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

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 app you listen

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

All right.

Back to the show.

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.

That's crazy, right?

This is another frame-breaking company.

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'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 to 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.

Like do the like Texas is 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, I was like, so what's the rule?

Is it six months out of the year?

What is 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 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.

Yeah.

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, 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, you know, funny, you say 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 it's like, yo, just tell me the real deal, dude, Google needs to understand italicized

really 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?

Cause 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?

Are taxes a recommendation or a requirement?

Well, what I learned Googling this, Googling this was the IRS and I like, 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?

I'm Googling that to follow the rule, but I am curious and I was like, in case they

also listen to podcasts, I'm Googling this A for a friend and B to enforce the law on

my friend cause 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'm 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 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?

Or like, you know, there's this Twitter account.

I love called the house stuff works or something like that.

I love it.

And today they posted a thing of 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 at him 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, 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, like I'll Google

just like, you know, rich people don't pay taxes dot, dot, dot.

But how like, you know, what are these loopholes that I hear about?

Are there 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 the 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 bootcamp course.

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 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, what 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 it's not just money making, but it's just like the earth, like just how the world

in 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.

They 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 like a bad game of Dr. Mario?

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?

Right.

Or like, you know, 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, what's 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 a year

worth of unclaimed bags.

And they, it's like a huge thrift store, you know, and same thing with like 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?

Like, oh, actually there's the whole company that recycles these, they take the half used

shampoos from hotels and they said, 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 because 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 eats 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, those little nooks and crannies.

Well, which is a perfect segment for what I want to talk about today, because 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 by the way, today I was, 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'm, I'm, I'm, 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 call you Sam Parr full name.

I love it.

I don't know if she knows that to your first and last, but Sam Parr'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 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.

Hey, Sean's mom texts me, I'll send you some more pics and I'll send you some pictures

of my legs.

I got you.

Thank you.

I appreciate the love though.

All right.

So basically the reason I thought about this was 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're 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 20 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 an FDA, a full disclosure agreement where you're like, I will put this on blast

if you send this man of shit to me.

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.

So 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.

The revenue slam slam on dig.

Nice.

Keep going.

They're 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 80, 70, 91,000, 44,000 a month in revenue, horrible, crazy certified small

boy shit.

Yeah.

So 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 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

that 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 Bisbing 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 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 compare tech that was

kind of intriguing.

So I linked to it.

Do you see compare tech dot 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 noticed that they're based in England.

And the thing about England and the UK is that if you are a UK company that name all

the things you love about about England, maybe the tea, 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 this thing called companies house, which is a very British name.

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 their, on company's house, but basically their revenue for the

trailing 12 months, which 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's sold last year or six, 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 what

it's 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, some numbers like that.

Normally, when I see that those like really high traffic 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 and 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 $6 million a year, you know, 90% profit margins, something

silly like that.

And like, you know, the person is 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.

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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 in Jiu Jitsu and know nothing about karate, right?

Or you know karate and you know nothing about Taekwondo or judo.

You don't know how to do any grappling and or 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, 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.

And I'm like an absolute novice on it.

Absolute beginner.

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 and I wouldn't exactly know if you were.

Right.

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.

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 maybe the best one.

Like it's like, like if you nail it, I think it's the best thing to nail or one of that.

That seeded the office when Dwight's like, you know, trying to ignore Jim and then Jim's

like Dwight.

All right.

They're doing like a job interview.

Yeah.

Which bear is best?

He's like, that's a stupid question.

He's like.

He's basically schooled.

Yeah.

Well, there's basically two schools of thoughts here.

Wrong.

Yeah.

That's, that's how I feel about like, you know, is SEO best is like, I don't know, is

a brown bear best or is a black bear best 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 two, I want to spend a dollar

or get two dollars back at the Facebook guys like, oh my God, you can get free traffic

on Google and the Google guys like, holy shit, this thing grows virally.

Wow.

What is that?

You know?

And so I think there's no, 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

a hundred million dollars.

I believe this year in 2022 for like one, give me, give me another frame breaker.

That's a great first one.

