From College Dropout To 40 Million Dollars At Age 23

Shaan Puri

Can I just read you the menu of shady gaters would you guys be interested in that yeah

Sam Rattner

be very interested

Sam Parr

tell me all the variations of tater tots

Shaan Puri

you mean gator bites

Sam Parr

gator bites

Shaan Puri

ultra tater tots or loaded loaded tots for me

Sam Parr

Alright, we're live. We have Sam Ratner. By the way, Sean, I don't know Sam that well. I think you think that I know him.

Shaan Puri

Well, yeah, because I don't know. I'm like, "How'd this guy get here?" He's here because I already talked to her and talked to him on the phone. We do these pre-calls, and Sam, I gotta say, out of every 10 pre-calls we do with people that we don't know, 8 out of 10 are kind of like, "Hey, probably not a good fit for the pod." She talked to you and she was like, "You gotta have this guy on." So I don't even know what you did, but you did something. You have some kind of story, energy, or ideas that she liked.

Sam Parr

Yeah, basically what I know about you is... by the way, you're like shockingly young. How old are you? 27? 26?

Sam Rattner

yeah I just turned 27

Sam Parr

And what I know about you is that you had this company, which was a sports betting site. You sold it for around **$40 million** to FuboTV, I think before it even launched. But you've also done all these other strange things. Like, I think you bought... did you buy a riverboat casino? Yeah, like you bought a bunch. You're into a lot of really strange things. For such a young person, you've done a lot of odd things. I mean, just the fact that you've done a startup that you sold for a lot of money is already impressive. But even among impressive people, you've done a lot of strange and unique things, right?

Shaan Puri

Alright, so let's start with that. You dropped out of college and started a company that you ended up selling for... can you say how much you sold it for?

Sam Rattner

yeah it was 40,000,000

Shaan Puri

Okay, so you drop out of college, build a company, and sell it for $40,000,000. At that time, you must have been pretty young. How old were you when you sold? 23? Okay, great. So, from 18 to 23, what was the idea and how did you make that happen?

Sam Rattner

so I had gone I was actually at the university of missouri for a year

Sam Parr

nice mizzou

Shaan Puri

so I

Sam Rattner

I was at Mizzou and enjoyed my time there, but it was not for me. I always wanted to start a company. When I dropped out, I didn't really have an exact plan yet, but I did play a lot of online poker. I was very active; I was the kid with 12 monitors playing online poker in the dorm rooms. I knew the community well and started hearing whispers of them legalizing gaming nationally here in the United States, lifting the federal ban, if you would. I thought the market would evolve, and it shouldn't evolve much differently than it does overseas, where it's very much part of the culture. You can bet when you're 18, sometimes even 16. You're betting at the Arsenal game inside the stadium. But here, there was a stigma to it. If grandma says she buys a lottery ticket, you don't think anything of it. But if she says she took the Bears' spread, you're like, "Grandma, what the hell are you doing?" So I thought, if that were the case, I just sat down and essentially wrote out for hours how I thought the market would evolve. My conclusion was that there would be early players like DraftKings and FanDuel, who have audiences in fantasy, but it would really end up being dominated by either the brick-and-mortar casino companies or the media companies, which is now just playing out with ESPN and stuff. To date, all the technology had been built overseas because it's been around for 50 years. But it was built in the early 2000s, where you had these desktop applications to place a bet. Then, to get to mobile, they just compressed it into a mobile experience; they didn't rebuild it. They didn't rebuild it natively for iOS, and it didn't have any good API functionality for ticketing and merchandising and these other things. So I said, "What if I just rebuilt all that?" Then I could call these big companies and say, "Hey, don't white label this garbage from Sweden and pay some huge revenue share. What if we just do a deal?"

Shaan Puri

Can you pause there for a second? So, you're describing what sounds like a pretty sophisticated process here. I heard that there was this inflection, that maybe it was going to get legalized. So, I started thinking ahead of that. Instead of just jumping right in with my two dumb friends and starting to build a product, I wrote down how I thought the market would evolve. Then, I realized that my go-to market strategy would be to kind of undercut these revenue share competitors with a mobile-first product on the platform. Dude, you were like 18 or 19 years old at this time! I couldn't figure out how my night was going to evolve, let alone how a market was going to evolve. Was this your first rodeo? And why were you so good at it at that time?

Sam Rattner

so in high school I ran a snow removal business which

Sam Parr

natural pivot

Sam Rattner

It was a natural pivot, and so I had been, you could call it, in business in a very rudimentary way. We were plowing driveways, but we had hundreds of houses. I kinda knew how to build a business, and when I realized... although I learned a ton, I'm like 15, I'm learning: - What insurance is because some woman slipped on salt - How to finance trucks to get plows So I kinda had this business sense.

Sam Parr

and by the way when you're talking about plowing you're not talking about shoveling you just said financing trucks

Sam Rattner

yeah like the plows you put on the front of trucks

Sam Parr

got it okay

Sam Rattner

yeah and so you so

Shaan Puri

you were sophisticated you're going door to door to get these customers from your snow business how did you

Sam Rattner

Get this: it was me and a good friend of mine, Ilya, who's now David Dobrik's right-hand guy, Ilya Fedorovich. We went to high school together; I went to Vernon Hills, which is where they went. So, Ilya and I built a snow removal business, and we'd be at used car lots negotiating for plows. Essentially, what I learned from that...

Shaan Puri

how much were you making back then 15 16 years old

Sam Rattner

I think we did like $50 or $60 for the winter or something like that. The big problem was that I couldn't drive; I only had my permit and didn't have a license. So, we couldn't really get anywhere. There was no Uber, or at least we didn't have debit cards. We would walk to Mundelein, which is the neighboring town, to look at the plows. It was complicated. What I learned from that experience is that you could scale that business and actually do really well from a cash flow perspective. Candidly, most people don't want to be in that business, or they're like 60 years old and have been driving the same truck for the same couple of commercial lots. However, I realized there's no value; it can't scale that well. I was always interested in how big I could make something, and I had that itch to do that. I thought, "Well, if it's easy, there can't be any value in it." If anyone could just get into it, then there's inherently zero long-term value if you want to build a billion-dollar business. When I thought about gambling, I realized it could be big. It would have been very easy to say, "Oh, we're going to have a fantasy site that is slightly different, and you can pay to play, and it also includes NASCAR or something." But to me, all those ideas raised the question: "How does that get to $500 million in revenue?" I didn't see it, and I wasn't interested. So, I knew I had to really sit down and think about how the market would evolve. I literally looked at what pieces of this evolution would be such a headache or capital-intensive that no one would ever want to touch them. Because of that, it should actually end up being slightly less capital-intensive since no one wants to do it, and then you have value. That was my thought, essentially.

Hubspot

Our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot? See, most CRMs are a cobbled-together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. "I think I love our new CRM. Our software is the best!" HubSpot: Grow better. And when you dropped out, was that an easy decision for you to go do this gambling company? Was it hard? And basically, how did you live? Because I always wonder this when people drop out of college. You're kind of... college is a very... it's a bubble that's like...

