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

Shaan Puri

Your random tweet about your mother-in-law gets to him, and he writes back: "Dear Smithy, Soudin, 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: "Believe me, I know pillows."

Sam Parr

Yeah, alright, we're live. Sean, I've got three stories that I want to tell you about to kick this day's episode off. You ready?

Shaan Puri

I'm ready.

Sam Parr

Years ago, I was trying to get in touch with this one entrepreneur who is the CEO and founder of a very famous media company. I'm not going to call him out, but 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 [or a different service] for a couple of days, visiting family. I log on to Netflix on the TV, and guess whose house I'm renting right now?

Shaan Puri

That guy.

Sam Parr

I am currently staying at his house right now. Should I do anything? Like, is there anything I should look up on YouTube so when he goes to his YouTube account, he sees it? Like, yeah.

Shaan Puri

You could just do the most... whatever the most petty thing you could do. Like, just change his Wi-Fi password. Just send him for a loop. He'll be like, "What? What is happening right now? I don't understand this."

Sam Parr

So, I'm in his house. I go to Netflix and I see the image for like the... or I go to some YouTube account or something, and I see the thumbnail image for his account. I'm like, "I know this person." Then I start picking up the other details. I'm like, "Oh, he's logged in to all this stuff. I know exactly who this is." So, I'm going to have to figure out a way to get his attention. It's going to be borderline creepy regardless of how I do this, even if I do it in the most tasteful way. But I'm going to take my shot. I'm going to leave this guy a message. It's not mean; I'm very happy. I'm happy, but I'm going to leave him a message.

Shaan Puri

Hey man, I really love the place! I'm trying to pee in the sink, but there's no stool. Do you know where I can pee?

Sam Parr

Yes, I'm going to have to do something. The second story that I've got to 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 going to make out when we get to a million, is that right?

Shaan Puri

No, I didn't say that. I said specifically that these other podcasters made out when they crossed 50K. It's a very uncomfortable video watching them in slow motion kiss. One guy's kissing, and the other guy's like resisting it. The other guy's trying to do the bet, and he's like, "I'm just getting teeth. Can you move something? I'm just getting a lot of teeth right now."

Sam Parr

And by the way, it's a finance podcast. Yeah, yeah. Hey, it's great! The video that they make out on it barely has any views.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and...

Sam Parr

They never actually liked it; it barely worked.

Shaan Puri

That is the funniest part of the whole thing. When I saw that the video has 25,000 views, I was like, "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 and it didn't go anywhere." Which is exactly what would happen if I tried to, you know, "Oh, this will definitely go viral," and then it doesn't.

Sam Parr

By the way, there is a number for everything. I don't know if 1,000,000 subscribers is that number, but I don't know if the number ends.

Shaan Puri

In the word "subscribers," I think it's nothing like "dollars" instead of "subscribers."

Sam Parr

but there is a number so if you're listening on to the podcast apps just go ahead and go to our youtube and subscribe the the comment section is pretty fun we read every comment alright 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 it so I've got this company called hampton you could 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 but 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 use we just change 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 in making landing pages like this I highly suggest it look I'm actually doing it but you could check it out go to the link in the description of youtube and get started alright now back to mfm the third story I've gotta tell you so I said the story a little bit I haven't given an update on it but about 3 years ago my mother-in-law who loves to sew she previously a long time ago like you say even sew wedding dresses and things like that for friends but 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 to the airport and you can like tell me how like the internet works basically and I gave her

Shaan Puri

The free ride to the airport... sweet!

Sam Parr

Yeah, yeah. I gave her like the most high-level advice ever. So, I can't even remotely take credit for this because it was basically like, "Well, there's this thing called Shopify." Like, that's basically what the advice was. There's a thing called a 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! Did they name your company the same name that you were going to name your company though? What the hell?" And she goes, "That's my website." I'm like, "What?" She's like, "Yeah, in fact, I already got my first sale." I was blown away. Well, fast forward three years, she's done over $1,000,000 in revenue. She's doing high six figures, I think, or she did high six figures in '23.

Shaan Puri

And what's the store? So, it's a pillow store, right? What is the name of it? It's Smithy's Pillows or something.

Sam Parr

So, her birth name and the name of the store are slightly different. Her name is **Smithy**, but she spells the store's name **Smithy** with a "y" at the end. So, the word "Smith" with a "y" at the end, and then "Home," followed by "Couture" (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. Basically, what she sells is really high-end throw pillows. As a young man, I was like, "Throw pillows? Who the hell buys that?" Well, women love throw pillows. Do you see how the family sales...?

Shaan Puri

Because they're on the bed, and then you have to throw them on the ground whenever you want to use the bed. That's what it is. I don't really understand this, but I do see... do you?

Sam Parr

You see that pillow? You see that pillow you have behind you on that leather chair?

Shaan Puri

Oh, I gotta throw over here. Okay.

Sam Parr

You have a throw. That's a throw pillow. They're decorative, fancy pillows.

Shaan Puri

9,685 sales. So that's how many transactions she's had or how many customers she's had check out. Almost 10,000! **Star seller**, 5-star review. Very cool! And then, she's hand-making these, no?

