How To Buy A D2C Startup For Cheap and Sell It For Millions

D2C Turnarounds, Mehtab Bhogal, Millions - April 4, 2023 (almost 2 years ago) • 01:14:17

This My First Million episode features Shaan Puri and Sam Parr interviewing Mehtab Bhogal, a 29-year-old entrepreneur specializing in distressed D2C brand turnarounds. Mehtab's journey began with ecommerce ventures in his teens, including guitar sales and a men's hair product company, before transitioning into private equity-style investments. The conversation explores Mehtab's unique investment approach, focusing on rapid liquidity rather than long-term equity growth. They also discuss various under-the-radar companies and agency ideas.

Mehtab's Background: Diagnosed with a spinal condition at 17, Mehtab pursued ecommerce, launching successful ventures in guitars, hair products, and guitar pedals, all before his mid-twenties. He then transitioned into investing, focusing on distressed D2C companies.
Investment Strategy: Mehtab prioritizes quick cash extraction, aiming to recoup investments within 2-3 months. His firm, Cartagov, targets operationally intensive businesses with strong moats, often involving US-based manufacturing. They specialize in complex deals others avoid, frequently partnering with senior lenders and disgruntled founders.
Under-the-Radar Companies:
- Josh's Frogs: A profitable, bootstrapped company breeding and selling frogs and their food, demonstrating a strong operational moat.
- Fast Growing Trees: An online tree retailer with significant revenue, highlighting the unexpected success of niche ecommerce businesses.
- Betty's: A children's bedding company with patented designs, showcasing the power of strong intellectual property.
Agency Ideas:
- Mexico-Based Outsourcing: Mehtab suggests focusing on higher-quality talent in Mexico for outsourcing, citing advantages in proximity, cost-effectiveness, and cultural understanding.
- Site Speed Optimization: An agency specializing in improving website load times offers a valuable service for ecommerce businesses.
Weight Watchers Case Study: Mehtab discusses a successful private equity deal involving Oprah Winfrey's 10% stake in Weight Watchers, resulting in substantial returns.

Transcript:

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Shaan Puri	It will go down as one of the best private equity deals ever. Over the 19 years, they put $226,000,000 into Weight Watchers and got $5,370,000,000 out, with $4,700,000,000 of realized profits. Alright, what's up? We are back, and we got another episode. We have a guest here today. Matab is here. He's a friend of mine who most people, I think, probably haven't heard of unless you're in the D2C world or you're on Twitter or you know what's going on in that area. But I want to introduce you because you're somebody who, A, has helped me a bunch with my D2C brand. You know a bunch of tips, tricks, and hacks, and stuff like that. So, I basically have a little scoreboard in my head, and everybody's attributes are there. Yours was like "business hacks" and it was filled up. The other thing is that, I don't know if you listen to the show regularly, but you would send me little nuggets of like, "Oh, you should talk about this," or "You should talk about that." So, I kind of got confidence. I was like, "Oh, I think he's just got his back pocket full of interesting stories that are off the beaten path." So, I kind of like that. Do you listen to the show? First, let's start there.
01:15	Mehtab Bhogal	yeah all the time almost religiously so same I said to shower podcast
01:20	Shaan Puri	Oh, that's perfect! We are the number one rated shower podcast in the country. Actually, millions of men lather to us. So, Sam, I sent him a picture of the Vancouver show where the stadium, or like the theater, was filled up. He goes, "Wow, oh, that's a lot of virgins."
01:41	Sam Parr	and I that's hilarious
01:42	Shaan Puri	that's so true
01:43	Sam Parr	that's a good.
01:44	Mehtab Bhogal	My fiancé listens to the show religiously too. She wouldn't use ChatGPT when I told her about it maybe a month or two ago. You guys mentioned it the other day, and she was sending you screenshots, so you guys caught her using that.
01:55	Sam Parr	Dude, the Dharmesh pod... I think you're referring to the Dharmesh pod. I've been using it all together. After talking to him, I implemented a lot of the stuff that he was talking about. Man, he got me hyped up! Also, what a lot of people don't realize is that Dharmesh's pods always get tons of views on YouTube. Finally, Sean texted Dharmesh in a group chat and was like, "Hey Dharmesh, what are you doing?" He goes, "Oh, nothing really." I go, "Really?" And he goes, "Well, I'm just telling you a few things." He gave this very detailed list of internet marketing—not hacks, but he was like, "Oh, I'm just testing buying ads, like $500 here, just to test this." Then I'm like responding to comments—just the small stuff that you wouldn't expect someone who runs a $20 billion company to be doing. It's very tactical.
02:42	Shaan Puri	We don't even do it with our own podcast. We don't do any of this stuff. People are like, "Oh, the thumbnail, the title." People don't realize we don't see those. We don't approve those. We don't know about those. We're not involved in it. We don't do a lot of this stuff that we probably should, but you know, we can't be bothered to do all that stuff.
03:01	Sam Parr	but he did he did do it
03:02	Shaan Puri	they said they say the devil's in the details and I ain't trying to hang
03:07	Sam Parr	out with him
03:07	Sam Parr	Dude, he's the man. Like, he was like, "Oh, I'm not doing anything." Then he had this really long list, actually.
03:13	Shaan Puri	Meytan, you said this phrase to me the other day. I called you, and you said a phrase that I've stolen and have just been saying all around town. I've been saying it everywhere, even when it's not really appropriate, because I thought it was so funny. Sam, I was talking to him, and I was like, "Oh, you lived in Utah? Why Utah? Aren't you like Canadian? You're Indian, like what's going on here?" And he was like, "Oh yeah, my wife, something something." I asked him something about his wife, and he goes, "Yeah, you know me. I look like I got beat with the ugly stick, but somehow I ended up with an awesome-looking wife." I thought, "It happens, it happens. It's common here." "Beat with the ugly stick" was so funny! I've been using that everywhere.
03:56	Mehtab Bhogal	I use it to refer to my business partner all the time so
03:59	Shaan Puri	oh you take him down with you
04:01	Mehtab Bhogal	oh always yeah he's my go to
04:03	Sam Parr	I don't know I Google him he he's pretty handsome how how how old are you
04:08	Mehtab Bhogal	I'm 20 9 wow
04:10	Sam Parr	I'm looking at interesting because
04:12	Shaan Puri	He does stuff that, like, you say words that most people don't say. So, I pay attention to vocabulary. For example, in the tech world, Sam and I used to live in San Francisco, and you couldn't go outside. You couldn't poke your ear out the window without hearing the word "EBITDA." Nobody says "EBITDA" in San Francisco. Nobody knows about it; nobody talks about it. It's not a thing. But then, when you get into the cash flow business kind of world, that's all you're going to hear. A bunch of different people talking about words that have to do with profits. You hear a bunch of other terms like "dividend recap" and "distressed buyout." He talks about all these things that, frankly, I don't know what they mean, what they do, or how it works. But I know that you come from a little bit different world, so I'm excited because I want to talk about some ideas from your neck of the woods—your part of the business world that I'm less familiar with personally. So, I think I'm going to learn a little bit. Where do you want to start? What topic should we begin with? You sent a document with some things. I want to look at some of these. Let's start with one that we have.
05:15	Sam Parr	Sean, I need a little bit of background here. So, I read your Medium post, and if I understand this correctly, what is the name of your holding company? You guys buy into, or you buy entirely outright, distressed or only okay-performing D2C (direct-to-consumer) brands, and you make them great. Is that the summary?
05:36	Mehtab Bhogal	Yeah, that's the gist of it. We're less of a holding company and more of an independent sponsor, if that makes sense. That just means you do it on a deal-by-deal basis. So, the equity that you're working with might be very different on a deal-by-deal basis.
05:47	Sam Parr	that doesn't make sense I don't understand what's what do you mean when you say sponsored
05:52	Mehtab Bhogal	So it just means that we're the ones making the investment. In one deal, Sean's a co-investor with us, and then in the next deal, only Sam's on the cap table with us.
06:01	Sam Parr	and you run it or you hire ceos or what
06:05	Mehtab Bhogal	it depends on the the portfolio company right now I am day to day with one of our portfolio companies
06:10	Sam Parr	and how many do you have like 7 I think
06:12	Mehtab Bhogal	There are three platform companies, and then there are another eight to ten minority equity and debt positions that we have.
06:18	Sam Parr	and the whole thing is roughly of what size so me and listeners understand
06:24	Mehtab Bhogal	The core platform companies, which I would count as part of the revenue because we own the majority of those companies, is well under 8 figures. It's kind of that mid 8 figure range.
06:33	Shaan Puri	got it is the biggest one the the flowers company
06:37	Mehtab Bhogal	No, that one's slightly smaller than the Succulent Company, but the Flower Company is the one I'm most bullish on. That one's solowoodflowers.com, and that's just because there's a lot of room for margin expansion yet.
06:47	Sam Parr	what's that called
06:48	Shaan Puri	The one you talk about the most. So, let's give... let's give you said three platform companies. So, you said a succulent company.
06:54	Mehtab Bhogal	mhmm
06:55	Shaan Puri	solo wood flowers so it's a like a wood or fake flower company correct
06:59	Mehtab Bhogal	yep made made in our mother or in our son
07:01	Shaan Puri	That, yeah, be exactly. So, made in India, people buy them for like weddings and things like that, right? Because flowers are super, super expensive at weddings. These look really good, but they don't cost as much as fresh flowers or whatever. What's the third, like, majority-owned company?
