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My First MillionThis Viral TikTok Ad Sold $500,000 Worth Of "Sex Chocolates”
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Teasing the viral 'sex chocolates' TikTok and rapid sales claim
The conversation opens with Shaan describing a young founder and the eye-popping claim that a TikTok ad sold roughly half a million dollars of chocolate in a short span. Sam reacts skeptically and jokes about what a 21-year-old would know about such a product.
- •Shaan repeats the claim that the product sold about $500,000 worth of chocolate off a single ad
- •Sam questions the founder’s credibility given his age
- •They frame the ad’s performance as unusually strong and worth unpacking
- •The tone is comedic while setting up the marketing discussion to come
Outcome Health: turning doctor’s offices into an ad network
Sam introduces Outcome Health after discussing the TV screens commonly found in waiting rooms and exam rooms. He explains the company’s core model: providing screens and software to doctors for free, then selling targeted pharmaceutical advertising to reach physicians.
- •Sam describes the presence of TV screens in clinics, including in exam rooms
- •Outcome Health’s screens are positioned as both a clinical tool and an ad surface
- •Pharmaceutical ads target doctors, not patients, because doctors drive prescriptions
- •Sam characterizes the model as ethically questionable but commercially compelling
Outcome Health fraud: inflated placements and billing for screens that weren’t installed
Sam explains the fraud allegations and what went wrong operationally and ethically. He recounts how advertisers discovered that claimed TV placements didn’t exist in many offices, despite being billed as if ads were running there.
- •Sam says the founder raised money at a very high valuation and claimed revenue that wasn’t true
- •He describes advertisers checking offices and not finding the promised TVs
- •The alleged misconduct is described as billing for impressions that weren’t happening
- •Shaan reacts that it seems easier to install the screens than to lie about it
Captive audiences and physical-world ad networks beyond healthcare
Shaan generalizes the Outcome Health concept into a broader strategy: find captive audiences and build an ad network around them. They discuss where else this might work, and why certain audiences are harder to aggregate.
- •They reference other ad-network analogs like screens on top of rideshare cars
- •Shaan proposes places like dorms, colleges, or other concentrated physical settings
- •They discuss why doctor’s offices are attractive due to high-value targeting and fewer locations
- •They frame the broader question as: where can you reliably reach a valuable audience at scale?
Cheddar’s big pitch: CNBC for social media, produced 24/7
They shift to Cheddar as another distribution play, recounting the fundraising pitch and the operational ambition. Shaan explains the logic: younger audiences don’t watch traditional business TV, so stream business news live on social platforms around the clock.
- •Cheddar’s pitch is described as bringing business news to social platforms via live video
- •The contrast is drawn with CNBC’s relatively small concurrent viewership but large business outcome
- •They emphasize the sheer difficulty of producing 24/7 content
- •They argue the premise was executed well even if demand on social for long live viewing was weak
Cheddar’s outcome and gas-station screens: monetizing a weird captive moment
Sam and Shaan describe how Cheddar still achieved a major sale despite low engagement with the original format. They note Cheddar’s presence on gas-station screens, turning fueling time into an attention slot for light entertainment and ads.
- •They mention Cheddar raised significant funding and sold for a large amount
- •They describe Cheddar’s distribution showing up on gas-station pump screens
- •Shaan recounts meeting someone who owned gas-station screen inventory in a few cities
- •They highlight the monetization challenge of matching the right advertisers to local inventory
Local ad sales reality check and the ‘Yelp salesperson’ hustle
The discussion turns to the grind of selling local ads and why it’s painful compared with scaled ad platforms. They riff on Yelp’s sales culture and compare it to a racket, emphasizing the intensity of small-ticket sales.
- •Sam says selling local ads is especially difficult and grindy
- •They describe scenarios like small businesses paying modest amounts or offering barter instead of cash
- •Shaan and Sam joke about Yelp salespeople being ruthless
- •They frame local advertising as hard to scale operationally despite clear local targeting benefits
Remnant ad inventory, store-credit deals, and ‘fake it till you make it’ sponsorship signals
Shaan shares a tactic for monetizing unused newsletter inventory by trading discounted ads for store credit on products he actually wants. Sam explains how simply appearing to have advertisers can attract more inbound interest, then admits he once faked sponsorship placements to create momentum.
