This Guy Is Making $100M/Year Selling Quilts To Your Grandma (#354)

From Quilting to Millions - August 29, 2022 (over 2 years ago) • 46:03

This My First Million podcast episode features Sam Parr and Shaan Puri interviewing Al Doan, owner of the world's largest quilting company, Missouri Star Quilt Company. Doan discusses the company's growth from a small startup to a $100 million revenue business, including the unique strategy of buying up the entire downtown district of Hamilton, Missouri, to create a quilting destination. He also shares his entrepreneurial journey, the challenges of bootstrapping, and his future aspirations beyond quilting.

Missouri Star Quilt Company's Success: Doan explains how he grew Missouri Star Quilt Company to over $100 million in revenue and 400 employees. He describes the initial struggles, the innovative idea of creating a quilting destination, and the importance of online content and community building.
Building a Quilting Destination: Doan details the unconventional strategy of buying the entire downtown district of Hamilton, Missouri. This created a unique retail experience and a tourist attraction for quilters, driving significant growth for the company. He suggests other businesses can replicate this "biggest wooden nickel" strategy to stand out from online competitors.
Bootstrapping and Early Growth: Doan discusses the financial challenges of bootstrapping a fabric company. The long lead times for inventory required significant capital investment and careful management. He reveals the company's growth trajectory, from $100,000 in the first year to $100 million+ twelve years later.
Entrepreneurial Journey and Mentorship: Doan shares his background in software and his "year of the MBA." He explains how he networked with successful entrepreneurs, read extensively, and interned at Techstars, gaining valuable business knowledge.
Future Aspirations: Doan expresses his desire to pursue smaller, passion projects after potentially selling Missouri Star. He discusses his interest in diverse ventures like a barbecue restaurant and reveals his internal conflict between financial success and finding new motivations. He also touches on his experience with therapy and his curiosity about psychedelics.

Transcript:

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Sam Parr	So bad at telling your own story
00:02	Al Doan	what you just said to intro this isn't my story you want me to tell
00:05	Sam Parr	Well, I would say, yeah, I started a quilting company called Missouri Star Quilt Company.
00:14	Al Doan	that's it's a behemoth of a quilting company
00:16	Sam Parr	can you can you say what the revenues are
00:18	Al Doan	yes well
00:19	Shaan Puri	it's the biggest let's first start with that it is the biggest
00:21	Al Doan	It's the biggest... it's the biggest. Let's see, we're over 400 employees and have over $100,000,000 in revenue. It's a big oval; it's a big oval.
00:36	Sam Parr	we're live by the way this is it this is the pie okay okay how wait how did you meet him
00:40	Shaan Puri	well you gotta keep the hoobastank story
00:42	Al Doan	that needs to be like one of our can you just
00:44	Sam Parr	do you get it
00:45	Shaan Puri	or should we say it again yeah say it again funny
00:48	Al Doan	the joke was just
00:49	Shaan Puri	exactly the same way
00:50	Sam Parr	The joke was when we started the hustle, for some reason, I picked Hoobastank as the band that I liked.
00:58	Shaan Puri	don't have to pick a band when you start a company
00:59	Al Doan	no no no
01:00	Sam Parr	it's like what
01:00	Al Doan	There's no form you have to fill out. Like, what's your band? What's the tree? What's the flower? What band are we?
01:06	Sam Parr	It was like our insider's joke. In the email, we would be like, "You know, this young kid who just raised a bunch of funding, like he's gonna be one of the greats, like Elon, like Steve Jobs, or Hoobastank."
01:18	Al Doan	You know, like slipping in... wait, would people notice? Would you get replies that are like, "What the crap are you talking about?" every once in a while?
01:24	Sam Parr	So, I put it on my LinkedIn. I put that I'm the webmaster of the HoobastankFanClub.com. Yeah.
01:29	Al Doan	and I when you endorse a skill it's like good at hoobastanking
01:32	Sam Parr	well and when I wanted to like make a joke with someone I would email them from [email protected]
01:37	Al Doan	you owned it
01:38	Sam Parr	I have yeah yeah I still have it
01:41	Shaan Puri	still I keep renewing it
01:43	Al Doan	just in case that's $9 for a great joke that's still going
01:47	Sam Parr	wait so dude you gotta give your intro
01:48	Al Doan	who are you
01:49	Sam Parr	what do you what would you say you do
01:51	Al Doan	Oh yeah, yeah, I'm Aldone. What do I do? Not as much right now. I just shut down a software company I own. I'm the owner and the executive chairman of Creativity Inc., which is, you know, it's got a quilting company, a big quilting company, and a knitting company, and an art company. A lot of stuff in that space.
02:11	Sam Parr	dude you're so bad at telling your own story
02:14	Al Doan	well you just said the intro this isn't my story you wanted to tell me
02:17	Shaan Puri	well well I
02:18	Sam Parr	I would say, yeah, I started a quilting company called Missouri Star Quilt Company.
02:26	Al Doan	that's it's a behemoth of a quilting company can you
02:29	Sam Parr	say what the revenues are
02:30	Al Doan	yes
02:30	Shaan Puri	it's the biggest let's first start with that it is the biggest
02:33	Al Doan	It's the biggest... It's the biggest. Let's see, we're over 400 employees and have over $100,000,000 in revenue. It's a big, it's a big deal.
02:41	Shaan Puri	Old boy, you own the largest quilting company in the world. It does over $100,000,000 in revenue, and you also have now bought two towns.
02:48	Al Doan	It was so... the quilting company in Hamilton, right? We bought the entire downtown district—27 buildings downtown.
02:55	Shaan Puri	because you had to or because that's awesome
02:57	Al Doan	No, this was the... So, like, when we started this quilt company, the challenge is that there are 35,100 quilt companies in America, right? They're in every little city.
03:05	Shaan Puri	and you're saying that like we know that you're
03:07	Sam Parr	like right you know there's a month with me
03:11	Al Doan	Right, it's a 3501. It doesn't really pull the eyeballs in. There's no ESPN for quilters, right? I can't just go advertise for this. So I'm like, how are we going to get this? We were in this little town, and we grew big enough online that we couldn't fit all the inventory in our space or in our store. We could either go open a warehouse, which would have been the normal thing to do, or we thought, "Man, it's awesome because when people come to our town, there are normally no customers." The impression you get if you walked in there is just retail. It's like nobody's here, and this really sucks. Instead, we had like 12 people cutting and fulfilling fabrics. So you'd walk in, and there was this energy, this buzz that was happening in the shop. We split it out, bought the next building over, and put fabric in there. Then I thought, "Man, who has the most quilt shops of any town in the world?" That was going to be my thing. It was some town in Germany, I think, at Ford. I was like, "We're going to take it."