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

Here's your bed, here's the bathroom, here's the library. You know, this is your place. And then when you're out of the system, you're neither at home nor are you in school. So, what was the drama?

Sam Rattner

It was definitely my parents who were not thrilled, as you can imagine. When you go home, it's like when you grow up, you're their son, and they love you. Then, when you turn 18, you're like that guy in the house. They're like, "What are you still doing here?" So, I went home and lived with my mom. Although, essentially, I went to Starbucks every morning and worked from whenever they opened, around 5 or 6 AM, until they closed at 7. Then, I would go to Lifetime Fitness. There were no yoga classes after 8, so I would work in the yoga studio upstairs at Lifetime. They had free coffee and all that stuff, so I kind of had an office there. It got to the point where I started leaving my stuff set up in the corner. I think a lot of the instructors thought, "Oh, that's someone else's class," but it was just my laptop, monitor, and computer. I worked out at Lifetime for about a year, I think. It was cheap because, you know, at Lifetime, I was under 28, so I was paying the reduced rate. I would just kind of work all day, so I lived at my mom's.

Shaan Puri

how'd you fund how'd you fund the company at that stage

Sam Rattner

come on sean credit cards baby I essentially what

Shaan Puri

happened to that snowplow money

Sam Rattner

Oh yeah, we had some cash from that. But essentially, I knew I needed... you literally have two options. If you don't have tons and tons of cash saved, you can either work a part-time job or focus entirely on your business. I was unwilling to do anything but spend every waking moment on the business, so I didn't want to do that. I kind of just went and opened credit cards. I've always been a "zero backup plan" guy. I purposely failed every final before dropping out, so going back was not an option. I'd be going back at like 23 years old as a freshman. So, I'm always a "put it all on the line and you will figure it out" kind of guy.

Shaan Puri

purposely failed your finals

Sam Parr

yeah that's that's what I that's what I say too

Sam Rattner

So, I came home when I dropped out. You know when you come home a little early and it's like you're surprising your parents? I came home early enough where it was kind of too early for them to believe that I had finished finals. That essentially meant I didn't show up to the finals, and I got zeros on all the finals. So, going back was now out of the question, which removed the debate with my parents because they kind of said, "Well, he can't really go back."

Sam Parr

Did you end up selling the company? I was looking at the site on the Wayback Machine. Did you sell the company before it even launched?

Sam Rattner

yeah

Sam Parr

in like 18 months but is that right

Sam Rattner

yeah yeah about

Sam Parr

Alright, so who contacted you? How did we even know that you were up for grabs?

Sam Rattner

So, what we had was essentially every component to a gambling platform that you could want. We were an authorized gaming operator of the NBA and Major League Baseball. I just willed my way into convincing the leagues to do a deal with me. Candidly, I think they thought I was kind of crazy and kind of cool. They're not used to cool and crazy; they're used to like Disney. So, they were like, "Okay, we'll do the deal with you." So, it was like these... we'll explain that because...

Shaan Puri

I would think if a 19-year-old is like, "Yeah, I'm gonna go become an authorized gaming operator for the NBA," I'd be like, "Yeah, it's not really gonna happen, man."

Sam Rattner

so what's your

Shaan Puri

what's your other plan

Sam Rattner

so

Shaan Puri

how did you do that

Sam Parr

yeah they they offer you an internship instead

Sam Rattner

yeah we had a couple things we at that time we did raise a little bit of capital and it was from some venture funds in sports media and entertainment that the leagues knew very well so they were like okay this kid called us 6 months ago he sounds kinda crazy but now it seems like there's this article out the people that invested in them 76 capital also invested in a bunch of other companies we have deals with so there's some significance there we also they were very familiar with our lawyers because our lawyers represent espn and a lot of other people so you kinda just have to put the pieces in place that kinda give them some gut feel to they're not he's not just crazy he's crazy and he has some people that we know and so at the time it was like draftkings fanduel mgm barstool and then like us and and the league was also like a little careful like can we like we'll do this with you just don't tell anyone right now and we don't really wanna put out an article but we kinda wanna do the deal we think the platform's cool so we kinda had all these assets we were an authorized gaming operator of those leagues we had market access which I can get into which is the licenses we were through compliance and mostly all legal states now back then it was 17 states or so now it's 35 + I think and at the time if you wanted to be in the gaming business you have to go through regulatory compliance most public boards of directors have no interest in going through a regulatory process they have to disclose their financials and all these things so and they also didn't know the business enough you know you can be a big public company but if you wanna have a book in jersey you have to go down to atlantic city and sit in an old room with regulators and lawyers and convince them as to why they should give you the license and so it was just like this old school process that they were unwilling to go through and we kinda spent the money and went through the pain of building the platform getting it through compliance getting the licenses getting the deals and we knew that what we really wanted was an existing audience in sports even if we went and raised a $100,000,000 I think draftkings at the time spent a $100,000,000 on corporate travel a year so a $100,000,000 wasn't gonna move the needle for us to go to market without any users so we started talking about a joint venture with a handful of companies and at the time fubotv had just gone public they put out a proxy they wanted to be in the gaming business and my phone rang and it was fubotv and they wanted to talk about a deal so

Sam Parr

Which, and so they... yeah, they bought you for, I think I read the SEC filings, like just about close to $40,000,000. What did you do with the money?

Sam Rattner

I have it what do you mean

Shaan Puri

well I

Sam Parr

That's a lot of money for anyone to get, particularly for a 23 or 24-year-old. What did you invest in?

Sam Rattner

I'm mostly in the market, and then I have these small, random, crazy investments that I feel really good about. But I'm mostly in the market; I'm pretty long. Here's why I'm long in the market: If I want to do other things with the money, I'll simply take a loan against my portfolio and then take the risk. If you sell the stock now, you have a taxable event. You get less than if you wanted to put $1,000,000 into something. You can either sell $1,000,000 and have some huge taxable event and a headache to deal with regarding paperwork, and then you invest. If it goes to zero, you're screwed. Or, you take a line of credit against your portfolio, say in the index fund like the SPY. If I need a million, I'll take a line of credit, keep $1,200,000 as collateral, and then I get to take my $1,000,000 shot. Anyways, if it doesn't work out, all I have to do is wait. In eight years, I'll have the money back because the stock would have doubled, given that the interest rates are pretty low when you take a loan like that. So, I have most of my money, for the most part, in the market. Yeah, I was down during COVID, like $1,000,000, but if you're never selling, then it just doesn't really matter. If you don't need it, like I kept what I needed in cash, but other than that, I'm pretty much in the market.

Sam Parr

But that's where your story gets kind of interesting. So, selling for that amount of money at the age of 23, pre-launch, that's, you know, 1% of the 1%. That's pretty wild! I read that, you know, when Ari talked to you, and I read in our notes that you bought this riverboat. What the hell is that? That's one of your crazy investments. You also were looking at a vending machine business. This is wild to me that you would do this.