All right.

Another one.

Can I give a PS here just in case something good happens?

A PS is with a milk road today we run our, like 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, what would be, what product would work

best?

What bear is best Ben?

And he was like, VPN dude, he's like, he's like, we should just launch our own VPN fits

the audience.

Amazing business model.

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 would, 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 it can't track me.

You know, like you got to come up with something cute, just like you do it in milk road and

cell phone.

Like 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, you know, secret juice.

And it's like, oh, I use juice.

I'm on board with that.

Don't tell, don't tell, you know, 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 and tell me like what my guess is,

I thought this was a fashion brand if you had told me nothing else, but 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 it says, and this guy is high intent prospects.

This guy is a horrible stock mod.

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 Telemundo.

Yeah.

They just look like just normal, you know, it's like they're so normal that they don't

even look like.

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 that 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.

All right.

Dude, I'm going through the slideshow.

This slide show is hilarious.

Dude, this looks like, you know, Meredith from the office.

This is like.

That's what I'm saying.

It's normal that they're not that it looks silly.

So this 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 what they still own now, but they used to own websites

like directory of schools dot com or campus corner dot com or learning and life dot com

or find the right school dot 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 will disrespect it.

They made about 600 million in revenue last year.

It's publicly traded.

It's publicly traded.

That's crazy.

Right.

This is this is another frame breaking company.

They have to 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 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

all bird 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 has like performance are our product or something like that going into a video

game and like you bump into one of the stock characters that just like, it's like, Oh,

hey, didn't see you there.

Hello.

And this is like, keeps repeating some 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.

I want you to listen to me.

I'm going to say this again.

I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

That's how I feel when I see the investor relations tab.

I know some shit's going down when I see that.

That's hilarious.

Yeah.

I mean, 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 teamwork, T is for teamwork is everybody.

That's what this whole website looks like, but it makes 500, 600 ish million in revenue.

Market cap isn't very great because it's a lead gen 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 the website, they're 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 could 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 Sand Park 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 like tweeted me this a while ago and I just

saved it.

And then number two, Joe Spicer, my partner and 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, you, they would, you know, they owned all these school websites.

You would Google like, what's a good online degree?

They figured out that in this wet, what the, the, the, the, 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 trains jiu-jitsu.

Just like, just like you talked about, like, oh, this guy, he's good.

And, but then he like, you know, can like put you in a headlock button 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, car insurance.com, card ratings.com, money rates,

bank tracker, and, and one and modernized home services.

And then they partner with way more as well.

By the way, that's a really great source for info is talk to people at ad networks.

Yeah.

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 AWS.

My payment, all I need is like login credentials into the dashboard, right?

Like to, 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, whom I got a copy.

Right.

Right.

Dude, there's a website.

Like going to a, going to a barber shop and you see like, yeah, 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.

So funny.

The number 12 is in your world.

Not just because he's an Indian guy, but because he's, he's an Econ 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 ink 5000 list of all the list.

That's the only one that like kind of matters.

It's still, you could still game.

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 5000 winner.

I'm like, well, you can still game it.

You could still, it's supposed to be based on revenue and there's both.

So I don't trust ink anymore, but I used to.

And when I did, okay, listen, I clicked the lake for 2022 block, five is number one block

five.

Basically just went out of business.

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 two weeks ago, 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.

Yeah, you forgot the negative side, like, but it's like, it's so far away.

The computer.

I don't know where my charger is.

We can order one, but we would need our computer to do that.

I guess I could speak my best behind my way home.

Yeah, but they're like, oh, it's happy hour.

Dakarys, 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 and 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 you're like, 100% 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's like a bunch of wine and cheese types of guy though.

I know.

But before I joined the office was pretty, you know, adult and mature and like sophisticated

people.

When 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 and just drink for a bit and like, oh, server's

downs.

Like, how much traffic you think we get on the weekends anyway, one guy would go back

to his desk to like fix the thing or like you check, they check their email like, oh,

we got to go and fix this.