- •Shaan describes trading unsold inventory at a steep discount in exchange for store credit
- •They discuss how having ads already in a product increases inbound advertiser interest
- •Sam admits he placed major brand logos as “sponsors” before actually selling them and later realized it was illegal
- •Sam describes targeting competitors and even customizing which subscribers saw which ‘sponsor’ message
How marketers hunt underpriced channels, then saturate them
Sam outlines how strong marketers behave: they seek underpriced new platforms, exploit them heavily, then move on once the channel becomes crowded. Shaan adds the pattern of publicly teaching the channel only after extracting most of its value, often via courses and content.
- •Sam describes marketers as constantly searching for new, underpriced ad platforms
- •He explains the cycle of scaling spend, exhausting the channel, and moving on
- •Shaan adds the ‘teach it after you’ve extracted it’ playbook and selling courses
- •They connect the idea to TikTok as an example of a powerful emerging channel
Tabs Chocolate TikTok ad breakdown: hook, promise, and implied payoff
Shaan introduces what he calls an outstanding TikTok ad for Tabs Chocolate and walks through why it works. They describe the low-production, authentic style, the sexual implication, and Shaan’s framework for effective ads: hook, promise, and implication of the end state.
- •Sam describes the ad’s storyline: ‘special chocolate’ followed by implied post-sex scene and “It works”
- •Shaan emphasizes it doesn’t “scream ad” and feels like a normal selfie TikTok
- •Shaan’s three-part ad framework: hook (attention), promise (curiosity), implication (show the result)
- •They note the ad went viral and drew attention beyond TikTok
Founder backstory and creator engine: paying a small roster to produce UGC at scale
They talk about Tabs Chocolate as a D2C company and discuss what they know about the founder’s public posting. Shaan describes the founder’s approach as building a repeatable content machine by paying multiple creators to generate a steady stream of videos.
- •Shaan says the founder is young and publicly brands himself around ‘sex chocolate’ on Twitter
- •Shaan repeats the claim of about $500,000 sold from the ad in a couple weeks
- •Shaan describes paying creators roughly $500 to $3,000 to generate many videos per month
- •They debate whether the company is bootstrapped and note uncertainty about some details
Hiring ‘young blood’ to understand youth culture: Shaan’s Steve Bartlett stories
The conversation shifts to the broader idea of hiring young people to understand and market to young audiences, leading into Shaan’s experience hiring Steve Bartlett. Shaan recounts how he brought Steve to San Francisco to help with social insight and distribution, including launching via meme pages rather than direct links.
- •Shaan frames the need for people who deeply understand social platforms and youth behavior
- •He contrasts how engineers might build social products versus how socially-native users think
- •Shaan recounts launching by coordinating posts across large meme accounts without links to create FOMO
- •He describes the results as hitting the top of the App Store charts and major early downloads with minimal spend
High school user testing mishaps and the ‘swipe to chill’ lesson
Shaan tells stories about trying to recruit and test with high schoolers, including a tactic of offering a free burrito to beta test. He recounts being visibly out of touch, the difficulty of asking teens to use TestFlight links, and how attempts to sound current backfired in product copy.
- •They describe rapid, scrappy user testing: from a couple teens to dozens via burrito offers
- •Shaan recounts being mocked for using links and realizing friction kills youth adoption
- •He notes how hard it is to hold a high school class’s attention and ‘pitch’ them anything
- •He shares a later product copy attempt—“swipe to chill”—and how even a teen employee found it cringe
Managing unconventional young talent and ending on ‘cancellation vaccination’
Shaan describes the challenges of employing young, socially-native talent in a professional office environment, including stories of office living and hygiene issues, while still recognizing their strengths. The episode closes with a meta discussion about telling riskier, funnier stories publicly and the idea of becoming ‘vaccinated’ against cancellation by consistently leaning into a provocative, unapologetic style.
- •Shaan recounts office-management friction: treating the workplace like a hangout created problems
- •He concludes such talent is best used for market impact and distribution, not corporate process
- •They discuss aiming for more funny storytelling while acknowledging reputational risk
- •Shaan outlines a ‘cancellation vaccination’ approach and notes it’s harder when tied to corporate sponsors