07:18	Mehtab Bhogal	that one's an apparel company
07:20	Shaan Puri	an apparel company okay
07:21	Mehtab Bhogal	yeah
07:22	Shaan Puri	And so, you own these three. Let's talk, before we go into the details about each of these, I want to know the origin story. You've told me some interesting things, like I think you met your co-founder on Reddit, in a subreddit? Yeah, yeah. So take us back. Go all the way to... I see here something about getting sick at 17. Start there and then tell us the story of how you got to this spot now, when you're 29 years old.
07:47	Mehtab Bhogal	Yeah, so the quick and dirty version is that I was diagnosed with spinal stenosis and degenerative disc disease when I was 17. This meant that, obviously, doing anything physical for work was kind of out of the picture. So, I decided to learn more about e-commerce and entrepreneurship. I just kind of stumbled into it. I started a Facebook page called "Guitar Porn," and this was back when organic reach was awesome. You know, you post something and people would actually see it. Facebook blessed us with so much free organic reach; it was the greatest time ever—almost like TikTok is now, right? Then I transitioned to doing basically guitar runs—like semi-custom guitar runs—with big brands. We would partner with a retailer dealer. This was before brands would work with you directly. We would sell out these preorder runs and take a cut. Eventually, we cut out the retailer and became the retailer ourselves. That got to kind of low seven figures, which was nice because there was no capex; we didn't have to have much cash. It was all preorders. After that, I started a men's hair product company, which is really ironic because I'm sick, so I don't cut my hair and I wear a turban. I did that with one of my best friends, and that also scaled to kind of low seven figures, along with a guitar pedal company that scaled to low seven figures. Then, after that, I decided, you know, these are all fairly small. Like, Tamm's really small for niche guitar pedals. So, I decided to start investing. I realized, hey, you know, no one's gonna come to me just given I...
09:14	Shaan Puri	don't know you weren't even doing guitars you were doing guitar pedals specifically
09:18	Mehtab Bhogal	So, the first company was a guitar retailer—like actual full-blown guitars. Then, the one that was really profitable was guitar pedals, just because the margin was insane. I partnered with a guy who I had met flipping guitars—just trading guitars with. He was a Grammy-nominated guitarist; he plays in a band called Periphery for any metal nerds. So, that went well. Those were both flowing well in terms of business.
09:40	Sam Parr	of cash
09:41	Mehtab Bhogal	they were such small opportunities
09:42	Sam Parr	Were your products any good, or were they... you're just good at the marketing? Because that's my kind of rub with a lot of DTC [Direct-to-Consumer] companies. They have pretty shitty products but slick marketing. What? No...
09:54	Mehtab Bhogal	The products are awesome. I mean, I have like 30,000 or 40,000 posts in guitar forums by the time I was 18, so I really was into guitar. I used to play 6 to 10 hours a day, so I definitely knew what it took to make a good product.
10:06	Sam Parr	So, oh, okay, cool. Yeah, I mean, a lot of these companies, like, I'll see them and think, "Dude, these are crap," or "This is some Alibaba stuff that’s just wrapped up in something a little bit nicer." But it's still pretty bad. There's no R&D that made it a superior product, you know what I'm saying? Especially with a lot of the cosmetic stuff, like lotions and things. I'm like, "I don't know, man, this is kind of crappy."
10:24	Shaan Puri	So, did you go to college? It sounds like you were doing these when you were like 18, 19, 20, or 21. Is that right?
10:30	Mehtab Bhogal	yeah so I was in school and then I dropped out it just didn't make sense to stay in school
10:34	Sam Parr	what did your indian parents think about that
10:37	Mehtab Bhogal	they were not they were not big fans of it that was yeah
10:40	Shaan Puri	What was your reason for dropping out? Was it that you were making X dollars and the amount was just too big to ignore? Or did you just not have the time to go to school? Why did you drop out?
10:49	Mehtab Bhogal	It just didn't seem like the value was there relative to who I had the opportunity to interact with on the business end. It just seemed like there was more opportunity there, if that makes sense. Then, obviously, I was doing okay in terms of cash flow, so...
11:03	Shaan Puri	So, how old were you when you made your podcast called My First Million? How old were you when you ended up making your first million?
11:09	Mehtab Bhogal	In cash or equity? Cash. I don't know, I'd probably put it in the mid-twenties, early twenties, like $24,000 to $25,000.
11:18	Shaan Puri	And so, you did that through these smaller e-commerce ventures. How did you get into this private equity style approach, where you buy distressed companies and turn them around? How did that happen?
11:32	Mehtab Bhogal	Yeah, so in the Great Recession, when I was a kid reading about it, I always thought it was interesting how private equity firms made money no matter what. Whether the company did well or failed, I thought, "Hey, that sounds great!" I hate being an entrepreneur because, obviously, if the company doesn't do well, you fail, right? And that's still the case. It's not like, you know, it's just not as black and white anymore. So I started... I just realized the TAM [Total Addressable Market].
11:54	Shaan Puri	Explain that. Why would it work whether the company does well or not? How does that work?
12:00	Mehtab Bhogal	Yeah, we can jump into that a little later. But part of our thesis is essentially investing in how much liquidity or cash the company can generate on a short-term basis. So, if you can invest today and pull most of your cash out within 2 or 3 months, there's a lot less risk, right? Versus, say, you bootstrap something new. You're always putting more and more cash on the working capital side; you need to fuel growth. If you're doing a traditional consumer brand, that's less of an issue for something asset-like, like SaaS. But in that case, you don't actually end up pulling cash out of it for so long.
12:32	Shaan Puri	So, where most people focus on equity appreciation, you guys focus on liquidity. You focus on how quickly you can pull cash out, whereas most business people just think, "How do I make this worth more?" This often results in putting more cash in. Is that correct?
12:47	Mehtab Bhogal	Right, and that's just one facet of it. We're okay with holding to the long term or being more long-term focused if it makes sense. Sometimes, we're just more of a short-term partner.
12:55	Sam Parr	And like, it's not uncommon for a software company to sell on the low end for 3 times revenue. On the high end, if it's fast-growing, it can go for 10 times revenue. What you just said was you're going to buy a company for basically 1/6 times because you said you want to get your cash in. I can't do that math, but you want to get your cash back in 2 or 3 months. So, you're buying it at 1/6 times profit or cash flow. I mean, like... nothing, right?
13:23	Shaan Puri	give us give us a sample deal economics so in a situation where that happened
13:28	Mehtab Bhogal	Yeah, so we invested in an adult health and wellness retailer, which is a nice way of saying sex toys. That's... I'm in Utah, so yeah.
13:36	Sam Parr	but what what why don't you ever say the name of the brands because you don't wanna you don't wanna talk about it
13:41	Mehtab Bhogal	well if they're distressed it's just kind of
13:43	Sam Parr	got it okay
13:44	Mehtab Bhogal	Yeah, just culturally, I’m kind of mean to them. So, I’m not like that. But I can send them over. I think I shot them over to Sean. So, we invested essentially at, I’d say, a fairly far below market valuation just because others were unwilling to invest in that kind of company. This was in 2018, back when it was a little bit more taboo than it is now. Now, there are a few publicly venture-funded brands like Dame, etc., in that space, so it's become more socially acceptable. But we got in far below kind of market valuation. The comp...
14:17	Shaan Puri	Give us a sense of the revenue. It was about X. Then, what was the distress? Why was it distressed? They had too much inventory and they had a debt problem.
14:25	Mehtab Bhogal	What was the problem? It was more of a case of really bad margins, and there's a clear case to improve those margins. They were originally a dropshipper, doing about $6,000,000 a year. This was one of our first deals, so they were very small, only doing $6,000,000 a year. I'd say the market for that, for valuation on the growth equity side, would have been around $10 to $15 million as far as valuation back then. We got in at about $1 million, and then the company paid us a royalty until we were paid back in full on that initial cash investment. There were a few other structural things going on, but we got involved and helped boot up their initial operations.
15:00	Shaan Puri	Why would a company like that sell for $1,000,000? I think that's, if I'm listening, that's my question, right?
15:06	Mehtab Bhogal	like
15:06	Shaan Puri	Yeah, he said they do $6,000,000, and normally that's like $10,000,000 of value. But they bought it for $1.
15:12	Sam Parr	man how you are you are
15:14	Shaan Puri	you just mister charming or what why were you able to to buy
15:17	Mehtab Bhogal	it for
15:18	Shaan Puri	that that price
15:18	Mehtab Bhogal	So that one was a minority equity investment, and we got involved really hands-on operationally. My co-founder jumped in and helped them boot up their physical operations. He assisted in transitioning from a dropshipper to holding their own inventory and launching operations here in Utah. He helped them launch that facility and make their first few hires, GMs, etc. Then, I helped them raise debt to fuel growth, and that kind of took them from the $6 million to $12 million mark.
15:42	Shaan Puri	gotcha gotcha okay and then
15:43	Mehtab Bhogal	We sold our equity just via secondaries to a VC firm that invested later, once that value had been created.
15:50	Shaan Puri	Okay, gotcha. So, continue on. You've done some of these, right? So, I want to go back to how you got this idea. You read about this and thought, "Alright, private equity has this trait where they can buy stuff at a certain price or on certain terms so that they get their money back quickly." Whether their equity portion is small or they have a lot of debt, they get the money back quickly. You read about that, but still, you've never done it. So, how did you decide to actually go do it? How did you figure out how to do it?
16:23	Mehtab Bhogal	it yeah so I just started posting on reddit to try and find initial deal flow and then I met
16:27	Sam Parr	which subreddit
16:28	Mehtab Bhogal	I met my co-founder, Alex, through the entrepreneurship subreddit. I also met a lady who was one of the first few engineering hires at Uber Eats. She actually ended up retiring about eight months after we started working together, when Uber went public. The other person I met had a very traditional background in private equity. He's the one who taught me a lot about private equity.