Sam Parr

Yeah, well, she now has a little warehouse in New Jersey. She's got like four ladies sewing. I just imagine her, just like, "What was that movie where they're like, 'My fingers hurt from sewing?' Well, now your back's gonna hurt; you just got landscaping duty." Yeah, she just has these four stay-at-home moms, or I guess moms who aren't working anymore but like to sew. They have part-time work sewing these pillows. Then she's got the UPS guy coming to her office every day, picking up these pillows. She's got a legit small business, and I'm always like, "Scale, scale, scale! Spend more!"

Shaan Puri

Look at this. The store, if you go there, every pillow says $2 under it. I'm like, "$2 is an incredible deal!" Then you go and it's like, "No, $2 is for the swatch sample. If you want the pillow, it's $79." So I think that's definitely bringing a lot of people in. I like it.

Sam Parr

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

Shaan Puri

No, have you seen a photo of my mother-in-law? No, that's just not a thing people do.

Sam Parr

Well, I tweeted out pictures of her. She's a very pretty woman. I call her like the **Haitian Martha Stewart**; she's always really well put together and dresses nicely all the time. She's a very charismatic person with good energy. I tweeted out that story two days ago, or maybe it was yesterday. The tweet got viewed by about a quarter of a million people. But that guy, Marcus from *The Profit*—what's his last name? Lemontas? He's now on that TV show *The Profit*. I think he's the CEO and founder of Camping World, which is like a multibillion-dollar RV business. He's now on the board of directors at Bed Bath & Beyond.

Shaan Puri

So, I think you just said that whole sentence so casually. Like, "Yeah, I tweeted this out," and then that guy Marcus from The Prophet replied. Do you know Marcus? What do you mean, the guy from The Prophet replied? Like, how did this even happen?

Sam Parr

I have no idea who he is. I mean, I know him as a celebrity, but I've never spoken to this person in my life.

Shaan Puri

Your random tweet about your mother-in-law gets to him, and he writes back, "Dear Smithy, Soudin," right? Her name.

Sam Parr

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

Both Bed Bath & Beyond and I would like to invest in your business. If these are your designs, they are outstanding. And the best part? Believe me, I know pillows.

Sam Parr

And then the way that he originally communicated with me was by replying. He tweeted that on his own, in front of his old audience of about 600,000 people. He replied to my tweet and said, "Contact me. I would love to sell this in Bed Bath & Beyond." I responded with my email, but when he emailed me, it went straight to spam for some reason. So I'm thinking, "Is this really you?" Anyway, I connected them, and now they're meeting. He shared it on his Twitter that he wants to meet her. Pretty wild, right? So I better get the... I better get the funding for this one. I deserve something. Yeah, you're going to get like...

Shaan Puri

A loaf of pumpkin bread, but still pretty good. Yeah, son-in-law of the year, Sam Parr. I did not know that was your New Year's resolution. Good job! This is crazy that it got picked up like that. Good for her! This is such a cool story. You know, how old is she? Right, she's probably in her fifties. Yeah, she's in her fifties.

Sam Parr

And basically, my wife is 31, and her other daughter is 27. She was just like, "My kids are grown. I've got time. What should I do?" She loved to sew and always had an entrepreneurial spirit. Her husband is an entrepreneur as well, and she helped run their moving business. They thought, "Let's do something." My husband retired, and she had free time. She needed to figure out something to do. So, she just started sewing these pillows. She had the gumption to go and get a website built for about $3,000. She found a developer to make the website, got on Etsy, and I taught her... when I say "taught," I don't actually teach her. I was like, "Yeah, I bet Etsy has a way that you could run like $100 worth of ads." She runs $100 worth of ads and gets a handful of customers. From there, she spent basically no money on marketing. I asked her, "How much are you spending on marketing?" She said, "$300." I was like, "A day?" She replied, "No, no, no, over the past two months." I said, "Scale that sucker up, baby!" But she was like, "Nope, I'm happy with the workload. This is fine. It's going good. I like it." Her customers are coming back and forth. Now, what she does is go into all the door buildings in New York City. There are fancy high-rises with doormen, and she goes to all those buildings. They're buying her pillows to put in the lobbies. So, she's got these wholesale contracts.

Shaan Puri

Gonna ask you, because the most annoying thing in the world for me is any business story that's like, "I had this idea and then it worked." It's like, "Yo, yo, yo, what about the middle part that I'm gonna have to do of getting it to work?" What did you do? How did you actually get the initial sales? Do you know? Was it just posting 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?

