6 Profitable Business Ideas You Should Start in 2022

Six Business Ideas You Can Start Now - April 23, 2022 (almost 3 years ago) • 22:06

This My First Million episode features Shaan Puri and Sam Parr brainstorming business ideas, some practical, some more whimsical. They discuss the potential of reviving defunct business models, the need for improved digital experiences, and the power of injecting personality into everyday workspaces. The conversation is lively and engaging, offering listeners a mix of actionable insights and amusing hypotheticals.

  • Milo 2.0: Shaan proposes reviving the defunct service Milo, which allowed users to search for local in-stock products. He argues this model remains relevant in today's market, where immediate needs and physical store preferences persist.

  • Zoom Waiting Room Experience: Shaan suggests enhancing the Zoom waiting room experience with branding and interactive elements, transforming it into a virtual office space that reflects the host's personality and company culture. He draws a parallel to the positive impressions created by physical office environments.

  • B2B Spencer's: Shaan pitches a business selling quirky and humorous office supplies, allowing companies to inject personality into their workspaces. This concept aims to elevate mundane office items like bathroom signs and exit signs into opportunities for brand expression.

  • Discord Property Managers: Shaan identifies the need for professional management services for Discord servers, particularly in the crypto space where spam and confusion are prevalent. This service would help maintain order and facilitate positive community engagement.

  • Fit Furniture: Shaan introduces the concept of "fit furniture," designed specifically to fit through standard doorways. He points out the common frustration of moving bulky furniture and the lack of readily available solutions. Sam relates this to his own experience with Lovesac and the difficulty of finding affordable, easily movable furniture.

  • Bulletin Board Material/Haters as a Service: Shaan proposes a service that curates and delivers constructive criticism or "hater" comments to clients, providing them with motivational fuel and a reminder of their doubters. This idea plays on the notion that a "chip on the shoulder" can be a powerful driver of success.

Transcript:

