Frame Breaking Businesses: From Pomegranate Juice to VPNs

So in like two thousand twelve, twenty thirteen, thousand fourteen, he started a vitamin brand and it only did okay. And then he started also tinkering with a skincare brand, which it actually did much better. It got to like ten million or so of re in revenue. He hired a CEO, the CEO kinda like drove it into the ground and didn't really do that well. And so he started focusing again to his vitamin brand. And he's like, Look, it's doing okay. Oh. Who's the best customer of a vitamin company?

Dogs. Because you And this is it. I'm not disparaging him, but like Do do they work?

Yeah, why not? Like Fugazi, you know like Fugaz Welcome to Fugazi Inc. We make supplements for dogs. They'll never tell you if it works or doesn't work. What uh Hold up. Are we supposed to like start with like a

Catch phrase now. Hey boys and girls, welcome to the business show where you learn how to make so much money. That You'll get taxed out the ass. That's what rich people do care about. Taxes. If you don't care about taxes yet, you ain't rich. Do you care about taxes?

Yeah. I like I don't I don't I'm not gonna live my life According to like where the low taxes are.

But like it's like the number two or number three thing that I'm thinking about. So I'm thinking about this whole New York, Texas thing, and I like do the math and I'm like Damn, like imagine I gotta rent a place for let's just say like twenty grand a month, like That's How much taxes I'm paying. By moving here versus staying or you know, whatever it is, like a lot of money a month.

Well, you have a good thing. You could do the like Texas is your main residence and spend four or five months out of the year in New York. So that's not so bad. That's not so bad. But I I I need to do it with uh New York and Florida because Texas winter is not like Winter winter that's desirable enough that you want to winter there. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Dude have you heard about this like the teddy bear? Law.

The Teddy V. What's that? So I was asking my tax guy, I was like you where you keep your Like possessions. Yeah, but basically I was like, So what's the rule? Is it six months out of the year? H what does it take to have residency in some place? And he was like Well, it's there's a bunch of little factors. He's like, but one he's like there was a famous case with Derek Jeter, the the U New York Yankees shortstop. They're like

Jeter wanted Jeter play for the Yankees in New York, but he didn't want to pay New York taxes. He wanted to pay Florida taxes because he's like, look, this is my home, this is where I live. Ah, blah blah blah. But you also have an apartment in New York and you play in New York, you so you work there Your home is there and your kids go to school there, I think, and they're and so they ended up it got uh ruled in the in court and they call it I think the the n the name they call it is the I haven't looked this up. It's like the Teddy Barrett Law and it's basically like

Where would you keep your teddy bear? So the place you would call home. So like factors like where your kids go to school. Where are the possessions that you love? It all goes into this like umbrella to s be like, where do we actually think your home is? And um and actually when I first heard this, I was like, wow, that's really like subjective for like a ruling or a law. And actually it's one of the laws I kind of agree with. I actually think that that is more like How it should be done.

Which is like, dude, what's the spirit of this? Do you actually live here or do you just like Stay here for exactly six months and one day. every year and I have to, you know, I don't actually know where you are at any given time. But if you know, if you're working at a place, your kids go to school there, all your possessions are there, all your friends are there, your family is there, like That's where you live. As an avid listener of Date Line, one of the easiest ways to catch the husband who

Kills the wife is like three weeks before he either bought like you know, a trash bag and like a shovel or he Googled like How to dispose of a body. And last night I found myself Googling

And I was so embarrassed to do this, so I went to an incognito window. I was like I can't Google this. Like they're gonna know that I killed her. Yeah. And it and it was like how does the state that you're visiting know like like if I'm renting And I didn't even know what to Google, by the way. I was trying to figure out how to phrase this, but if I live in Texas How does New York even know that I'm there if I'm just renting a place?