Sam Rattner

Okay, so when you're in the online gaming business, everyone who's in it, for the most part, is like the old Trump gaming people. All the regulators are the same. One time, we got a document and they sent us the wrong copy because my partner Scott Butera's name was on it when he was president of Trump. So they sent us a Trump Entertainment Resorts form. The regulators never change. While the business is techie, you could call it, the industry is not. So everyone you meet has been in this casino business for 50 years. I stumbled into this riverboat because to get a license, unlike a cannabis license where you can just apply as a dispensary, you have to get what's called market access. You are subleasing the licenses from the ones that have them, and the only people that have them are the brick-and-mortar properties. It's kind of like if you wanted a grocery store; imagine if you had to sublease from Whole Foods, like a license that they have for entry. The reason that's the case is because we took land from Native Americans and allowed them to have casinos on reservation property. Then, all of a sudden, in 2018, the government goes, "We'll just legalize online gambling." Well, then they were like, "No one's going to come to our properties anymore because they can just log on to DraftKings, and you just screwed us. So you should give us the license, and then we'll sublease it to them." So they did that, and then MGM, Caesars, and everyone went crazy because they're like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! We're the biggest tax revenue drivers in the country besides oil. So if the tribes are getting them, then we get them." Fast forward, everyone got them. Riverboats counted as properties, brick-and-mortar properties. Before land-based gaming in the early nineties, everything was on the water because it was illegal. It started in the early forties and fifties because all the trade happened up and down the Mississippi, candidly mostly through St. Louis. People would just, like truckers, pull over on the highway. People would pull over their vessels and they'd have makeshift card games on a barge. And then all of a sudden, it...

Sam Parr

I don't think that a guy like Sean doesn't know this, but I grew up in St. Louis. So when you say you're going to the casino, we actually wouldn't use the word "casino." We would say, "Let's go to the boat."

Sam Rattner

the boat

Sam Parr

and all the all they're not some of them actually are like boats

Sam Rattner

yes

Sam Parr

But a lot of them are just like properties that are somehow floating. Technically, they're floating, but they're not really a boat. It's like the boat is this massive parking lot, and then they built a building on top of it. When I was younger, we would say, "Let's go to the boat."

Sam Rattner

it's essentially a structure built on a barge is really what it is but there's no engine room it's just floating there it's like building a house and then shoving it out into the water and tying it and you meet the state standard yeah so I was talking with a buddy after I leave fubo and he was showing me this picture of his grandfather in atlantic city and in the background are these riverboats and he said you know what happens to these things when they're done with them and I was like what do you mean he goes well like where do they go and I was like I don't know like I have no idea and and so I hang up with him I'm like where do they go it's kinda interesting I'm unemployed I don't have much to do so I emailed the general counsel of a casino company that we had done a license deal with at fubo to get the license in iowa and they were a riverboat property and I went to it a couple of times we had to go set stuff up and I called the general counsel I said hey bill I have a question for you your boat's really old I heard you guys were thinking about building a property on the land what are you gonna do with this cruise ship you have sitting in front of the property when you're done with it and he goes well you know when you couldn't build brick and mortar properties there was a market for them you know they'd sell because they were just operating casinos like any other property but he goes now no one wants them so they kind of just end up in junkyards and I was like you're gotta be kidding me he's like no these things are unbelievable I go you'd scrap them and he goes probably who would ever buy them and he just bought they had just bought 2 casinos in baton rouge that were both on vessels but operating still which they do in like places like baton rouge or kansas city and stuff and I said are there any near because I'm in chicago he's in iowa I go are there any near us and he goes sam are there any boats near us I wouldn't have bought them in baton rouge louisiana and then like almost like a movie I'm hanging up the phone and I hear like hey sam sam sam sam and I'm like bill what's up and he said we don't know where it is but we think somebody somewhere in iowa has the catfish and he was talking about catfish bend riverboat casino and I said what do you mean someone has he goes well they built a property like 20 years ago and no one knows where the boat went I'm unemployed I'm kind of like into this kind of stuff I have nothing to do and I was like okay I have somewhere to be at like noon it's like 10 o'clock I'm I'm gonna give myself an hour and a half or two and try and find this boat just for the pure fun and if not I'll never think about this again and we'll call it a day and so first I called every junkyard in the tristate area in chicago and iowa I'd call there was this place I remember in like des moines or somewhere and I and this guy answered I'll never forget this and I said hey quick question who's the oldest guy at the junkyard who's been there the longest and they were like on speaker and they're all yelling like oh it's ricky everyone grab ricky go get ricky go get and this ricky guy gets on the phone and this was like I've been on the phone for an hour with junkyards and ricky's like catfish he goes he goes I would never forget if catfish ben came through this junkyard we've never seen it so so I'm like alright ricky so I hang up I talked to 12 rickies this boat has not gone to a junkyard it is not in a and I thought to myself if they brought it down somewhere out of illinois or iowa and it got junked in missouri so be it I can't call every junkyard in america but we're gonna move forward assuming it's still still a thing so I found I remember one time I got a ticket on my uncle's boats in wave runners and chain o' lakes and if you don't pay it it ends up on the fishing and gaming or like the the fishing and hunting ticketing site so I was like alright whoever's goofy enough to buy this thing or have it definitely got like a moving violation or something I mean this thing is a cruise ship it's not like a corolla so I said let's assume they have a ticket and they haven't paid it so I went to the site and I sat there for an hour and I just clicked through hundreds of pages of tickets but you don't even see the pictures of anything it's just the entity name or the person's name and so I'm looking for like a random entity like some kind of sign and on like a 194 page 190 something I see like cffb whatever it is llc it's like an acronym and I kinda go past it and then like I thought to myself I was like catfish bend riverboat casego that kinda fits and I clicked it boom big vessel moving violation $22,000 ticket from the company that bought it at auction and then I read the court filings and essentially catfish ben built a brick and mortar property left the boat to rot kinda like icon left the casino in atlantic city to rot knowing that the city would pay for it to get cleaned up so he didn't have to pay for it they then said alright you have to move it we'll pay for the fees but you have to auction it off and so he auctioned it off in an anonymous auction to a marina construction company in northern iowa who does a lot of work with the army corps of engineers fixing submarines so I thought to myself oh he they probably want it for the engine rooms and stuff but all I had was like an entity name and it was like random and I called a buddy in iowa and I said hey what do you know about this x y z enterprises or whatever and he said what are you buying a boat and now I've been on the phone for 2 hours trying to find this thing I got like phone in the ear I'm like notes from ricky at the junkyard and I was I dropped everything I'm like woah how did you know I was talking about a boat and he said that company he goes they fix everyone's yachts I was like no way so I called like their websites from the nineties then phone numbers floating like at the bottom of the website and I just and I just called and I said hey is I did what I did with the I go who's the oldest person at this company and they put this like 90 year old man on and I said I've got a crazy question for you and I swear to god he cut me off and he said tell me you're looking for the catfish baby and I said do you have it and he was like yeah he goes I have it I've been looking at it every day for 20 years I said wow I said no one knows you have this like why like no one knows where it is and he goes yeah like you know we're quiet like whatever and he said why are you calling me what do you wanna buy it and I think my wife heard in the other room and she looked at me like you are not buying this thing and I kinda smiled I'm like I don't know maybe and he's like well why don't you come see it and I'm like okay so long story short I drew drove you know to northern iowa and it was sitting there in a quarry he had planned to use it for parts became too cost intensive to get the engines out of the engine room and I persuaded myself to buy it