Start TimeSpeakerText
Shaan Puri
Okay this idea is called milo again
Sam Parr
what is milo
Shaan Puri
so milo is a company that got started back in the day that a guy who came on the pot jack abraham started
Sam Parr
yeah
Shaan Puri
And what Milo did was a very simple thing. Milo said, "If you need to go buy Scotch tape," you would just type it in. It was a search engine for finding where you can go buy a specific product in person. So you'd be like, "I want to buy, you know, whatever, like a Phillips razor or something like that." You just type it in, and it would say, "It's in stock at this Target near you." So it took where you are, and then it knew all the store's inventory. It just told you if the product was in stock right there. And like, the world is moving towards e-commerce, yes, but there's still a very healthy slice of people that shop in real stores. They want something now, today, and they don't want to wait for it to be delivered in a certain amount of time. So this idea of Milo... Milo got bought by eBay for about $75 million.
Sam Parr
and then like a couple years
Shaan Puri
And then it kind of, you know, like many acquisitions, it just sort of faded away and disappeared inside of eBay. But this idea is still a great idea, dude.
Sam Parr
I completely agree, man. I tried buying something the other day, like some chairs or something, and I had to go to like 8 different websites: HomeDepot.com, TractorSupply.com, Lowes.com, Walmart.com.
Shaan Puri
Even when you go, you're seeing the generic thing. You're not seeing... you're seeing like, "Does Home Depot carry this?" Okay, yeah. Now let's go to store locator, type in my thing. It sucks. And then I go to each one and do that, and it's like... sucks. I completely agree. [For example, with] kids' cough medicine, and I was like, "Dude, I just need to know: do you have kids' Robitussin or not?"
Sam Parr
And then, like, usually at CVS or Home Depot, wherever, you type something in and then they're like, "This isn't near you." It's like, "Oh, well, because up here it says my zip code is, like, you know, 8 hours away when I was on vacation." You don't have an easy way where it's just like search, you know what I mean? I completely agree, it takes forever. I was trying to do this the other day; it's a pain in the butt, a pain in the ass. I was using Google Shopping, but it's not easy.
Shaan Puri
Exactly. And I know it's also hard to build, right? Because you have to have real-time inventory of physical stores.
Sam Parr
Yeah, but that's not that hard. If you go to Target and ask for a vacuum, they go to Target.com and type in that vacuum to figure out where it is in the store, right?
Shaan Puri
So, it's in some system. You would need to build integrations with the major back-end inventory systems in order to be able to do this. You have a really strong reason why they should give you that access. It's like, "Hey dude, I'm going to send you a customer. I'm going to send you foot traffic to your store." Is there anything a store wants more than foot traffic? I don't think so. To me, Milo is an idea. By the way, this is just a general observation: companies that get acquired and then kind of dissolve into the big company just go and restart those companies like three years later.
Sam Parr
Yeah, I actually think that's a really fantastic idea. So, that business model... I have said that I hate the advertising business model. I don't entirely hate it, but I do hate that when you're a publisher, you have to say stuff that you don't really want to because of an advertiser. So, I don't love that model. However, I love non-publishing business advertising models because it's the perfect alignment. Basically, with Milo, you have a site that gets lots of traffic, and then you allow someone to pay money on a per-click or per-view basis. It's very fair, and it's the easiest sales process. I think I'm all about that.
Shaan Puri
right okay I got some more random ideas
Sam Parr
this is all keep going
Shaan Puri
These ideas, by the way, are a little bit more like the tipsy, the drunk ideas. So, this might be another drunk idea segment. I might have to take a fake shot here, and we might do drunk ideas because these are very, very loose.
Sam Parr
no milo again is alright
Shaan Puri
Bad ideas are bad ideas, but they're the good version. I'm giving you a good bad idea.
Sam Parr
did have you ever asked
Shaan Puri
manager
Sam Parr
Did you ever ask that guy, Jack, what he thinks? If we could just email him and be like, "Is this cool? Would this work again?"
Shaan Puri
oh no I didn't I didn't ask him yeah we we should ask him we'll see what he says
Sam Parr
I'd be
Shaan Puri
Happy to! But also, people should know this: when a founder goes into a space, they can tell you a lot of things about it. However, they have so much scar tissue about that space that they will always tell you, like, 9 times out of 10... I should say, 9 times out of 10, they're going to tell you, "Don't do it," because they have trauma. You shouldn't necessarily listen to the "don't do it." You should listen to all the reasons why they say "don't do it" and then assess: are those still true, or do I have a compelling reason why those are no longer true? But yeah, we should ask them. Alright, so here's my... here's my drunk idea number 2. Alright, you take Zoom calls, right? Yeah, you got a pulse.
Sam Parr
yeah
Shaan Puri
What's the experience like? Okay, let's say you had a meeting with me before the era of Zoom. We were meeting in person, you come to my office for a meeting. What's that experience like while you're waiting for that meeting? And just in the 3 minutes before the meeting, what do you get?
Sam Parr
So lately, nothing much. But I recently did something where they had an ad on Zoom, and I thought that was intriguing.
Shaan Puri
No, no, no. In real life, what do you get? What's the best version of a real life before your meeting? You show up at the building. You've done this together.