16:53	Shaan Puri	And you're just, what, building a relationship through Reddit DMs? Or like, how are you...? I don't meet anyone on Reddit. What is actually happening here? Sounds like you met some pretty high-quality people and actually trusted them enough to partner with them.
17:05	Mehtab Bhogal	Yeah, it's the same way you meet people through Twitter, I guess, right? Just posting and getting to know people. I'd say that the community there is very low quality on Reddit versus Twitter and some other private forums, like you know, EO and YPO, what Sam has going on. So there's a lot of filtering to be done, but we did sort the deal through that. That's how the succulent company was found.
17:28	Shaan Puri	Okay, gotcha. So, Sam, what do you want to do from here? Do you want to talk a little bit about this flower company thing, or do you want to discuss other brands that he's got on this list?
17:38	Sam Parr	I want to talk. You have three... whoa, whoa, shit! You have five categories or four? Three categories. You have frameworks, you have interesting ideas and opportunities, and then you have under-the-radar companies. I would like to start at number one: under-the-radar companies. Sure, I read those. I read that in reverse order. Number one: under-the-radar companies. You have things that I've never heard of, and I like... I'm pretty good at finding these unheard-of things.
18:05	Shaan Puri	Yeah, so let's start with a simple one. Tell us about Josh's frogs and what is one of these types of companies?
18:11	Mehtab Bhogal	This is one of my favorite companies. It has all the characteristics of a company we'd love to invest in. I've been trying to invest in it since 2018, but he always says no. That's okay though; I still love him. So basically, Josh's Frogs does exactly what it sounds like. They breed their own frogs and their exotics. They also grow the bugs that the frogs eat and sell the food. They do all of that in-house in Michigan and ship it to customers. So if Sam wants a frog tomorrow, he could order one from Josh's Frogs. They've scaled really cleanly and are totally bootstrapped. Josh is awesome! I called him on a Sunday, and the guy was catching frogs with his kids. I couldn't believe it! You know, I think he's been doing this for 15 to 20 years, and he still loves frogs.
18:54	Sam Parr	and frogs basically do you
18:55	Shaan Puri	know the price of a frog
18:57	Sam Parr	you know
18:57	Shaan Puri	what frogs you're going for
18:58	Sam Parr	Dude, I'm looking at it now. I would have thought, like, you could buy a chicken at Tractor Supply for like $5, like a chick. Or, yeah, frogs are way more expensive.
19:08	Mehtab Bhogal	this is super delicious
19:11	Sam Parr	Yeah, I mean, the frogs here range in price. The most expensive one is $400, and it looks like the average one is between $60 to $100 for a frog. These are beautiful, but like, you know, I don't...
19:21	Shaan Puri	Are for pets. Like, people want a pet frog, so they go buy a totally... yeah, this $60 black poisonous dart frog. Alright, it's fair enough.
19:28	Mehtab Bhogal	later on you you guys should watch the tour of his facilities it's really cool
19:32	Shaan Puri	and so you like this business because what
19:36	Mehtab Bhogal	So, what I really like is the steep ops mode. No one else, your typical e-commerce guy, is going to go out and boot up a frog operation, right? It's just too intense for them. They don't really like physical things, so they have to show up. A lot of guys just use 3PLs, and it requires a lot of specialized knowledge. At the same time, you know that someone overseas is not going to undercut you. It doesn't become a race to the bottom with de-commoditized products because you can't really ship a live frog from China or directly overseas to the U.S. It's just not viable.
20:04	Shaan Puri	thank god
20:05	Mehtab Bhogal	So with that, there's a very strong operating mode. You're only really competing against other companies in the U.S., right? So your cost per acquisition is...
20:14	Shaan Puri	competing against like only people weirder than himself which is yeah
20:17	Sam Parr	exactly
20:18	Shaan Puri	gonna be like 3 other dudes in the country
20:20	Mehtab Bhogal	CPA or CGA (Cost Per Acquisition) of customers stays consistent. It doesn't really spike the way you see it spike in other spaces, like, you know, Josh's.
20:28	Shaan Puri	frogs jack's frogs sam's frogs and you know herbert's frogs
20:32	Sam Parr	those are the that's the
20:34	Shaan Puri	the big 4 in the frog industry
20:36	Sam Parr	If you're Josh... if you're Josh from Josh's Frogs, what would you sell this business for? Or like, what would be the threshold of, "Okay, this is interesting. I'll take the offer," or "I'll maybe take the offer?"
20:49	Mehtab Bhogal	Yeah, I obviously can't say what his EBIT [Earnings Before Interest and Taxes] does, and if I gave you a multiple, I would kind of tell you what his EBIT does. But I would say there's probably... let's say your average T2C [Truck to Consumer] business his size might sell, and I'll just use a range, for 8 to 10x. He would get a premium of a few turns on top of that because of that operations moat, and it's not something anyone can just knock off, right?
21:10	Shaan Puri	yeah it's just super super defensible
21:12	Sam Parr	yeah
21:13	Shaan Puri	okay so and how did you even find this you know this guy personally or you found it
21:17	Mehtab Bhogal	I met him through a podcast on Ecommerce Fuel. Then he reached out, and we just got along. I always stay in touch with him. We like to turn it out; we have similar problems with our businesses, so it's fun to discuss them with him, like implementing lean, etc.
21:32	Sam Parr	So, by the way, I just read... I just googled Josh's Frogs revenue. It looks like they're on the Inc. 5000, so you can find it there. But according to some articles, they're in the range of about $15 million a year in terms of frogs. I don't know if that's accurate, and I haven't actually researched it, but that's just some top searches that are showing that. That's pretty wild, yeah.
21:48	Mehtab Bhogal	I think they're they're bigger than that now that's yeah
21:51	Sam Parr	this guy
21:51	Shaan Puri	Is there a picture of him on the about page? He just looks so happy. This guy looks like he's in frog heaven right now. I'm so happy for this guy! Just this one picture... I hope to be as happy as this man right here. This is a good one; I like this. I think what's cool when you... so in the sort of tech world...
22:11	Mehtab Bhogal	right
22:12	Shaan Puri	All the discussion is always just about the future dream, like the dream end state. It's like, "What could this be if everything goes great?" What I've learned as I talked to guys like Andrew Wilkinson or the people from Enduring Ventures, or you know, people who are buying solid, stable, cash-flowing businesses that are profitable, is that it's not the pie-in-the-sky sort of thinking that you get in Silicon Valley. Instead, it's basically, "What could go wrong?" So instead of asking, "What could go right?" it's more about, "What could go wrong if I bought this company?" That's why people love businesses like this that have defensibility, this moat. It's like, "No one's going to compete with me, not internationally, because you literally can't ship the frog locally." The average e-commerce entrepreneur is not going to want to take this on. So, who am I competing against? I'm competing against basically nobody, which means my business is extremely defensible. It's just a different way of thinking that is less common when it comes to tech, which is sort of like, "Can you grow? Can this become huge? Can this become a unicorn?" It's a different sort of mindset altogether. What's another example of an under-the-radar business that's worth talking about?
23:24	Sam Parr	talk about this fast growing trees one
23:27	Mehtab Bhogal	I think that one's a great example. So, similar operations, but where obviously they're kind of growing the trees again. No one wants to be a tree farmer, right? It's not sexy. No one's going to go out and raise capital to become a tree farmer. Oh no, that sounds alright.
23:39	Sam Parr	that sounds kinda neat to me
23:41	Shaan Puri	Wait, so literally, what is it? Do they sell seeds or do they sell the actual tree? What's going on?
23:46	Mehtab Bhogal	Both. I first stumbled across the company when it was being sold 6 or 7 years ago. I think it went for between $100 million to $120 million. It looks like they've grown quite a bit since then. I wouldn't be surprised if they're worth closer to double that now, just with their website overhaul, etc. They had a very... like really...
24:04	Shaan Puri	Traffic estimates show it went from almost 3,000,000 uniques a month. That's pretty crazy for a free website.
24:12	Sam Parr	Their website says "flower." So here's their H1: "Flowering Trees." You'd hate to miss out on the hottest trees of the season, wouldn't you? Shop now! Over 1,500,000 happy customers. What you see is, I don't know what type of tree this is, but it's like a grown tree that's purple. It does look beautiful; it's a beautiful tree. I just think it's hilarious. You'd hate to design the highest...
24:39	Shaan Puri	Flowering trees are it. That's like, you know, the Gen Z people saying "he is him" and "she is her." Have you seen this trend? Flowering trees are it.
24:51	Mehtab Bhogal	This is awesome! It's a really defensible business. It's cool. No one would really expect something like that to be that large, right?
24:58	Sam Parr	and so what do you buy you buy a tree that's mostly grown already and then they come and plant it
25:03	Mehtab Bhogal	I think you plant it I think it shows up and then you plant it
25:06	Sam Parr	oh my god
25:07	Mehtab Bhogal	If you want a tree for more privacy, say privacy hedges or something similar, or just trees in general. This is where you go.
25:14	Sam Parr	how much revenue do you think they do
25:15	Mehtab Bhogal	I have no clue. Now, again, I'd be really surprised if it was less than $100,000,000 in revenue. This is crazy. A product closer to $150.
25:25	Sam Parr	and what type of what's about net margins would this be or net income or ebitda
25:31	Mehtab Bhogal	I'd be really surprised if it was below 20% probably closer to 2025
25:36	Sam Parr	This is crazy. They probably don't... they probably aren't buying too many ads. I mean, they had a couple of Google ads, but it seems... I bet you this is a type of company that they... I mean, they call their company "Fast Growing Trees" for a reason. I imagine that was a search thing.
