My Mother-in-Law Started a $1M Side Hustle In Her 50's

Shaan Puri 0:00 Your random tweet about your mother-in-law gets to him, and he writes back, "Dear Smithy Sewdeen, both Bed Bath & Beyond and myself would like to invest in your business if these are your designs. They are outstanding." And then the best part, "And believe me, I know pillows."

Sam Parr 0:16 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 0:16 [laughs]

Sam Parr 0:17 Yeah. [upbeat music] All right, we're live. Shaan, I've got three stories

Sam Parr 0:30 that I wanna tell you about to kick today's episode off. You ready?

Shaan Puri 0:33 I'm ready.

Sam Parr 0:34 First one, years ago... This is gonna be fast. Years ago, I was trying to get this one entrepreneur, who is the CEO and founder of this very famous media company that I'm, I'm not gonna call out, and he ignored me. He never got back to me. I probably sent him 15 emails. Well, I'm currently in Brooklyn, staying at an Airbnb right now for a couple days. Not an Airbnb, a different service. And, um, visiting family, and I log on to the Netflix on the TV, and guess whose house I'm renting right now?

Shaan Puri 1:03 [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:05 That guy.

Shaan Puri 1:06 [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:07 I am s- currently staying at his house right now. Should I do anything to, like... Is there anything? Like, should I look something up on YouTube so when he goes to his YouTube account, he sees it, like, in the previous searches?

Shaan Puri 1:18 Yeah, you gotta do the most, the, whatever the, what is the most petty thing you could do? Like, just change his Wi-Fi password.

Sam Parr 1:24 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:24 Just send him for a loop. He'll be like, "What? Uh, what is happening right now? I don't understand this."

Sam Parr 1:29 So I'm in his house, so I, like, go to, I go to Netflix and I see his, the image for, like, the... Or I go to some YouTube account or something and I see the image for, like, the thumbnail image for his account, and I'm like, "I know this person." And then I start picking up the other details. I'm like, "Oh, he's logged into all the stuff. I know exactly who this is."

Shaan Puri 1:46 Right.

Sam Parr 1:46 "So I'm gonna have to figure out a way to get his attention." I- it's gonna be borderline creepy, regardless of how I do this, even if I do it in the most tasteful way, but I'm gonna take my shot. I'm gonna leave this guy a message. I, it's not mean. I, I'm very happy.

Shaan Puri 1:57 Right.

Sam Parr 1:57 I'm happy, but I'm gonna leave him a message.

Shaan Puri 2:00 "Hey, man, uh, really love the place. I'm trying to pee in the sink, but there's no stool. Do you know where you keep it?"

Sam Parr 2:05 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 2:07 [laughs]

Sam Parr 2:08 Yes, I'm gonna have to do something. The second story that I've gotta tell you about is that we need to get our people listening to this right now to subscribe. We just crossed 400,000 followers. You tweeted out that we're gonna make out when we get to a million. Is that right?

Shaan Puri 2:21 [laughs] No, I didn't say, I did not say that.

Sam Parr 2:23 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 2:23 I said specifically, these other podcasters made out when they crossed 50K, and it's a very uncomfortable video watching them s- in slow-mo kiss. And he's like, [laughs] the guy's kissing, they're kissing each other. And one guy's, like, resisting it, and the other guy's, like, trying to do the bet. And he's like, "I'm just getting teeth. I'm, there's just teeth."

Sam Parr 2:42 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 2:42 "Can I, can you m- uh, can you move something? I just, I'm just getting a lot of teeth right now." [laughs]

Sam Parr 2:46 And by the way, it's a finance podcast. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 2:49 Yeah, yeah. It's great.

Sam Parr 2:50 And the video that they make out on, it barely has any views.

Shaan Puri 2:53 Yeah. [laughs]

Sam Parr 2:53 And they never actually... [laughs] Like, it barely worked.

Shaan Puri 2:57 That is the funniest part of the whole thing.

Sam Parr 2:59 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 2:59 When I saw that the video has 25,000 views, I was like, n- my worst nightmare is not that I have to make out with you. It's that I made out with you for the YouTube content-

Sam Parr 3:09 For nothing

Shaan Puri 3:09 ... and it didn't go anywhere, which is exactly what would happen if I tried to, you know, oh, this will definitely, you know, go viral, and then it doesn't.

Sam Parr 3:18 By the way, there is a number for everything. I don't know if a million subscribers is that number. [laughs] But please subscribe if-

Shaan Puri 3:23 I don't know if the number ends in the word subscribers either.

Sam Parr 3:25 [laughs] Yeah.

Shaan Puri 3:25 I think the number might have dollars instead of subscribers.

Sam Parr 3:28 Yeah. [laughs] The, but there is a number. So if you're listening on, uh, through the podcast apps, just go ahead and go to our YouTube and subscribe. The, the comment section's pretty fun. We read every comment. All right, everyone, a quick break to tell you about HubSpot, and this one's easy because I'm gonna show you an example of how I'm doing this at my company. When I say I, I mean not my team. I mean I'm the one who actually made this. So I've got this company called Hampton. You can check it out, joinhampton.com. It's a community for founders. And one of the ways that we've grown is we've created these surveys where we'll ask our members certain questions that a lot of people, a lot of times people are afraid to ask. So things like what their net worth is, how their assets are allocated, all these, like, interesting questions. And then we'll put it in a survey, and I went and made a landing page. So you can check it out at joinhampton.com/wealth. You can actually see the landing page that I made. And the hard part with this is with Hampton, we are appealing to a sort of a, a higher end customer. Sort of like, like a Louis Vuitton or a Ferrari. So I needed the landing page to look a very particular way. HubSpot has templates. That's what we used. We just changed the colors a little bit to match our brand. Very easy. They have this drag and drop version of their landing page builder, and it's super simple. I'm not technical, and I'm the one who actually made it. And once it's made, I then shared it on social media, and we had thousands of people see it and thousands of people who gave us their information. And I can then see over the next handful of weeks, this is how much revenue came in from this wealth survey that I did. This is where the revenue came from. So it came from Twitter. It came from LinkedIn. Whatever it came from, I can actually go and look at it, and I can say, "Oh, well, that worked. That didn't work. Do more of that. Do less of that." And if you're interested

Sam Parr 5:00 in making landing pages like this, I highly suggest it. Look, I'm actually doing it. But you can check it out. Go to the link in the description of YouTube and get started. All right, now back to MFM. The third story I've gotta tell you. So I said this story a little bit. I haven't given an update on it. But about three years ago, my mother-in-law, who loves to sew, she previously, a long time ago, like you said, even sew wedding dresses and things like that for friends. But, uh, now that her kids are grown and out of the house, she starts sewing again. She goes, "Sam, I think I wanna start a business online. Can you, like... Can I drive you to the airport, and, uh, you can, like, tell me how, like, the internet works," basically. And I gave her the-

Shaan Puri 5:38 You're like, "Free ride to the airport, sweet." [laughs]

Sam Parr 5:40 Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. And I gave her, like, the most high level, like, advice ever. So I, I can't even remotely take credit for this 'cause it was basically like, "Well, there's this thing called Shopify." Like, that's basically what the advice was. Like, there's a thing called the funnel where you get, like, this many eyeballs and a percentage of them buy, whatever. The most basic thing ever. Well, three weeks after that, she sends me this website And I'm like, "Smithy, this website looks beautiful. Is- the- they named your company the same name that you were gonna name your company, though. What the hell?" [laughs]

Shaan Puri 6:09 [laughs]

Sam Parr 6:09 And she goes, "That's my website." And I'm like, "What?" She's like, "Yeah. In fact, I already got my first sale." Uh, and I was, I was, I was blown away. Well, fast-forward three years ago, she's done over a million dollars in revenue. She's doing high six figures, I think, or she did high six figures in '23.

Shaan Puri 6:24 And what's the store?

Sam Parr 6:25 I j-

Shaan Puri 6:25 So it's a p- it's a pillow store, right? What is the name of it? It's Smithy's Pillows or something?

Sam Parr 6:29 S- so her birth name and the name of the store are slightly different. So her name is Smithy, but she smells her- spells the store's name Smithy with a Y. So the word Smith with a Y at the end, and then, uh, home, the word home, and then c- couture, so C-O-U-T-U-R-E. If you go to her Etsy page, that's where I think a lot of her sales come from. You'll see on her Etsy page, I think it's, like, 8,000 or 10,000 sales.