Dude, that's so funny you say that. I did the same thing and Like my queries sound exactly like Does the Irish really know? It's like somehow somehow that's how it's like formatted in my search. Like I wish Google would like Dude, Google needs to understand italicized. Really? Like the asterisk and everything. It's like there's one browser that's just like Hm, this guy's only ever incognito and he's either looking at porn or taxes. Like what's this guy's life like, right?

Basically it's like you know, I I'm trying to Google like Um When you get you know. Yeah if the R S does this to you. Is that like jail or just a we bringing a rule or a law? Are taxes a recommendation or a requirement? Well, what I learned Googling this Googling this was the IRS and I I it makes sense, but I didn't even understand it. IRS is for federal.

So like uh but I pay my Federal taxes no matter what. But I'm like, Okay, so then How does the state of New York actually know that I was ever here? And I'm trying to like

I want to I'm Googling that to follow the rule. But I am curious and I was to be clear, f in case they also listen to podcasts, I'm Googleing this A for a friend and B to enforce the law on my friend. Cause I'm not here for anything else. And I was just curious. I'm just curious. I'm like literally, how does the state of New York even know that I exist? I'm I'm the same way. I I I'm the same way. We're all go down this rabbit hole. Then I'm like thirty minutes in, I'm like, why am I even looking for this is not applicable at all to me. But I'm like, I just want to know how it works. Like I'll be like

When you keep the receipt. Does anybody ever go read the receipts? Like, you know what what actually happened or like, you know, there's this Twitter account I love called uh how stuff works or something like that. I love it. And t today they posted a thing of like It was like How luggage gets loaded into an airplane. So there's a guy in the back of the airplane, and then there's like a conveyor belt shooting suitcases at him and he's stacking it like a perfect Tetris grid.

And I'm just like I dude, I love this account because it's always these These things where I'm like, dude, how does the world actually work? Like I you know, I know I give them my suitcase, but what happens after that? And it's like sort of the same thing with like Either taxes or like Uh Google just like, you know. Rich people don't pay taxes.

But how? Like you know, like what are these loopholes that I hear about? Are there are there really these loopholes? Like are like You know Universities have this endowment. What the hell are they doing with that? And I'm just like always trying to get to the bottom of like I wanna have like an actual understanding of the what's going on. And I feel like I have so little understanding about so many things on earth.

But it's so funny that you wro you brought that book. I actually wrote I'm like doing the thing with Maven again, the ideation boot camp course and Uh, I started talking about the book that I had as a kid called How Stuff Works. And then there's another one where they just like split like a power tool into two and you just see like a picture of like how school bus like operates or whatever. And I'm like the reason why researching, which is what you and I do for this podcast, is cool, is because whether you like it or not, America and the rest of the well, most of the world is you know, guided by capitalism and commerce. And so like if you understand how like a business works, just like these books show you how like the luggage guy works, then you kind of understand like what's possible and what's not possible, why laws are the way they are. why art is the way it is. Like you can you it's not just money making, but it's just like the earth, like just how the world and society and so Uh I actually was just writing that yesterday and

I totally agree and I think that's why like studying businesses is cool. And by the way, like I think most people do this for science. They're like, you know, why is the sky blue? And like there is a element of that. I'm talking about just like Here's a perfect example. Th uh we'll use the luggage one, for example. It's like Question. What happens

If you just never pick up your suitcase. Or like what happens if you just simply Like I see those bags over there that say that they're waiting for someone to come get them. What happens if they don't? Like is this just gonna pile up forever? You wanna know the game of Doctor Mario? And then Yeah, I do know tee it up for you. Then there is an answer, and it's actually kind of fascinating for somebody who goes and digs in and says, like Okay, but then what? Right. Or like the you know, like a kid, like Well why do they do that? And why do they do that? And why do they do that? And then you get to what's it called unclaimed Baggage or whatever it's called? Like that what's that? Was that the name of the company? So basically The Hustle wrote about it. So if you go like The Hustle, Unclaimed Baggage, there's a company in like rural Alabama, I think it's Alabama or Arkansas called Unclaimed Baggins, and they sell three hundred million dollars a year worth of unclaimed bags and they