Sam Parr

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

Shaan Puri

Dude, there are so many amazing things about the story! I'll tell you three of the amazing things. **Number 1:** You tweeted this and got in touch with the guy from Bed Bath & Beyond, who's now going to help her get into Bed Bath & Beyond. **Number 2:** Your mother-in-law, in her fifties, decides to start a business and become an entrepreneur. That's the second most impressive thing! She took 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, and I really respect that. **Number 3:** 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 it turn into a loss. You start to stress out and try to keep up with the thing or try to grow it because 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. Actually, I have a fourth bonus one! This guy said, "Trust me, I know pillows." I am now going to end every tweet with some version of that. Like, if I'm like, "Hey, everyone, check out this app," I’ll say, "Believe me, I know a thing or two about apps." What a gangster style of speaking! I love this guy, and I'm totally stealing this. You're going to see this in my next ten tweets! It's like when Trump used to end a tweet with an emotion instead of emojis. He would say something like, "The border is not safe. Sad." That's how he would always end his tweets.

Sam Parr

Well, it's kind of smart of this guy. He probably has no idea who you and I are, and he didn't give a shit. But he probably saw the engagement of the tweet and thought, "Well, if I could pounce on this and just get a little bit of interesting press, it could be worth it." Who knows? I told Smithee, "Have your hopes low." Who knows if this is going to work out? It's a huge company. Even though he's on the board or whatever he is, that doesn't mean anything's going to happen. But like you...

Shaan Puri

She needs to be giving you advice from now on.

Sam Parr

Well, I agree. I agree with that. It was a little more like a therapy session, although she doesn't need that. It was more like, "Oh, who knows?" You know, I don't want you to get your hopes up.

Shaan Puri

Alright, well, Sam makes the will. Congratulations, dude!

Sam Parr

Yes, congratulations to me! I have a bunch more interesting stuff. Do you want me to dive in?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah. Give me another one.

Sam Parr

There's these ads I've been getting, and it's by a company called **Mad Muscle**. It might be easier if you just go to the Facebook Ad Library and type in "Mad Muscle." They have these animations; it's a popular ad I see all the time. In one picture, there's a guy with kind of a beer belly at 20% body fat, and then there's a guy that's ripped at 10%. It's very eye-catching—ads that grab your attention. They also have these other ads where it's like a guy doing a bicep curl. Very catchy ads! I get this ad like crazy. So, I was curious about who's behind it, and I found it very interesting. I do this with every catchy ad: I go to the website, scroll all the way to the bottom where it says "trademark," and then it'll say the real name of the company. After that, I research the company. Check this out: there are these two guys in Ukraine who started this company when they were 25. Their names are Ivan and Dimitry. Originally, the company was called—well, the whole holding company is called **AMO** (A-M-O). But they've got three arms of the business. The first part of the business was **AMO Publishing**. Listen to these numbers! They kind of created these little clickbaity news websites, and eventually, they geared it toward moms. They have headlines like, "Elderly couple divorces after 53 years of marriage; later, man sees ex-wife dating in a cafe." It's an article. Then they switched to Facebook videos, and they went crazy viral. So, at this...

Sam Parr

They have **53,000,000** followers on Facebook. They have this thing called **Amomama**, which has **14,000,000** followers. They also have **Amom Nostalgia** and **Amomews**. It's almost sort of like, I guess you could say, a "Fuck Jerry," where it's like a social-first news company. They get huge, with **53,000,000** followers from there. They created this thing called **Amo Pictures**. A few months ago, you mentioned these guys that have soap operas on YouTube, and that is exactly what Ivan and Dimitri pivoted to next. They created a YouTube channel called **Dramatize Me**. **Dramatize Me** has **2,400,000** subscribers and **500,000,000** views, which is a lot. The average video is something like **20** or **30** minutes, and it features actors acting out a soap opera. You can tell that a lot of the stuff is dubbed, so they film it one time and then have **Dramatize Me** in different languages. They have different pages for each language. From there, they started launching these apps. Their first big app was to help women exercise during their periods. I guess when you're menstruating, you feel crappy and don't want to work out. They created an app that helps you do that.

Shaan Puri

That's gotta be the hardest sale to make. It's like, "Yo, what kind of extra degree of difficulty did they take as an entrepreneur?" It's like, "We are gonna help somebody do something they don't want to do, right at the time that they don't want to do it." Wow.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I don't know. I obviously don't understand how that feels, but I guess there is a need. Then they launched this thing called **Unimeal**, 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. From there, they created **Mad Muscles**, which is the thing that I saw. Their website, according to SimilarWeb, is getting **11,000,000 visits a month**. It's insane!

Shaan Puri

Wow, 500,000 followers on Instagram!

Sam Parr

And the app has **35,000 reviews**. These young guys started this company when they were **25**, just like **4 or 5 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. They are like the scrappiest people that I've ever seen because they're just launching stuff. They're like, "Oh, that works! Let's do the spin-off." It looks like they all have a similar problem: they want to work out. We have a lot of middle-aged women who want to work out on their periods, so let's create this thing. Oh, it looks like workout apps are cool; let's create one for men. This is an example of what we've talked about many times: these scrappy people who just... I don't want to say soulless because that sounds negative, but they just follow the numbers like crazy and they don't overthink it. What's that meme that you were talking about the other day? It's called the **midwip meme**, which is like in the middle: "Create a beautiful product, study the market, whatever, yada yada yada." The one on the left with the idiot is like, "Just launch it and just keep iterating and just do whatever the customers say." And the smart person also says that.