04:16	Shaan Puri	you wanted to create a tourist destination for quilting
04:18	Al Doan	just just be a novelty right it was just supposed to be a novelty and so then we ended up
04:22	Shaan Puri	like dollywood or whatever it's like this that's how
04:24	Sam Parr	I mean it
04:24	Al Doan	So then, like, if you're driving by on the highway, you're like, "Are you kidding me? Alright, let's get out of here." Yeah, and so in that process, dude, we got like... people were coming to town and we only had like Subway in the gas station for food. So we started restaurants. And we've got a sleep-in, so we're like, "It's a slumber party for ladies to come." And they... you're saying it.
04:43	Shaan Puri	Right now, it's like, you know, this is a natural thing to do. But the first part of the idea, which is, "Let's create a town with the most..." let's create a tourist destination. That's not what most companies do. So, you have this idea from where? And then, aren't people saying, "Yo, this is crazy! We don't have to do this"?
05:00	Sam Parr	do you and your family own the whole thing
05:02	Al Doan	yeah yeah
05:03	Sam Parr	so you're able to do crazy shit like this
05:04	Al Doan	Well, we're bootstrapped, but like, dude, a fabric company is a hard thing to bootstrap. Because, like, you order your fabric six months before you get it. We're growing 200% a year. We have to hold the fabric for nine months to recover our initial costs in the first 90 days, right? So that we can cover terms. It's a really complicated situation. We're betting the farm every three months, and if we're wrong, we go under.
05:26	Sam Parr	so if you do a 150,000,000 in revenue how much ebitda can it do
05:30	Al Doan	It's so... we're like a normal e-commerce business. Our goal is about 20%. We're not there yet, especially this year, right? But like, that's where we... that's where we'll end up.
05:41	Sam Parr	but then you take the profits out and buy yeah
05:43	Al Doan	I've made like 7 nickels along the side. I pay myself a fine salary, but all the money goes back in.
05:49	Shaan Puri	right next purchase order next purchase order
05:51	Al Doan	well because because we're growing by significant amounts every year most of that gets tied up in inventory
05:56	Sam Parr	in 2 years what do you think you could sell the business for
05:59	Al Doan	Well, our goal right now, man, I think we can get 20% growth for a couple of years, right? This should move our valuation to like a 5x revenue.
06:08	Sam Parr	so like $1,000,000,000
06:09	Al Doan	yeah that's the that's the idea
06:10	Sam Parr	How many are your shareholders? Is it like your wife, or your sister, or your mom? Who else is involved? So, like, your whole family's going to get...
06:18	Al Doan	Yeah, so it's me, my sister, and my buddy Dave who are the main ones. Then, like, all of our family. Just this year, we cut in all of our employees that have been there for any kind of time. That's a cool feeling.
06:29	Shaan Puri	but you started it with your mom or your mom started it and
06:31	Al Doan	You know, let me tell you a little bit of a story. The idea is that my sister and I have been talking about starting a company for a while. I was about a year out of college, right? So, I was like, I don't know, everybody's sort of an entrepreneur right out of college. That's what I'm going to do, and we were sort of that same way. My mom had taken a quilt in to be made. You sew the top together and take it to a lady who has a big $40,000 machine. She's going to stitch all the backing, the fluffy stuff in the middle, and the top together. This lady was out for a year, and she said, "Oh, I made your sister a quilt. I took it in, and I'll get it back in 2008." I'm like, nothing takes a year to do! You can build a house in less time than it takes to get this quilt done.
07:15	Shaan Puri	and so either she's terrible or there's a lot of demand
07:18	Al Doan	By the way, that was literally my market research. I was like, "There is going to be a market here for this." Are there others? She's like, "Yeah, everybody's backed up."
07:25	Sam Parr	and when you say quilt like literally just a blanket
07:27	Al Doan	Right, shut up. Okay, how dare you? Yeah, it's a quilt... watch of words. Like, I mean, like quilt.
07:34	Sam Parr	like because I know some people like hang shit on their walls
07:36	Al Doan	yeah yeah so so and then some
07:37	Sam Parr	people have like a decorative quilt and then some people like I had a quilt like comforter
07:42	Al Doan	Yeah, it's exactly that. My mom's shtick is that she's like the McDonald's of quilting. Most of these hobbies are very defined, you know? There's the "quilt police" that are going to come and get you if the seams are off or if your points don't match. I feel like getting into any hobby comes with that sentiment: "I can't go to the group yet; I'm not good enough." But my mom's philosophy is, "No finish is better than perfect." Our big innovation is that we made the "Lego blocks" of quilting. It's a pack of 5-inch squares and a pack of 10-inch squares. You sew them together and cut them like this, and whack! It makes it this way. So, we have really simple tricks and techniques. She was a costumer when we were...
08:25	Shaan Puri	Kids, you're saying McDonald's because he kind of made a process out of the burger-making process where it's like anybody can make this burger.
08:30	Al Doan	Well, no, I'm saying McDonald's because it's like... it's not fancy, right? You're not spending a lot on it. It's serving the purpose of filling you with food. I mean, it's funny because, like, quilting... I never thought that, you know, my business buddies and stuff would sort of laugh at my whiteboards. Like, "Layer cakes up 17%, turnovers down, you know, jelly rolls, we gotta get these back." It's all sort of, you know, goofy terms for people that aren't in the space. But, like, man, it's a 45 to 70-year-old demographic that is the majority of my customers. There are so few people building awesome experiences for them that I feel like, you know, a lion among sheep being in there. Just like, "We're gonna build amazing, great experiences for these people." And Sam's...
09:16	Shaan Puri	phrase for that is a a dwarf amongst midgets is that is that your phrase
09:20	Al Doan	yeah no everybody normally says that a dwarf amongst midgets that's very clever
09:24	Sam Parr	It's not... that's not allowed anymore. But we're both Missourians. We probably grew up in somewhat similar environments, and that was a phrase I liked. And my... wait.
09:34	Al Doan	wait it's the same people right is is no that's why it's hilarious
09:38	Sam Parr	My no one ever feels good at it. You just said "dwarf among midgets." It's like your dwarf is like a tall midget. Look, that's just a phrase. I didn't even realize it was like... don't cancel Amari. I can't see it. I didn't realize it was bad. Don't worry, man. Another one is "tough titty said the kitty, but the milk's still good." Have you heard of that one?