Shaan Puri 6:54 Wow.

Sam Parr 6:54 So basically what she sells is, like, really high-end throw pillows, which is, as a young man, I was like, "Throw pillows? Who the hell buys that?" Well, women love throw pillows. Do you see... Well, how does the family sales-

Shaan Puri 7:06 'Cause you... 'Cause they're on the bed and then you have to throw them on the ground whenever you wanna use the bed? That's... What is the name for? I don't really understand this, but I do see, you see it's open.

Sam Parr 7:13 Do you see that pillow, you see that pillow you have behind you on that leather chair?

Shaan Puri 7:17 Oh, I got a throw over here. Okay. Uh, uh-

Sam Parr 7:19 You have a throw.

Shaan Puri 7:19 I mean, I got a throw

Sam Parr 7:20 That's a throw pillow. They're decorative fancy pillows.

Shaan Puri 7:23 9,685 sales, so that's how many transactions she's had or how many customers she's had check out. So almost 10,000. Star seller, five star review. Very cool. And then she... So she's m- hand making these? No.

Sam Parr 7:36 Yeah. Well, she now she has a little warehouse [laughs] in New Jersey, and she's got, like, four ladies, like, [laughs] sew it. I just, I just imagine her just, like... What, what was that movie where the, like, [laughs] "My fingers hurt from sewing." [laughs]

Shaan Puri 7:46 Yeah. [laughs]

Sam Parr 7:47 Well, now your back's gonna hurt. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 7:48 Yeah.

Sam Parr 7:48 You just got landscaping duty.

Shaan Puri 7:49 [laughs]

Sam Parr 7:50 Uh, yeah. She just has, like, these four, like, m- stay-at-home moms, or I guess moms who aren't working anymore but like to sew, and they have part-time work sewing these pillows. And then she's got, like, the UPS guy come into her office every day, picking up these pillows. She's got, like, a legit small business. And I'm always like-

Shaan Puri 8:06 Also-

Sam Parr 8:06 ... "Smithy, scale, scale, scale. Spend more"

Shaan Puri 8:08 ... marketing genius. Look at this. Uh, the, the store, if you go there, every pillow says $2 under it. And I'm like, "$2 is an [laughs] incredible deal." Then you go and it's like, no, $2 is for the swatch sample. If you want the pillow-

Sam Parr 8:19 Yeah

Shaan Puri 8:19 ... it's $79. [laughs] So I think that's, uh, definitely bringing a lot of people in. I like it. Real practical.

Sam Parr 8:24 It brings a ton of people in, and, uh, it... They're great pillows. I have them all over my house, and people love them. It's really high quality stuff. And so I'm like, "Smithy, you gotta grow this thing. Scale, scale, scale." And she's like, "Nope. I'm really happy with how it's going." And my, my mother-in-law, have you ever seen a photo of her?

Shaan Puri 8:38 No. Have you seen a photo-

Sam Parr 8:40 You know, uh-

Shaan Puri 8:40 ... of my mother-in-law? No. That's just not a thing people do. [laughs]

Sam Parr 8:43 Well, I tweeted out pictures of her.

Shaan Puri 8:44 [laughs] That's good.

Sam Parr 8:45 I tweeted out pictures of her. And so she's, like, a very pretty woman. She, like, I call her, like, the Haitian Martha Stewart. Like, she's always really well put together. She just, like, dresses nice all the time, so very charismatic, like, good energy type of person. I tweeted out that story two days ago, or maybe yesterday. I tweeted out that story. The tweet got, like, viewed by, like, quarter of a million people, but that guy Marcus from The Profit, what's his last name? Uh, Le-

Shaan Puri 9:08 Lemonis or something?

Sam Parr 9:09 Le- Lemonis. He's now, he's on that TV show, The Profit. I think he's the CEO and founder, or CEO of Camping World, which is, like, a multi-billion dollar RV business, and he's now on the board of directors at Bed Bath & Beyond.

Shaan Puri 9:21 So I think-

Sam Parr 9:22 Yeah

Shaan Puri 9:22 ... you just, you said that whole sentence so casually. Like, "Yeah, I tweeted this out, and then that guy Marcus from The Profit replied." W- do you know Marcus? What do you, what, what do you mean-

Sam Parr 9:31 No

Shaan Puri 9:31 ... the guy from The Profit replied? Like, how did this even happen?

Sam Parr 9:33 No idea. I have no idea who he is. I mean, I know him as a celebrity. I know him as a celebrity, but I don't, like... I've never spoken to this person in my life.

Shaan Puri 9:40 Your random tweet about your mother-in-law gets to him, and he writes back, "Dear Smithy Sodine," right? Uh, her, her name.

Sam Parr 9:48 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 9:48 "Both Bed Bath & Beyond and myself would like to invest in your business if these are your designs. They are outstanding." And then the best part, "And believe me, I know pillows." [laughs]

Sam Parr 9:58 [laughs] Yeah. And then the way that he originally communicated to me was he replied... So he, he tweeted that on his own, like, in front of his whole audience of, like, 600,000 people. He replied to my tweet, and he goes, um, "Contact me. I would love to sell this in Bed Bath & Beyond." And I, I go, "Here's my email." He emails me. It goes straight to spam for some reason, so I'm thinking, like, "This might be a s- what i- I don't know. Is this really you?" So anyway, I connect them, and now they're meeting, and he shared it on his Twitter that he wants to, like, meet her. Pretty wild, right? So, like, I better be, I, I better get the fucking will for this one.

Shaan Puri 10:33 [laughs]

Sam Parr 10:34 I, I deserve something. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 10:38 Yeah, you're gonna get, like, a loaf of pumpkin bread, but, um-

Sam Parr 10:40 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 10:41 ... still pretty good. Yeah. Son-in-law of the year, Shaan Parr. Un- uh, I did not know that's what your, that was the New Year's resolution. Good, good job. This is crazy, uh, that it got picked up like that, and g- you know, good for her. This is such a cool story of, you know... How old is she, right? She's probably in her, what, like, 50s, 60s, something like that?

Sam Parr 10:59 Yeah, she's in her 50s, and basically her, you know, s- uh, my wife is, uh, uh, 31, and then her other daughter's 27. And so she was just like, "My kids are grown. I, I've got time. What, what should I do?" And she loved to sew. She always had an entrepreneurial spirit. Her husband is a entrepreneur as well, and she helped run their moving business, and they were like, "Let's, uh... You know, my husband's retired. I've got free time. I gotta figure out something." And she'll, she just starts sewing these pillows, and she had the gumption to go and get this website built for, like, $3,000. Like, she found a developer to make the website. She gets on Etsy, and she... I teach her, and, and when I say teach her, I, I don't actually teach her. I was like, "Yeah, I think..." I bet- I was like, "I bet you Etsy has a way that you could run, like, 100 bucks worth of ads." She runs, like, $100 worth of ads and gets a handful of customers, and from there she spent no money basically on marketing. I'm like, "How much are you spending on marketing?" She's like, "300 bucks." I'm like, "A day?" And she's like, "No, no, no. Like, over the past, like, two months."

Shaan Puri 11:53 [laughs]

Sam Parr 11:54 Uh, and I was like, "Scale that sucker up, baby." And she's like, "Nope. I'm happy with the workload. This is fine. It's going good. I like it." And her customers are coming back and forth. Now what she does Is she goes into all the door build- or the, in New York City there's fancy high-rises with doormen, and she goes to all those buildings, and they're buying their, her pillows to put in the lobbies of the... So she's got like these like contracts-

Shaan Puri 12:15 Okay

Sam Parr 12:15 ... these wholesaling contracts

Shaan Puri 12:15 'Cause that's what I was gonna ask you, 'cause, uh, most annoying thing in the world for me is any business story that's like, "I had this idea, and then it worked." And it's like yo, yo, yo, what about the middle part that I'm gonna have to do of like getting it to work? What did, what did you do? How did you actually get the initial sales? So do you know? Was it just post on Etsy and Etsy brought some traffic, or did she... Sounds like maybe she went door to door and kind of was showing her product to some people and got-

Sam Parr 12:37 Well, well she did what-

Shaan Puri 12:38 ... the demand

Sam Parr 12:38 ... she did what a lot of... Like, she, she, she didn't do any like crazy hacks. She basically had, uh, like 10 or 20 friends, including me, like buy her pillows at cost through Etsy. We left a review. She started getting reviews. She ran like, I literally think it's $100 worth of ads. The customers loved the pillows, and they started telling their friends about it, and it was mostly all word of mouth. And then now she starts going to these doorman buildings to get more sales. But it was a very word-of-mouth business. So like I'll be with her, and like customers will call her, and she'll just pick up her cell phone and just talk to them. I mean, it's, it's like a small business where there's not really any hacks. It's just been word of mouth.