Shaan Puri

Launch it and see what works.

Sam Parr

Yeah, that's exactly what they're doing. These guys, it's so fascinating how they're running their company.

Shaan Puri

This is a crazy find! Good on you, props to Sam with a Zapar special for finding this random app in Ukraine. I am impressed and confused. I'm impressed because clearly these guys are awesome. They're smart, figuring stuff out, and they've built a really cool set of products that look like a pretty cool company. I'm confused because they are doing four separate hard things at the same time, and I'm puzzled about that strategy. But you know, this is actually pretty common when it comes to startups in Eastern Europe. I've seen this several times. Because they don't have a lot of venture capital, it's like bootstrap-driven. They create businesses that work, and one business unlocks the next opportunity. Maybe one taps out, but it's still good enough to stay as a business. So they end up with this conglomerate of four different things. I've seen this about ten times now, so I'm actually not surprised that this is what's happened here. To go from publishing to then their pictures arm, which is like their Hollywood arm or whatever that's making movies and shows, to apps... those are not really related. You can kind of squint and say, "Oh, we use the media to promote our apps." Okay, cool. But what about these YouTube shows? Or just in general, maybe just spend money on Facebook ads and don't do all the other stuff. So, I am simultaneously impressed and confused by this.

Sam Parr

Well, first of all, I was not able to find any news about them. There was just, like, even in Ukraine and Russia, there was very little information about them. I'm like, "What is going on? This app has 35,000 reviews, and I can't find anything about them." I had to search to find the owner. I eventually found their LinkedIn profiles, but it was really, really hard. Whenever that happens, I'm like, "Alright, I'm interested. I gotta figure this out."

Shaan Puri

You can tell how successful an entrepreneur is in many ways. Let's say I said, "Sam, I'm going to give you an hour locked in a room with this entrepreneur. You have to figure out if they're going to be successful or not, or how successful they're going to be." There are many questions you could ask them and various ways you could quiz them to try to see if they're good or bad. However, one signal that just really never fails is if you go to their videos or pictures section and look at some of the titles and thumbnails for their content. It's exactly what you talked about. People who do this, these people never lose. So, here's the first one...

Sam Parr

Because they don't give a shit.

Shaan Puri

Girl sends... girl sent selfies to her boss, and then she's looking worried. Next one: "Gender reveal went wrong?" Third one: "Right, like grandpa in the gym, nailed it." These are things that human nature must click on and must watch to find out how the payoff is. This is universally broadly appealing content. People love to see the heartwarming thing, the gossipy thing, or the major screw-up in some high-stakes situation. Those are things that people have to watch. 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. They understand what makes people tick, what's going to get the click, and what's going to get the conversion. Eventually, they'll stop making silly videos, or they'll stop writing funny tweets, or posting on a meme Instagram page, and they'll work on a bigger product. I see this all the time. I see this with younger people, but just in general. If you're running that goofy TikTok account that's going viral, it makes no money, but you've figured out how to get people to watch your videos and what makes people click. Eventually, that's the same person who's going to have that really successful D2C brand or create that app that goes to the top of the charts because they just get it when it comes to human nature.

Sam Parr

Well, I remember when I first started the hustle. We got 50,000 subscribers in a short amount of time. Tim Chen was the founder of NerdWallet. NerdWallet is now a publicly traded company that writes articles for the best credit cards or whatever. He was like, "Hey, I want to invest." And I was like, "Dude, I don't even know how we're gonna make money." He said, "Well, look, I know enough to know that if you're good at getting an audience, making money off that is actually easier." I was like, "What? What are you talking about? This wasn't that hard to do." He explained, "Well, it's hard for many people." NerdWallet is kind of that answer. It took them three years to get to, 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 rank for. Now, as I've grown and understood this, I realize that if you can get an audience and you can get eyeballs, ideally, it's a math equation. The equation would be: **Value = (Amount of influence you have over them) x (Their spending power) x (The amount they're willing to spend).** If you can maximize that equation, you can build a big business. In fact, making the product is often easier than getting the audience.

Shaan Puri

100%. People who understand how to get an audience, they're going to win. It's the same way that when I meet people who are elite at a video game, like a hard, worldwide video game, it's just a matter of time until they're fatigued with that game and decide to play the next game called business. Guess what? The same willingness to grind, the ability to figure out the meta strategy, the ability to coordinate and collaborate with their team, and communicate at very fast speeds—like, that's all going to work once they pick a different game. So, you know, that or the sneaker flippers, the eBay flippers. When we started this podcast, it's called "My First Million." I was interviewing people, asking, "How'd you make your first million?" One of my favorite questions is, "If I was filming a documentary of you back when you were 12 or 13, do you think I would have known that you would go on to do such interesting things? Was there anything unusual you were doing for a 13 or 14-year-old?" At first, the reaction is like, "No, I was just a normal kid." But then you ask, "So what were you doing for fun?" And they're like, "Well, actually, my neighbor had these extra golf clubs, and I realized that you could sell them on eBay. So I would go to old people's houses, knock on their doors, ask if I could see their golf clubs, and I would buy their golf clubs to flip them on eBay." You're like, "Okay, it's just a matter of time until you elevate from flipping golf clubs to whatever it is—SaaS, software, whatever the next bigger game is." But that's such a high likelihood of success, so highly correlated with success for people who have that background.