09:51	Al Doan	yeah yeah sure
09:52	Sam Parr	So anyway, what do you think it's going to be like in 2 or 3 years if you ever sell? I mean, are you guys going to be the richest person for like 100 miles? What are you going to do? Just buy 1,000 acres? No? Well, I mean, what do you do?
10:07	Shaan Puri	such crazy questions
10:08	Al Doan	Because everybody says, "This feels very aggressive the way that you're phrasing this." I'm just going to say that right now. The idea is not to... I don't know if we'll sell it, right? But there's a big question in my head of... I don't want my kid to grow up and say, "I gotta be a quilter because Pop was a quilter." It's like, it's a business. You gotta get in here.
10:32	Sam Parr	as as all this time
10:34	Al Doan	tough titties with the kitty and
10:36	Sam Parr	the milk and the goods
10:38	Al Doan	But, I'm trying to figure out how to navigate around that. How do you maximize value and create the most opportunity and all that kind of stuff? I'm very attracted to a finish line, right? Which an IPO or a sale or something would be. But also, you know, get to the point where it's shutting off EBITDA, and it's a very good time to just keep running.
10:58	Shaan Puri	12 years? Yep. You didn't know? Were you even into quilting before that? Like, were you an enthusiast?
11:04	Al Doan	No, my mom makes me. She made me make one quilt. She's like, "You can't run this company and not be a quilter." So I've made one, and I'm making another right now—a nice bear paw one.
11:14	Sam Parr	So what did you know how to do you didn't you you worked at you were a software guy
11:18	Al Doan	these are such mean questions
11:21	Sam Parr	no I the funny thing
11:24	Shaan Puri	is at this event
11:25	Al Doan	why are you
11:25	Shaan Puri	Sam's basically been having an intervention because he's asking questions that he thinks are completely normal questions, and every other interview has...
11:31	Al Doan	been like wait and women will date you that's so weird yeah
11:33	Shaan Puri	He's... and people are like, "Sam, when you ask questions, it's like a full frontal attack." He's like, "What do you mean?" Well, he is completely oblivious to the fact.
11:42	Al Doan	that these questions are outrageously aggressive
11:45	Sam Parr	So, like, his mom is the face of their YouTube channel. He was explaining to me what she was like, and I looked at the YouTube channel and thought, "Oh, she looks exactly like I expected."
11:54	Al Doan	Yeah, and he was like, "What the hell?" I was like, "What?" I expected her to be good and nice. He's like, "That was a compliment." I was like, "Very rarely does she look exactly how I thought she would."
12:05	Sam Parr	make a compliment
12:06	Shaan Puri	a lot of misunderstandings going on
12:08	Al Doan	I was
12:08	Sam Parr	She sounded like a lovely, nice woman. Yeah, and who's cool. I was like, and she looks like it.
12:13	Al Doan	sweet dorothy mann too but but she
12:16	Sam Parr	well and but he also said that you owned 200 acres and you like I
12:20	Al Doan	I do also I like like this but what do you
12:22	Sam Parr	do in missouri when you become that
12:23	Al Doan	I'm 100% hillbilly rich, right? Like, give me $100,000,000 tomorrow and my life doesn't change at all.
12:28	Sam Parr	all right
12:29	Al Doan	I've got a car that I like to drive. I've got a house that I like to live in. I have three beautiful boys and a beautiful wife. I mean, beautiful extends to all of them. I'm done, right? It's sort of a weird spot where I don't need the finish line. The only value that a finish line would offer is like the past, the mantle. I no longer wake up and have to stress about, "What if we ruin it all tomorrow? What if the person that we hired to do this screws it all up?"
12:59	Sam Parr	what were you good at the
13:01	Al Doan	oh yeah yeah
13:02	Sam Parr	what skill what what what attributes did you bring to the quilting table
13:05	Al Doan	Great question! Yeah, not a lot. I mean, I came out of college, and my first job was with Symantec. I was a really good kind of networker, right? Not a networker in the traditional sense, but I like people that I like, and I hate people that I hate. I like some guys that were...
13:29	Shaan Puri	Doing so... popular guy in the house right now. By the way, I don't know if you know this for real, but there are like 25 people here. There are some famous people; everybody's like big. Everyone's got a different nickname for you. It's like "Big Al," then somebody's like "Big City" because he's buying cities. Oh yeah, and other guys like...
13:57	Sam Parr	you know you'd have
13:58	Shaan Puri	to be like tiny country
13:59	Sam Parr	or something like that like it has
14:01	Shaan Puri	to be some mopset thing
14:02	Sam Parr	yeah no big cities
14:03	Al Doan	but okay
14:04	Shaan Puri	thank you anyways you're super like well I was calling out there like
14:07	Al Doan	what did you know
14:07	Shaan Puri	You go, "He's rich, he's smart, and he's funny." I was like, "Yeah, you need to be the next Bachelor, dude! This is amazing." You met him? Well, I mean, I don't even know. No.
14:20	Al Doan	no no no patrick was on the podcast
14:22	Shaan Puri	came on the pod that was the first time I thought about the word quilt in like 12 years
14:26	Al Doan	Well, he was telling my story and all my buddies were like, "Dude, you're on this podcast! You gotta check this out." So I'm like, "What the crap?" I DM'd you and I was like, "Oh man, that's my story! If you want to hear it, I'll just have Patrick..."
14:37	Sam Parr	was like yo there's
14:38	Shaan Puri	This niche market of quilting is way bigger than people realize. I was like, "What? Really?" We were blown away. Then he said, "Yeah, there are companies that are huge."
14:47	Al Doan	the the conversation was great because you're like oh that's rad man love to hear it sometime do you
14:50	Sam Parr	ball yeah do you wanna come yeah he dm me
14:53	Al Doan	I said I think
14:54	Shaan Puri	I ghosted you for like a month. Yeah, and I was like, "Oh hey, by the way, I do want to talk about that." But more importantly, do you want to meet up in person? It's like basketball.
15:02	Sam Parr	anyone here right
15:03	Al Doan	No, no, no, no. Yeah, this is great! Did you even know Patrick? No? Oh wow, I've never met any of these guys.
15:08	Shaan Puri	you took an amazing look
15:09	Sam Parr	at face and show up
15:11	Al Doan	dude and I've turned out to be like 6 foot 7 and love playing basketball yeah and yeah
15:15	Sam Parr	dude he squeezed my ass on the court yeah
15:17	Al Doan	He's amazing, except you, dude. You smoked us for the championship game. You drained three threes in my face. Yeah, that was like the greatest moment of...