Shaan Puri 13:14 Dude, so many amazing things about this story. I'll tell you three of the amazing things. Number one, that she tweeted this and it got in touch with, uh, the guy from Bed Bath & Beyond who's gonna now get her to Bed Bath & Beyond. Number two, your mother-in-law in her 50s decides to like just like start a business, become an entrepreneur. That's the second most, most impressive thing, that she took the action and actually did it. How many people do you know that would love to do it but count themselves out? She didn't count herself out. I really respect that. Number three, um, that she found her version of enough. It's hard enough to win. The even harder part is to actually enjoy the win and not let the win turn into a loss because you, you start to stress out and try to keep up with the thing or try to grow it, try to keep going 'cause you feel some stupid pressure to keep going. So being able to say, "No, no, no. This is how I want my business to run," on her terms, even more respect for that. And actually I got a fourth bonus one. This guy saying, "And trust me, I know pillows."

Sam Parr 14:10 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 14:10 I am now gonna end every tweet with some version of that. [laughs] Like if I'm like, "Hey, everyone's like this app, and believe me, I know a thing or two about apps."

Sam Parr 14:19 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 14:19 Like what a, what a gangster just style of speaking.

Sam Parr 14:22 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 14:22 I love this guy. I'm, I'm totally stealing this. You're gonna see this. My next 10 tweets I'm gonna end like that. It's like when Trump used to end a tweet with like the emotion. Like instead of emojis, he would be like, "You know, the border is not safe. Sad." [laughs]

Sam Parr 14:35 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 14:36 At which point he would always end his tweets like that.

Sam Parr 14:38 Well, it's, it's kinda smart to this guy. This guy probably has no idea who you and I are, and he doesn't give a shit. But he probably saw the engagement of the tweet, and he's like, "Well, if I could like pounce on this and just get like a little bit of like interesting press, like this could..." Or not pr- real press, but get impressions. Like it could be worth it to them. And who knows if... I told Smithy, I was like, "Have your hopes low. Like who knows if this is gonna work out. It's a huge company. E- even though he's on the board or whatever he is, like that doesn't mean anything's gonna happen." But like-

Shaan Puri 15:05 No, I don't, I don't think you need to be giving her advice anymore. I think she needs to be giving you advice from now on.

Sam Parr 15:09 Well, I agree. I agree with that.

Shaan Puri 15:11 [laughs]

Sam Parr 15:11 Uh, I was... It was a little more therapist session, although she doesn't need that. But it was a more like, oh, who knows, you know? I don't want you... Don't get your hopes up.

Shaan Puri 15:18 Right. All right. Well, Sam makes the will. Congratulations, dude.

Sam Parr 15:21 Yes. Congratulations to me. I have a, a bunch more interesting stuff. Do you want, do you want me to dive in?

Shaan Puri 15:25 Yeah, yeah. Give me another one.

Sam Parr 15:26 There's these ads I've been getting, and it's by this company called

Sam Parr 15:30 Mad Muscle. So you actually, it might be easier if you just go to Facebook Ad Library and type in Mad Muscle. And they have these animations. It's the, it's a popular ad I see all the time where it's these cartoon-looking guys. One picture is like a guy with kind of a beer belly at 20% body fat, and then a guy that's ripped at 10%. And like it's very eye-catching ads that grab your attention. And they have got these other ads where it's like a guy doing a bicep curl.

Shaan Puri 15:54 Yep.

Sam Parr 15:54 Very catchy ads. They're very catchy ads. I get this ad like crazy, and so I was curious who's behind it. And I found a very interesting thing. I do this with every ad that's catchy. I go to the website, I scroll all the way to the bottom where it says like trademark, and then it'll say like the real name of the company, and then I'll research the company. So check this out. There's these two guys in Ukraine. They started this company when they were 25. Their name is Ivan and Dmitry. Originally, the company was called... Well, the whole holding company's called AMO, so A-M-O. But they've got three arms of the business, and the first part of the business was AMO Publishing. Listen to these numbers. So they kinda created like these, these, uh, little clickbaity like news websites. And then ag- eventually they geared it toward moms. And so they have headlines like elderly couple divorces after 53 years of marriage. Later, man sees ex-wife dating in a cafe. And it's an article.

Shaan Puri 16:53 [laughs]

Sam Parr 16:54 Then they switch to Facebook videos, and they get crazy viral. And so at this point they have 53 million followers on Facebook. They have this thing called AMO Mama, which has 14 million. They have AMO Nostalgia. They have AMO News. It's almost sorta like, I guess you could say like a Fuck Jerry, where it's like a social-first news company.

Shaan Puri 17:17 Right.

Sam Parr 17:17 They get huge. They get 53 million followers. From there, they create this thing called AMO Pictures. Years, or not years ago, but a few months ago, you mentioned these guys that have soap operas on YouTube, and that is exactly what Ivan and Dmitry pivoted to next. So they created this YouTube channel called Dramatize Me. Dramatize Me has 2.4 million subscribers and 500 million views, so a lot, and the average video is something like 20 or 30 minutes. And these, it's these actors like acting out a soap opera. And you could c- you could tell that a lot of the stuff is dubbed, so they film it one time and then they have, uh, Dramatize Me in different, in different languages. And so they have different pages for each, for each, uh, language. From there, they started launching these apps. And so their first big app that they launched, it was to help women exercise on their periods, which I guess when you're menstruating, I guess like you feel crappy and you don't wanna work out. They created an app that helps you do that.

Shaan Puri 18:18 That's gotta be the hardest sale. [laughs] To make... It's like, yo, what kind of extra degree of difficulty did they take as an entrepreneur? It's like, [laughs] we are gonna help somebody do something they don't wanna do right at the time that they don't wanna do it. [laughs] Wow.

Sam Parr 18:34 Yeah, I don't know. I, you know, I, I obviously I don't understand that, that, how that feels, but I guess there is a need. Then they launch this thing called UNAMEAL, which is a healthy meal plan app that costs $20 a week. So clearly they must have high churn if they're charging $20 a week right off the bat. And then from there they create Mad Muscles, which is the thing that I saw. So their website, this website for Mad Muscles, according to Similarweb, is getting 11 million visits a month. It's insane.

Shaan Puri 19:02 Wow. 500,000 followers on Instagram.

Sam Parr 19:04 And the app has 35,000 reviews. And so these young guys, they started this company when they were 25, uh, just like four or five years ago. According to LinkedIn, they now have close to 400 employees in Ukraine. These young guys that nobody, at least in America, is talking about have this massive media empire in the middle of Ukraine, and they [laughs] are like the scrappiest people that I've ever seen 'cause they're just, like, launching stuff and they're like, "Oh, that works. Let's do this spin-off. Oh, looks like they all have a similar problem. They want, I guess, to work out, and we have w- we have a lot of middle-aged women. They wanna work out on their periods. Let's create this thing. Oh, looks like workout apps was cool. Let's create one for men." And they are like it... They, this is an example of what we've talked about many times, of these just, like, scrappy people who just... They're, I don't wanna say soulless 'cause that sounds negative, but they just follow the numbers like crazy and they don't overthink it. What, what's that meme that you were talking about the other day?

Shaan Puri 20:00 The Midwip meme.

Sam Parr 20:00 It's called, like, the, the Midwip meme, which is, like, the, in the middle it's, like, create a beautiful product, study the market, whatever, yada, yada, yada. The one on the left with the, the idiot, it's like, uh, just launch it and just keep iterating and just do whatever the customers say. S- and the, you know, the smart person also says that.