Sam Parr
water yeah water
Shaan Puri
Famous New York bougie places... You've been there. What happens? Someone attractive greets you. They ask you if you need anything to drink. They give you the drink, and you have a seat. You look around; they've got art everywhere. You start to feel like, "Wow, this company's pretty cool." Like, yeah, I was looking at that wall over there with all the cool... you know, little hand-poured [artwork].
Sam Parr
that's funny one yeah
Shaan Puri
You know, I went to one the other day and... the bathroom sign, oh by the way, this is another drunk idea, but I'll... this is coming next. Coming next drunk idea: the bathroom sign at this place didn't say "men," it said "**Batman**" and they had like a cape on the guy.
Sam Parr
that's pretty hilarious
Shaan Puri
And I was like, "Ah, these guys... they like to have a good time. These guys got a great sense of humor." So I got all of this information, all this persuasion, before I even went into the meeting.
Sam Parr
which where which office is this
Shaan Puri
I can't say, but Zoom needs this. Zoom needs a waiting room experience. This is a feature for some product manager at Zoom. We need a dope waiting room experience. It can even be built off Zoom. There are, like, a trillion Zoom calls a day. Give me a dope waiting room where I can send somebody that's connected to the Zoom call. When they're ready, they can come in. But before that, they get a branded experience—a virtual office, a virtual vibe of who they're dealing with and what that person's all about. Create a little website space for them to hang out, have some fun, enjoy a drink, and relax.
Sam Parr
I did this call with a company; I forget what they're making. Maybe they're making a game. I logged in a little bit early, and they had a teaser video that was about one minute long. Because they were the host of the Zoom, it automatically played. So when I got to the meeting, I was pretty psyched up. Yeah, I was psyched up! It was awesome; it was really cool. It almost felt like they had bought it. I was like, "Is this a new feature? Was that an ad that you paid Zoom to play?" They're like, "No, they have this new feature where they allow you to show an amp-up video prior to the meeting starting." It was really cool. But dude, how about the fact that Zoom has been around? We've been in a pandemic for two or three years, and it's like the same stuff over and over again.
Shaan Puri
yeah no features and the stock cut in half what's going on zoom yeah
Sam Parr
this is not good
Shaan Puri
I'm more mad about one of those than the other I'll let them figure out which one is actually bothering me
Sam Parr
And there are so many people that go to that landing page where it says, "Click here to open up Zoom," and it's just a blank page. Yeah, it's a blank page. There's so much real estate there.
Shaan Puri
I get there, and I've already clicked the Zoom link. Guess what? I do want to open Zoom. You didn't have to re-ask me, right? Like, yes means yes to Zoom.
Sam Parr
On SimilarWeb, Zoom.com gets **1.7 billion** visits a month and it's the **26th** most popular website in the world. That page is just this blank page. I cannot believe that they could make maybe **$100,000** or **$1,000,000** a year just in ads.
Shaan Puri
Just like the new Batman movie needs to play like a 15-second trailer to everybody today. That's what needs to happen.
Sam Parr
for real I do think that that that's like way so much wasted space
Shaan Puri
Yeah, I'm more in the meeting room, the waiting room bucket. I want you to be able to say something about who you are by showing what you know. You could decorate it, put your little drinks there, have a little interactive thing, play Jenga... you could do whatever you want, right? Like, make it cool. Alright, so that's one idea. The second one is what I teased a second ago. It's called "I Don't Have a Personality, Give Me One" or "I'm Not Funny, Make Me Funny." It's a store like Spencer's back in the day. Remember Spencer's? Or what's...
Sam Parr
the whole thing I just went to hot topic I just went to one the other day yeah it's awesome
Shaan Puri
alright that's the joke that's the actual joke for for
Sam Parr
Me and Sarah went on a date night on Friday. We thought, "Do you want to walk around the mall and go to the food court?" So we did, and it was awesome.
Shaan Puri
date night that's awesome
Sam Parr
it it was awesome man it was so much fun
Shaan Puri
so spencer's still a thing
Sam Parr
Yes, and hot topic. We went to both of them. This shirt that I'm wearing, I bought it from Abercrombie. Dude, Abercrombie's cool right now.
Shaan Puri
I believe you. So, my idea is it's the B2B version of Spencer's. It's just stuff for you to put around the office that's going to make your office more fun and interesting.
Sam Parr
I think we should workshop that name a little bit though. What was your name? I don't have a personality. Please give me one, yeah?
Shaan Puri
Maybe there's an acronym in there. We want it to be a word that's like "Botox," but instead of injecting filler into your lips, it's for injecting personality into your company. So, basically, what this is: **Botox for your company**. What it's going to do is take all the common items of any office—like bathroom door plaques, bathroom door signs, exit signs, emergency exit signs, meeting room signs, little trash keys on the table for meetings, your welcome desk sign, and mat, and even a little bell. It's just all items like that. Then, it'll make you seem like the fun, interesting version of your company. We take the common and do it uncommonly, and that's what we do here.
Sam Parr
We used to have this exit sign. Do you remember this? We had this exit sign at the dojo where, over the exit sign, someone wrote "IPO" because that was the goal. The goal exit was an IPO, so we had an IPO sign instead of an exit sign.
Shaan Puri
it
Sam Parr
