3 low competition businesses minting MILLIONS right now

Shaan Puri 0:00 All right, today we're playing Shoot Your Shot, where we let founders come in, sit in the hot seat, and pitch us their business. We got founders that have million-dollar businesses all the way up to hundred million dollar businesses. They get 15 minutes, and in it, they start by telling us the one big number, give us the pitch, and, uh, and shoot the shot. They get to ask us any questions that they want.

Sam Parr 0:17 Yeah. We've done this in New York City. This time it's in San Francisco. Now, whatever you're doing right now, uh, you need to stop and go to Spotify or go to YouTube, look us up on My First Million, and let us know in the comments which city you want us to go to next.

Shaan Puri 0:30 All right, let's do it. [upbeat music]

Sam Parr 0:37 All right, you wanna bring the first guy out? Who do we got?

Shaan Puri 0:38 All right, let's bring it out.

Sam Parr 0:39 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 0:40 [laughs]

Nick Haschka 0:42 What's up?

Shaan Puri 0:43 How's it going?

Nick Haschka 0:44 Nice to meet you.

Sam Parr 0:45 Nick, what's good? Hit us with the big number.

Nick Haschka 0:47 All right, um, so I'm, I'm running a backup generator company in California.

Sam Parr 0:50 Okay.

Nick Haschka 0:51 We're doing about 12 million in ARR right now.

Sam Parr 0:53 Wow.

Nick Haschka 0:54 And, uh, we've got line of sight to 14 million this year, and contracted to go out to around 25.

Shaan Puri 0:59 Okay, so the, the big number is 12 million in revenue, and you're... What are you providing for people? You use- you provide-

Nick Haschka 1:06 We do backup generator sales and service.

Shaan Puri 1:08 So what does that mean? Like, I'm a house- home- I'm a homeowner out here.

Nick Haschka 1:11 That's right, yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:11 I would just buy a unit, I rent a unit-

Nick Haschka 1:13 So-

Shaan Puri 1:13 ... or you sell to power companies?

Nick Haschka 1:14 We'll sell generators.

Sam Parr 1:15 Like a Generac.

Nick Haschka 1:16 We'll service generators. Um, we typically do higher end units. Um, our clientele are typically the, like, high-end estate properties, as well as large, more regulated facilities. So every telecom tower, every nursing home, every police station, fire station-

Sam Parr 1:31 Oh, wow.

Shaan Puri 1:31 Gotcha

Nick Haschka 1:32 ... every data center.

Shaan Puri 1:33 So it's B2B.

Nick Haschka 1:34 Mostly B2B. We will... And, and the product that the high-end estate properties get, that's a, it's an industrial product.

Shaan Puri 1:40 So there's all these businesses that as soon as somebody says them, I'm like, "Ah, of course," yet they've been a complete blind spot to me my entire life.

Sam Parr 1:45 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:46 I've never thought about it once, and I always wonder, how did that guy start thinking about this?

Nick Haschka 1:49 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:49 So how did you realize, "This is a business I could go be a part of?"

Nick Haschka 1:53 So I started my career in management consulting, where you dabble around a bunch of different industries. Uh, at one point I landed in a corporate job at NRG, large power company in the US. Was doing innovation projects there, strategy, and one of the areas we had the hardest time finding good expertise in was backup generators.

Sam Parr 2:11 And a backup generator is if your power goes down for one minute or 12 hours because of a storm or an ear- earthquake or something-

Nick Haschka 2:18 Yep

Sam Parr 2:18 ... this thing kicks on-

Nick Haschka 2:19 Yep

Sam Parr 2:19 ... you're good to go.

Nick Haschka 2:20 You do not want the power to go out when you're on the surgery, surgery table, unless there's a backup generator there to cover.

Sam Parr 2:25 Great.

Nick Haschka 2:26 And so every surgery center, every hospital, they've all got 'em.

Sam Parr 2:28 When did you start the company?

Nick Haschka 2:30 Um, so I acquired the first one, and so this has been an acquisition venture. It started with a thesis. Went around looking f- trying to find a s- a service provider to buy. We bought our first one in January 2024, and then bought a second one about five to six months later.

Shaan Puri 2:44 And describe the industry. So is this a bunch of mom-and-pop companies, a few large players? Like, what does the industry-

Nick Haschka 2:49 Yeah

Shaan Puri 2:49 ... even look like?

Nick Haschka 2:49 So very bar-belled. So you've got, we go head-to-head up against big, big industrial names like Caterpillar and Cummins and Generac. On the direct side, where we're competing for the business of, you know, marquee names, big counties, big state b- state contracts and things like that, we also go head-to-head against the small mom-and-pop players. But really, the, the lion's share of the market is owned by the, the bigger platforms.

Shaan Puri 3:13 So, so you did a search. You quit your job and did a search? You searched on the side? What'd you do?

Nick Haschka 3:16 So this was actually, this is my third search venture. Um, I had done, my first one was an office plant company. Um-

Sam Parr 3:24 O- what?

Nick Haschka 3:24 An office plant company.

Shaan Puri 3:25 Plants?

Nick Haschka 3:26 Yep.

Shaan Puri 3:26 Like-

Nick Haschka 3:26 In- yep, probably, possibly those.

Shaan Puri 3:28 [laughs]

Sam Parr 3:29 How'd that go?

Nick Haschka 3:30 Uh, that, that's, still own it. Um-

Sam Parr 3:32 You own it?

Nick Haschka 3:33 Bought it in 2017. Um, we've done 14 acquisitions on that platform.

Sam Parr 3:37 Uh, hold up. Uh, how much revenue does that do?

Nick Haschka 3:40 Uh, that's around 10 million.

Sam Parr 3:42 What? You own it outright?

Nick Haschka 3:43 Uh, me and my partner, yeah.

Sam Parr 3:44 Okay.

Nick Haschka 3:44 There's two of us.

Sam Parr 3:45 How much EBITDA?

Nick Haschka 3:46 Uh, a little over two.

Sam Parr 3:47 Okay.

Shaan Puri 3:47 Was that a thesis, or that was, "I stumbled into a guy who owned a plant," uh, office plant company?

Nick Haschka 3:51 That was a failed venture-backed startup. There's gotta be an easier way to make money. Sitting on my couch, cruising Biz Buy Sell in the way that a lot of people do with Zillow, uh, instead of-

Sam Parr 4:01 You had a, a, a venture f- uh, company that failed.

Nick Haschka 4:04 Yep.

Sam Parr 4:04 And so you were, like, a management consultant-

Nick Haschka 4:06 I wasn't the founder, but-

Sam Parr 4:07 But you were, like, a management consultant nerd.

Nick Haschka 4:09 Yeah.

Sam Parr 4:09 You were just like a, a, a, an academic-

Nick Haschka 4:11 Totally

Sam Parr 4:11 ... like, nerdy guy.

Nick Haschka 4:12 Ivory tower, here's your board deck.

Sam Parr 4:14 Yeah. You're like, "All right, now I need to get after it. So, uh, this company, it failed. Now we're gonna get into plants."

Nick Haschka 4:19 Yeah, so-

Sam Parr 4:19 Okay, I'm gonna buy something

Nick Haschka 4:20 ... we did, bought it with an SBA loan. It was, like, the polar opposite of what I had been doing throughout my career, which was a mix of, like, management consulting, boardroom, Fortune 500 type of stuff, and venture-backed startups. And I guess there's a third leg to that, which is-

Sam Parr 4:35 And what was the second company?

Nick Haschka 4:36 ... kind of the small business world.

Sam Parr 4:36 You did plants, then what?

Nick Haschka 4:38 We carved out a portfolio of commercial landscaping contracts in that plant business and sold that to private equity.

Sam Parr 4:43 How much did you sell for?

Nick Haschka 4:45 Uh, just, uh, a little over a million.

Sam Parr 4:47 Okay, so that was the-

Nick Haschka 4:48 But it was, it was 20% of my cash flow and, like, 80% of my headaches.

Sam Parr 4:52 Got it.

Nick Haschka 4:52 And that freed me up, um, 'cause I was, like, the biz dev guy. I was finding the plant acquisitions. I, uh, that business, I built it, I bought, did the first acquisition, I did four after that, and then I kinda handed it off to my partner to run day-to-day.

Shaan Puri 5:05 So you, you like doing the search, the, the biz dev-

Nick Haschka 5:08 The initial builds

Shaan Puri 5:08 ... and you like doing the M&A. You have a partner who does the operations, or?

Nick Haschka 5:11 Yeah, that's right.

Sam Parr 5:12 How much did you raise for this third business?

Nick Haschka 5:14 So the third business-

Sam Parr 5:14 What, what's it called? It's called OnPoint?

Nick Haschka 5:16 OnPoint, yep.

Sam Parr 5:16 Okay.

Nick Haschka 5:16 So this is the first time we've raised outside money, because we felt that given where the macros were in terms of electricity demand booming, data center market booming, you know, electrical contractors booming, we felt like to meet the opportunity where, where it was gonna be, like, we needed to raise some outside capital. So we brought in six and a half million. Um, we did a significant chunk of it, but there's, you know, about 5 million of outside investment in this one.

Sam Parr 5:41 And how big is this gonna get?

Nick Haschka 5:42 I don't know yet. I think this business can get really, really big.

Sam Parr 5:44 Hundreds of millions?

Nick Haschka 5:45 Hundreds of millions. I think we can get to... We're, the question will be, it's really revenue throughput. Do we have the technicians to pull off the work? I've got the work contracted. It's pure, uh, it's purely an execution game at this point.

Shaan Puri 5:55 Wow. And so describe, you said you would go up against Caterpillar and these other larger players. What, what axes do you need to compete on? Is it price? Is it-

Nick Haschka 6:03 It's-

Shaan Puri 6:03 Uh, what, what, what are, how do you win the pitch?

Nick Haschka 6:05 It's 100% speed They are slow. They're good at what they do, but they're very slow.

Shaan Puri 6:10 What's the speed difference? Uh, how long versus how long?

Nick Haschka 6:13 So for us, and, and AI has been an absolutely s- like central part of our strategy of speeding up every single process in that business. I need to be able to deliver a quote while my guy's there. These are complex machines with a very difficult parts supply chain. It can take weeks to turn around a quote from a, "Hey, your generator's broken," to, "Hey, here's what it's gonna cost me to fix it, and when we can do it." It's very, very slow business, and it's very, very difficult because of all the research and tribal knowledge and it's, you know, spread across all these different vendors.

Shaan Puri 6:39 So how do you use AI to speed up that quote if, let's say the guy's standing there-

Nick Haschka 6:42 Yep

Shaan Puri 6:43 ... understanding what's the issue.