Shaan Puri 20:16 Yeah, launch it and see what works.

Sam Parr 20:17 Yeah. That's exactly what they're doing. These guys, it's, are, it's so fascinating how they're running their company.

Shaan Puri 20:22 This is a crazy find. Good on you. Uh, uh, props, [claps] Sam, with a Sam Parr special finding this random app in the Ukraine, or this company. I am impressed and confused. I'm impressed 'cause clearly these guys are awesome, and they're smart, and they're figuring stuff out, and they've built a really cool set of products, and, uh, a what looks like a pretty cool company. Um, I'm confused 'cause I'm like, they are doing four separate hard things-

Sam Parr 20:51 Yes

Shaan Puri 20:51 ... at the same time, and I'm confused about that strategy. [laughs] But, you know, this is actually pretty common when it comes to startups in Eastern Europe. I, I've actually seen this several times, which is because they don't have a lot of venture capital, it's like bootstrap driven, and so they make businesses that are working, and one business, like, unlocks the next, or they s- discover the next opportunity, or maybe one taps out, but it's still good enough to stay as a business. And so they end up with this, like, conglomerate of, like, four different things. And I've seen this, like, 10 times now, so I'm actually not surprised that this is what's happened here. But to go from publishing to then their pictures arm, which is like, you know, their, their Hollywood arm or whatever that's making movies and, and shows or whatever, to apps, you know, like, those are not related really. Like, you can kinda squint and be like, "Oh, we use the media to promote our apps." Okay, cool, but what about these, like, YouTube shows? Like, uh, or just in general, like maybe just spend money on Facebook ads and don't do all the other stuff. So I am, uh, I am simultaneously impressed and confused by this.

Sam Parr 21:53 Well, first of all, I was not able to find any news about them. There was just, like, even in Ukraine and Russia, there

Sam Parr 22:00 was very little information about them. I'm like, "What is going on? This app has 35,000 reviews. I can't find anything about them." I had to search t- to find the owner. I eventually found their LinkedIn, uh, profiles, but it was really, really hard. And whenever I... That happens, I'm like, "All right. I'm interested. I gotta figure this out."

Shaan Puri 22:16 You, you can tell how successful an entrepreneur is. Like, there's many ways. Let's say I said, "Sam, I'm gonna give you an hour locked in a room with this entrepreneur. You have to figure out if they're gonna be successful or not or how successful they're gonna be." And there's many questions you could ask them. There's many, uh, you know, like, you know, ways you could quiz them to try to see if they're good or bad. But one signal that just really never fails, if you go to their, um, like, videos, their pictures, um, section, and you go look at some of the thumb- uh, the, the titles and thumbnails for some of their things, it's exactly what you talked about. And people who do this, these people never lose. So here's the first one.

Sam Parr 22:53 'Cause they don't give a shit.

Shaan Puri 22:55 Girl, girl sends s- girl sent selfies to her boss, and then she's looking, like, worried. Next one, gender reveal went wrong, question mark.

Sam Parr 23:02 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 23:03 Third one, right? [laughs] Like, grandpa in the gym, dot, dot, dot, nailed it. And it's like these are things that human nature must click and must watch to find out how the payoff is, and this is, like, universally, broadly, um, appealing content, right? People love to hear, see the heartwarming thing or the gossipy thing or the, like, you know, the major screwup in some high-stakes situation. Those are things that people have to watch. And you know that if somebody is creating content like this, it's just a matter of time until they create a product that goes mainstream because they understand what makes people tick and what's gonna get the click and what's gonna get the conversion, and eventually they'll stop making silly videos or they'll stop writing, you know, funny tweets or m- posting on a meme Instagram page, and they'll work on a bigger product. And I see this all the time. I see this with younger people, but just in general, um, if you're running that, that goofy, uh, you know, like, uh, TikTok account that's going viral, it makes no money, but you figured out how to get people to watch your videos, what makes people click. Eventually that's the same person that's gonna have that really successful D2C brand or create that app that goes, you know, to the top of the charts because they just get it when it comes to human nature.

Sam Parr 24:17 Well, I remember when, um, I first started The Hustle, we were, we got 50,000 subscribers in a short amount of time, and Tim Chen was the founder of NerdWallet. NerdWallet's now a publicly traded company. They write, like, articles for the best credit card or whatever. And he was like, "Hey, I want to invest." And I'm like, "You don't even..." I was like, "Dude, I don't even know, like, how we're gonna make money." And he was like, "Well, look- I know enough to know that if you're good at getting an audience, making money off that is actually easier. And I was like, "What? What are you talking about? Like, this, this wasn't that hard to do." He's like, "Well, it's hard for many people." And NerdWallet is kind of that, that answer, where it took them three years to get to, like, I think 5 million or something like that in revenue, but in year four they got to, like, 30 million in revenue because it took them three years to rank in Google for people searching best credit card. It's one of the hardest terms to, to rank for. And now I, a- as I've grown and I've understood this, that if you can get an audience and you can get eyeballs, as long as they're... Ideally, it's a math equation where it's like you want... It's like, um, the equation would be, like, values equals the amount of influence you have over them times their spending power multiplied by, uh, the amount they're willing to spend. Uh, if you can, like, do- maximize that equation, you can build a big business, and actually making the product oftentimes is easier than getting the audience.

Shaan Puri 25:38 100%. And, um, people who understand how to get an audience, they're gonna win. It's the same way that, uh, when I meet people who are, like, elite at a video game, like a st- like a, a hard, like a, a worldwide video game, it's just a matter of time till they're fatigued of that game and they decide to play the next game called business. And guess what? The same, you know, willingness to grind, ability to fi- figure out the meta strategy, ability to coordinate and collaborate with their team and communicate at very fast speed, like, that's all gonna work once they, once they just pick a different game. Um, so it's like, you know, that or the, the sneaker flippers, the eBay flippers. Uh, you know, when we started this podcast, it's called My First Million, I was interviewing people, "How'd you make your first million?" And one of the things I always ask them, like, one of my favorite questions is, "If I had, you know, if I was filming a documentary of you back when you were 13, 12, 13, do you think I would've known that maybe you would go on to do such interesting things? Like, was there anything... Would I have seen at that time you were doing something unusual for a 13, 14-year-old?" And at first their reaction's like, "No, I was just a normal kid." But then you ask, you're like, "So what were you doing for fun?" And they're like, "Well, actually, I was, uh... You know, my neighbor had these extra golf clubs, and, uh, so I actually realized that you could sell them on eBay. And so I was... I would go to old people's houses, I would knock on the doors, ask if I could see their golf clubs, and I would buy their golf clubs and go flip them on eBay." You're like, "Okay, it's just a matter of time until you elevate from flipping

Shaan Puri 27:00 golf clubs to whatever it is, SaaS software, whatever, whatever the next, the bigger game is." But that's, like, such a high, like, likelihood of success or so highly correlated with, with success, um, for people who have that background.

Sam Parr 27:11 All right. Let me... Can I go, can I give you one more? We're gonna do one more, a little small business one.

Shaan Puri 27:16 Yeah, let's do it.

Sam Parr 27:17 All right. So go to this website called [laughs] it's dumpsterenterprises.com.