15:23	Shaan Puri	my life today so you
15:24	Al Doan	know what I mean it's all good
15:26	Shaan Puri	so okay so you do the you do the quilting thing
15:28	Al Doan	No, wait, wait, wait. My skills before this... just buddies that connect me up. So, I was working in a software company and lost that job in dramatic fashion. I'd never been without a job at the time. What?
15:39	Shaan Puri	does that mean like I fired
15:40	Al Doan	Yeah, like me and 20,000 people got laid off in 2008. So, I'm consulting and trying to just...
15:47	Sam Parr	I was 26 in missouri
15:51	Al Doan	Yeah, yeah, but like... I was living in Boston at the time. They moved me out there, and I was visiting my buddy up in Toronto. Then I moved in with him, his wife, and their new baby—You, Me and Dupree style. It was like, "We'll start a company up here. Let's do it!" So we tried like three of them. We tried to develop our own cleaning technology that we'd sell to real estate agents, but that was a terrible time to sell to real estate agents since it was 2008. We also tried to do a little wealth management thing because he wanted to be a wealth management advisor. So we tried to start that. Then there was the quilt company we already had, and I wanted to do a daily deal version because at the time...
16:26	Shaan Puri	it was hot right
16:26	Al Doan	Or it was like Woop.com, Steep and Cheap, and Chain Love. Man, I loved those in college because they were great. I'd wait up till midnight, which in Hawaii, where I was going to school, was like 7 o'clock. I'd be waiting to see what it is. It's cool, but it hooked me as a college kid. Every site was built for "Are you a dude that loves riding bikes? Get ChainLove.com," and there was a new thing every night. But nobody was building them for the 45 to 70-year-old demographic. So when I did The Quilter's Daily Deal, I think it was literally the first time anybody had done a daily deal site for my demographic.
17:02	Sam Parr	which is like a a discounted fabric
17:05	Al Doan	well I mean it was discounted items right
17:08	Sam Parr	and
17:08	Al Doan	Like, dude, at the beginning, it was so funny because I was the guy doing it all. We were just scrapping our way through it. So, I'm not a good writer for my mom, right? I'd write these stories and they would...
17:19	Sam Parr	Always say, "Hey ladies," like, no.
17:26	Al Doan	No, no. So, we started a forum, and the first six months of the forum... because nobody wants to join an empty forum. I was Jeannie B, and Sarah Sue, and my buddy Dave was Carmen and Elizabeth. We just had these like...
17:37	Shaan Puri	chatting all day yes
17:40	Al Doan	What kind of quilt did you mail? That's so cute! That's the brother, and eventually now it's like 90,000 members. It's a great old thing.
17:46	Shaan Puri	so that's really so you but your mom had must've had some following or something is that how it started no
17:50	Al Doan	She had zero following. No, I... you started with the form. We launched... so the chronology: we launched with the website that I sat and built. We launched with a store that we started. She was doing quilts, and then I built this website on a oneandone.com, if you remember that old shared hosting van. They lost my site a couple of times, and it was like, "I'll start over, thanks guys." I built this site, and it was a daily deal site that I would change at midnight. I didn't have any automation, and I would just go in, you know, be on a date and be like, "Hold on a second, I gotta log into my quilting website and change it up."
18:26	Shaan Puri	tens of women are waiting for this
18:27	Al Doan	Yeah, and we launched it. I still have the Facebook post from like February 2009. It said, "Hey, I made a quilt shop for my mom. Check it out!" It got 2 likes and 0 orders in the first 3 weeks. But like, every day I was going in there. I didn't give up. I was persistent. It was a marketing challenge at that point. We knew we had a product that was interesting. We were selling fabric online, and the other sites were built on Yahoo stores and crap. I thought, "I can create a way better experience for this." So, we decided we were going to take better pictures. This was our novelty; we were going to sell it better. We kept working at it, thinking we had to figure out how to find people. I would write these deals every day, and they were always some version of the Pinocchio nightmare scene. I would say, "And then he turned into a donkey, and then he was in the whale's belly, and jumbo rick rack is $3.99 today." It was like some weird thing because I was just trying to be creative.
19:25	Sam Parr	I did it too they were pretty funny
19:27	Al Doan	Well, dude, I was modeling after that and just trying to be humorous. Turns out, my mom was like, "This isn't good. You need to stop this. This is weird." My buddy Dave ended up doing it for the next while, and he was much better than I was. So, we went three weeks without a sale. Finally, my cousin Jennifer ordered something, and we were like, "Oh, that's alright. Thank you, Jed. That's very nice." We’d get like an order a day, and one day, we meant to price something at $2.88. It was the Crazy Eights charm pack. We accidentally priced it at 88 cents. We sold like 11 of them, but shipping was $5, right? Our cost on it was for something, and we were like, "We still made money! This works!" The average order size was actually like $28. Like, dude, a loss leader! We should lose money on this in a meaningful way, and we can build this. So, it turned into like, the deals are great deals. People love them, and that's what ended up building our business. And then as we went... where...
20:22	Sam Parr	were you getting the fabric and supplies from we buy
20:24	Al Doan	Them from vendors. So, like, even a day, there's probably 40 vendors that we buy from. To grow it, we started making videos, like the education stuff. YouTube was only a year and a half old at that time, so like late 2008, early 2009. There was this guy, Quilting Buck, on there, and it was like a webcam that he'd show on his quilt. It was cool; people were trying to do stuff, and nobody had done it well. I bought a Canon Digital Elf that was the best resolution at the time and just held it in my hands, you know, doing the manual zooming stuff. I got my mom to start doing these tutorials. Because I'm a 30-year-old bearded guy, I said, "Don't use your lingo, right? I need you to talk to me so I can understand. I'm not a dummy; I have no idea what a 'waff' is," right, with the fabric. Normally, when teachers start teaching, they'll try to give themselves some validation by saying, "Look, I know all the cool stuff, and I'm nerdy like you guys." I just wouldn't let my mom do that. She had to speak in a way that anybody could understand. We became very approachable. If you've never made a quilt, you start with Missouri Star. Because we were making this content every week, we'd put it in our emails that we'd send out. We led with that. It was like, "We made this great new tutorial for you with all these cool tricks and tips." We ended up with a 70% open rate on our promo emails, which is just the magic that we built around.