Sam Parr

Alright, let me... can I give you one more? We're going to do one more little small business one.

Shaan Puri

Yes, let's do it.

Sam Parr

Alright, so go to this website: **dumpsterenterprises.com**.

Shaan Puri

Should I... is this not safe for work? Okay, here we go.

Sam Parr

It's safe; it's exactly what it sounds like. So, this guy joined Hampton, and I saw that his company was called **Dumpster Enterprises**. I was like, "Dude, what the hell is this? Tell me everything about this!" I was so intrigued that I said, "We're on the record. I want to talk about this in the pod, so whatever you tell me, is that okay?" He replied, "Yeah, I would love to do it." So, I got his permission. This guy's name is **Ian**. His background is basically that he learned a little bit about SEO and web design. He started making a handful of "how to make money" websites, and it was going okay. Then, he randomly met this guy while trying to rent a dumpster. Ian started looking up the best vendors to find a dumpster for his house. We're talking about dumpsters for moving—like a bigger dumpster that you keep for about two weeks. He meets this guy, and the guy says, "Dude, I don't know how to do any of this SEO stuff, but I know all these vendors that are similar to me." Ian asks, "Well, can I have the vendors? Maybe we can work out a deal where I'll pay you for this vendor list." So, he does that. After two years, he builds a website called **dumpsterenterprises.com**. If you scroll down to our notes document, this guy was pretty crazy. He gave me his full P&L for 2023, and I asked, "Can I read this?" He said, "Yeah, I don't care." In the second year of the business, he did **$2,100,000** in revenue. The way the business works is that you type in the area code or zip code where you need a dumpster, and he forwards that lead to a handful of vetted vendors or dumpster providers. They pay him, let's say, **$100** for that lead. He profits **$50** because that's how much it costs him to get the leads. It looks like he paid himself, but the business also made about **$280,000** in profit. He mentioned, "This is a business that didn't take me a long time to set up. I work a few hours a day and travel a lot. It's a business that's been on cruise control a little bit." I saw this and thought, "Dude, there's a freaking business built in every niche that I never even would have thought of." This is a little example. People in our YouTube comments criticized us for talking about big companies—**$1,000,000,000** and **$100,000,000** companies. I want to give an example of an interesting small business. We've done that twice: **Smithee Home Couture** and now **Dumpster Rental Enterprises**.

Shaan Puri

This is super cool! This is a good blueprint, by the way. We've seen this now several times here as we've been doing the podcast. You take an industry that is well-established and local. It could be dumpster rentals, road painting, parking lot painting, or senior living facilities where they need customers. The typical owner of those businesses knows nothing about SEO or SEM. If you just say, "Cool, I'll create the website that does the lead generation 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," you're going to pay me some fixed amount per lead. That's just a blueprint we've seen work over and over again. It works even better the higher the ticket. For example, in senior living, people will end up spending hundreds or thousands in rent over a 3 or 4-year time period renting a bed in a facility. Or take pool construction; it's like a $30,000 project or something like that.

Sam Parr

And so, we had a friend— you and I had a friend, or I don't know if you knew him— Dave Grossblatt. He had SwimmingPoolQuotes.com, and he was making $2,000,000 a year. It was basically like he only made his money for 4 months out of the year, and so the other months he would just...

Shaan Puri

Without having to do the swimming pool stuff, right? He's not actually going and doing the thing. It's like that quote, you know? The biggest 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

The medium... the medium size, well.

Shaan Puri

The most medium-sized pool mogul owns makes no pools and builds no pools. So, you know, high ticket. And then if that’s how old school that industry is, 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? That arbitrage right there is such a formula for a $5 to $10 million business that you can build by yourself. 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, and you don't need any of that.

Sam Parr

But sometimes they can be huge. I've been doing research in this industry for a long time because I was obsessed with trucking. I talked about it a ton; I almost went into that business. There's a bunch of people who are doing it for trucking, meaning the trucking industry has truckers, right? So, the trucking industry has a huge shortage of people who have their commercial driver's license. 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 this works in is lawyers. I found there's a site called SuperLawyers.com that's owned by Thomson Reuters, a huge multibillion-dollar company. A lot of the early web 1.0 businesses that I looked up were affiliates or lead generation businesses for lawyers. If you look at what the most expensive keywords are, this is how you know it's a big industry. You can just go to Google Keyword Planner (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 that word. 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 is having to spend—I can't do that math because I'm an idiot—tens of thousands of dollars in order to acquire a client who wants to sue someone for mesothelioma issues. It has the highest cost per click I've seen, which is lawyer-related. I've seen multiple lead generation companies for lawyers that are doing hundreds of millions in revenue.