25:49	Mehtab Bhogal	Yeah, it's an older company. It's been around for a while under a few different owners. I think a private equity firm runs it now.
25:55	Shaan Puri	Ben, who would have thought that when the internet came out, it was like, "Yeah, people are going to be able to buy things online." There’s some guy out there who thought, "They'll buy trees online." It’s like, "No, no, no way! Why would I buy a tree online? That sounds like the most far-fetched thing." And then here we are, $100,000,000 selling fast-growing trees online. You could buy this, by the way. Look at this Italian Cyprus. It's like this...
26:21	Mehtab Bhogal	be perfect for the airbnb sam yeah I am a bit
26:24	Sam Parr	I'm looking at this and I think this is pretty awesome. I like that they have some beautiful hedges and there are fruit trees. I mean, this is pretty amazing. I understand this; I'm getting to the age now where I appreciate a good tree.
26:42	Shaan Puri	yeah this is this is pretty crazy okay I like this one give us another under the radar business
26:48	Mehtab Bhogal	yeah what seems more appealing to you the first
26:51	Shaan Puri	Well, let's do the Betty's one first. Then we've talked about this CSC generation thing, and we should. But you have more info on it than we do. So, let's do Betty's and then do the CSC.
27:01	Mehtab Bhogal	Yeah, so Beddies is a really interesting business. What I love about it is the strong IP mode. So if you go to their website, you can tell.
27:08	Shaan Puri	us something what they do what what do they do
27:10	Mehtab Bhogal	It's like a bed cover thing for kids. I actually don't know how to explain it very well, but it allows your kids to change their branding really easily. They have a patented design and proper intellectual property management. When you go to their website, you can tell it's not very optimized, but they've been crushing it. They are totally bootstrapped, have great people, and a very healthy EBITDA margin. And you know, that intellectual property management...
27:32	Sam Parr	It's a duvet cover. It's a duvet cover that's easy to zip, which I have. A zipped duvet cover is great because duvet covers can be a pain in the butt to deal with.
27:43	Shaan Puri	It's meant for little boys, so that makes sense. They bootstrapped this to $40,000,000. That's pretty impressive.
27:52	Mehtab Bhogal	yeah I I'm pretty sure it's right around there
27:55	Sam Parr	yeah yeah
27:55	Shaan Puri	that's pretty good
27:56	Mehtab Bhogal	And you can tell it's all PMF (product-market fit), killer product, killer IP (intellectual property) mode. They've done a really good job with that end of the business.
28:04	Sam Parr	What do you think are some of the... I don't think this is everything, but I think that when you look at a software company, you think, "Alright, what are the attributes of a great software company that scales?" You think, "Well, they have to have good net retention," meaning most people come back constantly. Ideally, it's an expensive enough product that you can afford to hire a sales team. Things like this—there's a handful of checklists. Then, there are lots of examples of things that don't check the checklist but still succeed. So, what are the handful of checkboxes that you have when looking at or building a D2C (direct-to-consumer) company? Particularly, what are the things that people don't think are true? For example, in the cool kids' circle, when you're 22, you want to create cool stuff that Gen Z buys. None of the things you've mentioned fit in that category.
28:54	Mehtab Bhogal	Right, for us, what we found is that the most consistent moat—though some people are different—is that operating moat. Anything that requires physical manufacturing to be in the U.S. or Mexico is great. We found that, like, I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with lean manufacturing. It's just a philosophy behind, I guess, running a manufacturing operation. It's a Toyota thing, right? Yeah, exactly. It ports over very cleanly from company to company, but marketing does not. What worked with your paid ads for a company with, let's say, a low average order value (AOV) but really fast consideration—so, you know, something like clothing—I say clothing because I buy it. It's very simple compared to the marketing side for something with a long consideration. That's very different. Different teams, totally different strategy. Nothing will really carry over cleanly, but on the manufacturing end, it carries over cleanly from company to company to company. So for us, that's our favorite moat.
29:46	Sam Parr	To summarize, you want a low consideration product. You also want something that can be made in America because it has some type of manufacturing moat. Anything else? Well, we...
29:56	Mehtab Bhogal	We don't actually care about the consideration. I think it's just like a natural challenge in any vertical that you get into, right? If that's there, but for us, we only really care about the manufacturing. Now, obviously, the way we enter the deal is really important too. If you pay next to nothing for something, the odds of making it work and making money on it are much, much higher than if you overpay on entry.
30:19	Sam Parr	I want to talk about this agency stuff because, you know, the interesting thing about people like you in the D2C world is that they're oftentimes really, really good at acquiring customers. It's kind of like the D2C folks are often pretty good. Now, before it was the gaming company. So, if you met someone from a gaming company or from the ad tech world, that meant that their internet marketing chops were pretty good. Now that D2C or now that Facebook is harder to buy ads on, the people who are succeeding are oftentimes quite good at that. Sean and I have a bunch of friends who are starting recruiting companies, which is really interesting because recruiting companies aren't new, and outsourcing isn't new. But people are putting sexy new packaging on it. From what I'm guessing, because you have it on here, they're doing a really good job or historically have done a poor job of acquiring customers, and you want to apply that to that space. Is that right?
31:16	Mehtab Bhogal	Yeah, I just think it's a really interesting space in general. However, I think some of these agencies are really heavily focused on, say, the Philippines or other countries in Southeast Asia. We've noticed there's a lot of higher quality talent in places like Mexico, and you don't lose the same negatives associated with hiring in the Philippines that are not present in Mexico. For example, you could build an office there and fly out, being there in person in a few hours if you live in Texas. The wage disparity is not as high as you would think for really good talent. You're only paying a large number, but it's not actually that bad—about 30% more than you would for someone who's great in the Philippines, maybe 40% more in Mexico. But again, you can visit them in person, which is really significant. You can have them fly out, and again, it's big for us because we do a lot of manufacturing. They can actually understand the product or interact with the team in person, so your retention goes up, and the quality of work is much higher. We've found the quality of applicants is much, much higher in Mexico too. So, if I did start an agency, it would be focused solely on talent in Mexico. Just for example, when we're hiring a customer service role, like a new manager or director, we're getting people who used to head up Uline. Are you guys familiar with Uline?
32:26	Sam Parr	I just use it to buy like boxes
32:28	Shaan Puri	yeah we yeah yeah use it a ton for like the when we had our our warehouse
32:33	Mehtab Bhogal	Yeah, so their customer service is awesome. We got one of their former directors, and his salary ask was really reasonable. It's like, I think, $5,000 a month, but his talent was the equivalent of someone who's $200,000 in the US. I can't find this client info.
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33:01	Shaan Puri	Yeah, you have one agency ID on here that I think is a no-brainer, which is site speed. So yes, we have this problem with our store, but I think everybody has this problem. Like...
33:11	Mehtab Bhogal	yep
33:12	Shaan Puri	Basically, if you're selling something on the internet, one of the easiest and biggest levers you have is your site speed. If you have a slow loading site, you're just going to lose traffic and customers. Sure.
33:24	Sam Parr	as you
33:24	Shaan Puri	Have a slow loading page? You're also going to suffer in terms of your Google rank because Google takes into account your page speed as well. It's really easy in the e-commerce space to have slow pages. What happens is you start with a Shopify store and install 15 plugins just to get your Shopify store to do anything. You can't basically run a Shopify store just out of the box; you have to end up installing a bunch of apps. Each app injects a bunch of code into your page, and even if you delete the app, the code stays. There's no automatic cleanup; you have to manually clean that up, which is kind of insane and probably a business of its own. Basically, site speed is a problem that we’ve hired three different folks to try to fix. All of them claim to do something, but I have no idea if they're doing a great job or not. I don't think they are because the next guy comes in and says, "Oh man, your site speed sucks! Let me fix it." So, I think this is a product that I wish existed and I think could clean up the issue because it's clearly beneficial to the person. But explain your thinking on it. What did I miss?
34:28	Mehtab Bhogal	Yeah, so it doesn't really require much in terms of development skills. You don't have to be great at the development end to actually do most of these changes. It's almost like a checklist that's very portable from company to company. It applies very cleanly. For example, changing the order in which your pixels fire for Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, etc. You can delay some of those very slightly and dramatically increase site speed. It won't really hurt the business that much.
34:52	Sam Parr	right
34:52	Mehtab Bhogal	That's just an example of one quick fix you could do. Certain apps do not compress images properly. For instance, JudgeBee, the review app on Shopify, does not properly compress images for a lot of sites. If you just apply more compression to those images, your site speed goes up at the product display page level or wherever.
35:09	Sam Parr	those reviews are so how would
35:12	Mehtab Bhogal	You acquire new customers for this. Honestly, I would probably just... have you guys used BuiltWith?
35:18	Sam Parr	before
35:18	Sam Parr	yeah we love it
35:19	Mehtab Bhogal	Yeah, just go to BuiltWith for a full list of websites. Make sure they're doing a certain amount of revenue or at least have meaningful revenue coming in. Just cross-check that against something that shows traffic, right? Like Alexa or something. From there, I think you just can... can you make their site slow, right?
35:36	Shaan Puri	Yeah, just cold emailing, I think, is the way to go with this. If somebody out there wants to do a site speed shop, just DM me because this is a no-brainer. I'll be your first customer. I hope you get the next 10 because...