Shaan Puri 27:23 [laughs] Um-

Sam Parr 27:25 All right. So [laughs]

Shaan Puri 27:26 Should I... Is this not safe for work? Okay, here we go. [laughs]

Sam Parr 27:29 It's safe. It's exactly what it sounds like. So this guy joined Hampton, and I saw that his, uh, company was called Dumpster Enterprises, and I was like, "Dude, what the hell is this? Tell me everything about this." And so I was like, "We're on the record. I'm, I wanna talk about this in the pod, so whatever you tell me, is that okay?" And he's like, "Yeah, I would, I would love to do it." So I got his permission. And so this guy [laughs] named Ian, uh, his background is basically that he l- he learned a little bit about SEO and web design, and he started making, like, just a handful of, like, how to make money websites. And it was like, uh, this is on- kind of only going okay. And so he, like, randomly met this guy because he was trying to rent... This guy Ian was trying to rent a dumpster, and he started, like, looking up the best, like, vendors to find in order to bring, like, a dumpster to his house. We're talking, like, dumpsters when you move. Like, you want a little bit of a bigger dumpster to th- that you keep for, like, two weeks. And he meets this guy and he's like, "Dude, I don't know how to do any of this SEO stuff, but I know all these vendors that are similar to me." And this guy's Ian like, "Well, c- can I have the vendors and maybe we can work out a deal where I'll, like, pay you for, like, giving me this vendor list?" And so he does that. And so after two years he builds this website called dumpsterenterprises.com. And if you scroll down to the, uh, our notes document, this guy was pretty crazy. He gave me his full P&L for 2023, and I was like, "Can I, can I read this?" He's like, "Yeah, I don't care." So he gave me his full P&L. So in year two of the business, he did $2.1 million in revenue, and the way that the business works is he ranks a little bit on search. It looks like he only spent $26,000 in, uh, advertising and marketing, so he's not spending that much money on ads, but some money in ads. And so he did 2.1 million in revenue, and the way his business works is you type in which area code or zip code you need a dumpster in, and then he forwards that lead to a handful of vendors or dumpster providers that he has vetted. They pay him, let's say, $100 for that lead. He's able to profit 50, 'cause that's how much it costs him to get the leads. And he made about... It looks like he paid himself, but the business also made about $280,000 in profit. And he was like, "This is a business that didn't take me a long time to set up." He goes, "I, I work a few hours a day and I travel a lot," and it's like, it's a very, it's kind of a, a business that's been on cruise control a little bit. But I saw this and I was like, dude, there's a freaking business built in every niche that I never even would have thought.

Shaan Puri 29:58 [laughs]

Sam Parr 29:58 And so this is, like, a little, little example.

Sam Parr 30:00 A, people in our YouTube comments criticized us for talking about, like, big companies, billion-dollar, $100 million companies. I wanted to give an example of an interesting small business. We've done that twice, Smithy H- uh, Home Couture, and now Dumpster Rental Enterprises.

Shaan Puri 30:15 This is super cool. This is a, a good blueprint, by the way. We've seen this now several times here as we've been doing the pod, which is you take a industry that is well-established and local, like it could be dumpster rentals, it could be, um, you know, uh, road painting or parking lot painting, it could be senior living facilities where they need customers, but the typical owner of those businesses knows nothing about SEO or SEM. And if you just say, "Cool, I'll create the website that just does the lead gen for whatever it is," and you're like, "I'll bid on the Google keywords, I'll create the easy-to-use website, I'll grab the customer contact info, and then I will pass you the lead, and you're gonna pay me some fixed amount per lead," that's... It's just a blueprint we've seen work over and over again. And it works even better the higher the ticket, right? So, like, senior living, for example, the people who, people will end up spending hundreds of thousands in rent over, you know, a three or four-year time period of, of, of, you know, renting a, a bed in a, in a facility. Or pool construction. It's like a f- you know, $30,000 project or something like that. And so you take-

Sam Parr 31:21 We had a friend. You and I had a friend, or I don't know if you knew him, Dave Groesplat.

Shaan Puri 31:23 Yeah.

Sam Parr 31:24 He had swimmingpoolquotes.com, and he was making $2 million a year getting... And it was basically, like, he only made his money four months out of the year. And so the, the other months he would just chill.

Shaan Puri 31:32 Without having to do the swimming pool stuff, right? He's not actually going-

Sam Parr 31:35 Yeah

Shaan Puri 31:35 ... and doing the thing, right? It's like the, that quote, you know, like, the biggest taxi in the company o- uh, uh, taxi company in the world owns no taxis. The biggest hotel company in the world owns no hotels, like Airbnb or Uber. Well-

Sam Parr 31:45 The medium [laughs] the medium size [laughs] well, the most medium sized pool.

Shaan Puri 31:49 The medium sized pool, pool mogul.

Sam Parr 31:51 [laughs] Yeah.

Shaan Puri 31:52 Own, makes no pools. Builds no pools.

Sam Parr 31:54 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 31:54 Um, and so, you know, high ticket. And then if that, how old school that industry is. So how, how much of it is mom-and-pop operators who don't know how to do Google Ads and don't know how to do SEO? And that arbitrage right there is, like, such a formula for a five, $10 million business that you can build by yourself working v- you know, very... It's a very good lifestyle business. It's not hard work. You don't need a big team. You don't need a lot of funding. You don't need any of that.

Sam Parr 32:20 But sometimes they can be huge. So I've been doing research in this industry for a long time, 'cause I was obsessed with trucking. I, I talked about a ton. I almost went into that business. And there was a bunch of people who were doing it for trucking, meaning, uh, the trucking industry has a-

Shaan Puri 32:32 To hire truckers, right?

Sam Parr 32:33 Yeah. So the trucking industry has a huge short, a, a, there's a, a shortage of people who have their commercial driver's license. And so if you can get someone who has their commercial driver's license and send them to a trucking company, they give you this massive finder's fee. But the biggest industry that I found that this works in is lawyers. So I found there's, like, a site called, like, superlawyers.com that's owned by Thomas Reuters, a huge multi-billion dollar, tens of billions of dollar company. But there was, like, a lot of the early Web 1.0 businesses that I looked up were affiliates or lead gen businesses for lawyers. Because if you look at what the most expensive... And this is how you know it's a big industry. You can just go to Google Keyword Finder. I forget what it's called now, but it used to be called Keyword Finder. You could type in the word lawyer, and it will tell you how much you have to pay in order to get a click from Google for the word lawyer. Now, if you type in something even crazier, like mesothelioma lawyer, it's, like, $1,000 a click, meaning only 5% of those will close. So this company's having to spend, I, I, I can't do that math 'cause I'm an idiot, tens of thousands of dollars in order to acquire a client who wants to sue someone or whatever for mesothelioma issues. Like, the, it has the highest cost per click I've seen is lawyer related, and I s- I've seen multiple of these lead gen companies for lawyers that are doing hundreds of millions in revenue.

Shaan Puri 33:53 Lead gen. Yeah. Incredible business blueprint that, uh, really if you just have one skill, you just need to figure out the niche to apply it in. The one

Shaan Puri 34:00 skill being, you know, SEM, search engine marketing, and how do you use that search engine marketing in a field where the people who run those businesses aren't great at it. And if you can just become great at it, it's, it's a big winner there. Um, I gotta ask you, do you, have you seen this Apple Vision Pro thing? And what do you think about this?

Sam Parr 34:17 I haven't tested it yet, but I've seen it. Uh, what do I think of it? Um, on one hand, I am, have, I have the Boomer mentality of, like, this is sad. This sucks. We're all gonna be in this. But on the other hand, I'm like, it's pretty sick. Like, they pushed the, they pushed the envelope. It's pretty cool.

Shaan Puri 34:35 Right.

Sam Parr 34:35 I think, I think it's kind of cool knowing that the current version is gonna be the worst version that ever comes about, and that first version is pretty, seems pretty awesome.

Shaan Puri 34:46 Pretty dope, yeah.

Sam Parr 34:48 Yeah. What do you think?

Shaan Puri 34:49 Uh, one to 10, how bad do you want one?

Sam Parr 34:52 Uh, I don't want to own one, so not at all. But, uh, nine out of 10, I, I wanna go to the Apple store and try one.

Shaan Puri 34:58 [laughs] And, and-

Sam Parr 35:00 What, what are you?

Shaan Puri 35:01 Um, I, yeah, I didn't buy one. And, like, the bar for me to buy something is pretty low. Like, I'm a pretty o- impulse-driven person. Like, if I'm just curious, I'll just usually get something.

Sam Parr 35:10 It's not an impulse, impulse buy per, uh, price.

Shaan Puri 35:13 It's not, but, like, you know, I, I kinda justify anything that's in, you know, trying new tech. That, that's kind of my, that's kind of my job to do, to do things like that.

Sam Parr 35:21 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 35:21 So, so yeah, I, I don't do that. But I've been, I have three VR headsets already sitting in the corner of my room just staring at me like-

Sam Parr 35:28 Same

Shaan Puri 35:28 ... "Really, bro? You're gonna get another one of these?" Um, and each one, I tried them on, I was like, "Wow, this is so impressive. All right."

Sam Parr 35:36 Never touched again.