21:50	Sam Parr	And you're 12 years in. You're at like $100,000 to $150,000 in revenue. What were the first 5 years like, do you think?
21:58	Al Doan	1st year was a 100 grand then we did a 1,000,000 then we did 4 then we did 8 and then we did 14
22:03	Sam Parr	and then did 8 it kept growing at that rate
22:05	Al Doan	yeah yeah it would and but but again man like bootstrap through that was intense
22:10	Sam Parr	at what. Were you able to pay yourself and make money
22:13	Al Doan	So we paid Mom after 3 years, right? It's crazy because I have like 7 siblings in my family, and 5 of them work on the quote company. We couldn't have done it if they couldn't have just worked for free at the beginning. I mean, it's like... volunteers, right?
22:27	Sam Parr	well what year was it making enough money we're like fuck it let's buy a town you know let's do this
22:31	Al Doan	Well, so, four years in, we bought our second building, right? Or was it three years in? We bought our second building and remodeled it all ourselves. We did all the work. Then we piecemealed the beginning one. We can look back on it now and be like, "Oh yeah, we got everything. This is great. We did a good job." But that was never the intent in the beginning. My thought was that people would see that we were bringing more people to town and they'd start these other businesses and do stuff. By the time we were running so far ahead of our own curve, we just ended up with our whole downtown. Now we have a few other businesses in town, but...
23:06	Shaan Puri	And is there like... because what normally happens if you start to buy everything in a town, like there's always one or two people who are like, "I'm gonna hold out," and we're like, you know...
23:13	Al Doan	oh yeah
23:13	Shaan Puri	yeah negotiate like yeah because you need it you need to complete the set
23:17	Sam Parr	Yep, and then Tiny comes knocking on their door. "We need to talk."
23:22	Al Doan	I cannot promise you protection
23:26	Shaan Puri	did you guys run into that no
23:27	Al Doan	The average price for a building in a small Missouri town like that was about $20,000. By contrast, our last building was about $80,000. So, I just bought this other town down the road from us, Kingston. Right?
23:40	Sam Parr	7 missouri
23:41	Al Doan	yeah so 7 miles down the road are is our county city
23:43	Sam Parr	With the really nice, like, king... like, what they have a huge... is that on the way to Mizzou from Saint Louis? No, I'm thinking of Kingsland.
23:50	Al Doan	Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, Kingston is not by me. The other side, by Kansas City, was 7 miles from our town. So we bought, I think it's 8 buildings, and it'll be like $70,000 for all of them, right? Wow! They're just these old, like, condemned or sort of overrun buildings. We'll put $2,000,000 into them to get them fixed up, right? But the real estate is cheap, and the fact that it's already there, and we're just kind of fixing what's there is good.
24:18	Sam Parr	You is great. I mean, I live in St. Louis, which is way bigger than where you're from, but even...
24:24	Al Doan	that it's not a competition
24:26	Hubspot	But even in St. Louis, I felt like, "Oh, fuck, no one gets me." I feel like a freak here because I'm building this internet stuff. That's why I left and eventually moved to San Francisco. There's a reason why a lot of companies are started in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, or Austin—these bigger cities. You meet people, spread ideas, and inspire one another. It rubs off on each other. Other than the internet, where were you learning how to do all this stuff? Do you ever feel like, "What the hell, man? I need to get out of here. I can't find this client info." Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform that shares its data across every application. Every team can stay aligned—no out-of-sync spreadsheets or dueling databases. HubSpot: grow better.
25:14	Al Doan	So, after the call, I actually left this part out. There's a cool part after college. When I lost my job, this was, let's see, 2009. I declared it the year of the MBA. I was looking at going back to Harvard. I'd lived in Boston, and I thought, "Should I really go spend..." It was like $200,000 to get an MBA there. I was like, "Man, that's too much money for this broke farmer." So, I declared the year of my MBA and emailed all the guys who were successful in business, asking, "What are the three books that you'd recommend I read?" I got a constrained list of about 37 books. I bought them all on Amazon for like $200. Then, I had a bunch of buddies who were doing cool stuff that I wanted to try. One guy was doing import-export out in Hawaii, and another dude was doing venture capital in Salt Lake. I thought, "Let me come work for free for you guys for like three months. I just want to shine your shoes and make your coffee. I just want to see how you run your business." So, I hopped around some of that, and then I got to be an intern at Techstars in 2010.
26:17	Sam Parr	which which one colorado
26:18	Al Doan	Boulder. Yeah, so it was only Boulder. It's a boulder in Seattle, but like it was David Cohen and Nicole Glarus in 2010. So, while I'm building this quote company on the side, we've got these world-class mentors coming in. They would mentor these companies doing, you know, cool robots and so on.
26:33	Shaan Puri	you're like you're listening to all these office hours
26:35	Al Doan	Yeah, Dick Cassella, that's super interesting. What would you... talk to me about what you're feeling right now? Yeah, so I was getting this way outsized brain for the internet stuff. I always thought that I would do something like work for Microsoft or Facebook or something, right? In the end, I just took all the learnings that I have from this and my desire to be an internet tech entrepreneur and shoved all that into this quilting company. Which is, you know, again, it's a very technology-focused, way early adopters on a lot of stuff. It's given us a huge advantage as we've built this stuff because there's no other... like, there's no kids coming out of their MBA school trying to take my margins. That's the exception, except for Patrick. Once Patrick told all your listeners...
27:36	Sam Parr	How do you have peers? Do you have peers in the internet world or e-commerce world with whom you're chatting on an unrelated basis to be inspired by, learn from, or share ideas?
27:47	Al Doan	Like I got buddies, right? I'm an angel investor. I'm in 50 companies doing stuff. I have an early-stage fund that I run with somebody. These are still friends; we still talk. But from an e-commerce standpoint, honestly, man, I think I'm world-class. I think I'm one of the best brains at selling stuff on the internet, and that's awesome.
28:08	Sam Parr	yeah that's awesome
28:09	Shaan Puri	Also, the MBA thing—like giving myself an MBA—the way you approach that is so smart. But once you hear that story, you're like, "Of course this person's gonna be successful as a hustler," right? Because you basically do the math. You're like, "Okay, what do I want? What's the normal way to get there?" Oh, this is like a long, 2-year, really expensive way. Can I just get that? Like, dude.
28:29	Al Doan	that was my reason 9 months
28:30	Shaan Puri	For $250, you're like, "Oh yeah, what if I just emailed all the smart people and asked them what are the best three books?" I read all those books, and then I go shadow, you know, the three smart people you want.