Sam Parr

so but what's the game plan here

Sam Rattner

Yeah, well, okay, so here's the plan. First of all, it's 40... it's three interior stories all connected by elevators. The thing's a full-blown casino vessel. It's 40,000 square feet of some of the most unique real estate ever. When you walk in, you think you just walked into Las Vegas with Elvis Presley. The walls, the floors... when I bought it, all the blackjack tables, all the craps tables. So first, I was like, "Could be a movie set. Could I... I mean, I know the gaming business. Maybe I could open up a casino, or maybe I'll turn it into a restaurant or nightclub or something like that." So I had some loose ideas, but nothing like in place. I bought the thing, had to deal with the Coast Guard, all this stuff, and spent about a year going down the path to open up a casino. Long story short, there aren't many riverboat licenses left in America. So, you know, I was meeting with the chairman of one of the largest gaming companies in Goa, India. He controls Goa, which is like Atlantic City on the western side of India. They have a bunch of vessel casinos. Long story short, it became too cost-intensive to get it there, but he introduced me to a deal in Southeast Asia where we had the deal on the one-yard line. Long story short, some of these countries in Southeast Asia are pretty corrupt, and they made a big ask. My lawyer said, "That ask is not happening. We're not talking about this anymore." So now I'm kind of pivoting back to, you know, partnering with someone to open up a really cool restaurant or entertainment venue and move it down south somewhere like Florida or, you know, Nashville, Cumberland River, or something like that. What?

Sam Parr

did you end up paying for

Sam Rattner

I might wanna tell you that off the pod

Sam Parr

over or under 7 figures can you

Sam Rattner

say that under

Sam Parr

Understood. This seems like a crazy thing to be working on when you are able to build websites for free or with just your time. But you've done... you're kind of interesting in that you can root out these really off-the-wall ideas. Because you did another one with vending machines, didn't you?

Sam Rattner

Didn't end up doing it, but yeah. So, everyone was talking about vending machines all over Twitter. "Vending machines are the next gold." I'm like, okay, what's that?

Sam Parr

Well, we had a guy who, like we were joking about in the last episode, said, "Dude, I'll make it 15." So we talked about, you know, like big ideas—$100 million, $1 billion ideas. Then we had this guy who said, "I'm making $10,000 a month on vending machines." For some reason, that interests everyone because when you're 13 years old, vending machines are one of the things that you're fascinated by. So, yeah, I don't know if we helped to make it popular or if we pounced on it because it was already popular, but we saw that too.

Sam Rattner

there's a chance I heard about it on on the pod I don't even know but all I know is there was like maybe it was a year ago or so there was like this 30 day rush of it was like vending machines were like crypto or the next ai everyone in the world wanted vending machines so I was like alright it seems like a terrible business so why does everyone want this and it's like high cash flow like I get it but similar to atm business you have to go there it's physical you have to replace product I was like that can't be that interesting but like anything else I always go down this path of like before I say no let me do some diligence and I'm on like some one of those sites biz buy sell or one of those type of sites where you can buy a company and there's this rural company in the middle of nowhere like lewiston idaho not even boise like lewiston there's nothing there and it did when I I had looked at 20 companies and they all did about the same margins whatever they were I don't remember now this company did like 3 times the margin I was like why is this company so much better like either they're lying and fidgeting these numbers or something's going on and the broker convinced me to go so I flew into this like remote airport in lewiston idaho and I drive 40 minutes to this like warehouse and we open up and it is just like full blown operation I have pictures I have like so many pictures of they had hundreds and hundreds of vending machines that they didn't even have out there yet that they have stocked they had more inventory you thought they like ran a hospital there was so much inventory and I was like okay this is a bigger business than the numbers I saw and so I said there's no way that the numbers I read is this business and he goes yeah they own 5 regions and we listed one of them but if it was the right person we'd probably sell them off and I said okay and I was trying to ask a bunch of questions and he kept just saying like you just have to go out with god I'm spacing on his name roger or some whoever owned it you just have to go out with him and you'll know why everyone loves vending machines I said okay so I spend all day in idaho in the pouring rain and we drive around lewiston idaho and I realized there's no grocery stores there's no convenience stores there's no foxtrot coffee they rely on vending machines it's fedex distribution centers it's like this is where they do build all the turbines that go on the propellers for the fields it's like it's like you know the workers part of america and everyone's lunch break they just go to the vending machines and warehouse will have 50 of them snacks cold food hot food everything they eat is out of vending machines so I said oh like every meal of the working day is coming out of a vending machine and so then when I dug into how the business works usually you're buying a contract from coke or pepsi and you're you're obligated to sell their product they give it to you for a rate and you have to use their machine well those are on like 5 or 10 year deals so then during diligence I asked them to give me all of the contracts with pepsi and coke because what I knew is that this local library or this local warehouse they don't want to have to deal with getting new machines they don't want to deal with that and so it'd be disruptive to the business so I realized that all of his contracts with coke and pepsi were expiring soon and I was like well the only reason the margins aren't absolute insanity is because I have to pay a dollar 20 for fritos and I can only sell them for $2 but what if I got an alternative to fritos and and bought it for 4¢ and then and then sold it for 2 and now the margins are insane and so I looked into like the legality of like like do I need to renew with coke or pepsi and the answer was no I need to get new machines but there's companies that'll finance them so I was like what if I just buy this company wait for all the contracts to expire renew none of them and then go in without coke or pepsi now you have a little bit of a distribution headache because they'll bring them to lewiston idaho but lewiston idaho there's all these like discount stores to buy product at so it could work and near the end of diligence I had just kinda had the idea to start my next company and I came to the conclusion of I don't wanna end up having to move to lewiston idaho because I bought a vending business and I need to save it and so while I think it's an unbelievable opportunity I chose not not to do it

Shaan Puri

how big do you think that could have been

Sam Rattner

it was 5,000 machines

Shaan Puri

yeah but in dollars what what

Sam Rattner

do you think

Shaan Puri

it would have done annually

Sam Rattner

I probably would have made, like, I don't know, $1,000,002 a year... $1,003 a year. But it would have... I'd have to run it. I felt like I was gonna have to run it for 2 years, or maybe a year and then hire someone. But the other thing is you're dealing with physical stuff. I need to pay drivers to go to the things, I need to have inventory. So everything had to be in Lewiston, and I'm like, "What am I gonna move to rural Idaho?" So...

Sam Parr

if if that business is doing a 1,000,000 a year in cash flow what what's it sell for

Sam Rattner

I think they wanted 4,000,000 for the business 5,000,000

Sam Parr

so 4 times cash or ebitda or however they measure it so I

Sam Rattner

I went to a bank and they wrote up a loan. I was going to finance it, and then I was like, "Wait, what if I end up having to move to Idaho? This is a problem."