Shaan Puri 35:36 "That's enough." [laughs]

Sam Parr 35:37 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 35:38 "I guess I'll put this down and never put it back on."

Sam Parr 35:40 [laughs] Yeah.

Shaan Puri 35:40 And that's what's happened to me with every VR headset, so I'm afraid that that's what's ha- gonna happen with this. I did watch a bunch of the videos you-

Sam Parr 35:46 I was like, I used my Oculus for hours a day on the day that I bought it.

Shaan Puri 35:50 Right. [laughs] Yeah.

Sam Parr 35:51 [laughs] Like, that's about it.

Shaan Puri 35:53 Every time I use it, I use it for four hours.

Sam Parr 35:55 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 35:55 It's just a one-time. Um, did you watch the Casey Neistat, like, review video?

Sam Parr 35:59 So good.

Shaan Puri 36:00 So good.

Sam Parr 36:00 So good.

Shaan Puri 36:01 So he goes, he puts it on, and he's like, "I'm so excited about this." He walks around New York, and he basically goes on the subway, and he goes to Times Square, and then he goes to, like, a Krispy Kreme, and he's using it. And he made a great video about it which is less like, "Let me review the, the features," and be like, "How, how good is the field of view? Is 110 degrees the right number?" He doesn't do all that. He's just like, "I actually wanna just, like, use this for fun and go see, like, you know, what it feels like." And, um, it seems like everybody's takeaway is kind of the same, which is kind of a magical experience. You feel like you got a glimpse of the future, but it's only a glimpse. This isn't the future yet. And y- but you see, like, oh, okay, five years from now, this thing is gonna be incredible, 'cause they're gonna solve all these annoying problems. It's gonna become lighter weight. They're gonna get rid of this cord that's a battery that I have to put in my pocket while I'm using it. They're gonna make it so that I can see my phone while I'm using this if I want to, blah, blah, blah.

Sam Parr 36:55 It's gonna be as small as a pair of glasses.

Shaan Puri 36:58 Exactly. And so that's pretty exciting. Um, but it did remind me of something that I think is... Forget the Apple Vision Pro for a second, 'cause, you know, whatever, it's just a device. Um, there's an incredible blog post that this reminded me of, and I think that this blog post is one of... If I, if I had a Mount Rushmore of blog posts that informed my way of thinking as an entrepreneur, this is one of them. And it's this post by Paul Buchheit, who is the creator of Gmail, and the blog post, I think, is called If You're Great, You Don't Have to Be Good. And what he's talking about was the iPad came out. So the iPad... He wrote this right the day after the iPad was announced or released, and all of the reviews were crushing Apple, being like, "iPad, what a f- what a flop," right? They're announcing this big deal, but this thing, it doesn't, doesn't have a keyboard, doesn't have a USB port. You can't even do this with it. You can't do this with it. And he, the guy who wrote the blog post, makes a point. He goes, um, "People said the same thing about Gmail when we first came out." And he's like, "We didn't have time to do certain things." So he's like, "For example, address book." He's like, "We didn't have time to build it, and so we shipped it without it, and people were just killing us. Like, 'Oh my God, this doesn't even have an address book? Oh, it doesn't even have this? It doesn't have this?'" And he's like, uh, "We thought, oh man, we might fail because of this." He's like, "But what saved us, and the same thing that's gonna save the iPad, is that when you... Like, a hit product is not a hit product because it's good in every category. It's a hit product because it's amazing. It's great in one to three categories." And he's like, "We'd..." He's like, "For Goo- For Gmail, we were like, cool, we're gonna do..." I don't remember what, what they were exactly, but I think it was, like, unlimited storage or, like, just, like, 10X more storage than the previous email provider, whatever Hotmail was giving you. Like, Hotmail was giving you 20 megabytes. These guys were giving you, like, you know, two gigabytes. He's like, the second thing was, um, super fast search, so you could find any email. So he's like, "Even though we didn't have your address book, if you just typed in somebody's name, you'd immediately find the last email from them, and that, you could just use that email, uh, you know, to, to contact them again." He's like, "And the last thing was, like, threaded conversations." He's like, you know, basically the ability for each email not to just be its own thing, but, like, every reply in one email thread, you can just see it all together. And he's like, "We just wanted to be great at those three things, and we delivered. We were great at those three things, and it worked even though we were missing these things that the experts all told us we, you know, we would get slammed for." He's like, "The iPad is the same way." He goes, "The iPad does not have those ports. It doesn't have the USB. You can't connect a keyboard. You can't do all this right now." He's like, "You know what it's amazing at? It is great in that if you turn on your computer, it takes, like, a minute and a half to get to, like, being able to use a computer. Like, it has to boot up, it has to go to the login." He's like, "With an iPad, you literally click the button, and it's ready for you to use. Instantaneous." He's like, "Number two, it's great for watching videos on your couch." He's like, "You can't... It's not super good for productivity right now, but man, is it amazing just to hold... be able to walk around with a screen that you can watch videos on." He's like, "And it's 10X better than the previous way." And so I kind of... When I looked at this Apple Vision Pro, there was a bunch of people that were like, "Oh, it can't do this and it can't do that." And what I've learned is don't discount something because of those, like, kind of, those limitations. Like, basically find does it have any extreme strengths? 'Cause if it has a couple of extreme strengths, it's actually gonna be a winner.

Sam Parr 40:23 Well, does it?

Shaan Puri 40:24 There's this one ad that I think shows one of the extreme strengths. Um, watch that ad for a second. [dramatic music]

Sam Parr 40:44 Yeah, it's awesome. So basically you see everyone else on their iPhone c- on a small screen, and then they- [laughs]

Shaan Puri 40:51 On an airplane. The, it's-

Sam Parr 40:52 On an airplane

Shaan Puri 40:52 ... panning across the rows on an airplane.

Sam Parr 40:54 And then you see a guy with the Apple Vision Pro, and it's at, it... You, you see what he's seeing, and it's a movie theater. He's watching, uh, Napoleon, and it looks like he's in movie theater where everyone else is looking at a little three-inch screen.

Shaan Puri 41:06 Exactly. He's b- And, and, and, and so you think about what is the, what is this thing great at? 'Cause that's the signals of, like, is this gonna work? Is this the future or is it not? I think one that you can identify is the ability to... Like, why would you ever go to a movie theater if you had one of these, really? 'Cause you could have a even better than movie theater experience. You're at home. It's a full screen. Like, everything you can see is the screen, and even better, you can, like, actually, like, change the surroundings. You could be in the jungle with the theater, or you could be on a... or, you know, i- in this case, you could be sitting on an airplane and have the theater come to you.

Sam Parr 41:40 Are you imagining [laughs] somebody in a jungle [laughs] playing a video?

Shaan Puri 41:42 Uh, what I meant with that was, like, you could change the scenery behind, uh, in the v-

Sam Parr 41:46 Yeah, yeah

Shaan Puri 41:46 ... the thing. But in this case, it's where he's actually sitting is on an airplane where, like, nobody else can see what he's seeing, so it's private, which is cool, 'cause I hate kind of on an airplane when, like, you're working or whatever, you're typing emails, and the person next to you can just read everything. Um, so it's, it's private.

Sam Parr 42:01 I sat next to a guy on the airplane [laughs] and he was an old guy, and so his [laughs] the text on his phone was huge.

Shaan Puri 42:07 Yeah. [laughs]

Sam Parr 42:07 And I could see him talking to his assistant, and I could see his name, and I looked him up on Wikipedia, and it was a famous producer, and I'm like, oh, it makes sense. This producer lives in this city where I'm leaving from.

Shaan Puri 42:16 Right.

Sam Parr 42:16 And so, like, I understood, I knew, like, all about this guy just from seeing his text messages. It was weird.

Shaan Puri 42:22 S- so I think private, private video is one way that this is great. I think the second way that it's great is, like, the theater experience. I think the third is, like, any sports or concert experience. So being able to sit courtside and watch an NBA game with this thing from home, it's like you take a $50,000 experience that only the richest of the rich can have, and now anybody's gonna be able to have it with this, and, uh, that I think is super, super cool, and I think there's a bunch of reasons why this thing is not great yet, but I think that is, is amazing.