Nick Haschka 6:44 Yep.

Shaan Puri 6:45 Is he inputting something on his phone-

Nick Haschka 6:47 That's right

Shaan Puri 6:47 ... and he's getting... What, what, what do you have?

Nick Haschka 6:49 And, and we've done all the backend work of every document that we have ever produced as a company has been ingested and studied by AI. We've built a reg- uh, retrieval augmented system so that we can do research on the fly and produce answers on the fly.

Sam Parr 7:04 This is great. So there's companies, I've got a friend that owns a HVAC company, and it does close to $200 million in revenue. And he was complaining and lamenting over all, "My business sucks for this reason. His bus-", you know, "You suck for that reason." And he wa- and he was telling me, like, he was like, "Well, we just have to get better at buying Google AdWords." And, and, and he was like, "The demand's there. Like, I just have to, like, operate." And I was, like, so envious of that because that's not what I have. I've gotta, like, teach people what it is and whatever. Are you in the weeds of training people, or is your personal job just finding who else you're gonna buy?

Nick Haschka 7:34 Um, so we've kind of put a pause on M&A right now. We're really trying to nail the operational workflows-

Sam Parr 7:40 And that's what you're doing

Nick Haschka 7:41 ... and AI support. And I'm doing a lot of the building myself.

Sam Parr 7:43 Is it a pain in the ass to train these technicians?

Nick Haschka 7:46 I'd say it's more than a pain in the ass. It's impossible.

Sam Parr 7:49 Why?

Nick Haschka 7:49 Like, this is very, very-

Shaan Puri 7:50 Training or finding them? Which, what's it?

Nick Haschka 7:51 Both. Because, A, there's not enough of them. Those that exist are on their way out, not in.

Sam Parr 7:58 And who is they?

Nick Haschka 7:59 Uh, field technicians.

Sam Parr 8:00 I know, but what, what do they... Like, are they in the same category of an HVAC person where, like, if you give me eight weeks of your time, I could teach you how to do this, but it's hard to find someone who's willing to do it?

Nick Haschka 8:09 I'd say not far off of that.

Sam Parr 8:11 Okay.

Nick Haschka 8:11 Um, it's mechanical, it's electrical, and it's both, and usually very few guys are good at both. It's increasingly instrumentation and controls, so there's more computer and, uh, like troubleshooting diagnostics.

Shaan Puri 8:23 How, how much does a field technician make? Is this, like, a job that people are gonna want 'cause it's, it pays really well?

Nick Haschka 8:27 This is a good job. This is an opportunity where the elite field technicians, they will clear well into the six figures, a guy with a high school education. But it takes time to accumulate the experience. And you don't see a lot of generators, so experience accumulates slowly. Even in HVAC, you might do, you know, three, four service calls a day. Our guys are doing one or two service calls a day. It is-

Sam Parr 8:48 And the consequences are massive.

Nick Haschka 8:49 The consequences are massive.

Sam Parr 8:50 How big is the average contract?

Shaan Puri 8:52 Hey, I wanna tell you about something pretty cool. We have a database of all of the business ideas that have been discussed on this podcast. So hundreds of episodes the team at HubSpot went through. They pulled out all the simple, relatable, interesting, profitable, uh, ideas that we have brainstormed, and they're all available for download for free. Just click the link in the description below. Thank you to our friends at HubSpot for sponsoring this podcast and putting together this free resource for you guys. Back to the show.

Sam Parr 9:17 How big is the average contract?

Nick Haschka 9:19 It varies tremendously depending on whether you're dealing with a, you know, a three-megawatt unit at an AWS data center or a, you know, Frank and Shirley's generator in their backyard. For the, you know, data center units, you're probably talking $25,000 a year in service revenue.

Sam Parr 9:35 And is there ever churn?

Nick Haschka 9:37 There is, but generally they kind of want accountability on the vendor, and so... And that is one thing that's hard about competing against Caterpillar, right? Like, the, the facilities guy's like, "Well, I hired Caterpillar and they couldn't figure it out, so..."

Sam Parr 9:51 Right.

Nick Haschka 9:51 Right?

Shaan Puri 9:51 So, so let me make sure I understand. It sounds like you do, you sell the generators, but you service them. Pr- I would guess servicing is more than new, new sales.

Nick Haschka 9:58 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 9:59 And you get brought in directly by the facility or by the guy, whoever the company is that made that. They o- they put servi- they need service technicians out in the field everywhere, so they subcontract out to you.

Nick Haschka 10:08 So we're an independent, so we have to, we have to e- eat what we kill, basically. So-

Shaan Puri 10:13 So you go straight to the facility.

Nick Haschka 10:14 We gotta go straight to the facility. We can work through the proj- uh, through the facilities operations companies, like the JLLs and CBRE real estate.

Shaan Puri 10:21 And now you're, you're saying my biggest bottleneck is I gotta get enough technicians to be able to service the workload that we have. How are you gonna solve that problem?

Nick Haschka 10:29 So we're still figuring it out. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 10:32 [laughs]

Nick Haschka 10:32 We've got every recruiter, y- you know, we've got e- every recruiter spun up sending us leads.

Shaan Puri 10:37 Okay.

Nick Haschka 10:37 Some of it is, like, you can pay to bring guys here. Will they stay here? Open question. I'd say we can find the guys who says that he knows how to fix those things. Can we select for the guys who actually know how to fix those things? That's, uh, I think... We've had a harder t- we've had an easier time finding people and getting them in the door and selling them on joining our company than we have had being damn certain that when that guy shows up there, he's gonna find the problem and fix the, and fix it.

Sam Parr 11:02 But what did the, um, like, we, this is the second time we've mentioned him, but, like, you know, Tommy Mello, the A1 Garage Door guy. Have you heard of that guy?

Nick Haschka 11:09 Yeah. Yes.

Sam Parr 11:10 Um, and then there's, like, tons of these, like, influencers who are legit business guys. What have they done to, like... 'Cause they have all had the exact same thing where they're like-

Nick Haschka 11:17 Yeah

Sam Parr 11:17 ... you know, garage doors. Like, a lot of the people who come to me are kinda, like, problematic, and I gotta teach them how to, like... I think he said, he's like, "We teach them how to, like, pet the dog. You pet the dog right when you come in. You ask, 'May I come in?'"

Shaan Puri 11:27 He does, like, sales excellence.

Nick Haschka 11:28 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 11:29 But still he needs the technicians to go do the work. One of the things we always talk about is, like, uh, as an entrepreneur, it's easy to feel like I have this, this problem, this burden, and it's, like, unique to me. And it's like pr- very few problems in your business haven't already been solved by somebody else. So the easy thing to ask them, "Well, h- who else has solved this problem, and how, how the heck did they do it?" So he's saying-

Nick Haschka 11:49 Yeah

Shaan Puri 11:49 ... how the heck did the garage or tech- how did the garage companies-

Nick Haschka 11:53 Yeah

Shaan Puri 11:53 ... get, scale up their technician force? Who do you look at that's already done this?

Nick Haschka 11:56 So you basically have to start a trade school. You are the trade school.

Sam Parr 11:59 Yeah.

Nick Haschka 11:59 You have to bring these guys up.

Sam Parr 12:00 My AC buddy who I'm referring to, he has Hoffman University

Nick Haschka 12:04 You have to.

Shaan Puri 12:04 Have you done that?

Nick Haschka 12:05 Not yet. We're not big enough to do it just yet. We're working on building our shop, building... We have a third bay in our shop that is the training bay, and we've handed our lead technician, you know, a, an assignment to, we gotta build out our own training capabilities. We've built the digital side of it, so turning every job we do into a training experience that can be relayed onto the tr- team, because I need the guys to get more than one rep a day, right? I, if I can turn every rep we do that day-

Shaan Puri 12:33 Well, how do you do that?

Nick Haschka 12:33 ... into a bunch of reps.

Shaan Puri 12:34 How are you turning it into, like, a simulation?

Nick Haschka 12:36 So as guys submit their field reports, we have a pre-job briefing. So we prepare these guys to go out to the field like they're CIA agents being dropped into Afghanistan, right? Here's everything we know about-

Shaan Puri 12:46 [laughs]

Nick Haschka 12:47 ... this unit.

Shaan Puri 12:47 Nice.

Nick Haschka 12:47 Here's everything we've ever seen.

Shaan Puri 12:49 Smart.

Sam Parr 12:49 [laughs]

Nick Haschka 12:49 Like, they play it on their phone. They can listen and hear, "Hey, this is what I'm, this is what I'm facing." And so, and that's the AI side. Then they do their report, and they document their findings in the report. Um, and we've got a pretty slick data collection process where they can use their voice to produce their report. We've got AI reading everything that they do, everything that they say, and then at the end of the process when they submit their report, we will flag the reports that are the best training material.

Sam Parr 13:17 When you're laying in bed at night and you're thinking, "If we can do this, this, and this, maybe in five years we could sell, or maybe I can have this much annual income," or, like, whatever that number, that, that vanity thing is, for you, what is that?

Nick Haschka 13:32 Man, I think for me-

Shaan Puri 13:33 Financial fantasy

Nick Haschka 13:34 ... this is my third time around.

Shaan Puri 13:35 [laughs]

Nick Haschka 13:35 And I feel like I'm doing this because I, I chose this. I wanted to be doing this. So it's kind of about, like, what are all the cool capabilities that we could build that have never been possible before?

Sam Parr 13:45 Well, okay, and s- be specific though. When you're, like, when you're thinking about this, you're like, what, what is that? Like, what really gets you going?

Nick Haschka 13:50 Um, I think making, like, really great jobs for these t- tradesmen, helping them ach- like, ordinary people achieve, like, really, really extraordinary performance.

Sam Parr 14:00 Yeah.

Nick Haschka 14:01 Um, I'm s- like, super excited about what we're gonna be able to do and, like, how we're gonna be able to empower people who have never really worked for a company that gave a crap that much about the process.

Sam Parr 14:11 There was this really cool company, I forget the name, but they took out an ad in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, or some huge national publication, a- and they played off this idea of, like, you know how, like, your grandfather walked me around the city, and he's like, "You see that building? I made that," you know? And he was just part of the construction crew. Or, like-

Nick Haschka 14:28 Yeah

Sam Parr 14:28 ... you know, "Look, about 50 years ago we installed this thing because..." And there's, like, this pride. And the ad that they put out, 'cause they were trying to recruit people, is, "Do you really wanna brag to your kids that you made B2B software just a little bit better?" You know, something like that.

Nick Haschka 14:39 Yeah.

Sam Parr 14:39 And, like, I wonder if there's, like, some cool, like, um, mission-driven, like, angles that you could take to this, like, recruiting. Because when you talk about, like, "I'm passionate about giving, like, everyday guys, like, a chance to, like, do something interesting."