Sam Parr

So, your due diligence on these things... The reason you're fascinating is your due diligence on these things is pretty in-depth. Like most people, myself sometimes included, I will end with just a few Google searches and it kind of ends there. You're... I mean, multiple times you're flying to places and meeting new people.

Sam Rattner

Yeah, I mean, I do a lot of times within 5 minutes. I think we all, on the back of a napkin, know if a deal makes sense. But I usually try and figure out how everyone else thinks there's a way to make this business marginally better by consolidating and rolling them up. However, how do you make it 5 times better? If there's no answer, I'm not interested because then I wouldn't do the deal. So, I only try and figure out how could you make this 5 times better when everyone tries to make it 10% better. My thought was, when I looked at the line item, the biggest line item—90% of it—was the cost of goods from Coke and Pepsi. I thought, "How can I just not sell that?" I can buy a store brand Twinkie wholesale for 10 times less than I have to buy a Twinkie for. So, I just read all the contracts and then I would call people. I'd call lawyers that I knew were in the vending business and I said, "Do I have to renew? Here's the language." It's kind of like... and they said, "There's always this thought from Coke or Pepsi of like, you don't really have to, but they give you the product. They distribute it. It's names that people know, brands that people know." But I thought, in my opinion, people's willingness to buy Fritos wasn't that much higher than a name brand because they have no alternative. Right? So, that was what I thought. They're at the job. Honestly, I could also lower the prices and those people would have been thrilled. I talked to them. I'd go in and I'd be like, "Hey, is it cool if I talk to your employees real quick?" I was at a distribution center and the guy's like, "Sure, just like don't take my vending machines." That's all I was like, "Okay." Then I'd go up and I'd be like, "Hey, do any of you guys care if it wasn't Fritos anymore?" The guy said, "Well, would it be 50 cents less?" I said, "Sure." They go, "I don't care what it is. Fritos are Fritos." I was like, "Interesting." So, that's where I think the value in vending is. If you're not just trying to build some big cap... I just wouldn't buy a vending router, an ATM router, or anything like that just to try to improve it because I'm a better operator. I think people think they're like, "You can be the best operator in the world," but the business is the business. So, that's kind of how I look at those things.

Shaan Puri

Well, I love that you go down these random rabbit holes. So, riverboat gambling, vending machines... I'm sure you've done more than we've just talked about in terms of thinking about ideas. You seem like you're one of us; you have that switch you can't turn off. Regardless of what you're doing, you're always going to be thinking of ideas or you're going to hear something that makes you curious and interested. You say, "Well, maybe not for me, but for somebody that would be actually pretty interesting." Do you have a couple of ideas you could share that maybe somebody in the audience might get inspired by? What are the other ideas, the silver medal ideas? Things that you're not necessarily doing or you're just willing to share?

Sam Rattner

There was another business that would actually be, in my opinion, a lot easier than the vending business. In Idaho, I was there about two summers ago. A lot of my friends, you know, they went to Mizzou, so we would go to Lake of the Ozarks in the summer for the 4th of July or something like that.

Sam Parr

The **Redneck Riviera**, baby! Home of the... home of the wet t-shirt contest and lost GoPros at the bottom of 40 feet of water.

Sam Rattner

That's actually a good business, Sean. If you want to hire divers, there's probably **$1,000,000** worth of GoPros at the bottom of Lake of the Ozarks. So, I'm at Lake of the Ozarks, and I hadn't been there since I left college, so it's been a couple of years. We needed to get from our Airbnb to a place called **Shady Gators**. I'm sure Sam knows this place. If you looked it up on Google, Sean, I think you would tell me you're not going. It's like classic spring break. It says "college spring break, bikini wet t-shirt contest" as it gets. Unfortunately, the bridge at Lake of the Ozarks is on the far side from where our Airbnb was, and the only way to get there is to drive all the way around the lake. Well, that's like a **50-minute Uber**. Instead of that, they have water taxis, and I didn't even know about this. My buddy said, "Yeah, just call a dispatcher; they'll send a water taxi." I was like, "What am I, in Venice?" So, we called this guy, and like **7 seconds** later, he pulls up to our Airbnb in the water. We just get on, and all my buddies were drinking. We're on our way there, and all I can think about is how much this guy is making right now. I said to my buddy, "How much are we paying him?" I whispered, and he's like, "It's **$250**; we split it between the five of us." I go, "I'm sorry, this is like a **3-minute ride**, 3 minutes tops!" And he just goes around. So, I couldn't help myself. I asked him, "Hey, do you own this thing?" You could tell he was driving it, but he did own it. He didn't want people to realize that the owner was driving; he wanted it to feel like it was a company. He had the brand on the boat and all this stuff, and he was like, "Yeah."

Shaan Puri

like he

Sam Parr

was like we own it

Sam Rattner

Yeah, he said, "We... he said, 'We...'" and so all my buddies are getting off and they're running in the shady gators. I am just locked on this guy. I go, "Hold on a second, hold on a second."

Shaan Puri

I was like it's $250

Sam Rattner

It took 90 seconds to get us here. He's like, "Yeah, it's seasonal because it gets cold here in the winter." But he's like, "We spew cash all spring and summer." I said, "What does 'spew cash' mean exactly?" He said, "Well, I have three boats. All I do is have a dispatcher. She sits behind a monitor and has a live feed because they put a drone up there with some things so she can see where all the boats are. She has the GPS, and when people call, she can see their IP address because when you call into the dispatcher, it's like some platform that shows you where people are on the lake. Then she'll load it into their system on the boat to go where to go next." A lot of these boats have GPS, so you just click 'accept' just like you do on Uber, and they drive around. I said to him, "Would you ever raise capital for this business? Do you need more? Are there more people than you can get?" He said, "By tenfold."

Sam Parr

well how much does he make him

Sam Rattner

Oh, like, every boat made him about $400 a summer. He had three of them, so he was doing like $1,200. Yeah, and he's from, you know, he built this from nothing. He started with one boat and used the money to buy another boat. But he doesn't know how to... like, he didn't... he would wait too long because he didn't know you could just finance a boat. He would just wait until he could pay $90 cash for a speedboat. It's like, you can just put down $9 like a car and you'd have ten tomorrow. So, but he didn't know how to do any of these things. I said, "If you had money and you had 20 boats, would it be too many boats?" And now they're sitting around. He goes, "I could probably fill ten boats as much as I fill these three, but I don't want to spend the cash. I kind of use it to, you know, I bought a house, we built a lake house, like all this stuff." And so then I was like, "Okay."