Sam Parr 42:53 I'm such a neckbeard that, like, Sarah wanted to go to, like, Greece or something to, like, see whatever the famous stuff they have there, and I just looked it up on Street View, and I was like [laughs]

Shaan Puri 43:04 Got it.

Sam Parr 43:04 [laughs] It's got... It's all right. [laughs] Yeah. Like, isn't that beautiful? You have your camera? Take a picture. [laughs] Like... And this would make it so much better. I'm just not gonna leave my house ever again Um, no, I think the, I think it's gonna be cool. I, I just don't want, I don't wanna, I don't have a need to own one yet, but the flight thing actually is pretty convincing.

Shaan Puri 43:25 Yeah. That, the... And I was like, "What a example of an ad?" That one ad is, like, 15 seconds. There's no words, there's no dialogue, and it sells the thing for you, right? Like, it, it, that was the most convincing ad I've seen about this whole thing, um, more convincing than all the reviews, and it was 15 seconds with no, no words.

Sam Parr 43:43 Dude, they crush it, man. Apple crushes it on those things. Um, all right, let me give you a quick follow-up. So [laughs] this follow-up is very... Well, you'll see in a second. But basically, do you remember when we talked about uBiome?

Shaan Puri 43:57 I feel like you talk about uBiome every fourth episode now. Uh,

Shaan Puri 44:00 what's going on with uBiome?

Sam Parr 44:01 So uBiome, they [laughs] ... I talked about it in April of 2021, so it's been a few years. So uBiome was launched, uh, I don't actually know when, I think 2014 or so. They started out actually as a Kickstarter and Indiegogo thing, and the whole thing was that you pay 80 bucks and you send them a piece of your poop, and they look at your poop, and they tell you all about your, your gut, which I guess you can find illnesses through your poop. And it was started by these three people, but two of them eventually started dating and got married. Well, turns out they, it was all, uh... Well, first of all, they raised from Andreessen Horowitz, they raised from YC, from 8VC. So they raised, in September 2018, they raised $100 million at a $600 million valuation from Y Combinator as well, from the best investors there are. Turns out it was all a scam, and, like, their tests were nonsense, and the way that it worked was basically they... You would send them your poop, they sent you back bullshit results, shit results, bad results that they, like, weren't legit. They [laughs] yeah, pun. Uh, they, they just completely made it up. But then what they would do is they would bill your insurer $3,000. And so in doing this, they made roughly $35 million from insurance companies, so it was insurance fraud because it was bull crap tests. And then they, the f- the two husband and wife couples, they sold $12 million worth of their shares. Well, fast-forward a few years after they raised their funding, their office gets raided by the FBI, and turns out the whole company was a fraud. It was one big fraud. It was nonsense. And I was curious as to what happened to the founders. I was like, "Man, did they get sentenced yet?" Because I know that they definitely were guilty. Um, turns out they fled to Germany, and here's the update to the s- to the case and the story that we did in '21. They're still on the lam. They're, they're f- [laughs] they're international felons in Germany. They've never been caught. Totally worked. Crime does pay.

Shaan Puri 46:01 [laughs]

Sam Parr 46:01 They did not get in trouble. [laughs] That's the update to the story. I was curious. I was like, [laughs] I was like, "What happened to these guys? Where are they now?" They're just chilling in Germany. For some reason, they got away with it.

Shaan Puri 46:14 And they're about to get, like, a Netflix deal on top of it.

Sam Parr 46:16 Uh, yeah, they've completely gotten away with it. Nothing bad has happened to them. They got the money, they ran away, and they're happily, [laughs] they're happily married, and it worked. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 46:26 In love, rich-

Sam Parr 46:27 Yeah

Shaan Puri 46:27 ... living in Europe. [laughs]

Sam Parr 46:29 [laughs] Yeah.

Shaan Puri 46:29 Free.

Sam Parr 46:32 It's an extended honeymoon. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 46:34 So what did we learn today? [laughs]

Sam Parr 46:36 They completely got away with it. Is that insane?

Shaan Puri 46:39 [laughs] Yeah, that's crazy. Also, I feel like Germany is not, like, the place I think about when I'm like, they ran away and g- and, you know, hid in some country and got away with it. It's like Ger- I feel like Germany should be able to, like [laughs] you should be able to find them.

Sam Parr 46:53 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 46:54 Not like, uh, you know, some small island somewhere.

Sam Parr 46:57 Well, I was reading their Wikipedia, and at the bottom of the intro it said, like, they currently are international fu- fugitives living in, living in Germany, and it said they have no intention of coming back to America.

Shaan Puri 47:08 [laughs]

Sam Parr 47:08 Like, yeah.

Shaan Puri 47:09 Duh.

Sam Parr 47:10 Duh. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 47:12 And do you think... H- how do they know they're living in Germany still? Like, wouldn't they just leave if there, if it's known that they're in Germany? Like-

Sam Parr 47:17 I don't know. Maybe they're... I, I don't know. I don't know, but they know that they're in Germany, and they've completely gotten away with it. So they've raised $100 million. They stole $35 million from insurance companies, so we're talking $150 million close to. Uh, they, they know they're in Germany, and they're just chilling. They, they've gotten away with it. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 47:36 One of the most successful Indiegogo projects of all time. [laughs]

Sam Parr 47:39 Is it really? [laughs] Yeah.

Shaan Puri 47:41 Well, given the outcome.

Sam Parr 47:42 Money.

Shaan Puri 47:42 Yeah.

Sam Parr 47:42 Marriage. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 47:44 Money, love, fame. [laughs]

Sam Parr 47:45 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 47:46 Great European lifestyle.

Sam Parr 47:48 Did you see that, uh, crypto documentary on Netflix about... Remember the, uh, the, uh, what was it called? What was... ICO scam that these, uh, like, two Brooklyn kids did in, uh, like, 2020? You remember that?

Shaan Puri 48:00 Uh, I didn't watch the, the... I know what you're talking about. I didn't watch that one.

Sam Parr 48:04 What was it called? Uh, or what was their scam called?

Shaan Puri 48:07 Uh, I have no idea. I just saw the Netflix, like, trailer. That's all I saw.

Sam Parr 48:10 I remember the scam-

Shaan Puri 48:10 I've seen, like, 20 crypto scam movies, and I'm like, "I think I'm good on that category for a little while."

Sam Parr 48:15 Well, we were making fun of them because we were like, "No, I don't wanna give my, I don't wanna invest in any person who says they've got some amazing technology, and they've got perfect teeth, a red Ferrari, and abs." And we, we were talking about this guy, and obviously it was clearly a scam. They paid Floyd May- Mayweather to, uh, endorse it. They paid, uh, what's that guy? DJ Khaled to endorse it. It was, like, clearly a scam. And they ended-

Shaan Puri 48:42 By the way, this, this founder of uBiome, Jessica Richman, her background: Stanford, Oxford, Google, and McKinsey.

Sam Parr 48:50 It's crazy, right? By the way, she lied about her age. So on her, like, everyone was like, "Dude, you're not 30. You look 50."

Shaan Puri 48:57 And her weight, too. [laughs]

Sam Parr 49:00 [laughs] No, she completely lied about her age. Like, it was, like, a known secret in Silicon Valley at the time that this woman... 'Cause she was... No, I know what it was. She made Forbes 30 Under 30, and everyone [laughs] was like, "Dude, you are not under 30 years old."

Shaan Puri 49:15 [laughs] Yeah, that's, that's hilarious. Just a 43-year-old on the Forbes 30 Under 30.

Sam Parr 49:18 [laughs] Yeah, she completely lied.

Shaan Puri 49:19 She even scammed everybody. Um, on their About Us page on the Indiegogo, each person has, like, their background, like where they went to school, and then some people, like... So for her, she's got Stanford, Oxford, Google, McKinsey Uh, but for other people, they don't have like four impressive things. They just went to undergrad and then that was it. So they just added like random taglines under them. So it's like, "Jennifer from customer care, cool under pressure." [laughs]

Sam Parr 49:44 [laughs] Yeah, no shit.

Shaan Puri 49:45 Next one. Samantha, customer care. Appetite for knowledge. [laughs] Another one. Hunger for fraud. [laughs] Just like-

Sam Parr 49:53 [laughs] Yeah

Shaan Puri 49:56 ... absolutely no conscience.