Nick Haschka 14:51 No, it's an interesting idea. I, and I think there's definitely a point of pride over, oh, we work on... You know, c- it's kinda fun, too, 'cause we work on a lot of high-end properties. So these are the, like, you know, lifestyles of the rich and famous type of stuff where we work on those properties. We put those generators in.

Shaan Puri 15:03 And the mission critical hospitals, whatnot, yeah.

Nick Haschka 15:05 And that, right? They're such an, an important duty.

Shaan Puri 15:08 Seems like, like, I coached high school basketball this year, and our star player, the power forward, he's graduating. We were like, "Do you wanna go play in college? We can get you in front of some scouts." And he's like, "I'm going to trade school." He's like, "I'm not gonna..." The, the trade school doesn't have a basketball team. He wanted to go work for, you know, he wanted to become, like, an electrician h- but he, but, like, f- like crazy stuff, like hanging out of a helicopter doing some repair-

Nick Haschka 15:30 Yeah

Shaan Puri 15:30 ... in some crazy site. And it made me realize, you know, there's probably a lot of people who are, like, have the talent, you know, whether it's veterans, whether it's, uh, ex-athletes. They kinda like the idea of doing certain types of work, getting paid really well for it, not having to go to a four-year university, and I wonder how you can surface more of them faster or where they're going today that you can tap into that flow.

Nick Haschka 15:54 I think the stigma of the trades is gone. I think that is behind us. Like, the things that we were told when we were, you know, coming up, like, you know, you gotta go to college, better make sure it's a good one, yada, yada. I think that there's some of that still there, but, like, I think the stigma of going into the trades is behind us, and now it's like this is the opportunity for the tradesman's craft to shine.

Shaan Puri 16:14 Right.

Nick Haschka 16:14 And we're trying to give them the tools so that they really can and so that they can grow faster, learn faster and-

Shaan Puri 16:19 Well, nobody's built a great brand around the trade school, right? Like-

Nick Haschka 16:22 Uh, no

Shaan Puri 16:22 ... is there a... What's Harvard, what's Stanford for, for that, right? Like, where could you be proud that you got into, that you're going-

Nick Haschka 16:27 Right

Shaan Puri 16:27 ... that you're coming out like a Navy SEAL who's gonna be able to do all these amazing things? That to me is a, a even bigger opportunity than what you're currently doing, 'cause that serves-

Sam Parr 16:34 And earn, like, $150,000.

Shaan Puri 16:36 Yeah, it serves-

Nick Haschka 16:37 Right

Shaan Puri 16:37 ... all kinds of industries, you know?

Nick Haschka 16:39 And there are some, they're really niche, you know, and they're, uh, they're d- with that specific trade.

Shaan Puri 16:45 Yeah.

Nick Haschka 16:45 And so it's, there's not, like, a big one that everybody would know, oh, that's the stamp of approval. But there's not a Harvard of the trades in general, which I do think there's, like, an excellent opportunity there.

Shaan Puri 16:54 Crazy opportunity for that, yeah.

Nick Haschka 16:54 And I would love to work on that. I feel like right now I'm working toward that, and I need to understand it at a level of depth and have solved it for one quarter of the universe so that-

Shaan Puri 17:03 [laughs]

Nick Haschka 17:03 ... we can think about, okay, what, what would, how would you next level this thing?

Sam Parr 17:06 You have very, um, kinetic and contagious energy. I, I have a feeling that in the next four or five years, you're gonna be significantly further along than where you are now. It, it's very evident.

Shaan Puri 17:16 You picked an amazing space, and, uh, it's so cool. You know, we had a guy, the last guy was, like, a franchise guy, and you're, you, you're doing entrepreneurship through search and acquisition. Uh, I just love all the different styles, so, you know, appreciate you coming on, man.

Nick Haschka 17:30 Yeah, thanks for having me.

Sam Parr 17:31 Cool. All right, we appreciate you. Thank you. [audience applauds]

Nick Haschka 17:34 We have someone else?

Shaan Puri 17:36 Welcome.

Kevin Moyer 17:38 How's it going?

Shaan Puri 17:39 Good. Excellent posture.

Sam Parr 17:40 Yeah.

Kevin Moyer 17:40 Oh, yeah? I, you know-

Sam Parr 17:41 Yeah, you scream good posture

Kevin Moyer 17:42 ... I work on it. I'll tell you that.

Shaan Puri 17:43 Yeah. [laughs] Look at this guy. Gee, I-

Kevin Moyer 17:44 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 17:45 ... up my game a little bit.

Kevin Moyer 17:47 Nice to have you here.

Shaan Puri 17:47 Yeah, thank you.

Kevin Moyer 17:48 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 17:48 All right, what's your name?

Kevin Moyer 17:49 What's up, guys? I'm Kevin.

Shaan Puri 17:50 Kevin.

Kevin Moyer 17:51 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 17:51 Welcome. [laughs]

Kevin Moyer 17:52 Thank you.

Shaan Puri 17:52 Welcome to Shoot Your Shot.

Kevin Moyer 17:53 Thank you.

Shaan Puri 17:53 Um, hit us with the big number to start.

Kevin Moyer 17:56 So big is relative. My number is 1.8 million. My... I think I'm a little unique with this setup, 'cause I actually just sold my business about two, three weeks ago.

Sam Parr 18:04 Nice.

Shaan Puri 18:04 Congrats.

Kevin Moyer 18:04 That's what I sold it for. Starter business on the board.

Sam Parr 18:07 Wait, so you are-

Shaan Puri 18:08 You, you just exited at 1.8?

Kevin Moyer 18:09 Just exited at 1.8, yeah.

Sam Parr 18:10 So what'd you-

Kevin Moyer 18:10 That was the sale price

Sam Parr 18:11 ... what did you sell for $1.8 million?

Kevin Moyer 18:12 Uh, it was a franchise business called Smash My Trash.

Sam Parr 18:15 Smash My Trash.

Shaan Puri 18:17 Oh, I've heard of this. Have you heard of this before?

Sam Parr 18:18 No. What is Smash My Trash?

Shaan Puri 18:19 [laughs] Explain. Explain.

Kevin Moyer 18:20 Yeah, so the basic concept is- Companies that produce a lot of trash, industrial businesses, warehouses, factories, things like that, throw away a lot of stuff in these open-top dumpsters that are these rectangles that hold, like, 40 cubic yards of stuff. The pricing model is that every time you fill it up and you need a new one, you have to get it replaced, and that can cost, like, $1,000.

Sam Parr 18:39 Yeah, I used to, like, get on top of ours and, like, jump up and down.

Kevin Moyer 18:41 That's it.

Shaan Puri 18:42 Imagine.

Sam Parr 18:43 Yeah.

Kevin Moyer 18:43 So, if a-

Shaan Puri 18:43 Imagine a giant thing came and smashed the trash down

Sam Parr 18:46 [laughs] Oh, if... I thought I was gonna, like, hire someone to come and jump on the trash for me.

Kevin Moyer 18:50 [laughs] That was it. No.

Sam Parr 18:51 [laughs]

Kevin Moyer 18:51 So we have these trucks that back up to the dumpster. Like you said, Shaan, there's a crane on the back with this spinning spike yarn that goes in, pushes the trash down. The deal is basically, let's say you get 10 pickups a month, 1,000 bucks. That's $10,000 a month you're spending on trash. We'll get you down to just round numbers, five, and we'll split the savings with you.

Sam Parr 19:10 Wait, so one... A, a large company will spend 10 grand a month in trash?

Kevin Moyer 19:13 Yeah, or more.

Sam Parr 19:14 Who? Like, a f- warehouse?

Kevin Moyer 19:15 Big factories, production facilities. In, like, agricultural California is where I was doing a lot of work.

Sam Parr 19:21 Wow.

Kevin Moyer 19:22 Companies that just-

Shaan Puri 19:22 So these are like, you just go to the parking lot, there's a huge dumpster back there. That's, that was the opportunity, is to-

Kevin Moyer 19:28 That's the opportunity

Shaan Puri 19:29 ... is, is to smash the trash down so you have to do less pickups per, per thing, 'cause you're paying per pickup.

Kevin Moyer 19:35 That's it.

Sam Parr 19:35 And do Smash, Smashing trucks exist already? Did you have to buy them?

Kevin Moyer 19:40 It was a new concept. So it's a franchise. This guy came up with the idea, started growing fast, decided to franchise it. So these didn't really exist. They exist in Europe, but they're, like, mounted to the side of the building. So those companies would back the dumpster up. So the insight was throw these things on a truck, have them drive around, and do it as, like, a mobile service.

Shaan Puri 19:56 So you bought a franchise-

Kevin Moyer 19:58 Yeah

Shaan Puri 19:58 ... and then now sold your franchise.

Kevin Moyer 19:59 Correct.

Shaan Puri 20:00 One location? How many?

Kevin Moyer 20:02 Five locations.

Shaan Puri 20:03 Five locations.

Kevin Moyer 20:03 Yeah.

Sam Parr 20:03 How much did it cost to buy in?

Kevin Moyer 20:05 I bought it in chunks, so my, I think my buy-in was, like, 185K.

Sam Parr 20:09 Upfront?

Kevin Moyer 20:10 Upfront.

Sam Parr 20:11 Did-

Kevin Moyer 20:11 And then I-

Sam Parr 20:11 How did you have money before?

Kevin Moyer 20:13 I worked in tech. I was, like, somebody who worked in SaaS, and, uh, had, like, the W-2 thing there.

Shaan Puri 20:17 Were you doing sales, or what were you doing?

Kevin Moyer 20:18 Yeah, I was in, like, sales, and product, and stuff like that. Like, the kind of classic Bay Area W-2 thing.

Shaan Puri 20:23 So this is so interesting. So you're just sitting there at the office. You got a good job. You're working in tech. And yet, you're like, "I need to get out there amongst the trash." What was the, what was the chain of events that led you to, like, quit this safe thing and go buy into a Smash My Trash franchise?

Kevin Moyer 20:38 Yeah, it was a couple things. It was, like, a growing sense of dissatisfaction. I, like, I kinda started to realize late in life that I wanted to work for myself, and I was also, like, in this venture world where you're, like, going after, like, the next round of funding, this eventual exit. And I didn't, I was, like, blind to the way that a lot of the world worked in terms of, like, cash flowing, blue collar businesses. And I started to get bit by that bug a little bit. Like, I started hearing stuff about that, and I got interested. And then it was really when I got married and went on my honeymoon, and I waited till, like, the last minute to book our honeymoon, so we stayed at places that, like, we probably shouldn't have gone to that were nicer than we otherwise would have. Started talking about, started talking to people there at the pool and stuff.