35:47	Mehtab Bhogal	You could even just charge this. You could charge purely on contingency too. It's really cool because you can see a black and white effect. Yeah, if you've done a good job, and again, it's really easy to do a good job. It's just nobody specializes in this for some reason.
35:59	Shaan Puri	Yeah, and it's a moving target. You'll do it, and then like 6 to 12 months later, they'll need it again because they've installed a few more things. They hired somebody who didn't know how to compress images before putting them up. They started using this new tracking software for heat maps, and then boom! Now you need it again because you've gone from an A rank back to a C rank on these site speed graders that are out there. I'm surprised the site speed graders don't have these agents, or maybe they do. I haven't actually looked, but like does GTmetrix or one of these companies that have the site speed score not offer a button that says, "By the way, we could fix this for you"? No.
36:36	Mehtab Bhogal	they should though to your.
36:38	Shaan Puri	Oh my god
36:38	Mehtab Bhogal	really easy especially if all these ecommerce sites are on shopify right it's very yeah checklist
36:44	Shaan Puri	Yeah, so that's the other move. You should buy that site. You should buy the site speed site that checks the speed and then just add this button at the end. That's the agency service to fix the problem if they don't do that already. That's kind of crazy.
36:57	Sam Parr	How are you balancing your time? It seems like you've got a bunch of stuff going on. I mean, you know, ideas are worthless, but it seems like a pretty good idea to me. When I hear this, I'm like, "Oh, that's kind of interesting." It actually seems like that has legs. You've got a good network; you could probably spin something up fairly quickly and scale nicely. So, how are you balancing everything that you're doing?
37:20	Mehtab Bhogal	About 15% of my time is spent on the investment end, managing our minority equity and credit positions. The rest of the time is just spent on the floral business. There's a pretty big lever that we're pulling right now with booting up another operating base, like a manufacturing base in Mexico. That'll get our EBITDA to around $5 or $6 million. From there, it's a pretty good valuation. We just want to get that over the hump, and then I'll probably slowly phase out. My co-founder is solely involved in that company.
37:43	Sam Parr	and that's the that's called solo wood flows
37:47	Mehtab Bhogal	yeah yeah
37:49	Shaan Puri	Sam, when I met Matheb, I heard what he was doing and I was like, I told him two things. I think I said, "How do I invest in this?" Because if you're willing to move to Mexico and build your manufacturing facility, you're going to win. Paul Graham has this essay that he wrote called "Schlep," and he basically describes the guys from Stripe as being willing to do the schlep work. He says, "In a lot of businesses, there's basically some amount of schlep that you have to do." For Stripe, they had to deal with all this banking stuff that was kind of annoying and bureaucratic, but they didn't really view it that way. They were so young that they didn't really know what all was going to happen. They didn't realize how much they would have to do, but they were just willing to do it. You are willing to do the schlep. You're like, "Oh, you know, I'm looking for operationally intensive things." That's the opposite of what I'm interested in. I want the least operationally intensive thing, but I get why you would want it. Because it's super defensible once you have it, and it's very valuable once you do it.
38:50	Mehtab Bhogal	And it's very simple once it's fully set up, if that makes sense. Once you have the best practices for lean manufacturing running, it's very simple to keep the manufacturer running. This is versus a direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand that's really reliant on the marketing end, right?
39:03	Shaan Puri	Yeah, exactly. I told you, I remember being like, "Hey, can I invest in your Mexico thing, like your facility there? I think that's a great idea." Then I also told you, I was like, "Man, I feel like you play the game on hard mode. You're super smart, and you are like, 'I'm gonna go do distressed turnarounds of D to C businesses.' That's like multiplying three hard things together." I was like, "Why do you do this? You could just, you know, there's easier options." And you were like, "No, I like this. I like, you know, I'm playing in the mud."
39:33	Mehtab Bhogal	once you get a really good deal you can't go back I'm I'm indian I need to get a good deal I need to get a good price
39:37	Sam Parr	so yeah
39:38	Shaan Puri	I think that's actually what it is. I think it's genetic that you're like, "Oh, you know, the best deal possible," a company that's burning to the ground you can...
39:47	Mehtab Bhogal	get it exactly
39:48	Shaan Puri	you can get it for nothing
39:50	Sam Parr	You're also... I'm trying to find it, but your website's really good. You have this blog post, or you have a bunch of blog posts on Medium. So, Carda Ventures... Carda with a K. K-K-K it.
40:00	Mehtab Bhogal	should be on substack now I killed the medium
40:02	Sam Parr	So, I found it on Medium, but it looks like it's also on Substack. You're really good with language. Your piece starts off with a great first sentence: "This is a guide intended to give distressed e-commerce heavy businesses with $10 to $15 million in revenue a high-level overview of turnaround management basics and resources to dive into." You're telling me exactly what I'm getting, and then you do a really good job of explaining your background with Alex, your co-founder. You mention that you started these ventures in your early twenties, took passive roles, or sold them. You also helped turn around Ice.com, which is now called Ice Trends. You met on Reddit, and then you say, "We welcome complex opportunities that others are unable or unwilling to tackle. As a result, we can invest in non-control opportunities. We can grow quickly." Another good line is, "My team and I are responsive, discreet, and avoid pointless formalities. We understand how critical speed is both in turnaround and high-growth environments, and we can tell you within 24 hours if we're a fit." You do a really good job of being crystal clear about what your offering is. You're direct, but you're not rude. You have a really good voice. You also cite a lot of the books that you read, discussing turnaround corporate artistry and including quotes from those books. Your language is wonderful. Sean said he pays attention to vocabulary, and so do I. You have really good words, and your rhythm is nice. What did you read to come up with your perspective? How did you become a good writer? You're quite good at explaining complex things.
41:43	Mehtab Bhogal	I think we all grew up during the era of hardcore. I don't know what it was, but for some reason, copywriting and being into copywriting was really popular from 2010 to 2013, maybe earlier.
41:52	Sam Parr	what did you what did you learn for that or who where did you turn to for that
41:57	Mehtab Bhogal	One of my friends was really into it, so I got dragged into it too. I started reading random books. I think there was a compilation of like 100 of the all-time best sales letters. That's back when people used to distribute swipe files and stuff like that, right? So, you would just be in a random group, and someone would distribute it. You would just rip through it, and that's kind of how I picked it up.
42:14	Sam Parr	It's good. You're very good at this. What were some of the other books that you read to learn this topic? Because you learned this at a very young age.
42:21	Mehtab Bhogal	Yeah, I'd say Corporate Turnaround Artistry is one of the greatest books ever. It's written by my mentor, Jeff Sands, and that guy is an absolute beast. He's turned around a handful of fairly large, nine-figure industrial companies, like manufacturing companies—everything from bakeries to large restaurant groups, etc. That guy is in his fifties. I think... I hope he doesn't kill me if I got that wrong. He just shows up and turns the operation around within 6 to 12 months. He's an absolute machine. His book gives you probably the most value I've seen in a book in a really long time. It's just tip after tip after tip, and you can take it and apply it. Even if your company is not distressed, it will just juice profitability, if that makes sense. Really awesome! The guy's just a complete machine. I'm convinced you could drop him into anything, and he'll just make it more profitable in 6 months.
43:12	Shaan Puri	and that's because what what is he like world class at doing what does he do when you drop him in
43:17	Mehtab Bhogal	I'd say he's just very fast at making decisions. He doesn't hold back in a lot of ways. Running a turnaround is like running a startup. You don't really have the benefit of sitting around to make decisions. You're not going to hire McKinsey to run a full-blown study to see if you should do something. You're just going to go and do it. Maybe you have some light directional data, but you're not going to wait for a ton of data. You're not going to run some crazy Qualtrics survey. You're just going to go out and get it done. That's what he's really good at—taking action. For example, when he turned around that Canadian lumber mill, he's American, so he just moved. Keep in mind he has kids, etc., but he still just moved up to a lumber mill in the middle of nowhere in Canada and turned it around. He got it done. No one else will really do that, and there's a premium for that.
44:00	Sam Parr	what part of this brings you joy why are you doing this other than that that it makes you a lot of money
44:06	Mehtab Bhogal	I'd just say it's really satisfying and it's fairly repeatable. I think the speed at which you learn is really, really good, right? It doesn't require a lot of equity to keep scaling, if that makes sense. For example, you can probably buy a relatively distressed brand doing $100,000,000 for maybe $10,000,000 to $15,000,000 in equity.
44:26	Sam Parr	I had friends, Moiz and Suri Ali. So, Moiz started Native Deodorant, and I was like, "Moiz, we're in San Francisco. Why are you selling deodorant? Why not do software and be normal and make more money?" He goes, "I'm a merchant man. I'm a retailer. This is just in my DNA. I make products and I figure out..."
44:46	Shaan Puri	how to make merchant
44:47	Sam Parr	that's what he says
44:48	Shaan Puri	I've been working on these T-shirts. I've been working with the T-shirt designer to do things, and now I'm just on the lookout for these quotables. I'm a merchant, that's what.
44:55	Sam Parr	he said he goes he goes I'm a merchant what's that say
44:59	Mehtab Bhogal	it says cartagov and then this is a banana that says irr like internal rate of return
45:04	Sam Parr	That's so funny! Well, Moyse also said, "My first favorite phrase in the English dictionary is 'distressed asset.'" It was funny, but he goes, "I'm a merchant man." I don't know if it's like an immigrant thing or what it is, but I know their family also owns lots of single-family homes that they rent out. They own gas stations as well. A lot of my Indian friends and Pakistani friends do that; they have gas stations and things like that. I'm like, I don't know, man. Maybe it's just something in the culture where you're geared towards small business. For you, is it the product that you like, or is it just that you enjoy making stuff? Is it something that provides value, and you just like optimizing it for profit? I mean, what do you think is driving you towards this?