28:40	Al Doan	For free, for a dude, for like three months. Like Cohen and Glarus, these guys, they'll still go to bat for me to this day, right? Because of that three-month investment that I made. I was the first one in and the last one out. I knew I wasn't getting paid, but I was trying to soak it all up. You do that, and they'll open every door you ever need to get through.
29:00	Sam Parr	what was the most game changing book of all those that you read well
29:04	Al Doan	Honestly, dude, it's this book that's out of print. I didn't read any business books that changed my life. Once you get through like six or seven, I quit reading them because I'm like, "It's the exact same thing." The principles for business are the exact same, just told in a different parable every time. Whatever your parable is, that's what you glom on to. You say, "Oh man, Good to Great—that's the best one! This one is your bible." But for me, the most impactful was this one called Coming Out of the Ice by Victor Herman. It's about this dude who went over to Russia and ended up being an amazing Olympic athlete, but Russia wouldn't take credit for it. He was like, "No, I'm American!" So they threw him in jail for like 50 years. It's this crazy story that I'm like, "This guy's an American hero! Somebody should know this story." Reading that while I felt like my life was so hard made me think, "Oh no, I'll be fine."
29:56	Sam Parr	dude I read that I did the exact same thing I'll read
29:59	Shaan Puri	like better than therapy
30:00	Al Doan	yeah yeah
30:00	Sam Parr	I you
30:00	Shaan Puri	want you want the fast version of therapy
30:02	Al Doan	it's like it's david goggins back in the day totally
30:05	Sam Parr	I often read books about Navy SEALs or about the Cherokee Native Americans.
30:12	Al Doan	oh man your problems are so slow
30:15	Sam Parr	I'm like I'm such a punk
30:16	Al Doan	yeah you know what I mean
30:17	Sam Parr	I do the exact same thing it's way better than business books no
30:20	Al Doan	It's like my favorite one out of that whole list because just about it, I was like, "Oh, this is the best book I've ever read. Read this!" And I was like, "Alright, I'm in, man." That one still, to this day, is great. But, like, the books... this is my problem with college. Every marketing class I sat through, I was like, "Oh, this is your great idea? You say sell it for more than I bought it? You guys are clever. Thanks, I'm glad I'm paying for this." It's all these professors that used to be in the industry that you want to get into but no longer are. They might have connections that could open the door for you. So when I was looking at an MBA, I thought, "What if I just go to the people that are in the industry right now and somehow network with them? That's going to open way more doors for me."
30:58	Sam Parr	How many? They're great! How many people do we have? We have 450 employees, but how many of them are doing white-collar jobs, like SEO work?
31:07	Al Doan	yeah or
31:08	Sam Parr	or like internet internet related things
31:10	Al Doan	it's maybe a100 of them
31:11	Sam Parr	a 100 of them how many of them live in the town
31:15	Al Doan	gosh I I I don't know I'd I'd think how many of them are
31:18	Sam Parr	are are on-site in missouri I think
31:20	Al Doan	We have about 40 fully remote team members. Our engineering team is remote, with members located all over, from Seattle to Serbia. Additionally, our design team is mostly remote as well. A lot of roles that make sense to be remote are indeed remote. However, in town, I don't know, there are probably 250 of them right there.
31:40	Shaan Puri	In town, there is an opportunity to buy a town with good business potential. Besides, you have a business, and this is kind of adjacent and helpful. If I didn't have that, I could consider buying an abandoned-ish town with really cheap real estate. I could refigure it. Is that possible?
31:59	Al Doan	a good idea or no well like I think I think every company should have
32:03	Sam Parr	a town well
32:04	Shaan Puri	like they did wow hot take dude that's
32:06	Sam Parr	a that's like an
32:07	Shaan Puri	hot take
32:07	Sam Parr	you know so we can list a few 4 henry ford tried doing this in yeah
32:11	Al Doan	Pella Windows is up in Iowa. They have their own... like, there's a lot of Bethlehem, PA, and when a lot of towns were built around like that.
32:18	Sam Parr	big company coal mine or something like that
32:20	Al Doan	But my thing is, every dumb internet brand should have one, right? A buddy of mine does. This is my thought pattern: if you're a 10-year-old girl and super into "Where in America," do I have to take you nowhere, right? But somebody, if they could just take...
32:38	Shaan Puri	that opportunity
32:38	Al Doan	To grab... and they're like, "We're going to have Dutch ovens in this store. Just go in and cook and stuff." Then the KitchenAid mixer... you'd come and have the experience. You're going to spend two weeks here, try everything they've got, and you're going to learn how to make all this cool stuff. Then you'll go home, and your mom's going to be stoked to spend $3,000 to give you the experience because it's magic. The whole town is built around it.
32:57	Sam Parr	and that's what you're doing for quilting
32:59	Al Doan	that's what we're doing for quilting that's exactly
33:00	Shaan Puri	What I do are people doing this for everything? Like, if I wanted to go cooking, people are like, "Oh, I need to go to Paris to get that experience." But like, if I'm willing to... like cooking or...
33:07	Al Doan	Design? Well, what's fine... Let's say it's cooking, right? And you go to Paris. You go to Paris and you take a class, but it's like you have not gone to the cooking mecca, yeah? The cooking mecca looks like: "We bought every building on this street." And then: - Walk in this one, we have all the cake decorating stuff in here - And then we've got all the baking stuff in here - And then we've got all the...
33:25	Sam Parr	so you'll give tours or I don't know what you want to call it
33:28	Al Doan	Well, no. You sell the stuff; you're a retailer, right? Yeah. And tours are part of it. People will... because when I go there, I'm all of a sudden a part of the community, right? It's common. It's common, right?
33:41	Shaan Puri	It's like you go to a brewery; you could buy the stuff. Or a winery, you would get... it's like Napa is a good example of this. Sure, like wine, it's like Napa.
33:48	Al Doan	Well, when you're a consumer of it, yeah, right? It would be cool to go and take the wine tour and do the whole thing. If you're a beer maker, where in America do you have to go? There's no... somebody should do it right away. I was... I forget who I was talking to, but they're like, "Oh, Patrick, right? He's from Wisconsin." I was like, "It's crazy, man! If I want to get into cheese making, give me the town that will teach me. It has 20 stores, and I can buy the cloth. They have every kind of cloth, and I'll buy the basket—every kind of basket." Somebody's just going to take that brand and go build their town around it. It's like the biggest wooden nickel in Wisconsin now, right? And I gotta go see it because it's not...