Shaan Puri 21:17 [laughs]

Kevin Moyer 21:17 And been like, "Oh, this blue collar thing," like-

Sam Parr 21:18 No way. I feel like all the rich guys are trash people [laughs]

Kevin Moyer 21:20 ... people make, yeah [laughs] people make cash doing businesses that are off the beaten path and interesting.

Shaan Puri 21:26 Do you remember, like, what were they, what were they saying? What did they do?

Kevin Moyer 21:28 So one guy did, like, real estate. One guy did, like, a food truck, but, like, did, like, a food truck, like, as a serious operation.

Shaan Puri 21:34 Right.

Kevin Moyer 21:34 Like, had many of them. I'd also had the seed planted. On my bachelor party, I was there with my friend who was in private equity, and he actually got in Smash My Trash before me.

Shaan Puri 21:42 Gotcha.

Kevin Moyer 21:42 So he planted the seed, and he's a private equity guy, so it's like-

Sam Parr 21:46 Of the, of the 180, how much of... Was that a huge chunk of your savings?

Kevin Moyer 21:50 I did 85 myself. A buddy gave me 70. And then, so that was, like, the equity, and then I did a $350,000 SBA loan as well.

Shaan Puri 21:58 But, but were you, were you like, "I'm all in"

Sam Parr 22:01 This has to work.

Shaan Puri 22:01 "This has to work," or was this, like, a safe, like, "I'm putting a small amount in, I'm, I'm hedging bet"

Kevin Moyer 22:05 It felt like a pretty safe side bet.

Shaan Puri 22:06 Okay.

Kevin Moyer 22:06 I had more than that that I would've been able to, but it felt uncomfortable.

Shaan Puri 22:10 Okay.

Kevin Moyer 22:11 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 22:11 So you, you decide to go in. You buy one. What happens?

Kevin Moyer 22:14 So I actually bought three out of the gate.

Shaan Puri 22:16 Okay [laughs] .

Kevin Moyer 22:16 I bought, I bought three territories out of the gate. Now, territories in the franchise world, like, a lot of times people picture restaurants, where, like-

Shaan Puri 22:21 Yeah

Kevin Moyer 22:21 ... it's clearly a unit. This is area.

Shaan Puri 22:23 Yeah.

Kevin Moyer 22:23 So, I mean, it's really one business. The areas are a little arbitrary.

Sam Parr 22:26 How many years ago was this?

Kevin Moyer 22:27 This was in 2022 I got started.

Sam Parr 22:29 Okay, so four years.

Kevin Moyer 22:30 Four years ago.

Sam Parr 22:30 Four years ago.

Kevin Moyer 22:31 So got started, and part of the reason I got into it was I was interested in something where I could draw a direct line between, like, brute force effort and cash in the bank. I felt like in tech world, I was so many layers abstracted away from, like, eventually making money.

Sam Parr 22:47 That's, like, a classic Warren Buffett metric, right? Brute force to cash in the bank [laughs] .

Kevin Moyer 22:50 [laughs] Yeah, exactly.

Shaan Puri 22:50 So what, what do you mean? You just meant, like, "If I, more people I call, the more money I'm gonna make."

Kevin Moyer 22:55 Right.

Shaan Puri 22:55 [laughs]

Kevin Moyer 22:55 Like, I had this no-brainer offer. I had these people who definitely could use this and 100% could make money, and all I needed to do was go get them to believe me.

Shaan Puri 23:05 Yeah.

Kevin Moyer 23:05 And I could just start making cash, and it wasn't, like, this promise of some future outcome. And I found that really motivating.

Shaan Puri 23:12 Okay.

Kevin Moyer 23:12 So I paid somebody overseas to, like, zoom in on Google Satellite view and put pins on every dumpster.

Shaan Puri 23:19 Okay.

Kevin Moyer 23:20 And, like, that was my plan.

Shaan Puri 23:21 [laughs]

Kevin Moyer 23:21 And I would drive from Walnut Creek down to s- you know, San Jose to Salinas. Like, hour and a half, two hours each way every day, and just, like, trespass. Go into warehouses, try to talk to, like, the person there who's in charge of the dumpster-

Shaan Puri 23:35 Right

Kevin Moyer 23:35 ... and just kinda willed it into existence. Started driving beyond the confines of my territory.

Shaan Puri 23:41 Well, wait. Even zoom in. You go, you drive. Okay, contractor gives you a pin. You drive to the pin. You get there. You weren't invited. Knock, knock. Now what?

Kevin Moyer 23:50 So not even knock, knock. Drive r-

Shaan Puri 23:51 Walk in [laughs]

Kevin Moyer 23:51 ... right around to the back where the dumpster is.

Shaan Puri 23:53 Okay.

Kevin Moyer 23:54 My, I, so I built this up over time. I learned.

Shaan Puri 23:56 Yeah.

Kevin Moyer 23:56 You don't wanna go to the office, because the office, they're gonna, you know, they're gonna tell you no. So what I would do is I had a red hard hat that I would put on.

Sam Parr 24:03 Oh, my God.

Kevin Moyer 24:04 Get the clip cord going.

Shaan Puri 24:04 It's so good, right? [laughs]

Kevin Moyer 24:05 Walk into the back, and try to find the person who's physically loading the dumpster. You got the red hard hat on, start asking questions. Well, most of the time they would just tell me-

Shaan Puri 24:12 They just assume you work there.

Sam Parr 24:13 He's like, "Dude, there's no construction around here. What are you doing?"

Shaan Puri 24:15 They just think you're, like-

Kevin Moyer 24:16 You're the trash contractor for the company

Shaan Puri 24:18 ... right [laughs] .

Sam Parr 24:18 [laughs]

Kevin Moyer 24:18 Right. They're, they're just not sure. They're just like, "This guy's asking me, like, 'How many pickups do you get? Who's in charge of it?'" I start to kinda size the account, get some info, and then I would go to the front armed with info, and then I would, you know, work my way to the decision maker.

Sam Parr 24:31 How many months until your first dollar?

Kevin Moyer 24:33 Right away. Right away. And the first-

Shaan Puri 24:35 How thrilling was that first sale?

Kevin Moyer 24:37 Oh, it was great.

Shaan Puri 24:37 [laughs]

Kevin Moyer 24:38 Oh, it was great. I was, like, out with our neighbors when they first... 'Cause these are, like, kinda chunky contracts. We're talking about, like, large... I mean, for me at the time, you know, couple thousand bucks a month recurring revenue. So it only took two, three, four accounts to basically pay my debt service and my driver and-

Sam Parr 24:55 So you had a driver right off the bat?

Kevin Moyer 24:56 I hired a driver right off the bat, yeah.

Shaan Puri 24:58 And did Smash My Trash give you this playbook? Or you were just like, "I'm gonna red hard hat this," or they were like, "Hey, here's how you do it"?

Kevin Moyer 25:04 They didn't tell me about the red hard hat, but they gave you the basic playbook, and then I, before I opened, went around to a couple other franchisees, including my buddy I mentioned, and just was like, "Show me everything."

Shaan Puri 25:15 Tell me what works.

Kevin Moyer 25:15 "How do you guys do it? What works?" And-

Sam Parr 25:16 It's sort of like, have you ever seen those videos where someone's [laughs] some- my, my friend Neville Medora, he's, uh, an Indian guy, and during South by Southwest every year he dresses up like a sheik. Like, he wears, like, a white, uh, thing.

Shaan Puri 25:29 As one does.

Sam Parr 25:29 And a hat. And then he's just like, "I get in free." [laughs]

Shaan Puri 25:34 [laughs]

Kevin Moyer 25:34 [laughs]

Sam Parr 25:36 And then there's, like, these Instagram videos of guys who, like, they're like, "I'm just gonna, like, look like a DJ," whatever that means.

Shaan Puri 25:41 Right. [laughs]

Kevin Moyer 25:41 [laughs]

Sam Parr 25:41 And then they get into the club. Uh, that-

Kevin Moyer 25:44 Yep

Sam Parr 25:44 ... that's like this version of that. [laughs]

Kevin Moyer 25:46 Exactly. People just don't ask questions.

Shaan Puri 25:48 So you... This is amazing. Okay. So you said you sold the business now. Year one, do you remember kinda like what was the P&L? Like, what'd you, what'd you make in, in first year of business?

Kevin Moyer 25:56 It's hard to say. I... Because in the first year I bought the, uh, two additional franchises. So one day I drove beyond the bounds of my territory, and I found, like, the trash gold mine, and I bought those two franchises and bought two more trucks.

Shaan Puri 26:09 Okay.

Kevin Moyer 26:09 So all the cash went right back in.

Shaan Puri 26:11 Were all three territories successful? Or one sucked but another one was amazing and made up for it?

Kevin Moyer 26:15 That was kind of it. There was a great one, there was an okay one, there was a medium one, and then I added on, like, these two amazing ones. Um, so I had to buy two trucks, had to buy two new, uh, territories. So all the cash went right back into that. I think I probably did, like, 6 to 800K of top line in those first two years.

Sam Parr 26:33 Wow. What was the biggest pain in the ass, looking back?

Kevin Moyer 26:36 The trucks.

Sam Parr 26:37 The operators? Or-

Kevin Moyer 26:39 Um, not even the operators

Sam Parr 26:40 ... like, fixing them?

Kevin Moyer 26:41 Fixing the trucks when there's issues was something I just don't want... It's a big truck with hydraulic equipment, and I eventually just kind of a- adopted the philosophy that, like, I had a mechanic. He was gonna charge me what he charged me.

Shaan Puri 26:51 [laughs]

Kevin Moyer 26:52 And I... He was probably overcharging me, but when there was an issue, I would just overpay for it. And I was like-

Sam Parr 26:55 You didn't exactly have, like, a lot of, like, shopping around you could do for smashing-

Kevin Moyer 27:00 Yeah, I just wanted to get it done

Sam Parr 27:01 ... mechanics. Yeah.

Kevin Moyer 27:01 Like, a lot of our accounts, they're paying us a lot of money every month, and if we can't get to them, I just was willing to pay a lot to just solve that problem and have it not be something we deal with.

Sam Parr 27:10 So how much profit did... How much take-home income did you do your last year?

Kevin Moyer 27:14 So it was kinda like the first two years and the last two years was, were very separate chapters. First two years I was down there every single day, not taking anything out, reinvesting everything into new trucks and new territories. The last two years, basically 2024 to 2026 summer, it was, like, maybe around, like, 450 EBITDA, if you wanna call it that, but 150K that was debt service. So really my take-home was, like, 300K.