45:49	Mehtab Bhogal	Yeah, I'd say the stress side's really interesting because it's like a game of chess with the existing creditors and the existing cap table. It's about figuring out how to squish it together to make it work, right? So maybe you have a really angry senior lender, and you have to convince them, "Hey, you know, give me the position at a decent price. I'll come in, I'll turn it around, and eventually you'll get right side up, or at least you'll make more than you would just liquidating these guys." Then there's the challenge of convincing the people you're getting the company from, because they're often really upset. Right? Like, say the company's doing $20 or $30 million; it's still run by the original founders in most cases, and they'll be really emotional about it. Rightfully so. So, kind of figuring that side out is really, really interesting. And then, obviously, the operating end... I don't like it as much as my co-founder; he really loves the operating end. But that can be a lot of fun too—just coming in, getting rid of the bad apples very quickly, and then building out a team and kind of revising the culture.
46:36	Sam Parr	There's a story about the famous hedge fund guy who's probably in his nineties now, but you guys will know him: Carl.
46:46	Mehtab Bhogal	carl icahn
46:46	Sam Parr	Yeah, Carl Icahn tells the story on YouTube. He's like, "I bought this company, and it was not doing great, but I thought it could do great." So, we owned like 12 floors in this one particular building. I just went from floor to floor to floor in one hour and laid off the entire floor. He tells this story laughing, saying it was the greatest thing ever. The audience was like, "Why? You're ruining jobs!" And he's like, "But I'm making it better! We're going to have a better outcome." I go both ways with him. On one hand, I'm like, "Well, you're kind of just, you know, like these hedge fund guys. You're just like an Excel monkey, squeezing every juice you can. You're not providing a lot of value." But I do understand the satisfaction of getting something that's not fulfilling its potential and achieving that potential. You know what story I'm talking about, right?
47:33	Mehtab Bhogal	I know the exact one
47:34	Sam Parr	what's what's the same
47:35	Mehtab Bhogal	same video
47:35	Sam Parr	did I get it wrong
47:37	Mehtab Bhogal	no you you nailed it you nailed it yeah he goes through 4 by 4 and and he does exactly what he said
47:41	Sam Parr	and he's like glowing with like he's like pride I'm like carl you're just like ruining these people carl
47:46	Shaan Puri	you're blushing
47:50	Sam Parr	Yeah, the layoffs just get him bothered. He's like, "I'm getting a semi just laying these people off." But yeah, I guess you're kind of in that position.
48:01	Mehtab Bhogal	A little bit, I guess it really depends on the company, right? In a lot of cases, you have a few really good apples—people left who are really passionate about the company. They want to see it succeed, and they're the last people left. Then you have all these people who are more or less just leeching off of the corpse, right?
48:13	Shaan Puri	what what do you think about how elon's done this with twitter
48:17	Mehtab Bhogal	I think it's great. I think a lot of those people are really self-entitled and they have no perspective on anything. In a lot of ways, they're kind of like the modern version of those companies in the 1980s that were really fat and just overpaying executives, etcetera. I don't really feel bad for someone who's making $100, losing their job. It's more so for people working blue-collar jobs where they're making $40,000 to $60,000 and they're working their ass off. I definitely don't feel bad for any software engineer making $300,000 who's upset they have to work 10 hours instead of 6.
48:44	Sam Parr	I don't disagree with you I just wish you would be less of an asshole when he was doing it
48:48	Mehtab Bhogal	You know, yeah, that was kind of pointless. I think he made fun of someone who's disabled or something. That's obviously horrible; it's not appropriate.
48:55	Sam Parr	And you mentioned something about being in America and how, like, you know, you like things that are in America. Does it ever give you a sense of pride around, like, creating American jobs? Because I know on your website you said, "We've created or saved 200 different jobs in America, let alone overseas." Are you into the whole "Made in America" thing for the sense of pride, or is it strictly about, "If it makes sense, it makes dollars"?
49:23	Mehtab Bhogal	Yeah, I think it's a mix of both. I think it really does make sense. I'm Canadian, but I'm obviously grateful for the opportunity that exists in the U.S. You know, Americans are just much more gung-ho about entrepreneurship. They're more willing to write a check and just get involved than Canadians are. If you go to Vancouver, where I'm from, it's a lot of older real estate families. They're not really willing to write a check and get into something the way Americans are. They love taking risks, and I really appreciate that about the U.S.
49:46	Shaan Puri	Yeah, man, there's a thing that I've noticed recently about what I call the North Star formula for a business. I like when you can boil down a plan into a very simple equation. Let me give you an example: like Sam with Hampton. I think I texted you this, but I just said 10,000 times $10,000. So, you just need 10,000 CEOs who are going to pay you $10,000 a year, and you have a $100,000,000 business. It's like, can I provide enough value where somebody's willing to pay $10 a year? And then can I get 10,000 people to sign up for that value? Your whole business comes down to that one equation: 10,000 times $10,000. When I met, when we were hanging out with Andrew Wilkinson, I was like, "How much equity did you put into Tiny originally?" I think it was something like... you know, don't quote me on this, but I think it was something like $6,000,000. He's basically turned $6,000,000 into like $600,000,000—just as round numbers. So, $6,000,000 into $600,000,000. If you want to be the next Tiny, you can just take that thing: I'm turning $6 into $600. Okay, how are we going to do that? Let's work backwards from that simple formula. Well, I think I would need to compound at 45% annually. Okay, how am I going to do that? Well, I need to buy businesses on these terms at these prices, right? So, a formula can be very instructive. We have some friends that just raised $18,000,000. I was like, "What do you do with that $18,000,000?" And they go, "We're just trying to figure out how we could turn—or like the goal is to take this $18,000,000 of equity and turn it into $10,000,000 a year of free cash flow." It's like, okay, that's a clarifying equation. I'm curious, Matab, for you: in a best-case scenario, how will this have played out? So, you go to the start. I don't know how much equity you and your co-founder put in as your seed capital to get your whole business off the ground.
51:46	Mehtab Bhogal	Well, it's kind of weird for Cardiac. We both had a few exits beforehand. Like, he'd sold a company that he got to kind of low eight figures in his early twenties. He put in a bit of cash, but we put in, I want to say, a couple of hundred dollars—like $200 to $300—to start making investments.
51:59	Shaan Puri	so you and so and maybe you've put in more over time
52:01	Mehtab Bhogal	I'm not sure but like whatever that's oh yeah we we reinvest everything more or less
52:05	Shaan Puri	Yeah, but like just the out-of-pocket initial investment—not reinvestments from the proceeds of what you've been doing. Have you had to take something out of the checking account or savings account just to recapitalize the business in any way? Or no, it was like $200 or $300, and then anything else we put in was reinvestments from what that $200 or $300 grand has made us.
52:24	Mehtab Bhogal	it was reinvestments from what that 2 $300 that we put in initially was
52:27	Shaan Puri	Okay, amazing. So you're going to go from, let's say, $300. If this all plays out the way you want, you know, fast forward, I don't know, 10 years or however long you plan to do this. What would be the big win for you? How much would the portfolio be worth for this to be like a, you know, a home run outcome for you guys?
52:44	Mehtab Bhogal	Yeah, we are really goal-driven. We're a little bit weird that way, but we both want to tackle increasingly large distressed deals. That's what we get pleasure from, I guess. It's just kind of fun doing it, and we'll just keep doing it until we don't have fun anymore. So, our goal really is to get this floral company thing to usually reach $100,000,000 in top line revenue. Our allowable customer acquisition costs will go up by 30-40% once we finish with a few manufacturing transitions.
53:08	Shaan Puri	Hold on. So you don't have... you're not goal-driven? What does that mean? I don't even... that's like not English to me. How do you function without goals?
53:16	Mehtab Bhogal	I I just like to do footrat stuff just whatever is fun right
53:19	Sam Parr	Dude, he's like a dom. You're like the dominatrix of PE. You just get pleasure... You just get, you get pleasure for like, "Oh yeah, you like that?"
53:28	Sam Parr	ebenezer oh oh shit
53:31	Sam Parr	yeah hey
53:32	Mehtab Bhogal	that's going on that's my new linkedin subheader
53:36	Sam Parr	You just love the act, man. You just like the act of, you know, someone whispering in your ear, and you're going to get weak at the knees.
53:46	Mehtab Bhogal	Well, it's just fun because you get to learn from people like you or hang out with other people that are really interesting. That's really exciting too, right?
53:53	Sam Parr	Like, go with the team. But don't you have, like, a... you know, a lot of people who get into business have, like, one day, "I want to make all this money so I can buy, you know, a thousand acres," or "I want to create a school that does this," or "I want to be able to make sure that everyone in my family never has to dream about medical bills." That's the goal.
54:12	Mehtab Bhogal	A dream. So, my initial dream, and my co-founders did this before we met, it just turned out we had the same target: to make $5,000 a month. That was it.
54:21	Sam Parr	that's how it starts man that's how it starts
54:23	Mehtab Bhogal	I know
54:23	Sam Parr	You realize that... then you realize that, you know, I've noticed I have all the same goals.
54:28	Shaan Puri	hold on hold on
54:29	Sam Parr	What I've noticed, dude, is that you didn't start like this. I had the same thing. Hold on... the goals always change.