Shaan Puri

Lead generation... Yeah, it's an incredible business blueprint. If you just have one skill, you need to figure out the niche to apply it in. The one skill being, you know, SEM (Search Engine Marketing). How do you use that Search Engine Marketing in a field where the people who run those businesses aren't great at it? If you could just become great at it, it's a big winner there. I gotta ask you, have you seen this Apple Vision Pro thing? Man, what do you think about this?

Sam Parr

I haven't tested it yet, but I've seen it. What do I think of it? On one hand, 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!" They push the envelope; it's pretty cool. I think it's kind of cool knowing that the current version is going to be the worst version that ever comes about, and that first version seems pretty awesome.

Shaan Puri

Pretty dope, yeah.

Sam Parr

What do you think?

Shaan Puri

1 to 10, how bad do you want it? 1.

Sam Parr

I don't want to own one, so not at all. But 9 out of 10, I want to go to the Apple Store and try one. What about you?

Shaan Puri

I didn't buy one. The bar for me to buy something is pretty low. I'm a pretty impulse-driven person. If I'm just curious, I'll usually get something.

Sam Parr

It's not an impulse buy per price.

Shaan Puri

It's not, but like, you know, I kind of justify anything that's in, you know, trying new tech. That's kind of my job to do things like that. So, yeah, I don't do that, but I have three VR headsets already sitting in the corner of my room, just staring at me like, "Really, bro? You're going to get another one of these?" Each one I tried on, I was like, "Wow, this is so impressive."

Sam Parr

Alright, again.

Shaan Puri

That's enough. Yeah, I guess I'll put this down and never put it back on. That's what's happened to me with every VR headset, so I'm afraid that that's what's going to happen with this. I did watch...

Sam Parr

I spent hours a day on my Oculus on the day that I bought it.

Shaan Puri

Right, yeah.

Sam Parr

Every time.

Shaan Puri

I use it for 4 hours. It's just a little time. Did you watch the Casey Neistat review?

Sam Parr

So, good video.

Shaan Puri

So good.

Sam Parr

So good.

Shaan Puri

So, he goes, puts it on, and he's like, "I'm so excited about this!" He walks around New York, goes on the subway, and visits Times Square. Then, he goes to a Krispy Kreme and he's using it. He made a great video about it, which is less about reviewing the features and more about the experience. He doesn't focus on questions like, "How good is the field of view? Is it 110 degrees?" Instead, he's just like, "I actually want to use this for fun and see what it feels like." It seems like everybody's takeaway is kind of the same: it's 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. However, you can see that in five years, this thing is going to be incredible because they're going to solve all these annoying problems. It's going to become lighter weight, they'll get rid of the cord that's a battery that I have to put in my pocket while I'm using it, and they'll make it so that I can see my phone while I'm using this if I want to.

Sam Parr

It's going to be as small as a pair of glasses.

Shaan Puri

exactly and so that's pretty exciting but it did remind me of something that I think is forget the apple vision pro for a second because you know whatever it's just a device there's an incredible blog post that this reminded me of and I think that this blog post is one of if I had a mount rushmore of blog posts that informed my way of thinking as an entrepreneur this is one of them 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 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. He goes 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 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 1 to 3 categories and he's like weird he's like for Google 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 10 x more storage than the previous email provider well the hotmail was giving you like hotmail was giving you 20 megabytes these guys were giving you like you know 2 gigabytes he's like the second thing was 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 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 and 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 2 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 he's like it is 10 x better than the previous way and so I kinda 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 because if it has a couple of extreme strengths it's actually gonna be a winner

Sam Parr

Well, does it? There's this one ad that I think shows one.

Shaan Puri

Of the extreme strengths, watch that ad for a second.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's awesome. So basically, you see everyone else on their iPhone on a small screen and then they...

Shaan Puri

On an airplane.

Sam Parr

On an airplane.

Shaan Puri

Across the rows on an airplane.

Sam Parr

And then you see a guy with the Apple Vision Pro. It's you. You see what he's seeing, and it's a movie theater. He's watching "Napoleon," and it looks like he's in a movie theater where everyone else is looking at a little 3-inch screen.

Shaan Puri

Exactly. So, you think about what this thing is great at because those are the signals of whether it's going to work or if it's the future. One thing you can identify is the ability to ask, "Why would you ever go to a movie theater if you had one of these?" Really, you can have an even better than movie theater experience at home. It's a full screen; everything you can see is the screen. And even better, you can actually change the surroundings. You could be in the jungle with the theater, or you could be sitting on an airplane and have the theater come to you.

Sam Parr

Are you imagining somebody in a jungle?

Shaan Puri

What I mean by that is you can change the scenery behind in the video, right? In this case, he's actually sitting on an airplane where nobody else can see what he's seeing. So it's private, which is cool because I hate being on an airplane when you're working or typing emails and the person next to you could just read everything. So, it's private.

Sam Parr

I sat next to a guy on the airplane. He was an old man, and the text on his phone was huge. I could see him talking to his assistant, and I noticed his name. I looked him up on Wikipedia, and it turned out he was a famous producer. I thought, "Oh, it makes sense. This producer lives in the city where I'm leaving from." So, I understood and knew all about this guy just from seeing his text messages. It was weird.