It it's like a huge thrift store. You know? Right. And uh same thing with like the uh Like you know, the the shampoo at a hotel, like you know, I use this thing once. What do they do with it? Do they just refill it and give it to the next person? I'm curious. What do they do? It's like, oh actually, there's the whole company that recycles these. They take the half used shampoos from hotels. And they say they tell the hotel, Hey, we'll pay you nothing for it, but we'll come collect it for you. We'll take it off your hands. Because you can't give that to the next guest.

And then they take that and then they have like a basically a a a way to repackage and resell those and their brand is around And they that company does extremely well. And so you actually find companies at the end of all these because again. This is like a giant little business ecosystem, just in the same way that like you know, there's Plankton that Eat stuff off the whale's head or whatever. It's like Yeah, basically there's

A little business that's going to solve every one of these edge cases all around the world, right? There's a person whose job it is to do that thing. And If you keep going far enough, you'll like find those those little nooks and crannies. Well which is a perfect segment for what I want to talk about today because here's here's why I I wanna I'm gonna give you a bunch of example of things that I've

I'm calling frame breaking businesses. Like Things that I've discovered that have changed how I thought about stuff. And there's a story. Uh And and by the way, today I was I was thinking, I was like today's my leg day'cause I'm putting you on my back and I'm carrying us for this episode. I I I've I've I've got a I've got like a Side note by the way, my mom yesterday while I I work out with my mom sometimes and sh she was like Sam Parr's legs. She always calls you Sam Parr full name. I love it. I don't know if she knows that's first and last, but Sampar's legs, man.

He's got strong legs. And I was like Yeah, he's great. And she's like I was just looking at his legs in the last video, the Mr. Beast video,'cause you were wearing like shorts on the couch or whatever. I was just looking at his legs. I didn't hear anything.

All right, Mom. Hey, uh Sean's mom text me, I'll send you some more pics. And I'll I'll send you some pictures of my legs. I got you. It's it's genetics. So people people comment on my legs. I it's just it was it I was born that way. So thank you. I appreciate the love though. Um Alright. So basically the reason I thought about this was because Uh, Dig. So there's this website called Dig. It's actually not that popular anymore, but if you're above thirty, you probably know it. Dig and Reddit were competitors, and for a long time Dig was kind of beating Reddit, but they're both like the whole like front page of the internet type of businesses that had like

tens of millions of monthly uniques and Kevin Rose, the founder of Dig, was on the cover of Time as like meet Silicon Valley's new Wonderkin, the guy who is twenty eight years old and worth a billion dollars or whatever. He was like the Mark Zuckerberg, like the next Zuckerberg and Dig ended up not. Actually winning this battle. And they're currently for sale.

And I linked. to their financials. Someone just sent this to me on Twitter. So it's not like I got this through um like I didn't like sign up for a service where I had to agree to confidentiality, but someone just sent this to me. Right. You signed to FDA. Full disclosure agreement where you're like I will put this on blast if you send this random shit to me. That's exactly what happened. Someone just sent it to me. I didn't ask questions and I just looked at it. But I'll give you like the overview. The overview is that over the last year they had twenty seven million users. So what's that, two million a month. So two which is not a lot. The hustle gets more than two million a month just on our website and we don't even try to get traffic on our website. So two million a month, their revenue Slam. Slam on dig. Nice. Keep going. Okay, so

Their revenue For the year. was something like A million or like one point three? Or like it it was like one point two, one point three. Nothing. Shit.

Dig, which was supposed to be like, you know A great website only like Uh eighty, seventy, ninety one thousand, forty four thousand a month in revenue. Horrible. Crazy. Certified small boy shit. Yeah.