Sam Parr 27:39 So why sell?

Kevin Moyer 27:40 It was... You know, it just, it felt like a starter business. It was always kinda-

Sam Parr 27:43 Yeah

Kevin Moyer 27:43 ... my starter business. I got into it 'cause I thought it would be, like, this direct line. It just weighed heavily on me in a number of ways. Like, one, these loans, and I got loans for the second two trucks. So it was that first 350K SBA loan. I got subsequent loans for the other trucks. So that's a personal guarantee.

Sam Parr 27:59 Yeah.

Kevin Moyer 28:00 In my head every day.

Shaan Puri 28:00 Right. [laughs]

Kevin Moyer 28:01 The f- A lot of people don't realize franchise agreements also have a personal guarantee, where you owe them royalties every month as a percentage of revenue. I think most people know that with franchises. But there's minimum royalties, which means you either pay some percent of your revenue or this fixed amount on a schedule-

Shaan Puri 28:18 Right

Kevin Moyer 28:18 ... whichever is higher. And that's a 10-year-long agreement that also has a personal guarantee. So I always felt like I could handle that, but that's, like, also weighs on you. And just, like, having these m- m- big trucks-

Shaan Puri 28:30 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Kevin Moyer 28:31 ... out every day where, like, couple times a year I'd get a call that was like, "Something bad happened."

Shaan Puri 28:36 [laughs]

Sam Parr 28:37 What did, what did it feel like when the wire hit?

Kevin Moyer 28:39 It was kinda anticlimactic a little bit.

Sam Parr 28:41 Yeah.

Kevin Moyer 28:41 So I had already... Like, I had worked with my accountant on, like, "All right. Tell me, like, after tax, after everything, what the number is." I had, like, seen that number in a Google sheet. And then when it happened, I was very happy. My wife and I for- like, we had a trip just coincidentally planned for, to go somewhere the next day. So we did get to enjoy it. But now it's just, like, back to baseline kind of.

Shaan Puri 29:01 Right.

Kevin Moyer 29:01 I feel the relief of not having, like, the responsibility, and, like, I don't have my phone on me right now. I'm used to, like, you know when-

Sam Parr 29:07 You're walking around, you're raw dogging?

Kevin Moyer 29:08 Yeah.

Sam Parr 29:08 No phone right now?

Kevin Moyer 29:09 No phone.

Shaan Puri 29:10 [laughs]

Kevin Moyer 29:10 What I'm saying is normally I would be-

Shaan Puri 29:12 Stressed, even now

Kevin Moyer 29:12 ... stressed out.

Shaan Puri 29:13 In the background.

Kevin Moyer 29:13 Like, I could go back and there could be just, like, a bomb dropped on me on my phone where, you know-

Shaan Puri 29:18 So-

Kevin Moyer 29:18 ... something went wrong.

Shaan Puri 29:18 Who bought it? Was it just somebody else who wanted even more territories? Or it was like, who, who's the buyer?

Kevin Moyer 29:23 It was that. It was the neighboring franchisees. So it was a great thing where, you know, I was happy with the amount they paid. I think they're gonna... They got a great deal on it for them, 'cause they're just gonna be able to fold it into their thing.

Shaan Puri 29:32 Right.

Kevin Moyer 29:32 It's how a lot of franchise M&A ends up happening.

Sam Parr 29:35 I have a feeling that you're plotting. You have something that you've been, that you've been thinking about.

Kevin Moyer 29:40 Yes.

Sam Parr 29:40 What is that? What are the list of things?

Shaan Puri 29:41 And, and also did you know what that was before you sold? Or the space gave you the time to figure it out?

Kevin Moyer 29:47 So the first two years were a dead sprint. The last two years I got it in passive mode. I had two kids, and so I wasn't able to go down there every day. So I did a lot of stuff to make it, like, truly passive, and I spent a lot of that time trying to figure out my next move. I don't wanna say too much about what it is, uh, but I do have something in the works.

Sam Parr 30:05 What other opportunities did you consider doing that you did not?

Kevin Moyer 30:08 So what I got really interested in was, like, this concept of how you could sell somebody a financial ROI no-brainer, where the only objection is that they don't believe you, and it would be, like-

Sam Parr 30:18 [laughs]

Kevin Moyer 30:18 ... cheap or free-

Shaan Puri 30:20 Right

Kevin Moyer 30:20 ... to prove it to them. And so I was looking at all kinds of stuff like that. Like, I think you can, like, audit people's utility bills. I think the idea of doing, like, site speed optimization for e-commerce is kind of interesting. That was, like, the insight that I, uh- That I thought was, like, a fun playbook to run that was, like, pretty straightforward if you're not that smart and you just wanna work hard.

Shaan Puri 30:38 What's really smart about your approach that I think very few people do is in business what most people do is they think about the product. They're like, "Oh, I love that product," or, "I know about that product," or, "I love this industry." I've, I... They think about their college major or stupid shit like that. You worked backwards from, like, what type of sale process do I wanna do every day? Because that's gonna be, like, 90% of my existence as an entrepreneur is just going, trying to sell, get more business.

Kevin Moyer 31:03 Mm-hmm.

Shaan Puri 31:03 And so you were like, [laughs] "Where's somewhere that I can just brute force, you know, get dollars in the bank by going and, you know, calling or showing up on more sites?" And then even just now you're like, "And the pitch I want to be giving is a you definitely are gonna make more money. It... All I gotta do is prove it to you, and I can prove it to you on a cost that's very little to me, or a quick, quick, uh, demo from my side to show you that the value is there." And I think so few people take a sales first approach, but as an entrepreneur, that's actually all you experience in the business-

Kevin Moyer 31:34 Mm-hmm

Shaan Puri 31:34 ... is just growing the business mostly. Uh, like, the product is very, like, fungible. You could swap the product out.

Kevin Moyer 31:39 Yeah. That's... I... So what it is for me is I just... I think like you guys. I like business. Like, I'm a business nerd. I like hiring. I like selling. I like figuring out the systems and the processes. So when you have that, you kind of have the luxury of being able to pick a business that you think would be enjoyable and straightforward to run.

Sam Parr 31:57 When are you gonna start it?

Kevin Moyer 31:58 I already started the, the new thing.

Sam Parr 32:00 So you only t- and that's only three weeks ago that you sold.

Kevin Moyer 32:03 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 32:03 Do you have a new mindset with this new one? Like, i- what's changed now that you had that experience going into the new one? Do you have any new rules of how you wanna do this?

Kevin Moyer 32:12 Bootstrapping. Bootstrapping. I found... And this is probably just 'cause I'm r- more risk averse than I care to admit, but, like, this idea of the personal guarantee, being tied to a franchise agreement, I really felt like the one-way door, you know, re- irreversible decision thing. So I think going forward I'm gonna try to bootstrap as much as I can and keep my options open a- as much as I can.

Sam Parr 32:35 What's funny is, like, maybe your tech coworkers are like, "That's... This is very risky, you know? This is, like, insane what you're doing." What I've noticed talking to a lot of, uh, entrepreneurs on here and through my life is that most entrepreneurs, I don't consider myself to be a very risky person at all. Uh, and most say that as well. They're like, "I, I, I'm not that risky." And, like, it's this idea of, like, there's a difference between uncertainty, which always exists, and risk, which you can reduce.

Kevin Moyer 33:00 Mm-hmm.

Sam Parr 33:00 Uncertainty always exists, and you just gotta get comfortable with that. But you definitely can, like, limit the risk, and taking those person, personal guarantees, that's actually quite risky.

Kevin Moyer 33:08 Yeah.

Sam Parr 33:08 Uh, and so it's funny to hear that you're a risk adverse person.

Shaan Puri 33:10 It's like great fighters. They don't pride themselves on how much, like, how much risk they're taking in a fight. It's all... It's really, it's a self-defense. It's hit and don't get hit, right? And, like, the best fighters, if you look at, like, Floyd Mayweather, undegoes undefeated, he didn't even really get hit that much.

Sam Parr 33:25 Right.

Shaan Puri 33:25 Khabib didn't really get hit that much. It's like the black belts understand that it's about minimizing the damage you take while still winning.

Sam Parr 33:31 Yeah. Like, there's all these investors, and they're like, "Rule number one, don't lose money. Rule number two, pay attention to rule number one."

Kevin Moyer 33:37 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 33:37 Yeah.

Sam Parr 33:37 Uh, and it's pretty funny, um-

Shaan Puri 33:39 Let me ask you another question. I'm, I'm talking to my friend who's a friend from college, and he's got a, a normal job, business. He wants to go do something entrepreneurial. And I think he wants to do it very much for the money, but I think truly the benefit would be that he's just gonna have a lot more fun, and he doesn't like his job, and just liking your day matters a lot more. You had a good job, and you did it for four or five years. Did you end up way ahead financially versus where you would've been just taking your salary with raises and savings? Was it a big financial win, or was it the life win, the confidence, the fun that you had? Like, where was the win?

Kevin Moyer 34:10 I think about it as, like, the escape velocity that I needed to go work f- I can work for myself for the rest of my life as long as I don't, like, mess it up, and that's how I think about it. It gave me that escape velocity out of that. And I think-

Shaan Puri 34:22 Was it financial runway, or it was confidence?

Kevin Moyer 34:24 It's financial runway. It's confidence. It's experience.

Shaan Puri 34:27 Skills.

Kevin Moyer 34:27 It's pattern recognition-

Shaan Puri 34:28 Yeah

Kevin Moyer 34:28 ... skills, and everything like that. And for me, I kind of had to, like, do the... Because, and really because I bought the business so far from my house, I was gonna try to keep my job for, like, a second there, and then I realized I had to quit it. That was the case for me. I think for s- other people, the move is to find something you can, like, step into and test it out a little bit before you fully, before you, like, fully rip it.

Shaan Puri 34:50 We've never done franchises. Um, and I've always been a little skeptical of franchises.

Sam Parr 34:54 Same.

Shaan Puri 34:54 It's like, as a... Franchise seem like great business for the franchisors, uh, not the franchisee. And so you did it. You have a good outcome. What's your current perspective on, like, is franchises a good [laughs] good place to go? Or, like, did you discover some other franchise along the way that you're like, "Shit, I wish I had done that one. That's... Now that I understand what makes these work, that's a way better one"?

Kevin Moyer 35:13 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 35:13 Tell me something smart about franchising.