Sam Parr 49:57 Yeah. Great at hiding.

Shaan Puri 49:59 Yeah, exactly.

Sam Parr 50:00 Uh, a- and you could like look, l- Google her name and you could kinda see some pictures where she's not wearing makeup and she's just like a, uh, it's just like a normal photo that's not like a press photo. At the time of a lot of these photos, I think she was supposed to be 29 years old. And if you look at some of these like YouTube videos of her, so there's a YouTube video in 2016 of her, and I think at this time she was supposed to be like 28. She looks 40. She could be even higher than 40. It's obviously that this woman, or it's obvious that this woman is not 28.

Shaan Puri 50:27 She's like, "I'm an old soul." And people are like, "No, you're just old." [laughs]

Sam Parr 50:31 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 50:32 Like, what are you talking about?

Sam Parr 50:32 Yeah. It's like you are an old soul.

Shaan Puri 50:34 It's not-

Sam Parr 50:34 You're an old body too. I mean, everything. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 50:36 [laughs] Yeah, you're not under 30.

Sam Parr 50:38 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 50:40 This is crazy.

Sam Parr 50:41 Yeah, that's a real yes and. Yes you are an old soul, and also, uh-

Shaan Puri 50:44 So she married the co-founder?

Sam Parr 50:46 Yeah, the guy with the beard. They like fell in love and got married and, and now they're, it's like they're Bonnie and Clyde. It's just crazy they got away from... We, uh, hopefully if someone who's listening to this has worked there can actually give us insight. But I looked for like any type of like update on this story that I could find, and everyone just says, "Yeah, they're just hanging out in Germany." They're just, I mean, it sound- sounds like they're living a normal life and they completely got away with it.

Shaan Puri 51:10 The haters all said it was a fraud, and the haters are right. [laughs] Shout out to the haters.

Sam Parr 51:15 Yeah, it says, uh, listen to this, it says, uh, there's a headline that says, "The poop testing startup founder who lied to get on the 30 Under 30 list is now officially a fugitive." Uh, yeah, and so like, I guess everyone knew that she, i- it was nonsense. Oh, by the way, here's her age. She's 47. She's 47 years old.

Shaan Puri 51:33 Right.

Sam Parr 51:33 And two years before that when she was 45, she was on Forbes 30 Under 30. That's a caper, man.

Shaan Puri 51:40 By the way, the husband, I mean, he just gets wrecked in this statement. It says, "Defense lawyers have informed the government that Richmond is suffering from a serious medical condition and Apti is her caretaker."

Sam Parr 51:49 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 51:50 Caretaker. I mean [laughs] it, it's like you go to a party for the first time with your b- with your girlfriend and she's like, "Oh my God, this is my, uh, this is my friend, Shaan." I'm like, "Friend?" [laughs] What?

Sam Parr 52:01 [laughs] And they're probably just... And he's like, "Yeah." He's like, he's like, "All fucked up, man. He's shitting all over himself. He's in a wheelchair. This guy's [laughs] he's, uh, he's in a horrible spot. You guys should see this mess. He looks disgusting." [laughs] Um-

Shaan Puri 52:16 I think we should do-

Sam Parr 52:17 Anyway, that-

Shaan Puri 52:17 ... an annual update on these guys. Actually, let's mark it down on the calendar. Every February 7th we should just update, [laughs] still on the run.

Sam Parr 52:22 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 52:23 'Cause like, uh, crime still pays, I guess. [laughs]

Sam Parr 52:27 It is, it is insane. Did Sam Bankman-Fried get sentenced yet?

Shaan Puri 52:31 Dude, I don't know. I feel like the last thing I heard was like, oh, they just like removed five counts like real s- quick, just like j- on a Friday news dump when other stuff was going on. It was kinda BS.

Sam Parr 52:41 Yeah, he's, I think he's actually not gonna serve a lot of time. And then Holmes, H- Elizabeth Holmes, how much time did she get? Was it nine?

Shaan Puri 52:48 Well, she kept having babies and was like, "I can't go to jail, I'm pregnant." And they're like, "Ma'am, you just keep, like you just, you can't keep... Listen, you can't have maternity leave from prison." [laughs] Like, you can't just keep staying out of prison that way.

Sam Parr 52:58 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 52:59 And so eventually she had to go. Uh, by the way, this is hilarious. The Wall Street Journal reporter, um, described the efforts by the newspaper to track them down, believing to, believing that they live somewhere in Central Berlin. And it basically says they located a bus- a, a building that was used for, um, like the postal address for them, and they were getting mail there. However, they were unable to find where they were actually living. So I think it's the, the building is in Germany, but that may not be where they're actually living. Which would, uh, that feels more right, that, that we don't know exactly where they are [laughs] as they're on the run.

Sam Parr 53:33 Maybe. Maybe. Who knows? Um, but that's the update. We're gonna come back to it in a year-

Shaan Puri 53:38 Dude, they should just trap her

Sam Parr 53:39 ... and we'll forget what's happened.

Shaan Puri 53:39 They should do like a honeypot. They're like, "Okay, how do we get, how do we get her? Uh, we need her ego."

Sam Parr 53:44 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 53:44 So it needs to be like, "We're having a contest for the like, you know, 40 Under 40 Berlin."

Sam Parr 53:50 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 53:50 And it's like they know she's gonna throw her hat in the ring. She just can't resist. [laughs] She-

Sam Parr 53:54 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 53:55 ... she's like, "I, I need the recognition." [laughs]

Sam Parr 53:58 Yeah, dude, I watch Cops all the time. That's my favorite show. And one of the ways that they catch guys who have warrants is they mail them a thing that says, "You won free Yankees tickets."

Shaan Puri 54:07 [laughs]

Sam Parr 54:07 "You have to come p- you have to come pick it up at this location." That's like a famous way to get... Have you ever seen that?

Shaan Puri 54:13 No, [laughs] but, but like-

Sam Parr 54:14 Dude, they do this all the time

Shaan Puri 54:15 ... Catch a Predator's kind of the same thing.

Sam Parr 54:16 Yeah. And they'll get like [laughs] yeah. And they'll get like 30 of these, uh, guys with warrants in like a ballroom. They go, "Everyone, all right, we're gonna... You guys are all the lucky winners of the Yankees tickets. Congratulations. Here they are." And then the police swarm in and arrest everyone.

Shaan Puri 54:31 [laughs]

Sam Parr 54:31 And they do like a [laughs] it's like a big thing. Yeah, that's what they need to do with her, is a, uh [laughs] , a 35 Under 35, and they're just gonna get 34 dummies to come in to win this award, and-

Shaan Puri 54:41 Right

Sam Parr 54:41 ... they're gonna honeypot this lady.

Shaan Puri 54:43 You shouldn't be allowed to lie like that, though. I mean, shouldn't be allowed to lie about winning free tickets. I, I, I'm against that. [laughs] I'm all for catching these guys. But you shouldn't be able to get someone's hopes up like that. Damn, that's harsh. [laughs]

Sam Parr 54:54 You know the cops can lie about anything. Like for example-

Shaan Puri 54:56 [laughs]

Sam Parr 54:56 ... if they're interrogating you and they're like, "All right, we're gonna turn off the camera. This is off the record." It's never off the record. They have got other like voice recorders in there. They can lie. Police can lie about anything.

Shaan Puri 55:05 Yeah.

Sam Parr 55:05 Or they could say like, "We have your DNA there." They're allowed to say that. You can say anything you want.

Shaan Puri 55:10 Really?

Sam Parr 55:10 Yes. You can say anything. You can be like, "Look, here's, uh, this zip, this bag. We've got a hair of yours. We found this at the crime scene." Yeah, they can s- you can say anything you want. The police-

Shaan Puri 55:19 So they can lie to you, you can't lie to them?

Sam Parr 55:21 They can lie to you, correct.

Shaan Puri 55:23 Wow.

Sam Parr 55:23 Uh, an officer is allowed to lie, like i- when you're, when you're at, when you're getting booked, they 100% can lie to you.

Shaan Puri 55:29 Rough. It's a rough world out there.

Sam Parr 55:30 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 55:30 All right. I don't know where to end it, but that's the pod. [laughs]

Sam Parr 55:33 All right, that's the pod. [outro music]