Was pretty awesome, but I completely agree. Like, this could...
Shaan Puri
Be cool. Toilet paper opportunity. There’s an opportunity in that toilet paper roll. There’s opportunity in the bathroom mirrors. There’s opportunity everywhere in your office to demonstrate a little personality.
Sam Parr
One time when I went to VaynerMedia, they had Vayner-branded bottles of water. It was awesome, and I still remember it. It stuck out. Have you been to a company that has their own branded bottles or just...?
Shaan Puri
No, but I also don't feel like I would have thought that was awesome. Why did you think that was so awesome? The label just looked amazing or something?
Sam Parr
I just thought it was weird. I thought it was cool; it was quirky and stood out. I mean, it was just a normal, cheap Costco bottle of water. Somehow, some company probably paid a quarter per bottle and just wrapped it with their label on it. I thought it was neat.
Shaan Puri
I remember when I went to Twitch for the first time. We were trying to sell the company, and they were like, "Do you want anything to drink?" You know, here's the little fridge. I opened it up, and it was my first time ever seeing boxed water.
Sam Parr
and so
Shaan Puri
I was like, "Boxed water? Fun!" I got that was like their gimmick, and I was like, "That's cool." I picked it up. You ever drank boxed water? Tastes nasty, by the way. Does not taste good... tastes disgusting. And also, you're drinking from the old school-like milk carton.
Sam Parr
Yeah, it's like drinking orange juice out of a metal thermos. It just doesn't taste good.
Shaan Puri
It doesn't taste right, and then it doesn't even look right or feel right. So now I'm in this meeting trying to sell my company—biggest day of my life—and I'm like a toddler drinking from this carton of water. The thing was just getting all wet and disintegrating. I was like, "Oh God, do you have a dumpster I can go throw this away in? Because it doesn't fit in any of the trash cans."
Sam Parr
it's like a paper straw alright here's my next
Shaan Puri
drunk idea
Sam Parr
sean's like fuck fuck them turtles
Shaan Puri
Choke on these... I don't want to choke myself to save the turtles. That's what was happening with the boxed water. I have moved straight to the end; I'm fine. So, the next one is... I don't know what I need to call this. I need a catchy name. I'm going to call it "Discord Property Managers" because I can't think of a name. Okay, so basically, there are a ton of Discords out there now. This is like community managers as a job title, right? A lot of people have communities. Communities are all the rage now, and there's a ton of Discords, especially in the crypto world. There are tons of Discords.
Sam Parr
dude they're so hard to figure out
Shaan Puri
That are just like noisy. There are spammers and scammers, and then there are new people coming in. They never use Discord; they never use crypto. There's some confusion all around. I think somebody should build the best property management company for your Discords. Just be like, "Dude, we are the best at managing Discords, and we will manage your Discord for this flat fee." Just build a brand around being an amazing property manager for your digital property and your digital spaces.
Sam Parr
That's a great idea! So, VaynerMedia, who we'll talk about again, when they started their whole thing, was like, "Social media is new. We're the guys, you know? We know how to handle it." Basically, most of their job titles were called community managers. Early on, a popular job title at their company was community manager, which basically just meant, "We'll comment on everyone's comment." You know, if you're Oreos and someone makes a comment about Oreos, we just reply. I actually think that you and they got big that way. I bet you VaynerMedia makes over $200 million in revenue. It's a big company, and you do the exact same thing, but now the new community or the new socialist community... and I think that you better.
Shaan Puri
you know david spinks
Sam Parr
yeah of course he was he was he was he was way early
Shaan Puri
He was way early, dude. If he had started that like 2 years ago instead of 7 years ago, that would be like a $100,000,000 company right now. He was just a little too early, and he didn't...
Sam Parr
he was early
Shaan Puri
make it all the way
Sam Parr
So, David Spinks had this company called CMX Summit. Originally, it was a conference for community managers. Then it became an online community and everything. He sold it, but I don't even remember who Bevy is.
Shaan Puri
The big idea was that you have a CEO, then you have a CTO who handles the technical part of things. You have a CIO, which is the Chief Information Officer, a CSO, and a CMO for marketing. So, you have all these C-suites. His belief was that community is going to be a big part of companies. Therefore, you're going to have a CXO, I think that was the term they were going for, which is like a Chief Community Officer or something like that. I don't know why it was "X" or "CMX." Basically, this is going to be a job title at the C-suite level. Then you're going to have a senior community manager and then a junior community manager. This is a whole new job function.
Sam Parr
and he was right
Shaan Puri
I don't know how to do it, and he was totally right and totally early, which is the same thing as being totally wrong. And that's what sucks.
Sam Parr
Yeah, he was totally right and totally early. I completely agree. He was on that like it felt like 10 years ago. But I think this is a good idea. It would be a pain in the butt to run an agency, but I think this is an agency that could crush it.
Shaan Puri
Let me give you... okay, can I give you two ideas? So there's a guy—I'm gonna... these are 100% stolen from another podcast I heard. I listen to the Bill Simmons podcast, a sports podcast, and Bill has his buddy Kevin Wildes (or something like that). He comes on and he does "half-baked ideas."