Sam Parr

that's that that's that precious mountain dew money maybe

Sam Rattner

so then I'm like okay what if I this is also post buying the riverboat before my next company so I'm still in like the vending mode of like can I blow up a business like this and so I called them because we were talking about maybe I would invest in the company and I said hey connor I changed my mind would you sell me this business he was like sell you this business I was like yeah because I never thought about that like I don't know what it's worth or anything and my thought process was what if I can blow this up to 10 or 15 boats on lake of the ozarks and then go to orange beach alabama and then go and then start going around america and building up the water taxi business baton rouge louisiana you need to get from tiger stadium to you know fred's bar whatever it is and then water is the only vertical that uber doesn't have and lyft doesn't have and then I called people executives I know at those companies and they said it's so difficult it's so regional the weather all this stuff we don't wanna own boats we have to dock them all this stuff but they kinda made a comment like but we'd buy it if it existed but we won't build that so I said okay so now I have a willing buyer of this business so I thought if I could do this he was taking most of the cash for himself I would buy this business I don't need any of the money so I would take all the money and just buy more boats until I've maximized lake of the ozarks and then I would go you know lake town by lake town and a lot of liability a lot of logistical things definitely think it's worth doing but it didn't I ran all the numbers I tried to estimate forecast out what I thought this business could do and I just I had decided when I left fubo that the next thing I was gonna do I had no interest in if it couldn't be worth at least $1,000,000,000 in 5 years and I thought if it could be it was the absolute ceiling and then you'd have to execute perfectly and hope there's no legal issues and weather and damage and like all this it's a very physical business so I chose not to do it but I think it's a big opportunity and I think we'll see uber buy some water taxi company in like 2028 I think we'll see that

Shaan Puri

can I just read you the menu of shady gaters would you guys be interested in that

Sam Rattner

yeah be very interested tell me

Sam Parr

all the variations of tater tots

Shaan Puri

You mean gator bites? Gator bites, ultimate tater tots, or loaded tots? For me, I'm going to start with the shrimp. As for my friend Sam, he wants the Brazilian sizzle. Those are the happy tonight. I mean, this place looks phenomenal! This place looks like... I think you're focused on the boats you needed to buy. Shady Gators is an institution. You know, like when rich people go buy something like the Washington Post? This could have been your Washington Post! You know, you could have bought Shady Gators and said, "I will protect this national treasure."

Sam Rattner

shady gators will cash flow for 100 of years to come

Shaan Puri

as long as there's boobs and there's white shirts this place will stay upright

Sam Parr

We have to take Sean... Has Sean ever been to some of these places? We gotta take him on a tour to Flora-Bama down in... Yeah, there's this restaurant, Sean. It's called Flora-Bama. They even made a TV show about it. It was like the... yeah.

Shaan Puri

I've seen that. So, I've seen these all through the TV safely while I'm, you know, under a blanket.

Sam Parr

Years... that's where I spent spring break. Floribama is right at the Alabama-Florida line. There's literally a line in the ground, and this restaurant is half on each side. It's where you go for just pure debauchery when you are 21 years old or 19 with a fake ID. These places are wild. You have to experience a good four-band.

Shaan Puri

I had

Sam Rattner

A buddy from New York, who I bought the vessel with, flew into a private airport because he had to see this thing. It's in rural Iowa. We were like running out of gas on the highway, and he was flipping out. He kept saying, "We have to pull over! We have to pull over!" I was like, "We're good, man. There's a gas station in 8 miles, and we have a reserve tank. Don't worry about it." He's used to New York Ubers and just getting Uber Blacks. Being in the middle of nowhere Iowa, he was panicking. He was taking pictures of gas stations, thinking they were like, you know, monuments.

Shaan Puri

it's like a safari for him

Sam Parr

yeah yeah yeah yeah this is where people get

Sam Rattner

gas fired yeah

Shaan Puri

so so you know what I wish and I kinda wish there was a well in general I'll say this you're like we have the segment on this pod called the blue collar side hustle you're like the walking blue collar side hustle right like all of these ideas you're talking about are so middle america I love it and they're so just you know hustle and ingenuity that I love it and you're finding really interesting opportunities that are off the beaten path right it's like you wanna do things that the 99 like if you if you say alright I'm not the smartest guy there is maybe I'm in the I'm in the top 20% of iq what you want is within that top 20% you wanna then go look in places where 99% of them don't look because now you're you know you're you're operating in a field of your own and it seems like that's what you're doing I kinda wish this existed nationwide because what what you're finding is you're finding a bunch of opportunities that you know how you would execute them but now they're no longer worth your time or the the the schlep that you would have to eat to do it you were willing to do it with your first business but now on your 3rd business you're not as willing to do that you know t peter thiel did this thing called the thiel fellowship where he was like I'm gonna pay kids to drop out of college if they're exceptional they might create big things and out of that came you know figma and ethereum and some of the like kind of breakthrough multibillion dollar tech companies I kinda feel like there should be a blue collar teal fellowship where we just go and we we we post a flyer in a bunch of campuses that just says sick of this shit drop out and make millions and let's just see who shows up and it's gonna be the person who's like this is probably bullshit but like I'm down what else am I gonna do go to organic chemistry right now like I I gotta see what's here there's gonna be like 8 people at the seminar and of the 8 you know 5 will leave halfway through because they think it's a time share presentation and out of the 3 remaining there'll be one person who's like oh you're telling me that you'll help me go find a business within a mile and a half of this campus right now that if I just like focus for 3 years can make me $9,000,000 alright I'm in I'm I'm sitting in I already go to you know boise state or I already you know like at where I went to school at duke there was this one bar it was our version of shady gators called shooters

Sam Parr

yep

Shaan Puri

And if anybody went and bought Shooters, it's like, guess what, sir? You now have a monopoly on the nightlife scene of Durham.

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

And every single student will come there, and like, this place just hasn't changed. Look, if the mechanical bull just took Apple Pay, your revenue would go up 10%. There are just a bunch of easy wins that can be had by thinking about things slightly differently. The example I would give of shooters would be: during the day, this needs to be essentially like a yoga studio, and at night, it's going to become the nightclub. Now you're going to go from, you know, 10% usage to maybe 45% usage. That will be a big change. That's how you do your 5x. I feel like that needs to exist. We need to find the Sam Ratners that are out there right now in every college. They just need a little bit of inspiration, a little bit of ideas, and a little bit of mentorship in order to...

Sam Rattner

Do it. The problem with the businesses I've found is that if the value is in the fact that it's remotely located, well then it's difficult. Because other than finding another Lewiston, Idaho, that already has an operating business and has those dynamics of the town, you can't scale it out of Lewiston. But the reason I love the water taxi thing is because there are 10 or 12 great lake towns in America. So I liked that a little bit better. However, my concern was when I really forecasted it out, it would be a big win, but it would take 5 to 7 years. I was like, "Nope, just not willing." I just couldn't. So that's always a problem. But for someone who has... I don't want to say it... for someone who is purely wanting to execute and wants to retire with $20, $30, or $40 million, I think that's a great play.

Shaan Puri

Well, for a lot of people, that's not necessarily where you have to retire. But it's like when you're at $0, $7,000,000 sounds like all the dollars. Then, once you have $7,000,000 and you're now 24, and your friends are still paying off student debt, you're sitting there thinking, "I learned so much and I have financial freedom. I could do whatever I want." They can do the thing you did and go chase down this riverbed for, you know, 9 months, where other people wouldn't think to go do that, right? So, it's a gateway drug into doing, you know, more and more interesting things.