Shaan Puri

So, I think private video is one way that this is great. I think the second way that's great is the theater experience. The third is any sports or concert experience. Being able to sit courtside and watch an NBA game with this thing from home is like taking a $50,000 experience that only the richest of the rich can have, and now anybody's going to be able to have it with this. I think that is super, super cool. There are a bunch of reasons why this thing is not great yet, but I think that is amazing.

Sam Parr

I'm such a neckbeard that, like, Sarah wanted to go to Greece or something to see whatever the famous stuff they have there. I just looked it up on Street View and I was like...

Shaan Puri

got it

Sam Parr

It's alright, yeah. Isn't that beautiful? You have your camera, take a picture, and this would make it so much better. I'm just not gonna leave my house ever again. No, I think it's gonna be cool. I just don't want... I don't have a need to own one yet. But the flight thing actually is pretty convincing.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that... and I was like, what an example of an ad! That one ad is like 15 seconds long. There's no words, there's no dialogue, and it sells the thing for you. Right? That was the most convincing ad I've seen about this whole thing. More convincing than all the reviews, and it was 15 seconds with no words.

Sam Parr

Do they crush it? Man, Apple crushes it on those things. Alright, let me give you a quick follow-up. This follow-up is very well... you'll see in a second. But basically, do you remember when we talked about uBiome?

Shaan Puri

I feel like you talk about ubiome every 4th episode now what's going on with ubiome

Sam Parr

so ubiome they I talked about it in april of 2021 so it's been a few years so ubiome was launched 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 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 3 people but 2 of them eventually started dating and got married well turns out that it was all well first of all they raised from andreessen horowitz they raised from y c from 8 b c so they raised in september 2018 they raised a $100,000,000 and a $600,000,000 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 yeah pun 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 $35,000,000 from insurance companies so it was insurance fraud because it was a bullcrap test and then they the the 2 husband and wife couples they sold $12,000,000 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 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 turns out they fled to germany and here's the update to this to the case and the story that we did in 21 they're still in the lamp they're they're they're international felids in germany they've never been caught totally worked crime does pay they did not get in trouble that's the update to the story I was curious I was like 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

they're about to get like a netflix deal on top of it

Sam Parr

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 married.

Shaan Puri

and it worked in love rich living in europe freak

Sam Parr

It's an extended money move. They completely got away with it. Is that insane?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's crazy. Also, I feel like Germany is not the place I think about when people run away and hide in some country to get away with it. It's like Germany. I feel like Germany should be able to... you should be able to find them, not like, you know, some small island somewhere.

Sam Parr

Well, I was reading their Wikipedia, and at the bottom of the intro, it said they are currently international fugitives living in Germany. It also mentioned they have no intention of coming back to America. Like, yeah, duh.

Shaan Puri

and do you think how do they know they're living in germany still like wouldn't they just leave if this

Sam Parr

Fits my role in Germany. 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 $100,000,000. They stole $35,000,000 from insurance companies. So we're talking about close to $150,000,000. They know they're in Germany and they're just chilling. They've gotten away with it.

Shaan Puri

one of the most successful indiegogo projects of all time

Sam Parr

is it really

Shaan Puri

Yeah, well, given the outcome: money, marriage, love, fame, and a great European lifestyle.

Sam Parr

Did you see that crypto documentary on Netflix about... remember the... what was it called? What was the ICO scam that these two Brooklyn kids did in like 2020? Do you remember that?

Shaan Puri

I didn't watch the the I know what you're talking about I didn't watch that one

Sam Parr

what was it called or what was their scam called

Shaan Puri

I have no idea I just saw the netflix like trailer that's all I saw

Sam Parr

I remember the scam one

Shaan Puri

Crypto scam movies... I'm like, I think I'm good on that category for a little while.

Sam Parr

Well, we were making fun of them because we were like, "No, I don't want to give my money. I don't want to invest in any person who says they've got some amazing technology, and they've got perfect teeth, a red Ferrari, and abs." We were talking about this guy, and obviously, it was clearly a scam. They paid Floyd Mayweather to endorse it. They paid, what's that guy, DJ Khaled, to endorse it. It was like, clearly a scam.

Shaan Puri

This is the founder of Ubium, Jessica Richmond. Her background includes Stanford, Oxford, Google, and McKinsey.

Sam Parr

It's crazy, right? By the way, she lied about her age. Everyone was like, "Dude, you're not 30; you look 50." And her weight too. No, she completely lied about her age. It was like a known secret in Silicon Valley at the time that this woman... I know what it was. She made Forbes' 30 Under 30, and everyone was like, "Dude, you are not under 30 years old."

Shaan Puri

That's hilarious! She's a 43-year-old on the Forbes 30 Under 30. Yeah, she completely lied. Everybody on their "About Us" page on Indiegogo has their background listed, like where they went to school. For her, she's got Stanford, Oxford, Google, McKinsey. But for other people, they don't have four impressive things; they just went to undergrad and that was it. So they just added random taglines under them. It's like, "Jennifer from Customer Care: cool under pressure." Yeah, no shit! Thanks for that. Then there's Samantha from Customer Care: "appetite for knowledge." Another one: "hunger for fraud." Absolutely no conscience.