54:35	Shaan Puri	but you said when you started you guys have had wins under your belt
54:38	Sam Parr	so no
54:39	Mehtab Bhogal	no I mean before that like
54:40	Shaan Puri	oh okay okay
54:41	Mehtab Bhogal	like early on like when I did my first thing I was like I'm gonna be stoked if I make $60 a year
54:45	Shaan Puri	okay yeah of course of course of course
54:47	Sam Parr	But what about now? You know, like what's the vision? The long-term vision that keeps you excited? Maybe it's sometimes buying things, giving things away, or helping your family... whatever.
54:59	Mehtab Bhogal	Right, I think getting this one portfolio company to the next level—either selling it or releveraging it, taking out cash, and then raising a large fund—is probably our immediate short-term goal for the next 2 to 3 years.
55:10	Sam Parr	dude that's so in college that's so not what I thought it was gonna be sorry go ahead
55:14	Shaan Puri	When I was in college, one semester, my buddy Trevor, our other friend Dan, and I had read the card counting book. This was before the movie "21" came out, but oh my god, the book "Bringing Down the House" was out. We were like, "Oh, not only are we going to count cards, but we decided to create an underground blackjack club on campus." So we started preparing. Instead of just doing the obvious thing—like inviting some friends over to play blackjack at low stakes and seeing how it goes—we were like, "Okay, let's go buy this fancy blackjack table." Now, we were in the hole with this fancy thing. Then we thought, "Let's run all these practice simulations to see how bad we could get beat." We were worried about what if somebody comes and counts cards, and how much security would be involved. We were focused on all this stuff that didn't matter. No joke, we spent the entire semester at college, which cost each of us probably about $40 just to be there. Instead of focusing on the $40 we put into being there, we were doing this thing. I remember one night we were calculating, and we were like, "Oh my god, if we do this, we could make $3,000!" Then we all started giggling, like, "Can you imagine that? That's $1,000 each!" We were so pumped about this. It just took over our minds like a mind virus for three or four months. It made no sense, but it was the humble beginnings of scheming. It was the first of many schemes to come with the same group of people. We ended up starting a company together and did many more things together. But looking back, I have a lot of fondness for that first taste of the scheme and how hilariously bad our plans and goals were.
57:13	Mehtab Bhogal	totally yeah it it makes sense it's always hard to fall and then you
57:16	Sam Parr	What do you like? You bought the safe to keep the cash before you even had the cash, and the cash never even came.
57:22	Shaan Puri	We never... yeah, we never even ran the club because we were too worried about getting kicked out of school. We found out how illegal it was. Well, basically, we had one simulation where I was... again, we were big into these simulations. I walked in and I played. I lost $100, and then I said, "Give me all the money or I'm going to tell people about this club." Then I thought, "Oh yeah, what are we going to do if somebody does that?" At any time, somebody could just literally take all the money because there's no recourse. What are we going to do? Call the cops and tell them that somebody stole from our illegal gambling club? We were like, "Oh, this won't work."
57:58	Sam Parr	Before I sold my first company, I was using some type of service like Mint.com. There was a feature where you could connect all your accounts, and it would show you your net worth and whatever. They had this option where you could manually add something, so I manually added this really big number. I would log into this every day, like six months in advance, and I was like, "Sick, this is awesome!" I remember when the money actually came in, I was like, "Damn." I kind of felt most of that joy in those six months leading up to it. I tricked myself into already believing this was real. The simulation kind of gave me a lot of the joy. It's pretty cool; you can trick yourself into believing these things are true, and you get a significant amount of satisfaction from that fake thing compared to the real thing.
58:48	Shaan Puri	Yeah, you... because what people want is the feeling. You don't want the thing. If you ever say, "Oh, I really want X to happen," why do you want X? If you just keep asking why you want that, the obvious answer is that you want a feeling. Whether it's a relationship, money, or even having a six-pack, it's all about some feeling. It's a sense of accomplishment, a feeling of relief, or of less anxiety and less stress. Whatever it is, you realize, "Oh, it's not the thing I want; it's the feeling." Then, you might be able to get that feeling through literally faking it. You might be able to achieve that feeling through something much simpler that won't take you seven years and a bunch of heartache to get there. Also, if you've never had that feeling before, even when that thing happens, it'll be your first time experiencing that feeling, and you'll suck at it. This is why a lot of people feel let down after they achieve success. The feeling wasn't as great as they wanted it to be; the anticipation was better than the result. The reason isn't that the feeling is actually a letdown; it's because it's the first time they've let themselves try that feeling, and the muscle is just very, very weak. So, yeah, a big life tip is to realize that what you want is the feeling. Start practicing having that feeling on a daily basis through much smaller things.
01:00:00	Sam Parr	Yeah, it works, Maytag. I'm looking at you on Twitter; you have 5,000 followers. I think that being popular on social media doesn't really matter in most areas of business. In fact, sometimes it's negatively correlated to how popular you are. But in your case, at least I know with Andrew, like when he's buying a lot of companies, having some social media presence is basically like being on Twitter as a billboard for him. So when he reaches out to someone, they're like, "Oh, you know, I think I've heard of you. Fine, let's have a conversation." For how good it seems like you're doing and how smart you are, your social presence is significantly smaller. Is there a reason for that?
01:00:37	Mehtab Bhogal	No, I just don't really like it. I like to post content about stuff that I actually care about, and I'm fairly open. On the distressed side, when you're buying a business, they're more of a forced seller. When you're talking to a lot of these senior lenders you're working with, it's a lot of guys that are in their fifties or sixties. They're very conservative, traditional banker types. They don't really care about social media or anything like that. I'm sure it does help with deal flow on the growth equity side or buying healthy businesses, but I've just never really been into it.
01:01:09	Sam Parr	Yeah, I mean, you do tweet interesting stuff. It looks like a Daniel Roth watch. It seems like a pretty fancy watch.
01:01:16	Mehtab Bhogal	You just saw a nerd about neo-vintage and vintage watches, as well as some newer brands, but mostly smaller ones. It's just kind of... a lot of it's like angel investing. If you buy into an early independent brand, which is just like a watchmaker basically going at it, sometimes they can appreciate in value significantly. You get a pretty cool watch for the money, and you support a small business. They'll build you whatever you want, so it's like a win-win.
01:01:40	Sam Parr	Yeah, your social media is actually pretty cool. I'm going to follow you because you have some interesting stuff. But, compared to some of the things you're doing, I know a whole lot of people in the D2C space that are significantly bigger than you. They are much more of a little pipsqueak and don't ever walk the walk like you do. You know what I'm saying?
01:01:59	Mehtab Bhogal	yeah yeah I know what you mean
01:02:02	Shaan Puri	Leave us with this example of this Weight Watchers thing. So, explain what happened with Weight Watchers, then we'll wrap it up.
01:02:08	Mehtab Bhogal	Super high level: Weight Watchers was not doing so well. Then, this guy from a relatively small firm convinced Oprah to join them, and they absolutely crushed it. That's the very high-level overview of what he did.
01:02:22	Shaan Puri	and so this guy what what what do like what were the numbers so they what did they buy
01:02:26	Mehtab Bhogal	for oprah to pull it up
01:02:27	Shaan Puri	and then what and
01:02:28	Mehtab Bhogal	and have to pull it up okay
01:02:30	Shaan Puri	So, how did this guy know Oprah? By the way, that sounds like... you know. Oh, it's simple. He got Oprah on Ford. That doesn't sound that easy.
01:02:36	Sam Parr	yeah 2015 oprah is was a big deal
01:02:39	Shaan Puri	that's peak yeah yeah that's peak oprah that's like 2012 obama like you know
01:02:43	Sam Parr	yeah that's
01:02:44	Sam Parr	peak oprah
01:02:46	Shaan Puri	So, in 2015, he did a deal with Oprah Winfrey to acquire a 10% stake in Weight Watchers. Since then, the company's stock has soared by almost 600%. They sold $1,000,000,000 of Weight Watchers stock, and Oprah gained at least $400,000,000 so far. Okay, that's pretty impressive. It will go down as one of the best private equity deals ever. Over the 19 years, they put $226,000,000 into Weight Watchers and got $5,370,000,000 out, resulting in $4,700,000,000 of realized profits.
01:03:15	Mehtab Bhogal	yeah damn pretty good
01:03:17	Shaan Puri	That's pretty good, not including the stock that they still owe. Scale, but they only bought 10% of it.
01:03:23	Mehtab Bhogal	I thought they bought more. I think they kept buying more over time. I thought they kept deploying more and more cash into it.
01:03:29	Sam Parr	Dude, we have to do a podcast on Oprah. I love her! I grew up watching her, and she's 70 now—I just looked her up, or she's 68 or something. We forget, or I forget, how big of a baller she is. I'm just Googling, and it's like, "Oprah buys another 1,000 acres in Hawaii."
01:03:47	Mehtab Bhogal	She came from nothing and bootstrapped her way up. She basically got her net worth to be something absolutely insane.
01:03:54	Shaan Puri	yeah what what's her what's her story so what what do we know about the beginning of her story
01:03:59	Mehtab Bhogal	Born in a really poor town, abused growing up, etcetera, and then absolutely crushes it. She should run for president. I would totally support that.
01:04:07	Sam Parr	I think she was born in an abusive family. I think there was even... she got...
01:04:13	Shaan Puri	like pregnant at 14 or something
01:04:14	Sam Parr	Like that, I think there was some sexual assault or some horrible, tragic stuff. Then, at age 24, I think she becomes a weatherwoman or like a news person, but you're not actually in the office; you're out on the street. Yeah, she did that. Eventually, when she's like 32 or 33, she gets a talk show, but it's not a hit right off the bat. It slowly starts picking up, and then eventually she makes some groundbreaking deals. She did one of these groundbreaking deals sort of like what Michael Jordan did with Nike or what Lucasfilm did with Star Wars, where it's like, "We'll just take a percentage of the upside." That turned out to be one of the best deals of all time, and it's worked out.