Sam Parr

What were the other investments you said you made? Two investments that were awesome. I assume one of them was the boat.

Sam Rattner

Yeah, I've invested, not a lot because I'm really focused on what I'm doing, but I have made some private investments into startups. I try to be as helpful with them as I can.

Sam Parr

You said that you want to start something that can get to a billion, I assume you meant exit value, in 5 years. You have a new company now. Is that the one that you think is going to do it?

Sam Rattner

so showroom so when I was at fubotv when I left we were doing about a $1,000,000,000 a year in revenue don't quote me at the apollo we can find the numbers I think about 700,000,000 was the monthly subscriptions to fubotv so 59.99 if you buy redzone you're probably near a $100 whatever it was and then 300,000,000 give or take was the advertising which is when you scale a streaming business it's the whole business so I thought to myself why are these companies coming to fubotv we're big but we're not massive so there's gotta be a play here that they think there's value here and what I realized is traditional cable nationwide too expensive disney + espn + and hulu all owned by disney kind of are at a scale where pricing is probably similar to being national and we were small enough that if you wanted 6 zip codes in nashville we'd give it to you and so what clearly the sentiment was from these companies was that it's very hard to get in front of consumers Google shopping while is okay for a user is unusable for a merchant because no one's outbidding calvin klein for the word underwear or black denim jacket it's become way too corporate I think like 80% or maybe 70% of the brands that buy keywords for e for fashion footwear on Google shopping I think in their last report I think it was like one of like a few 100 brands and there's tens of thousands of brands so most of them aren't on there and I was in a meeting once with the former c cmo of like a direct to consumer cowboy boot brand and she made this interesting comment in a meeting and she was like yeah we waste like 50¢ of every dollar we spend on Google and I was like woah woah woah hold on a second excuse me like stop the meeting I go that's the craziest thing I've ever heard I go why is that and she said because we pay about $4 to own the word cowboy boots and half the time someone looks up cowboy boots it's a 3rd grader looking up cowboy boots for their 3rd grade presentation they need a photo to like cut out and put on their poster they had no intent of buying $700 boots so we waste 50¢ of every dollar and I was like woah woah woah and she said and this is the first time I heard this concept she said that's why vertical search is so great I said what do you mean and she had been an executive she was a c or I don't know if she's a cmo but very senior at cars.com and she said people look up toyota on Google for all kinds of reasons photos videos they might be looking at toyota's stock price but if they look up at toyota on cars.com they're a buyer or they're a seller there's high intent you're not just browsing around cars.com so I said that's interesting so then I was like okay so those are really google's competitors is all these vertical places to find what you wanna find that it has a better experience and more tailored than just traditional search so I essentially do what I always try to do like in the vending business I called the lawyers who know the pepsi contracts I called as many engineers on the Google shopping team as I could get to agree to talk to me and the sentiment was they said sam we want Google flights to be a really great experience for Google users but not at the detriment of stepping on the toes of our large largest advertisers expedia kayak they want them to pay and they want them to battle it out they don't think it's not a good business to be in they would just rather them battle it out and battle it out means pay Google to be there and my conclusion was okay could this be done better now and I was very anti crypto still am don't like crypto at all never never owned it and so when all this ai started coming out I had this initial sentiment of like this is crypto again I don't believe in this I have changed my mind on that and when I realized I was like if I showed you 2 black t shirts and one's from lululemon and one's from gap if we remove the brand names the product descriptions the actual copy is shockingly similar it's just describing a black t shirt it's really inherent in the sentiment of the brand as to what that shirt is for lulu's shirt is for one thing gap shirt could be an undershirt and so your inability to have like an ongoing conversation with a language model that knows every brand and product in the world would be very limiting and you'd end up with Google shopping so what we've done is we've built this huge infrastructure we have thousands and thousands of merchants tens of millions of skus that kind of organically come into this dataset we've trained a language model to understand nothing besides what's in that dataset and then that can communicate to a user so they can have an ongoing conversation with essentially think about like not just neiman marcus or not just macy's or not just a retailer who picked a couple 100 brands to carry but you can essentially communicate back and forth with an inventory of every brand in the world and the reason why shopping's always had these big opportunities is because everything else has been dominated by amazon or alibaba and they have their market share in the like cheap fast fashion sector but gucci is not on amazon burberry is not on amazon every brand at neiman marcus tacovas away luggage these companies like they might people might sell nike products on amazon nike is not on amazon so that's why companies like shoprunner had come along where they're like we're gonna be the amazon prime for everything amazon doesn't have and they scaled and sold to fedex for 100 of 1,000,000 the founders on our board at showroom so there's always been these opportunities in fashion for product discovery and I actually think prior to language models this is this is absolutely a business that would have been very very hard to build because you lack that brand sentiment and so that's essentially what we've built we're launching the beta here shortly we have thousands of people on the waiting waiting list we're really excited we have revenue share deals with every single merchant in the platform those revenue share deals fluctuate you know between 5 20% just depending on the brand you know nike pays you you know a?

Sam Rattner

Probably, but you know, a direct-to-consumer brand is paying for growth. They'll pay you a 15% revenue share all day.

Sam Parr

You're kind of doing what you did before with the betting site. You're like, "Well, the consumers want this," and I don't know if I can differentiate that. So you went to the brand side. You know, if a marketplace has two sides, you went to the brand side. You're sort of doing that with this, where you're thinking, "Well, what's the problem for advertisers?" But it seems like with these consumer products, the hardest part is getting the consumers. Once you have them, oftentimes you can figure out—well, I don't know if "oftentimes" is the right word, but some of the times you can figure out how to monetize a huge audience. Are you scared that you're not going to be able to figure out how to get the actual users there?

Sam Rattner

Because I think inherent in the platform is the transaction. So then there are transaction fees that merchants pay and revenue shares. If you're a consumer platform for entertainment, social entertainment has become a little bit of a commodity. That's why Netflix does these originals. But everyone else, like Fubo, Hulu, ESPN, and Disney, we all just had ESPN and TNT, and everyone has the same stuff. If you're social, you have to increase engagement. But if you are something where there are transactions, well now inherent in the experience is transacting, and that's where you can really make money. So that's why I think companies like the social ones that get a big audience and then go social, I think is a huge mistake. Like Pinterest, they had a big audience and then they went social, not commerce. To me, it's like, well, no one minds paying fees or having hidden fees on things that they were already buying. People might complain about fees on Airbnb, but they were already booking something. So I think the value is, can you build a big consumer business where inherent in the journey is a transaction, and your product is a hundred times better shopping experience than what they had before? So I always just lean on focusing on the consumer. Forget everything else. If the consumer wants it, everything else is noise. You can push it through, and consumers will want the product.

Shaan Puri

I want to ask you about the way your brain works because I find you very interesting. We always ask everybody before they come on, "What are some of your strong opinions or life philosophies that you live by?" You gave us a couple, but I want you to explain them. So, number one: **never pitch twice**.