34:24	Sam Parr	what is
34:25	Shaan Puri	this example you're giving me
34:26	Al Doan	yeah what is nickel
34:27	Sam Parr	I don't
34:27	Shaan Puri	even know you said that like real time
34:29	Al Doan	To yourself. So, in Iowa, dude, driving down... what is it? I-70? Iowa City has the biggest wooden nickel in Iowa or in the world.
34:38	Shaan Puri	what is a wood and nickel what do you say
34:39	Al Doan	It's like a giant 16-foot buffalo nickel. That's like... yeah, they don't even know what a buffalo nickel is.
34:46	Sam Parr	so it's
34:46	Al Doan	A buffalo nickel in the olden days... Am I the owner that Washington was on the corner talking about? Yeah, it's a buffalo nickel.
34:53	Sam Parr	a a buffalo nickel is just a nickel that was made before like
34:56	Al Doan	I love that I'm looking at you like how do
34:58	Shaan Puri	you not know buffalo
34:59	Sam Parr	like 1905 what it was it like I don't
35:01	Al Doan	know when they stopped making it
35:02	Sam Parr	any any nickel made in the 1800s I think it had a picture of a buffalo
35:06	Al Doan	yeah that's right that's it
35:08	Sam Parr	the nickel used to have
35:09	Al Doan	A buffalo in Topeka is the biggest ball of twine, right? It's all just the roadside novelty. Come see the biggest whatever—the biggest pecan is in Minnesota, I think, or something, right? Gotcha. And you're like, "Alright, I'm just gonna get off this highway and go look at this stupid huge pecan, take a picture by it, and then buy back."
35:30	Shaan Puri	So, what are the economics? Let's say somebody does this. What's a vertical or a category where you're like, "Somebody should definitely do it for a beer?"
35:37	Al Doan	Or something. So, like, we just had twins a couple of years ago, and I want to know, where do we have to fly to if you're going to have a baby? They have the coolest experience. You race the stroller around the track, and then you try 15 different cars in America. Yeah, yeah, it should be in like Lehigh, Utah or something, right? Put it right with a Mormon.
35:56	Shaan Puri	baby nickel you've ever seen
35:57	Al Doan	Yeah, but like the novelty of having 20 stores and spending a week there to come out with $8,000 worth of baby stuff is the draw, right? You're going to have all your shopping done there. Every baby product is represented. That's the novelty of it. The economics are going to vary by interest to interest.
36:16	Shaan Puri	Where is the money made? Is it in retail sales, or is it in the land appreciation because you now made a destination?
36:22	Sam Parr	is it just just more is it just a retail business that has higher than
36:25	Shaan Puri	normal values
36:26	Al Doan	No, no, no. I worry that I'm doing a bad job explaining this. If I am, let's keep digging into it because it's great. So, for an internet business, right? Our company is one of many no-name warehouses on the internet that sell fabric. But we are a little quilt shop in Hamilton, Missouri. In fact, we're a cool quilt shop with all this branding and all this cool stuff that we've done. We'll never be the nameless, faceless warehouse. So, if you're starting... if you're starting...
36:56	Sam Parr	you
36:56	Al Doan	Know whatever goofy company you're doing, right? Like, the second you open up a town... So, one of the guys here, he's doing like Firebrand Tea, right?
37:06	Sam Parr	yeah david segal
37:07	Al Doan	I'm like, "Bro, go open up a retail store." Because the second you do that, I'm not just buying from your crappy warehouse where you're hoarding in and using them.
37:17	Shaan Puri	lift because you're like we're a real place it's
37:19	Al Doan	a brand with
37:20	Shaan Puri	a real it's a
37:21	Al Doan	branding play yeah
37:21	Shaan Puri	And like people say, "You'll never come here," even if you'll never come here. Because 99% of your traffic never goes there. You're saying that this stands you out against every other e-commerce direct-to-consumer brand.
37:31	Al Doan	In our split, we get 90% of our revenue online and about 10% in-store, with a little less than 10%, like 8%, coming from in-store sales. But our marketing is 98% focused on the town. Let me tell you the story about Susie Braddler quilting. Oh, look at this new display! We did all this stuff, right? And that's the story we tell, while most of our traffic, or most of our revenue, comes from online sales. That's why I'm saying, like, dude, if you have a brand...
37:58	Shaan Puri	that's fast
37:59	Al Doan	So many of these guys are just trying to flip Shopify stores. We import, and it ships out of ShipBob, and it's great. But people know they're just getting scammed. I mean, you're just buying to resell and try to make a profit. The second you build a little bit of experience around it, right? Like, do the work to build the physical manifestation of your brand. The company, all of a sudden, is much, much more interesting in my mind.
38:22	Sam Parr	Let's say you sell the company in 2 years. You or your family collectively are maybe worth $1,000,000,000. You're not working with quilting anymore. What do you want to do? Do you want to start another company? If so, what type of company? What do you want to do with your time and money?
38:37	Al Doan	I have no idea. I started a company I love called Pretzel about two years ago. It was the photo roll meets the credit card statement, right? We itemized all of your transactions and showed you this very beautiful overview of all the stuff you bought. I thought it was super cool. The SKU-level data aggregated around the user was so interesting to me. Unfortunately, I couldn't finance it and ended up shutting it down. That was my big play at it. Now, I've got some major PTSD from that experience. I never want to raise money again. I felt, dude, once you take somebody else's money and don't give them a return... I'm an investor, I know it's fine, but I felt so bad. Dude, so bad. So what?
39:17	Sam Parr	do you want to do then
39:18	Al Doan	Well, so now I'm just doing lemonade stand stuff, right? It's like, well, my therapist says, "I think you want to be... you wanna design a bridge, and then a helicopter, and then go paint a chapel." And I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's what I wanna do." I just like... I'm gonna do little lemonade stand style businesses. Just like little things that can't scale.
39:38	Shaan Puri	like what's an example what do you mean by that
39:39	Al Doan	I want to do a barbecue place, right? I'm like, "Oh yeah, it'd be great!" I could have the meat, the pickles, and the sauce. That'd be cool. I could do the branding amazingly. As long as I could let it die in four months, I think I'd really enjoy it. But as soon as it turned into, "Now I built this thing, I gotta grind it out," I'd be miserable. So, I'll just try little stuff like that. I mean, at some point, I'll get into another thing, but like right now...