And then everybody else would be like, watch them walk away and be like, all right, if

he looks like he's having trouble, I'll go to like, no, don't talk, it's just the voice

of like, well, let me know if you need anything.

I was looking at this 85,000, which apparently it's just bullshit black, but I didn't really

I saw black.

I was number one.

I didn't realize that that was the company that like went out of business with so yeah,

the list is kind of no at this point.

It doesn't really matter.

I saw 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 the other list I

was looking at, it was Patel and they use 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 41 X, right?

So like if it was a million, they're due 42 million now or 41 million.

Yeah.

Again, these numbers.

My new favorite word.

Yeah, just means like a fake, right?

Yeah.

It's all about the word Fugazi.

I feel like I can own this corner.

I don't know anyone who says it and absolute pleasure, absolute treat, say that word.

Fugazi.

It's like, well, it's like the most popular line in Wolf of Wall Street.

Fugazi, Fugazi.

Yeah.

It's all fake.

You know, just carry the 12, you know, like I just can't do this type of math.

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.

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, I'm not disparaging him, but like, do they work?

Yeah.

Why not?

Like Fugazi, you know, like, yeah.

Fugazi.

Welcome to Fugazi Inc.

Yeah.

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

acidity or brain acidity.

Yeah.

It's like, it's like, it's like, Neurosity.

No, no.

Yeah.

It's like an ad campaign towards those with amnesia or with like Alzheimer's is like,

does it work?

Yeah.

Maybe.

So that's like what, what like these vitamins for dogs are like, who knows if it actually

works.

And he starts growing this company and 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, Jorts city, USA, you know, Jorts city, white

New Balance town, we like 22, 22 listeners in Orlando.

They all just collectively looked down at their lap and came back and nodded like that.

Facts of fact, baby.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like, like, you know, the England or Illinois is the land of Lincoln, Florida is 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, the Florida is 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%, 41,000%.

So 41 X. 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 pause that that company

for 600 million, I think, right?

So the it was over in the in the in the transcript.

He says, yeah, the public number is six, six hundred, but it actually got raised a little

bit higher.

Wow.

And he he also has high key snacks in this thing, it says his first business side hustle

was he was selling.

He's like, I played Zynga 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.

Yeah.

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 should take a shower.

I just I feel dirty.

Yeah.

I googled like, can I declare bankruptcy just out of embarrassment?

Like, you know, is there is there some like version of that is 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 a hundred or 200 grand just doing the fake poker chips, like

buying and selling basically.

Which is it's kind of like, you know, 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 gonna, yeah, well, just here's

all my money.

Just hopefully you'll figure it out one day.

Just get me back where you can.

Like, that's what you do when you when you meet people doing things like that.

That's like, we need this guy on and I'll give you.

I'm talking to him.

I've been talking to him on Facebook.

I got him.

He's he clearly has the, you know, he comes from our, he's cut from the same, same cloth.

I don't know what kind of cloth that is, but it's definitely our cloth.

Yeah.

We'll assume it's silk, but this guy, 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 him, 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 this free like $10,000 a year subscription.

So this guy, this guy is my guy.

I'm mad.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so what's the second reason why we need him on here?

Because I just Googled his name, AJ Patel.

Now here's a guy sold a company for over 600 million sold another company got high key

snacks sitting on store shelves everywhere in the, in the, across the country.

Guess what Google puts up in the, the, 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, we can get this guy's SEO up one.

What's the Jessica Alba's company?

Honest.

The guy started that.

His name is 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 guy who looks like undertaker or like 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, than money.

So wrestling, 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 talks like to me.

I thought he knew what he was doing and he, and it didn't work.

And the guy goes, the interviewer goes, well, was it a sad day when you fired him?

Like it 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 organ, organism and like I have zero emotional attachment.

If someone doesn't serve the business and I'm willing to fire 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 nineties.

Remember like these pictures of like the Korean store business owners with like shotgun standing

on top of their like, they're like, no, we like, 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, well, can you do me a favor?

Like do a screen share.

Let me see your calendar and like it was totally open and like they hadn't booked a lot.

Like I'm like, what?

