Unclaimed Baggage Empire
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A story about how Doyle Owens built a successful business by partnering with airlines to sell unclaimed luggage.
"Doyle Owens founded Unclaimed Baggage in Scottsboro, Alabama. He partnered with every airline and said 'we will take the unclaimed baggage' because airlines have a protocol - after 21 days if no one claims it, they're stuck with it.
They built it into the nation's only retailer of lost luggage. They donate a bunch of stuff they get in the bags to charities, they take orphaned bags and recycle them, they sell them - those three combined make up the business. They have a huge facility in Alabama.
What I love about this is that people tend to overcomplicate things. This guy is the definition of turning nothing into gold. It's super simple, it's not fancy, it's in Alabama. He reduced waste significantly and got very wealthy in the process. He probably created thousands of jobs for low-income people.
This guy took something that airlines saw as a problem - that 0.3% of unclaimed luggage - and turned it into a successful business while doing good for the community."
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.