Sam Rattner

okay

Shaan Puri

what is that

Sam Rattner

so every investor I've ever had the moment I pitched them and walked out of the room called me 12 times showed up at my door in chicago and said I want in this round same thing with employees everyone I've ever you know I'm always recruiting anyone who's ever wanted to join the company the moment they wanted to join the company they wanted to drop everything they were doing to join the company in my opinion raising capital is an informative process not a persuasive one within 5 minutes of us getting on the call today I think we all we had some preconceived notions of what we thought of each other and then within 5 minutes I'd say you'd have a 90% cemented view of what you think of the person and so when I'm pitching I'm going in and I'm giving them my full attention but I'm informing them of what we're building and what we're doing and it's one thing if they have legitimate diligence questions as follow ups or whatever but I never asked twice because I know that everyone who's ever really wanted to do it didn't need to be asked twice they loved it and so I would rather just move on to the next one and in my opinion you give them the information they've formed their opinions if you're ever trying to persuade them you're on the wrong side of the table from a negotiation standpoint anyways and so I just don't pitch twice I try to be as cognizant if I can that you always wanna be respectful of like venture associates at the fund because sometimes by pure volume if it's like a big fund like a sequoia they their principals can't take every meeting they need some layers that's fine and if they have legit follow on questions I'll get back on more calls and answer emails whatever but I never pitch twice because I know that if I need to kinda sell it again then they didn't want it and that doesn't mean that you can't have luck following up and being ruthless about the follow-up and you there's those stories where you push it through but there's thousands of funds in my opinion capital's pretty cheap if you have a great business you're gonna raise the money and so I kinda just move on to people that are so excited by it that they are willing to get on the phone on christmas because they know this could be a life changing opportunity for them you know so that's kinda how I view pitching

Sam Parr

You've got this other one that is... I don't know if controversial is the right word, but it's one a lot of people wouldn't agree with. You said: > The potential you see in others is not real. It's rarely potential realized. So take everyone at face value for what they are today.

Shaan Puri

well there's one one key line in there is that you said it's a mirror of what you would do if you were

Sam Rattner

in their position not what they're gonna do I have thought about I always have like these I have like a massive massive note list on my phone and I have these concepts and and I have another notepad of concepts that I haven't really figured out a way to explain it the right way I always try to boil down this thought I have to like 2 sentences and recently on twitter I saw someone say this which is the potential I don't know who it was but the potential you see in others is rarely realized it's simply a mirror of what you would do if you were them I have spent a lot of time in my life trying to I don't wanna say change other people but I I think they have such great potential but I always feel like it's like you're dragging a bag of bricks in your backpack to the office it's like they just if they don't want it on their own you just can't change them and what I see in them is really what I would do if I were them but it's not what they wanna do and so I'm not saying you can't put an effort to coach people up and make them great members of the team but that's different than if they wanna be there or not if they don't wanna be there you know if they don't wanna box they're not showing up to the gym and boxing for 12 hours a day to go beat floyd mayweather they don't wanna be there and so if you think they're a great boxer and they show up every day okay you can coach them but I just feel like it's a wasted effort and you should take people for exactly what they are and what do what do those people love doing more than anything as much as I love running businesses and building businesses and doing things like this what do they love as much as I love this and can I get that task to be something in my business because then they're gonna do great but if it's anything other than that they're just better off going to somewhere else where they want that skill set and so I just think that you should pretty quickly know it's like if you're a trainer or you're a coach does the player wanna be there and if they don't wanna be there you can be mad that like they're 6.8 they it's like in high school when your coach goes to the volleyball team they're like peter like stop spiking volleyballs like you could play center you know at duke and they're like hey I like volleyball he just likes volleyball and anytime they've ever gotten that kid to say fine I'll play on the basketball team he doesn't care he doesn't wanna come to practice he's never very good and you just don't realize the potential but his potential while it looked to you if you were 68 on the volleyball team you could be a great basketball player peter doesn't wanna be a great basketball player so it just doesn't work out so that's kinda like my opinion on that that kind of stuff

Shaan Puri

Let's do one more. You have one on here that I'm curious about. It says, "The value is in the duck calls."

Sam Rattner

oh that's a good one

Shaan Puri

and I think that's the perfect one to end on here what does that mean

Sam Rattner

Me and... who's the best man at my wedding? Jonah Roberts. Give him a shout out! Jonah, he's from Memphis.

Shaan Puri

sounded like you almost forgot

Sam Rattner

His name is Jonah, and I definitely didn't remember his name at first. Jonah and I were in Memphis, Tennessee, in his hometown. He wanted to take me to the Bass Pro Shop, which is like the holy grail for outdoor enthusiasts. We're walking around, which feels like hours, and we cannot stop dying laughing. Every single aisle has every product you could ever imagine for hunting, fishing, and home tools. They have everything! Right when we think we've seen every product that anyone's ever made, we stumble around the corner towards the back of the store. There's this big sign that says "Duck Calls," and there's a glass door. We open it, and it feels like there are 100,000 duck calls! They've got metal duck calls, polyester duck calls, stone duck calls, and even duck calls with two heads. They have different colors. It's like this whole economy of duck calls that we didn't even know existed. What I realized is the reason I dig into the vending businesses, riverboats, and water taxis is because the value is in the duck calls. The value is in the things that no one knows about—very odd items that have these niche ecosystems of communities. The people who love duck calls, trust me, they love duck calls! They'll pay $1,000 for a duck call. They don't go hunting for fun; they don't go without them. It's a big thing—they collect them, and it's something I never knew about. So whenever I hear about something that could be really big, and then I hear a bunch of people say, "I've never heard of that," I go on one random brand site in the duck call business. Some random merchant I've never heard of before has 800,000 followers and does $5,000,000 a year. That cements for me that all the value is in the duck calls. It's in the things that people don't know about, or are too complicated to find, or are regional, or are niche. So Jonah and I always kind of say, "The value is in the duck calls."

Sam Parr

I have a feeling, Sam. Well, first of all, are you going to call your shot now for your new business? Are you going to say that in 5 years, it's going to be worth $1,000,000,000? Because I want to look back in 5 years. I think you're good. You clearly have the "F" factor. You've already done amazing things, but something more amazing, I predict, is going to happen with you. I don't know when, but is this going to be the one, you think?

Sam Rattner

I do

Sam Parr

if are you gonna hit your 5 year goal how your year and do it I know

Sam Rattner

Yeah, I would say that would be the goal. I wouldn't work on it every day. I wake up and it's like... every day you own a building, you own a stock, you're choosing to buy it. And every day I choose to work on this, I think more and more that it is definitely going to work. The moment that I think it's going the other way, I will not work on it.

Sam Parr

So, we're going to look back on this December 2, 2028, and we're going to see if you nailed it. But I have a feeling you're going to do something amazing. We appreciate you coming on, man. You're awesome.

Sam Rattner

Thanks for having me! I've been following the podcast since you started in 2019. I used to watch your videos out of the Lifetime Yoga studio.

Shaan Puri

that's amazing awesome thank you for coming on you're you're fun

Sam Parr

alright we appreciate you and that's the pod