I'm like every morning meditation afternoon walk, you know, like dude from 8am to 8pm.

It's got to, you have to have sales calls set up with perspective 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 do or the things 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, like that, that energy of like starvation with a side

of deportation is his dishes served.

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 it did 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 could

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 got to be that convenience store that has every kind bar, every cliff bar has a

stick and 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, 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, 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, you know, and like 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 gave 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 like, well, I kind of feel that

way, but I never say that.

I'm like, what are 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, you have to decide

when you, 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, but you, you know, you were trying really hard to do something and you

just messed it up.

That's okay.

That's a fumble.

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 one, 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 is 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 it's, 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're like, no, we're really excited about the pipeline.

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, I now I'm picking, 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

there's a mistake on my part.

I judged wrong, you know, my, 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 the week, but someone who like people never talk about, or at least

they don't talk about a lot and he's, 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?

You know, have we talked about him?

I don't know the name, but I just Googled it and now I know they do the, the wonderful

company or whatever.

So, 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, 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 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 coins, collectible coins.

And oddly enough, you know, who owns the Franklin Mint right now?

No, no idea.

Former MFM.

Tai Lopez.

Tai Lopez.

Does he really?

Yeah.

That was a joke.

Yeah.

Basically, 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're the ones who started it or who produced a lot of them.

And so from there, he parlayed that into 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?

It'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, Palm Juice.

And so basically the wife, Linda, she's like, you know, I love pomegranates, but this was

like in the 80s.

She's like, there's not really a good pomegranate juice.

Let's do this juice.

And she goes, you know what, pomegranate, it's good for your heart.

What else is it?

And she learns about what it's good for.

And she was like, you know, it makes women have like an hour glass figure.

Like it's like good for you and like, you know, it makes you feel good, I guess.

And so they made, she made the bottle like a, you know, it's like, if you've ever seen

it, it's like...

It's like a signature bottle, yeah.

Yeah.

Well, they own another company that has a wonderful signature bottle called Fiji Water.

So 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 it 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, 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 hip, but they're farmers.

They own, they're huge farmers and they're like have the best brands out there.

G is a great brand.

And they created these.

They're not just acquiring these, right?

No.

They made them.

Yeah.

They, they make these brands and they own way more.

Wonderful is 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 82 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, I'm like, sometimes I'm like, yeah, they're just like us.

And so sometimes they, 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, are, 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 of person that would give you a kiss on the cheek and then wipe

off the lipstick.

Yeah.

What just happened?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I love those women.

They always smell so good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like going to the bathroom at one of the, at, at a woman like that's house is just an

absolute pleasure.

There's so many things you didn't know, so many scents, scents you didn't even know existed.

Like you'll spend 15 minutes just trying to wash your hands and get out of there.

Cause it's like, oh wow.

This is, this is like a handkerchief instead of like a towel.

This is amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

At the end of this, you're going to be an expert on butterscotch candy.

Like you're going to do all of that.

And 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.

And I love this.

This is amazing.

And by the way, this teleflora, 1-800-Flowers thing, why doesn't somebody create like 1-800-Flowers

and teleflora flowers as just a ghost kitchen on DoorDash and on Uber Eats?

Like why, does that exist?

Like what, 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 arrangement or 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 is just like, I'm going to DoorDash them

something.

Right.

Cause it's like, I never planned it.

What do you DoorDash them?

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.

Cause 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.

That's a great friend machine.

Noah Kagan for my birthday gifted me like 200 bucks worth of 16 ounce bottles of Topo

Chico from Costco.

And I like that was, it was like a month, 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 then 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 friend's name at your gas station?

He'll walk in from time to time and you guys sell dip and like, cook zero.

You guys sell nacho cheese.

Yeah.

What do you use the nacho 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.

That was good.

Dude, you really did carry that episode.

That was amazing.

This is, this is, this entire episode 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 with the other way.

It's 1pm.

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.

I just, yeah, I just, my brain's good.

I just was on fire today.

I drank a bunch of coffee.

Nice.

But that's it.

All right.

I feel like I can rule the world.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.