Kevin Moyer 35:14 I think there's three situations where doing a franchise makes sense. I think the first one is if the franchisor actually has some secret sauce, and, like, the nerdy way that I think about it is if you listen to, like, the Acquired podcast, they do the seven powers. If the franchisor gives you a sev- one of the seven powers, it could be worth it. So that's brand with, like, m- the Midas touch, or it's, like, cornered resource, like the Chick-fil-A recipe. You can only get at Chick-fil-A. That's worth it. Those are rare and in high demand. The second one is if you are going into it to do, like, a roll-up. Franchises are friendly for roll-ups, I think, because you just have carbon copies of each other. Like, the systems are... Like, the integration is the hard part of a lot of roll-ups. The integration of a franchise is just, like, the people stuff. It's pretty straightforward to roll up, and it's like a walled garden. Like, if you're in the system and you have the appetite and the capital to do a roll-up, you can do it in a lot of cases. And a lot of franchises are ripe for consolidation 'cause they're incentivized to sell a lot of units 'cause they make franchise fees on each unit. And then what that means is in a couple years, it's just, like, begging for consolidation. And the third reason is basically my reason, which, like, if you're literally not gonna do anything else, you're not gonna do something un-

Shaan Puri 36:27 [laughs]

Kevin Moyer 36:27 ... less you feel like you have the training wheels of a franchise, that's what it took for me to do it. Like, I don't regret doing it. I probably won't do another franchise in my career, but, like, it played a

Speaker 36:38 ... important role in my, uh-

Sam Parr 36:39 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 36:39 It was a good stepping stone

Sam Parr 36:40 It got you where you wanted to go.

Speaker 36:41 Right. I wasn't gonna do it otherwise.

Sam Parr 36:42 Well, Kevin, you're the, you're the shit.

Shaan Puri 36:43 Yeah, badass.

Sam Parr 36:43 Thank you for doing this.

Speaker 36:44 Yeah. Thanks, guys.

Shaan Puri 36:45 Yeah. Awesome. Thanks for coming on.

Speaker 36:46 Yeah. [clapping]

Shaan Puri 36:48 Bring him in. What's up?

Speaker 36:51 What's going on?

Shaan Puri 36:52 Oh, good to meet you.

Speaker 36:53 Great meeting you.

Sam Parr 36:54 What's up, brother?

Shaan Puri 36:54 What's your name?

Speaker 36:56 Noam.

Shaan Puri 36:56 Noam.

Speaker 36:57 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 36:57 Yes. Noam, welcome to the show.

Speaker 36:59 Thanks for having me. I'm excited.

Shaan Puri 37:01 Okay. I don't know if they told you what you're getting into, but, uh, maybe start with what we call the big, juicy number. So give us one number that'll get us interested.

Speaker 37:08 All right. Big, juicy number. We're doing $430,000 a month selling heated jaw massagers.

Sam Parr 37:15 Jaw massagers?

Speaker 37:16 Yes, sir. [laughs]

Sam Parr 37:17 Okay. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 37:18 Heated.

Sam Parr 37:18 So that was my nickname in high school.

Speaker 37:19 Hey, okay. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 37:21 Damn. The less detail, the better on that one.

Speaker 37:23 Nice. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 37:24 So do you have one? What is the... What is a heated jaw massager?

Speaker 37:27 Okay. Listen, I do have one. Actually-

Shaan Puri 37:28 Fits in your pocket.

Sam Parr 37:29 Is this, like, a looksmaxing thing?

Speaker 37:31 It fits in our pocket.

Shaan Puri 37:31 See, Steve Jobs had 1,000 songs in your pocket.

Speaker 37:33 [laughs]

Sam Parr 37:33 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 37:34 He's got one hot jaw bone in your pocket.

Speaker 37:35 I have one, one heated massager.

Sam Parr 37:36 Is it kosher to share jaw massagers, or is this like a toothbrush?

Speaker 37:39 It's, uh... It's super kosher, actually.

Sam Parr 37:41 Okay.

Speaker 37:41 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 37:41 Yeah.

Speaker 37:42 Uh, it's not going in your mouth, but I mean, so I have two, actually. This one is, like, what we're selling right now.

Shaan Puri 37:47 Okay.

Speaker 37:47 Uh, it's the gen 1. It's, like, 3D-printed.

Shaan Puri 37:49 Let's take a look.

Speaker 37:49 Looks like a vape, right? Um, [laughs] this one is gen 2. I'm flying to China tonight, actually, so I'm trying to do it. But you basically click this button.

Shaan Puri 37:59 All right.

Speaker 37:59 Adjustable heat.

Shaan Puri 37:59 Gen 1 doesn't work, as far as I can tell. [laughs]

Speaker 38:01 Yeah, that one doesn't work. I gave, I gave all my San Francisco gen 1s away. I was just at a conference.

Shaan Puri 38:05 Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 38:05 It's over. I only have this, so [laughs] ...

Shaan Puri 38:07 All right.

Speaker 38:08 Um, but yeah, you, you have the two buttons there, adjustable heat, adjustable vibration.

Shaan Puri 38:10 A vibrator for your mouth.

Sam Parr 38:12 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 38:12 There you go.

Speaker 38:12 Literally.

Sam Parr 38:13 Okay, so I do this?

Speaker 38:14 Yeah, so it's, like, a couple things.

Shaan Puri 38:16 Is this look m-

Speaker 38:16 You have muscle scraping

Shaan Puri 38:17 ... looksmaxing? Is that what we're doing?

Speaker 38:18 You know what? Some people are looksmaxing.

Shaan Puri 38:20 Okay.

Speaker 38:20 But, um, the main thing actually is it's for people with, like, TMJ disorders.

Shaan Puri 38:25 Right.

Speaker 38:25 So I mean, there are, like, tens of millions of people out there dealing with, like, chronic jaw pain, and generally, that audience is, uh, is not the looksmaxing crowd. My, my main customer is not that, but they do exist. [laughs]

Sam Parr 38:36 So, so it is TM, TM... Well, uh, uh, TM-

Shaan Puri 38:39 TMJ.

Sam Parr 38:39 TMJ.

Shaan Puri 38:39 Can you explain TMJ? How, like, in America-

Speaker 38:41 Yeah, yeah

Shaan Puri 38:41 ... how, one out of every how many people have it? Give us something like that.

Speaker 38:44 Yeah. So around 5% of people seek treatment, but it's many more that have it and potentially don't even know. So, like, there are a lot of, like, really common things that happen. Like, the way I started dealing with it was, like, five years ago, my jaw started clicking on the right side.

Shaan Puri 39:00 Yeah.

Speaker 39:00 And I was like, "Okay, I wa-"

Shaan Puri 39:01 Yeah, I think my mom got this. Like, you get it, like, temporarily sometimes, right?

Speaker 39:04 Yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri 39:04 Stress and things like that can bring it up.

Sam Parr 39:05 Is it just annoying, or is it dangerous?

Speaker 39:07 So the, the clicking, um, if it's pain-free, oftentimes it's, it's just annoying. Some people say up to, like, one in three people have this at some point in their life. But for me, it started getting worse. It started to click on the left, and then my jaw started, like, locking closed, and then, uh, yeah, that would happen, like, once a month, and then once a week, then once a day. I would wake up, and I couldn't, like, brush my teeth. I couldn't eat.

Shaan Puri 39:28 What causes this?

Speaker 39:29 It's a good question. Like, a lot of different things can cause it, you know, like clenching, for example. A lot of people have a clenching issue, clenching, grinding at night. Um, some things is, like, you know, a lot of looksmaxing can actually end up causing this. [laughs] It could be trauma to the joint. It could be all this. For, for lockup specifically, there's, like, a disc in there, and it, you know, it can displace.

Sam Parr 39:48 And you put this on your jaw how often and how long?

Speaker 39:51 So the idea is, uh, a couple things. For, for the musculature, right, like, most people's pain actually ends up coming from, like, the muscles and because it's overcompensating, that kind of stuff. Um, so you're using it as, like, a scraper, a heater once a day, uh, or, like, a couple times a day, 20 minutes a day. That, that's what the research says you should do, the doctors say. But honestly, it's just like a, "Hey, I am... I have a flare-up. My, my head hurts." Uh, you go in, you, you work on the muscles, or you just have, like, instant heat in your pocket.

Sam Parr 40:18 And you have close to half a million a month.

Speaker 40:20 Uh, yeah.

Shaan Puri 40:21 So you sell, like, 5 million a year of this?

Speaker 40:23 Uh, that's, uh, annualized. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 40:26 Annualized.

Speaker 40:26 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 40:27 And it's ca- it's called Your TMJ Pen?

Speaker 40:29 It's called Your TMJ Pen, yeah.

Sam Parr 40:29 How much does it cost?

Speaker 40:31 So we're, we're normally 249. Uh, right now there's, like, a clearance sale.

Sam Parr 40:35 And did you raise funding?

Speaker 40:37 No. No, no. It's, no, very much fully bootstrapped, yeah.

Shaan Puri 40:40 This is, uh... I feel like I would see this on TikTok Shop.

Speaker 40:43 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 40:43 I would see this, like, on IG ads late at night.

Speaker 40:45 Yeah. Listen, it... I, I wish-

Shaan Puri 40:47 You're that guy.

Speaker 40:47 I wish-

Shaan Puri 40:48 You're the guy behind those ads.

Speaker 40:49 I, I am that guy. I am that guy on Instagram. I am the TMJ guy.

Shaan Puri 40:51 Actually, I think I've seen you. You're, you're the face of this, right?

Speaker 40:54 I am the face of that. Yeah.

Shaan Puri 40:55 I think I've seen you.

Speaker 40:55 A lot of rage bait on Instagram. I lo- I love it. [laughs]

Sam Parr 40:58 Why?

Shaan Puri 40:58 So what, what's... You said rage bait.

Speaker 41:00 Okay, so o- one of our, like, [laughs] big, most viral videos is, like, I'm on this plane, right? And, uh, I... This, this Karen-

Shaan Puri 41:07 This character he just went into

Speaker 41:08 ... this absolute Karen next to me starts, like, calling me out.

Shaan Puri 41:11 Yeah, you just hold it.

Speaker 41:11 She's like, she's like, "Hey, you can't be vaping on a plane," you know? And I, like, get really flustered. I'm like, "Oh, no, no, uh, it's, it's, it's not a vape. Um, uh, wait, let me explain." And I'm like, I'm, like, flustered trying to, like, explain this, that it's, like, my invention. Like, I, I made this. It's for people with jaw pain. It's not a vape. Um, and that concept got, like, 100 million views, [laughs] so...

Sam Parr 41:27 Really?

Shaan Puri 41:28 Wow.

Speaker 41:28 Yeah. Um, but-

Sam Parr 41:29 Wow, that's awesome

Speaker 41:29 ... it's nothing.

Shaan Puri 41:30 How did you think of that, just to go with the Karen on the plane? Where, where is-

Speaker 41:32 It's, it's mostly the vape

Shaan Puri 41:33 ... where, how does your mind work?