Sam Parr

Yeah, great at hiding. You could look up her name on Google, and you could kind of see some pictures where she's not wearing makeup. She's just like a... it's like a normal photo, not a press photo. At the time of a lot of these photos, I think she was supposed to be 29 years old. If you look at some of these YouTube videos of her—there's a YouTube video from 2016, and I think at this time she was supposed to be like 28—she looks 40. She could be even older than 40. It's obvious that this woman is not...

Shaan Puri

I'm an only soul people are like no you're just soul yeah

Sam Parr

you're talking about yeah it's like you are an old soul you're an old body too I mean

Shaan Puri

yeah you're not under 30 this is crazy

Sam Parr

yeah that's a real yes anne yes you are an old soul anne also

Shaan Puri

so she married the cofounder

Sam Parr

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

Shaan Puri

the haters all said it was a fraud and the haters are right shout out to the haters

Sam Parr

Yeah, it says, "Listen to this." There's a headline that reads, "The poop testing startup founder who lied to get on the 30 Under 30 list is now officially a fugitive." So, I guess everyone knew that it was nonsense. Oh, by the way, here's her age: she's 47 years old. And two years before that, when she was 45, she was on Forbes' 30 Under 30. That's a caper, man, Bob.

Shaan Puri

The husband, I mean, he just gets wrecked in the statement. He says, "Defense lawyers have informed the government that Richmond is suffering from a serious medical condition and Abdi is her caretaker." There's a good... I mean, it's like you go to a party for the first time with your girlfriend and she's like, "Oh my God, this is my friend Sean." My friend... what?

Sam Parr

And they're probably just... and he's like, "Yeah, he's like, he's all messed up, man. He's shitting all over himself. He's in a wheelchair. This guy's in a horrible spot. You guys should see this mess. He looks disgusting."

Shaan Puri

I think we should do an annual update on these guys. Actually, let's mark it down on the calendar: every February 7th, we should just update. Still on the run? It's like, you know, crime still pays, I guess.

Sam Parr

it is it is insane did sam begeman freid get sentenced yet

Shaan Puri

Dude, I don't know. I feel like the last thing I heard was that they just removed 5 counts, like, real quick. It was just like a Friday news dump when other stuff was going on. It was kind of BS.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I think he's actually not going to serve a lot of time. And then Holmes... Elizabeth Holmes, how much time did she get? Was it 9 years?

Shaan Puri

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 can't keep... you can't have maternity leave from prison. You can't just keep staying out of prison that way." So eventually, she had to go. By the way, this is hilarious. The Wall Street Journal reporter described the efforts by the newspaper to track them down, believing that they lived somewhere in central Berlin. It basically says they located a building that was used as 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 the building is in Germany, but that may not be where they're actually living. That feels more right—that we don't know exactly where they are as they're on the run.

Sam Parr

Maybe... maybe who knows? But that's the update. We're going to come back to it in a year.

Shaan Puri

Dude, they should just trap her. They should do like a honeypot. They're like, "Okay, how do we get her? We need her ego." So it needs to be like, "We're having a contest for the 40 Under 40 in Berlin."

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

And it's like they know she's going to throw her hat in the ring. She just can't resist. She's like, "I need the recognition."

Sam Parr

Yeah, dude, I watch *Cops* all the time. That's my favorite show. One of the ways that they catch guys who have warrants is by mailing them something that says, "You won free Yankees tickets." They have to come pick it up at this location. That's like a famous way. Have you ever seen that?

Shaan Puri

no but dude

Sam Parr

they do this all

Shaan Puri

the time kind of the same thing

Sam Parr

Yeah, and they'll get like 30 of these guys with warrants in a ballroom. They go, "Everyone, alright, you guys are all the lucky winners of the Yankees tickets! Congratulations, here they are!" And then the police swarm in and arrest everyone. They do it like it's a big thing. Yeah, that's what they need to do with her. A "35 Under 35" [award], and they're gonna get 34 dummies to come in to win this award, and they're gonna honeypot this lady.

Shaan Puri

You shouldn't be allowed to lie like that, though. I mean, should you be allowed to lie about winning free tickets? I'm against that. 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.

Sam Parr

You know, the cops can lie about anything. For example, if they're interrogating you and they're like, "Alright, we're gonna turn off the camera. This is off the record," it's never off the record. They have other voice recorders in there. They can lie. Police can lie about anything. Or they could say, "We have your DNA." They're allowed to say that. You could say anything you want. Yes, you can say anything you'd be like, "Look, here's this zip bag. We've got a hair of yours. We found this at the crime scene." Yeah, they could say anything they want.

Shaan Puri

so they can lie

Sam Parr

to you

Shaan Puri

you can't lie to them

Sam Parr

They can lie to you. Correct? An officer is allowed to lie. Like when you're getting booked, they can 100% lie to you.

Shaan Puri

rough it's a rough world out

Sam Parr

there alright I don't

Shaan Puri

That's the pod. Alright, that's the pod.