Sam Parr
what's this
Shaan Puri
He is... we need to get him on this pod because his half-baked ideas are like... he does drunk ideas, and he's been doing this for years. It's just a running bit. This guy only comes out like twice a year, but when he does, he's got these amazing ones. Can I give you the two most recent ones he did? By the way, he's amazing at pitching them. He's even better than me at pitching these drunk ideas. Alright, so the first one is called **Fit Furniture**. You might be wondering, "What is Fit Furniture?" I've been hearing a lot about it lately. Do we make the highest quality furniture? No, we do not. Do we have the best prices? Sure don't. Do we have furniture that fits through doorways? You bet your ass we do! Because moving furniture is a requirement of furniture, and all furniture is built as if everybody's home has just open walls that you can drag these things through. So, Fit Furniture is furniture optimized to fit through the standard doorway width. That's right.
Sam Parr
do you know do you know lovesac you remember lovesac
Shaan Puri
yeah of course so their new huge beanbags right
Sam Parr
Yeah, but their new shtick is furniture that fits through a door. It's modular. My god, it's a couch that you can take apart. So, at my Airbnb, the way it works is these guys are idiots. They put a spiral staircase going up to the second floor, and that's the only stairs. You can't carry anything up a spiral staircase. I was like, "I can't get a couch unless I can take it apart." There was this company in Texas, and they're the couch guys. They take apart your couch just for this problem. They take the whole thing apart and rebuild it wherever you want it. I was like, "Alright, well, I can't do that." So I looked at... because it's an Airbnb, I don't want a fancy couch. I looked at Lovesac. They're interesting, but it's like $3,000 for one of their couches or $4,000 for one of their couches. So I ended up going with a futon because I could build a futon upstairs. But dude, it was such a pain finding a couch that could fit into certain doorways that wasn't like over $5,000. I completely agree.
Shaan Puri
If you want to pay 5-star prices for that college experience, Sam's Short Term Rentals has got you covered. Sleep on a futon.
Sam Parr
Welcome to the stars! No, we don't call it a futon because we call it a pull-out couch. It's like... crazy comfortable. It's basically like a mattress that you can sit on sometimes. But yeah, I didn't... I was embarrassed to call people. I was embarrassed to call it a futon, that's for sure.
Shaan Puri
That was your nickname. We called you "The Pull-Out Couch," right? Alright, let me give you his second idea. His second idea is called "Bulletin Board Material." So this is for... I think this is for you. I think you are the target market for this. It's for somebody who's got a little chip on their shoulder, and you like it. That chip on your shoulder has made you who you are today. There would be no hustle if there weren't any doubters.
Sam Parr
dude they say
Shaan Puri
doubters and skeptics
Sam Parr
chips on shoulders create chips in pockets
Shaan Puri
Exactly. But what happens if you grew up around nice people? You don't have a chip on your shoulder. Or maybe you had that chip, sold the hustle, and now everybody tells you you're so great. You don't have a chip.
Sam Parr
So unlucky that you had a healthy father and a healthy mother who treated you well. Like, you don't... like, "Fuck me," right?
Shaan Puri
tells you you could do anything
Sam Parr
that's such a disadvantage because I grew up in an emotionally healthy household
Shaan Puri
the biggest disadvantage there is
Sam Parr
the biggest and and with money
Shaan Puri
We help solve that problem. We are for the healthy middle-class family who has lost their edge. What both the morbid material is, is it is "haters as a service." So what we do is we go and find the people. Oh, my first one would love the podcast. Everyday people love the podcast, but guess what? In some corners of the internet, there are people who hate this podcast. What "haters as a service" does is it compiles that information and it takes out the real toxic stuff that's going to, you know, give you nightmares at night. So there's some filtering, and it just drips to you a little motivation every week that just reminds you that some people believe you can't do it. Some people say you're not so prepared for this podcast. Some people say, "Sean, your camera's not working," and you know, you gotta get that sorted. So it just gives you that healthy dose of **haterade**.
Sam Parr
it's like you would be
Shaan Puri
your best
Sam Parr
And we just hire a bunch of immigrant mothers whose children are grown. They have some free time and they're like, "Well, you know, your brother's a doctor, Sean."
Shaan Puri
Exactly! I actually know two women who could run the service single-handedly. I'm not going to name any names, but they could serve thousands of customers... just if I was at the end.
Sam Parr
Of the day, you know, it's not too late to go back to school. We're just... yeah.
Shaan Puri
so haters as a service what do you think of that idea you in or you out
Sam Parr
yeah I'm down we'll we'll just call it like it it has to it just you're just nagging people all day
Shaan Puri
yeah exactly and and it's for the
Sam Parr
immigrant mom dot com yeah
Shaan Puri
yeah live like an immigrant.com
Sam Parr
yeah there's a reason why immigrants are always the best
Shaan Puri
Immigrantmedality.com. Alright, yeah, those are my drunk ideas. You got any drunk ideas? I feel like...
Sam Parr
I'm not creative like you. All my ideas are just legitimate money-making ideas, you know?
Shaan Puri
Yeah, it's hard for me to come up with bad ideas. How do you do it?
Sam Parr
Yeah, I'm like the **Lady Gaga** of ideas. There are no deep hits or deep tracks, only hits. Alright, that's it.
Shaan Puri
it that's the episode