01:04:58	Mehtab Bhogal	and you know she did this all back when people were very very racist it's all like now
01:05:04	Sam Parr	Yes, then like... I think it was out of Nashville, Tennessee that she's doing this. So, in the South, she kind of killed it.
01:05:09	Shaan Puri	We need a "How to Take Over the World" episode on Oprah. What's going on? Where is our definitive Oprah episode? Why have you not done this already? It's a real question for you, Ben.
01:05:23	Sam Parr	put it on the list sean
01:05:24	Shaan Puri	you put it on the list put it at the top of the list
01:05:26	Sam Parr	put on
01:05:26	Shaan Puri	the list do this after this after this episode is done
01:05:30	Sam Parr	Yeah, you got it. I'm buying my Oprah biography on Amazon.com. Is there an Oprah biography? I would totally buy that! Of course, there is. There has to be. I mean, she's the best. I'm a big fan of hers, and she did this all out of Chicago. I think she still owns the penthouse in the Sears Tower, which is one of the largest buildings in the world. But no, she's the best. You know, I always forget about this. So, I'm in Austin, and there are all these nerds talking about crystals. You know, you go to a therapist, and they recommend a crystal. There's some pretty woo-woo stuff out here. She was pretty woo-woo, but for some reason, she made it very, very likable. Do you guys remember that book, The Secret? It's like if you think about it enough and put it in place in your brain, the universe will grant you this. Yeah, and she was talking about that stuff before any of it was even popular. For some reason, when she does it, it's very tasteful. Other times, my friends do it, and it looks like, you know, they're one of those women wearing a Coachella brown hat. You know, and it's not cool at all. You know what I'm talking about? Those wide-brim hats. Whenever I see them with turquoise jewelry, I run away. Exactly, I'm out.
01:06:36	Mehtab Bhogal	get good choice
01:06:36	Sam Parr	You know, if you're wearing cowboy boots, turquoise jewelry... turquoise, yeah, I'm out. No wide-brim hats for me, I'm out. If you wear one of those things, I'm not part of this. But for some reason, when she does it, I'm in.
01:06:50	Shaan Puri	Well, that's what I want to know. I think the story I've heard is that she grew up in these terrible conditions, overcame them, and became super successful. But I literally want to know: what was the successful part? I mean, how did she get her break? What led her there? Was it literally just better content? Was she just that damn good and dynamic as a talk show host? Or was it like the Microsoft-IBM deal? You know, how did Microsoft take over the world? It’s like, well, they cut this really great deal for the operating system where they could be with multiple providers at once, and they used IBM to bootstrap. That's how they got bigger. So, was there a growth hack? Was there a smart deal that she struck? Was it the timing? Because, you know, cable started spreading into every home in the country, and she was one of the top three shows. Did she get to surf the cable wave or whatever? I want to know what actually led her to the mega fame. What were the actual factors? It's not like a simple answer, but that's what I'm actually curious about. In the areas and topics that I know about, those stories are always the most interesting. When I go into other topics, like with Matap, what happened? He started off bad and now he's the best. But yeah, what about Act 2? The middle part? That's the part that anyone who actually wants to make things happen in their life should focus on. Hollywood focuses on Act 1 and Act 3, right? The bad origin and then the happy ending. But it's the montage—the training montage—when you go from scrawny to strong. The training montage that they speed up through is where all the interesting stuff happens.
01:08:36	Sam Parr	I already told you, Gino. I go "Billy of the Week" on Wednesday. Oprah, I'm on it! Yeah, there's this really cool book called The Messy Middle. Have you guys read The Messy Middle? It's by... what's his name? Scott Belsky! Yeah, the most dreamy guy of all dreamy guys. Scott Belsky's the man. Scott Belsky basically started Behance, which is where developers and designers could host their portfolios. He started it, bootstrapped it, and had a $175,000,000 exit before it became very successful. He said he had like $50,000 and he invested $15,000 into Pinterest at a $3,000,000 valuation and $15,000 into Uber at a $3,000,000 valuation. Each of those had a $50 to $100 million outcome. Plus, he owned 75% of his company when it sold for $175,000,000. So, very, very, very successful! Now, it’s looking like he’s going to become the next CEO of Adobe, so it's a huge deal. He's got this awesome book called The Messy Middle, and it talks about how, you know, starting things can be somewhat easy. But once you start, then there's the middle, and you have the end. The end's kind of the easy part; you know, things are just kind of working. But the messy middle is that 10-year stretch.
01:09:47	Sam Parr	Where it's like, "Is this working? Is this not working?" It's a really cool book on how to navigate that. I love that title: The Messy Middle.
01:09:55	Shaan Puri	Yeah, great title, great guy. He came on the pod once a long time ago. We should bring him back. But yeah, he's on your "Mount Rushmore" of dreamy dudes. I feel like you got Huberman up there, you got Belsky... who else? It's basically like...
01:10:10	Sam Parr	Men that are strong and good looking... Yeah, you gotta have jawlines. Yeah, you need a good quality man.
01:10:18	Shaan Puri	and a clear cut jaw
01:10:20	Sam Parr	dude have you seen Scott belsky's jaw man he's got a strong chin
01:10:24	Mehtab Bhogal	I know I'm googling ass flesh chin
01:10:26	Sam Parr	talk talk about talk about
01:10:28	Shaan Puri	not a distressed asset okay it's chisel yeah
01:10:32	Sam Parr	he's a that's a blue chip stock right there
01:10:34	Shaan Puri	Yeah, he also just dresses well. I feel like dressing well is this really easy thing to do that nobody does, and he does an amazing job of it.
01:10:43	Mehtab Bhogal	especially in tech
01:10:44	Sam Parr	I know he's the man because he lives in New York. Dude, all those guys are stylish. He lives in New York, yeah, so he's got that leg up.
01:10:53	Shaan Puri	Dude, I've never been to his house, but I've been to his house. I know exactly what a guy like that’s house looks like. It's basically... I can picture it so clearly in my mind, how immaculate the design is of that guy's house.
01:11:07	Sam Parr	He invested in the hustle. He wrote us a very small check, and I've got the paperwork for where to send the documents to immediately. I looked up and I saw the house. I could tell you, off air, it's exactly what you're describing. You didn't even describe it other than you used some big words, and it's exactly what you're describing here.
01:11:26	Mehtab Bhogal	Something funny is, I tried to, in 2018, when we were hunting for deal flow, I stumbled across The Hustle. I thought, "This is awesome! I should try to invest in this." So, I messaged you on Facebook, but there was no reply.
01:11:36	Sam Parr	so oh I'm sorry
01:11:38	Mehtab Bhogal	oh wow you should
01:11:39	Shaan Puri	go pull it up this is kinda funny this is your revenge
01:11:42	Mehtab Bhogal	no I'm sorry sorry it's it's kinda funny if I would've not that would've been a good investment but
01:11:47	Sam Parr	I'm sorry, but I cannot provide a response without the content. Please provide the raw transcription again, and I'll be happy to assist you.
01:11:53	Shaan Puri	maybe you too could've zillow scott's house wow
01:11:56	Sam Parr	this is awesome yeah
01:11:58	Shaan Puri	We're not... we were friendly, we're not friends. But we've Googled his house; he's not Googled.
01:12:03	Sam Parr	Mine? Yeah, I can tell you what type of couch he has, though. But dude, thanks for coming on.
01:12:10	Mehtab Bhogal	man you
01:12:10	Sam Parr	you're awesome I'm gonna go and find that I'm I just pulled up facebook I'm gonna find that message
01:12:15	Mehtab Bhogal	It's just kind of funny. It's from 2018. It's like, "Hey, I'm an angel investor. Please let me invest. I like what you're doing."
01:12:22	Sam Parr	what's your is your does your last name start with a b yeah
01:12:25	Mehtab Bhogal	bogle if you just type in b h r
01:12:26	Sam Parr	g l
01:12:29	Sam Parr	yeah I see it sorry
01:12:30	Mehtab Bhogal	There was a good deal flow. I should've messaged you more. I should've asked you.
01:12:36	Shaan Puri	Dude, I saw a post on Reddit yesterday. It was a map. I don't know if this is fake news, but at the top, it was one of the most popular posts on Reddit yesterday. It's a heat map that shows the average life expectancy by town. There's literally a 20-year age difference between places like New York and California versus the South. It's like, you know, people in the South are dying at like 60-something, and people on the coast, who are living the yoga and salads lifestyle, are living until they're 80 on average. Then, you can see these small pockets, like in Florida, where it's the retirement community where people migrate into.
01:13:18	Sam Parr	yeah like jewish
01:13:19	Shaan Puri	New Yorkers have been living for a long time. Yeah, the Jewish New Yorkers who moved down there are living for a long time. Everything around it is surrounded by the walking dead of people who are going to die in their 60s. And it's a...
01:13:29	Sam Parr	Boca Raton kills it, and then like Fort Lauderdale, it's like it has a 30-year shorter life expectancy.
01:13:37	Shaan Puri	I asked my data guy, "Please overlay a map of Chick-fil-A's." It was a perfect sequence to... the dying early crowd, which is unfortunate for me because I love Chick-fil-A.
01:13:49	Sam Parr	Chick-fil-A is not healthy. Well, we're screwed, dude. Thanks for doing this; we appreciate you.
01:13:55	Mehtab Bhogal	yeah no worries thank you

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How To Buy A D2C Startup For Cheap and Sell It For Millions

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