Speaker 41:34 It's the vape on the plane, really. It's the-

Shaan Puri 41:35 Okay, the vape on the plane

Speaker 41:36 ... it looks like a vape. Everyone tells me that, so.

Shaan Puri 41:38 Right.

Sam Parr 41:39 What's gonna stop every Chinese knockoff from coming after you?

Speaker 41:43 I mean, listen, at some point, like, [laughs] they're, they're gonna come.

Sam Parr 41:47 [laughs]

Speaker 41:48 But the reality is, like, when I, when I started this, like, I, I, I looked, I looked it up. I was heat- and massaging myself, like, every day with, like, a mug of water. I would microwave it, whatever, and I would, I would look it up, and, um, there wasn't a heated massager for the jaw. The, there were no products, period, sold for people with TMJ problems, like, not a single one, which was baffling. And so I... Like, noth- there was no brand, there was no, uh, nothing.

Shaan Puri 42:09 You developed the actual device.

Speaker 42:11 So I developed this, and yeah, like, I, I'm the first brand.

Shaan Puri 42:15 Did you say you 3D printed this?

Speaker 42:17 Yeah. So the way I started the business is 'cause, like, dude, listen, hardware used to be, I think, one of the most risky things you can get into, making, like, a hardware device. Like, you'll look at Shark Tank, like, people are like, "Yeah, I spent, like, 100 grand making this," and it's like, "Dude, that was a big mistake." [laughs] But-

Sam Parr 42:32 How much did you spend to make the first handful?

Speaker 42:35 Uh, I spent less than $3,000, and- The idea was, like, there are, like, three things that, like, aligned in this age that we're living in that makes it probably now one of the least risky things that you can do, making, like, a hardware consumer product. First, having all the access to, like, information. Like, engineering at this point is, like, low-key kinda easy. Like, okay, don't clip that. But with ChatGPT, with YouTube, like, I didn't know how to make electronics, I didn't know how to make a PCB.

Shaan Puri 43:03 What were you doing before this?

Speaker 43:03 Looked it up. I was a m- I was a me- mechanical engineer. I was in college. Like-

Sam Parr 43:07 How old are you now?

Speaker 43:08 24.

Sam Parr 43:09 How old's this?

Speaker 43:09 Three years since I started making it, and then two years of selling it.

Sam Parr 43:14 And so you're... Like, I, I'm an idiot. So you have a 3D printer at home-

Speaker 43:18 Yeah

Sam Parr 43:18 ... and you're on ChatGPT at the time, and you're like, "Teach me how to, like-"

Shaan Puri 43:23 You're like, "Give me a-"

Speaker 43:23 Well, ChatGPT back in the day was not good enough.

Sam Parr 43:25 But then, like-

Shaan Puri 43:26 [laughs]

Sam Parr 43:26 So, like, there's a motor. I mean, I don't know how electronics work.

Shaan Puri 43:28 Okay, so what, what did you do?

Speaker 43:29 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 43:29 You, you're at home.

Speaker 43:29 So-

Shaan Puri 43:30 You've never made a thing

Speaker 43:30 ... so what I did, I... So, uh, I wrote out, what do I need this thing to do? I need it to heat, I need vibration, I need, you know, it to charge, it needs to be portable, da da da, whatever. You write out what you want. The obvious thing that it needs is, like, a PCB. It's a printed circuit board. So it, the, it's those little green-

Sam Parr 43:45 Yeah

Speaker 43:45 ... things. Like, it-

Sam Parr 43:46 Yeah, it looks like a chip.

Speaker 43:47 Yeah. It ha- it looks like a chip. It has a bunch of things, a bunch of lines on it. Um, so to design that, like, I, I didn't know what to do, but what... I looked on Reddit, I asked for advice, I, I went on YouTube. I figured out how to design this thing. Um, that was, like, the first thing I did. Then you design the casings. You look up potential motors, you buy them all, test them, and, and, uh, you pick it up.

Shaan Puri 44:08 So you ended up making the, assembling the thing yourself-

Speaker 44:10 Yes

Shaan Puri 44:11 ... for V1?

Speaker 44:11 Yeah. So for... I was assembling these things myself up, up until literally a year ago to the day. Um, we, we got up to, like, 80K a month. I was assembling, shipping, I had two 3D printers running in my closet in, like, in my apartment. And then I, I kinda went, like, Alex Hormozi mode. I was like, "Wait, what if I just st- uh, you know, do this but more," you know? So I found, like, a 3PL. Uh, and in... Normally a 3PL, say, I mean, you know this, but, um, they just ship stuff for you. Uh, they, like, fulfill your stuff. Uh, but I was like, "Hey, let me use your employees. Like, y- I'll put my 3D printers in your place. You guys can use them." And-

Shaan Puri 44:46 You can make them on the spot there.

Speaker 44:47 Yeah, you can make them. And so now my 3PL makes it, and that's how we gr- we're able to grow to this point.

Shaan Puri 44:52 So you're flying to China tonight.

Speaker 44:54 I'm flying to China tonight, yeah.

Shaan Puri 44:55 You're gonna get... You already have... 'Cause this is made.

Speaker 44:57 Yeah, so we-

Shaan Puri 44:58 This is-

Speaker 44:58 I've been-

Shaan Puri 44:58 ... somebody made a prototype. You found somebody on Alibaba. What'd you do?

Speaker 45:01 No, no, I, I did not do that. [laughs] That would be risky. Um, no, I, I got connected. So I, I- I'm, like, pretty big on Instagram now and, like, YouTube, so I, I, I made sure to, like, get connected via word of mouth. Um, so I found a factory. Together with them, we, we designed this thing. I flew there, like, a couple months ago. We, um, we got to this sorta, like, golden sample, and now production is, like, sorta done. Like, the molds are done-ish. So I'm going there now to, like, get the final samples, and then we'll be able to-

Sam Parr 45:27 How many employees do you have?

Speaker 45:28 I don't have any, like, like full-time-

Sam Parr 45:30 Just you

Speaker 45:30 ... employees. Uh, uh, but I have, like, you know, contractors. Uh, I have, like, um, five contractors.

Shaan Puri 45:36 So have you taken money out of the business yet? Are you, like-

Speaker 45:38 Oh, yeah. For sure

Shaan Puri 45:38 ... took a million bucks out of the business last year, or $2 million, or something?

Sam Parr 45:40 Yeah, so, like, this year it'll do... Let's say, let's say hypothetically you do 5 million in, in to- total revenue in '26. How much cash flow per... Like, how much, uh, profit? I don't know if you measure it.

Speaker 45:49 Uh, yeah, it's around, like, 20%, like, net, uh, income. I don't know. I, I, I kinda look at it as this is just, like, my business. Like, some of it's in the business bank, some of it's in my Vanguard, some of it's in my personal bank. I don't know. I just kinda, like, take it as I see fit. [laughs] Um-

Shaan Puri 46:03 And do... Uh, there's no repeat purchase, right? Like, nobody's gonna buy-

Speaker 46:07 Yeah, there's no-

Shaan Puri 46:07 ... again?

Speaker 46:08 Yeah. [laughs]

Sam Parr 46:08 But what if, like, uh... I remember years ago, when, uh, Thera... You know Theragun?

Shaan Puri 46:12 Yeah.

Sam Parr 46:12 Like, my... I have a Hypervolt that I use forever. I love it. And I remember they came out, and people were like, "Dude," like, "all the Chinese companies are just gonna knock this off." But they s- they did-

Shaan Puri 46:21 And they did.

Speaker 46:22 Yeah. [laughs]

Sam Parr 46:22 They did. But they did do a good job of, like, kinda branding it, where I, I-

Speaker 46:25 Yeah

Sam Parr 46:25 ... I am, like, into-

Shaan Puri 46:26 Yeah

Sam Parr 46:26 ... my Hypervolt. But then they also came out with, like, 30 products. There's, like, the things that, like-

Speaker 46:30 [laughs]

Sam Parr 46:30 ... do my legs.

Shaan Puri 46:31 I have that, yeah. [laughs]

Sam Parr 46:31 And I love all of them, and it's become my routine. Is there, like, a f- other things that you're gonna, you can do?

Speaker 46:37 I do have this vision of being, like, a, a brand specifically focused on making products for the TMJ community. The brand is, like, Your TMJ.

Shaan Puri 46:47 Yeah.

Speaker 46:47 So it's like Your TMJ Pen, then I'm thinking, like, Your TMJ Band, Your-

Sam Parr 46:50 So we had this guy on the podcast named David.

Speaker 46:52 Yeah.

Sam Parr 46:52 And his whole company... And, like, w- we started out as a shtick, but it wasn't entirely a shtick, where it was like, Sam doesn't believe that picking an important name is actually important.

Speaker 47:02 Yeah.

Sam Parr 47:02 And this guy's whole job, he makes a lot of money-

Speaker 47:04 Mm-hmm

Sam Parr 47:04 ... naming companies. He named-

Shaan Puri 47:05 He named BlackBerry, and Swiffer, and-

Sam Parr 47:07 Sonos, Febreze.

Speaker 47:08 Yeah.

Sam Parr 47:08 He named all this stuff, and I am totally on board with what he's doing now. And his whole... I actually just hung out with him the other day. His whole thing is like, if you're a young entrepreneur, start your company. Who cares? But once you get some traction, consider making a name that can last forever, because it actually does matter, and I buy into that. I would highly consider keeping that as maybe the TMJ Pen, that product-

Speaker 47:28 Yeah

Sam Parr 47:28 ... but having, like, a proper company name.

Speaker 47:32 Yeah. That's, that's possible. I don't know. I feel like it's just, like, not the main, like, concern right now.

Sam Parr 47:38 Right.

Speaker 47:38 'Cause, like, the-

Sam Parr 47:39 Maybe it's not now

Speaker 47:39 ... for the, for, for this product, yeah, like, people... It's like this is, like, the TMJ pen. You know? It's like, it's like when people say TMJ Pen, it's this. Like, there's no other thing. So it's like I think that's a pretty good name. But yeah, for the company, like, Your TMJ-

Shaan Puri 47:49 Well, so you said, like, you did have a question. What, what was your question gonna be?

Speaker 47:52 Well, yeah, my question was gonna be like, listen, you're, you're gonna, you're gonna be like, "Oh, money doesn't matter, da, da, da," but we-

Sam Parr 47:57 No, no, we won't say that.

Shaan Puri 47:58 No, no, no.

Sam Parr 47:59 [laughs] We won't say that. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 48:02 It's called My First Million, not Just One Million Then Stop. [laughs]

Speaker 48:05 Listen, I've, uh, I've heard a lot of guests come on the show. It's like, uh, you know, they've made it, and it's like, "Oh, you know, da, da, da."