40:05	Sam Parr	when you're in your early twenties and and late teens did you think you were gonna be wealthy and then
40:10	Al Doan	No, no, I... dude, that's interesting. No, not at all, right? It's kind of jacked; it jacks with your head a little bit. I never dreamed in my wildest dreams that I would be where I am today. So, I was talking to my wife a couple of days ago, and I said, "I think I might need... can we do a vision board?" I've never thought about what else is out there or what else I want to do with my life.
40:33	Shaan Puri	did you like overshot what you had pictured you never re pictured
40:37	Al Doan	Sometimes you go off plan. I didn't expect this to work. Landing here... I mean, it's a big thing in my head, trying to navigate this in a very serious way. I don't know, when you remove the motivation of money, what do you do with the rest of your life? So much of our world is built around "gotta get money." In the same year, dude, I stepped back from my company. I got married, bought a house, and we got pregnant with our first kid. I was like, every milestone I imagined I ever wanted to work for. And, dude, when you're dating, it's a great reason to go to the gym. You're like, "I gotta look good." And all of a sudden, I'm married, and I'm like, "Screw it! You don't care how many pushups I can do. I'm not going anywhere." It was like a full-on funky depression. Not like a depression that a lot of grown-up people have; it was like a baby depression for me. Just figuring out what I was supposed to reach for was a really hard walk for me.
41:32	Shaan Puri	and where'd you like what was the how'd you get out of that
41:37	Al Doan	Yeah, I don't know. Well, so like doing like any man, I just buried it inside and moved on. I think it's heavy with the Reboot guys. I don't know if you know like Jerry Colonna over at Reboot.
41:49	Shaan Puri	he's like the like the big exec coach
41:51	Al Doan	yeah he coach
41:51	Shaan Puri	who do you go steve jobs or someone there who who's he coaching
41:54	Al Doan	I I don't know he's a nice man though and I like him a lot
41:57	Shaan Puri	Let's see, he's like, he coached somebody famous, like, you know, whoever. Yeah, it was. But they do like a retreat now for CEOs.
42:03	Al Doan	Yeah, it was... I like when I was running the company. Dude, I was running the quote company and I needed to grow to like 400 employees. I was like 30, 32 or something. I didn't know what I was doing. When you scale that fast and you don't scale your own capacity to lead, I found myself sitting down in a room and immediately trying to make these other people feel stupid so they wouldn't notice that I didn't know what I was doing. You're throwing bombs in your own business. You're like, "Dang it, Rick! I can't believe you did this thing!" And then after this, I'm like, "I’m not gonna yell at Rick. Baby, I'm so sorry. It's not you, we're on the same team." I came out of that and I was like, "Man, I'm hurting the people around me. I gotta fix this." So, I went on a boot camp retreat that they do. I came out of that and I was like, "I either need to fire my co-founders," which was one of three co-founders. I came back and said, "I gotta fire you guys." They were like, "No, that's not gonna happen." We were like, "Oh, what should we do?" So they were like, "Oh, well, I'll step back and we can manage this transition." But to get to that...
43:07	Al Doan	Where I could sort of say those words out loud, like, "Man, I can't keep doing this." Because it's a family business, it's all the... it's the town. I felt all that weight on me and I couldn't get out. So, I did a lot of the therapy stuff and at this... now.
43:21	Sam Parr	psychedelics
43:22	Al Doan	No, dude, I'm so intrigued by psychedelics. But like, I'm Mormon, right? And so, like, the idea of doing... you're Mormon? Yeah, yeah. Wow, oh, that guy. Yeah, yeah.
43:32	Sam Parr	yeah yeah
43:33	Al Doan	you look just how I thought you would look no
43:36	Shaan Puri	you don't you're the coolest mormon I've ever met
43:39	Al Doan	and do you know mormons here
43:40	Sam Parr	so that's nice thank you you didn't have
43:41	Al Doan	To say that there was one like in the room, but no... I think because the stance is very murky from my religious standpoint. So I'm like, I've got a bunch of mushroom capsules in my medicine cabinet that I'm like, "Dre, my wife, someday I'm gonna go walking on the land." I just don't know where I am yet.
44:05	Sam Parr	But I'm going to go over it. I've never done it. I'm completely sober, but I'm totally into it. I'm trying to convince my wife to do it.
44:11	Al Doan	My fear is that I just don't want to be the one guy who, like, "Oh, he took it and then his brain snapped." I'm like...
44:17	Sam Parr	no I don't think that will happen with you
44:18	Al Doan	Thank you. I don't think it would either because I've got a good brain. But if it did, I'd be very serious. I don't drink. I've never touched it. Well, fuck.
44:25	Sam Parr	I always thought, like, if I'm... because I don't drink either, but I'm like, if I freak out, I could just get super drunk and I'll be okay.
44:30	Al Doan	You know, so you don't have that. This playbook feels made up on the spot. Did you? No, that's... is this science, Max?
44:37	Sam Parr	Well, what is science? Yeah, no, I just felt like that's my parachute, you know? That's my escape hatch.
44:46	Al Doan	I was man I don't I don't know at what. I'll feel okay with it but like at some. I'm just like
44:51	Sam Parr	wait so you bought it or you have it
44:53	Al Doan	Yeah, no, a buddy of mine is very... he's like, "I'm good at onboarding people into Slack." Oh my god, dude! I'm like, "Alright," and so... never.
45:00	Sam Parr	done it
45:00	Shaan Puri	No, and I meet those people and they're like, "Dude, it'll be so great, so controlled, so safe." I'm just like...
45:07	Sam Parr	he's emotionally stable though
45:09	Shaan Puri	yeah I'm like I don't need this I'm like yo
45:11	Al Doan	what do you
45:11	Shaan Puri	do you do I need
45:12	Al Doan	To get this thing, first, the interesting part is just like... the guys are like, "I have my greatest ideas in there." And I'm like, "Can I just... I just want to see what some of those ideas would be?" Yeah, I don't think I need the whole... like, I don't need the trip.
45:25	Shaan Puri	just yeah you're only using 12% of your brand
45:27	Sam Parr	right now
45:27	Al Doan	like then he got like your barber that's like I saw jesus
45:30	Shaan Puri	yeah he was there bro and I'm
45:32	Al Doan	like oh that could be cool too I mean alright I don't know
45:35	Sam Parr	Well, dude, this is awesome! You came here not knowing anyone, and we got you on the pod. This is pretty sick! You're the most popular guy here. Did you enjoy meeting some of these people?
45:45	Al Doan	oh this is a blast this is a blast

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This Guy Is Making $100M/Year Selling Quilts To Your Grandma (#354)

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