Ferriss's stuff, if you like

our stuff, you're going to like his stuff.

And so go check out the Jordan Harbor and Gear show on iTunes, Spotify, wherever you

get your podcasts.

You'll find them there.

All right.

We're back.

Man, I started off with a big, um, that's not cool.

Uh, Sam, you are wearing a Harvard shirt.

Why go to the school when you can buy the shirt for $35 and get half the benefits?

Uh, it was $60, Sean, but whenever I wear it, they go, you went to Harvard?

Yeah.

I went to Harvard.

I've been.

I've been to Harvard.

I took a, I paid $20.

I got a tour of there last year when I was 28.

That's actually a great conversation to start with.

And then they don't know how to escape.

They thought they were going to have an alumni chat and now they're just talking to weird

them.

Yeah.

I went for a Easter.

Took a tour.

It was lovely.

It'd be a great school to go to.

Oh, that's great.

That's great.

I, uh, I actually, this is like a weird thing.

I, I have a lot of weird collections and one of them, I like collecting university sweatshirts.

So I have, I didn't go to a, uh, you know, uh, an elite school, but I respect them.

I have a Stanford one.

I have a Harvard one.

I think I have a Dartmouth one.

I've got all the cool ones.

My wife went to Ivy, uh, Penn, I have a Penn one.

I have a Harvard one too.

I don't even know why I don't even know where I don't even think I bought it.

It's just at my house somehow and I wear it.

And then, um, I didn't buy any of my college gear when I was in college because I was like,

this is expensive and a little bit lame how people would wait in line for hours for a

free shirt.

I would wear a Duke one though.

You went to Duke.

Yeah.

I went to Duke, but I liked the stuff.

I just didn't, I thought it was too expensive.

And then now, like literally, uh, during black Friday, everybody was shopping and I was like,

oh, shit, I want to shop.

I got the urge to shop too, but I don't know what the hell to shop for.

So I bought a bunch of university shit 10 years later, 10 years later.

And so now I have like all Duke gear.

I wear it like, you know, every day.

I would wear a Duke stuff too.

I would be proud.

I think Duke's cool.

Okay.

I'll hook you up.

I have a bunch.

I will get you a Duke sweatshirt.

Well, Duke probably has like really good dry fit basketball gear and stuff like that.

I'm going to, um, I'll go and buy some.

I'll buy some from Duke.

What should I, what else should I add to my collection?

Cornell?

That's like a cool one.

Cause maybe like an edgy one of some kind, like you should get like, uh, you know, what

school has sort of fallen out of favor or you just do like the, like Theranos shirt

or like Lambda school shirt or something.

No, I want universities like, uh, I don't know.

Maybe throw a little Oxford in there.

Go international.

Oh, I could do Oxford or like a, like is Rhodes Scholar a thing?

I think that's, um, I think that's part of Oxford.

I don't know.

Alan just told me to wear a university of Sydney one because I did go to university

of Sydney for a year.

Yeah, it's less interesting when you actually went there.

I know.

So anyway, I'm wearing a Harvard sweatshirt and I'm drinking Kool-Aid.

Yeah.

He's drinking a glass of Kool-Aid.

The mood is set.

That is the perfect, uh, formula.

So let's, let's jump in.

Uh, what do we got?

Uh, we can talk about a bunch of interesting things.

You want to, um, bring up this, uh, Amazon company?

Yeah.

So this company, I don't know how you say it exactly, I think it's called Thrasio.

So, um, saw the news recently, I think probably a lot of people listening to this have heard

of this.

So we'll just give kind of our opinion.

Okay.

So, so Thrasio is the name of it.

It's a rollup company.

So we've been talking rollups, you know, here and there.

So this is a rollup company and what they're doing is they're rolling up Amazon FBA businesses.

So, um, brands that, you know, are built and sold just pretty much exclusively on Amazon.

And these are usually like private labeled goods.

So they, you know, find some shit in China, slap their name on it, post it on Amazon.

And they try to just surf the search traffic on Amazon.

And so these businesses are, you know, they can be, be decent.

And so these guys have rolled up so many of them that basically, so they just raised $110

million at a $780 million valuation and, um, it's only a year old or two years old, two

years old.

Exactly.

So two years old and they've built a ton of value.

So the, you know, this valuation at $780 million is 30 times what it was 18 months ago.

So they've built a pretty big, um, uh, company.

So the holding company, uh, they, they say their gross revenue is over $200 million and

they have $35 million in trailing 12 months, EBITDA.

So $35 million of EBITDA in the last 12 months, um, not bad.

Now this is a little bit controversial.

So when I first saw this, I was like, Oh, that's interesting, that's smart.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.

Sam (@thesamparr) and Shaan (@shaanvp) are back to talk wearing ivy league swag (3:24), Thrasio Amazon FBA rollup (6:20), Classpass for online courses (16:16), Real life bruce wayne Kinobody (19:45), What's a way the hosts have hacked a shortcut for themselves? (24:31), Looking at old newspapers to see what they got right/wrong (28:50), Personal ICOs (37:31), Billionaire of the week: Jim Patterson (44:44), Do you want to become a billionaire? (52:36) and Sexy notary business (57:05). The way you write has a huge effect on what you get — both in your business and personal life so why not learn how to write like you speak and sell like hell: search Kopywriting Kourse and improve you life 100x. 
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.