Sam Parr 48:10 Yeah.

Speaker 48:10 I'm just like, "Nah, I want a couple mil in the bank," right?

Shaan Puri 48:13 Yeah.

Speaker 48:13 I want that. So I get this urge to, like, sell in maybe two to three years or something.

Sam Parr 48:18 Sell the company.

Speaker 48:19 Yeah. And I don't know what therefore I should, like, really be focusing on, 'cause, like, if it... Uh, for me, like, the obvious thing right now is, like, hey, what's the, like, main constraint? It's, uh, you know, going and, uh, solving the supply-

Sam Parr 48:30 Right

Speaker 48:30 ... the supply issue.

Sam Parr 48:31 You have a short-term-

Speaker 48:31 Then it's gonna be, like, demand. It's gonna be, like-

Sam Parr 48:33 ... short-term constraint

Shaan Puri 48:34 And then you have your long-term constraint in this, in this scenario.

Speaker 48:36 Yeah. And, and I don't know what the, like, long-term... Like, maybe it is a long-term constraint to not have other products, but the issue is, like, I don't know, like, what would be super important then to weigh against, like, losing focus on just, like, cranking out more ads now. So maybe it's, uh, re- recurring revenue, right? Like, maybe I should get into TMJ, like, supplements and, and oils and creams and stuff. Or maybe it's having, uh, more products on the consumer side. Maybe it's having IP. Maybe it's having r- registration with the FDA. Maybe it's having, like-

Shaan Puri 49:04 So you have, you have three options.

Speaker 49:05 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 49:06 And you don't have to decide right now, but it's good to know what they are-

Speaker 49:08 Yeah

Shaan Puri 49:08 ... 'cause then when you're doing the business, you'll look for clues that support one of the three options. Either you can go wider TMJ. So you could say, "Great. TMJ, this helps, but it's not a solved problem. I can sell the creams. I can sell the oils. I can sell the supplements. I can sell the whatever." So you go wider TMJ. You can go wider pain relief, so maybe heated massage for other conditions, other parts of your body, the kinda Hyperice model, the, um, Theragun model, where you're gonna create, you know, right now-

Speaker 49:35 They're just like a recovery company.

Shaan Puri 49:36 Yeah, they're a recovery company. They're... And you would be a pain relief company, and you would say, "Okay, cool. I'm gonna go find all the different types of pain. I'm gonna create, like, specialty products. I'm gonna run the same playbook across them." And so, like, right now, the, those sli- heated s- heated vibrating slides is, like, the big one that's going viral right now-

Speaker 49:52 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 49:52 ... that I think, uh, someone's, Nike's doing or somebody's doing.

Speaker 49:55 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 49:55 So you could, you could go wider in that direction of pain relief, heated, maybe heated massaging pain relief. Or you could just say, "Actually, I just got good at doing this model of, like, content-based selling of products. I now know how to do a little bit of supply chain, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, but I'm really good on the marketing side, and it... and I'm fundamentally limited by category and product. And if I just take, you know, I'm a, I'm a 9 out of 10 entrepreneur. I just need to find a 9 out of 10 opportunity. TMJ is just a 2 out of 10 opportunity because of the nature of what I'm doing." And you just take your highly transferable skills of creating content, selling through content, you know, and you just apply it to a, a better category, and you... that has tailwinds. You don't fight the, the small TAM problem that's out there.

Speaker 50:39 And you'll potentially have liquidity already.

Shaan Puri 50:41 And you're so young, you're gonna have money in the bank, and you're gonna have, like, a bunch of lessons learned, that with a clean slate, like, this can be your starter business. Like, most entrepreneurs have a, have a starter business, have a thing that they did early that wasn't their lifetime business.

Speaker 50:55 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 50:55 And, you know, so that's the other possibility. So you, you, you know, you don't know which one of the three it is right now. Maybe you should write down a hypothesis as to which one of those three it is. And then as you operate the next six to nine months and you're focused on growing this business, you'll at least be aware of and looking for clues as to which one this might be. Maybe you launch a little test in one of those, one of those three areas, and you figure it out that way.

Speaker 51:15 Yeah. I mean, I think, I think it's... What it is, is, like, I, I like to use the business as, like, a learning opportunity, uh, like, as just, like, a personal growth thing. It's probably gonna be like, hey, is there more juice to squeeze out of that in, in the TMJ space, where it's like-

Shaan Puri 51:31 There definitely is, by the way, because-

Speaker 51:32 I, I, I think so too

Shaan Puri 51:33 ... when I, a few, a handful of years ago, I had Lyme disease.

Speaker 51:36 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 51:36 And I, like, would look on, like, Reddit and stuff, and I noticed the, the very clear trend. And am- amongst some other friends who got sick with different illnesses or injuries, there's dozens or hundreds of injuries or illnesses where people feel like, "No one's listening to me. No one takes me seriously"

Speaker 51:51 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 51:51 "What the hell? But I know something's wrong. I don't feel good." And so they go to these communities, and they buy these products where it's like, "Finally, I'm being heard, and I'm being catered to." And it's, I, if I had to guess, this is one of them.

Speaker 52:02 Yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri 52:02 Because I've heard that word, TMJ, but when you see it, like, clicking, I'm like, "Oh, that can't be that bad." And then the person who has it, like, "It's horrible" You know what I mean?

Speaker 52:08 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 52:08 Uh-

Speaker 52:08 And if you go to the doctor, they're just like-

Shaan Puri 52:10 "Well, you know, just put ice on it"

Speaker 52:11 ... "Try not to stress so much."

Shaan Puri 52:12 Yeah.

Speaker 52:12 Like, "Yo, I'm kind of pretty stressed because this hurts every day also, in addition to whatever caused it in the first place"

Shaan Puri 52:17 Bro. My, my first, my first, uh, specialist I went to prescribed me, like, 2,000 milligrams of Tylenol a day.

Speaker 52:22 Right.

Shaan Puri 52:22 I was like, "Bro"

Speaker 52:22 I would... If I had to make a guess, this will, you're gonna grow a lot over the next three years and sell it, and I think that would be pretty cool.

Shaan Puri 52:29 These are fundamentally pretty tough businesses to sell, um, you know, non-recurring niche product heavily based on your marketing genius. So it might be that, like, optimizing for the exit sometimes looks different than optimizing for cash flow, and so you wanna kinda weigh those. Uh, you don't even... Again, you can go look at some comps and be like, is there any... Who's done this before and exited well? Let me go talk to them and understand, like, does the factors that made that a successful exit match what I s- what I have fundamentally in my business? But if it's just a cash flow business, that's great. Cash flow businesses can be awesome.

Speaker 53:02 Have you ever talked to any bankers or brokers?

Shaan Puri 53:05 I haven't.

Speaker 53:05 A lot of times people only do that when they're ready to sell, when you should've done it three years earlier-

Shaan Puri 53:08 [laughs] Yeah

Speaker 53:09 ... and you find out, you're like, "I have a number in my mind. Just tell me what I need to achieve to make that number possible, and I'm just gonna go do that for two years"

Shaan Puri 53:16 Yeah. Tell me three companies you looked at that are like this. What did they sell for?

Speaker 53:19 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 53:20 Why did they get that multiple they got?

Speaker 53:21 I would-

Shaan Puri 53:21 When did they do it?

Speaker 53:22 And you're like, "Okay, it could be, like, this revenue, this cash flow, and, uh, you know, these are the, the five or six other metrics. I'll just do that for three years, and then I'll, and then I'll look up and be like, 'Okay.'"

Shaan Puri 53:31 Okay. Yeah. I, if you guys know any, like [laughs] I, I had some people, like, reach out on LinkedIn about it, but they seemed kinda skeezy, so I was like, "I'm good"

Speaker 53:37 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 53:37 Yeah. No, I, I would, so I would talk to Quiet Light. They're more of a online brokerage, but they're, they're easy to talk to. Go to-

Speaker 53:44 Mm.

Shaan Puri 53:44 They, if you go look at their thing, they'll, they have a lot of these, like, FBA businesses that they sell that, like, are kind of, like, I would say, lower durability, lower quality businesses overall, but they seem to be selling. So, like, they know how to package those, what type, what businesses work and don't work.

Speaker 53:59 It's called Quiet Light Brokerage. Okay.

Shaan Puri 54:00 Yeah, .com. So go to them, and then go look up brokers in your space. Maybe, like, you know, you, you just have to Google and, like, tell ChatGPT to go do deep research on who's sold, you know, who, who are bankers that sell products like mine. Like, I don't even know what the name of this category is, but it might be, like-

Speaker 54:14 Well, it's, like, wellness

Shaan Puri 54:15 ... non-medical-

Speaker 54:16 Wellness

Shaan Puri 54:16 ... non-medical wellness devices. Okay, cool. And like-

Speaker 54:19 And you could, you e- email the founders of people who have had had exits and say, "Who did you, who all did you talk to?" 'Cause everyone who sells their company will talk to three or four.

Shaan Puri 54:25 Yeah.

Speaker 54:25 They'll say, "I used this person. They were great. These two were kinda good"

Shaan Puri 54:28 But I would not delay this. What Sam said is, is absolutely right. You don't talk to them when you're ti- it's time to sell. You first talk to them a year or two before to actually understand what you need to do in the next 24 months to be a sellable business in the end. And it, the good thing about a sellable business is if somebody else is gonna wanna own it, it's probably the same, like, reasons you would wanna own it.

Speaker 54:48 Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Shaan Puri 54:48 So there's no harm in building a very sellable business, 'cause at the very least, you made a business that's higher desirability to own for yourself-

Speaker 54:55 Yeah

Shaan Puri 54:55 ... or for somebody else.

Speaker 54:56 Yeah. Dude, thanks for doing this. You're awesome.

Shaan Puri 54:58 No, of course. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 54:59 Good luck in China.

Shaan Puri 55:00 Yeah. [laughs]

Speaker 55:01 [laughs] Good Millionaire.

Shaan Puri 55:03 All right. That is part two of Shoot Your Shot. We got one more episode coming out of the San Francisco location. We got three more founders coming up on the next episode. Make sure you're subscribed on YouTube, on Spotify. We looked at the data. I think 80, 90% of you guys are not subscribed who watch the episodes. What are you doing? Subscribe so you can watch episode two.

Speaker 55:21 And do me a favor. Whether you're a listener, then you're gonna go to Spotify, or if you're a watcher, go to YouTube. Put in the comments the city that w- you want us to go to next. Right now we're doing this in San Francisco. We've already done New York. We'll go somewhere next to do it, so let us know in the comments right now. [upbeat music]