Yeah. And But here's the thing, is that this rep this this discrepancy, we're gonna call it the gap. The gap between how much we talked about them and their prestige and like You know, the accolades that they get.

As But from But the the gap between where they actually are and reality That gap.

Is huge. So instead I'm gonna swap it. And we're gonna have some frame breaking companies and we're gonna talk about the actual good type of gap. Um, and I wanna show you a few businesses that people don't talk about. That are actually

phenomenal and really interesting. So I'm gonna give you The first one. The first one I we maybe talked about before, but I was uh Looking at Michael Bisbing. Michael Bisbang's a u a YouTuber for MMA. And a VPN

company sponsored him. And I thought that's kind of strange. So I just Googled like what's a good V PN and m and maybe I'll start buying a VPN. Basically a V PN if you're in America and you wanna like Tell the internet that you're in Europe, you use a VPN. Or if you're in like North Korea or one of the Korea's Which ever one. would this would apply to and you wanna act like you're in America, you use a VPN. That's an that's a that's a or if you just want to like just search the web anonymously and you want to Google stuff about taxes. Um

And that's what the VPN just wore. And so I Googled best. VPN and I came across this website. called compare tech. That was kind of intriguing. So I linked to it. Do you see compare tech dot com slash VPN?

So I started reading it and I was like, this is kind of an interesting site. And I looked them up on similar web and they get millions of views and I scroll all the way to the bottom and I notice that they're based in England. And the thing about England and the UK is that If you are a UK company that name all the things you love about about England. Uh Maybe the T

Maybe you like the Queen and you like the fact that all company's numbers are publicly available. Yes. A lot of people don't know this, but if you are a company in the UK, I don't know what the threshold is. It could be as low as five, it could be as high as ten million, and you do over ten million in revenue, you have to you there's a thing called company's house. Which is a very British name. It's like their I don't know if it's like is it like their uh IRS or something like that, where you can go and log in and see all these financials. From privately held companies. And I was curious about this little website called CompareTech. So I went and looked it up on their on Company's house. Can you see what their financials are? Do you have it up?

I don't have it open, no. Okay, so I'm gonna pull it up and I I I linked to it down there. It said financials. Um, basically oh fuck. It the link. Broke on me. But basically their revenue

For the trailing twelve months. Which twelve million. And their profit. Was ten million. And this little old website

That just reviews VPNs. It's I'm sure it's more sophisticated than what it looks like, but it's not good looking. It's not like Uh Doesn't have like the best design. And I believe this website ended up selling for like two hundred million dollars. And I think it only gets like a million visits a month. It sold uh Last year.

Or six Six or ten six or twelve months ago. Interesting sight, right? That's crazy. It was also only started in twenty fifteen. So sometimes I see these sites that I'm like, Oh wow, this thing gets so much traffic and they just send clicks out to whatever. Yeah, basically their business model is.

They write about which VPN to use. And then they link you to the VPN and they get a kickback. From any whichever link you click of the ten. They'll get a kickback from all ten for, you know, some some dollar value, right? If the VPN says Cool, every customer's worth three hundred dollars to us.

We'll pay a hundred dollars to anybody that refers as a customer. And so these guys will do some some numbers like that. normally when I see the those like really high trafficked uh sites that sort of just look very basic It's like you know, this was starting in two thousand four. I'm like, Well Okay, props to you. You had the foresight to know that like

Very early on in like the you know, the the internet days or Google's days. Somebody was like, I'm gonna start reviewing credit cards. I'm gonna start reviewing VPN providers. I'm gonna start reviewing what email software is best. And they made what email software is best.com and like you know, that they rake in six million dollars a year. you know, uh ninety percent profit margin or something silly like that. And like, you know, the person is has spent the last fifteen years trying to figure out

You know, the meaning of life because they they won the business game already. And so that's normally what you see, but twenty fifteen is like pretty new for a site like this. It's pretty new. And here, here's their financials. I went and found them on Company's House. In two thousand twenty one, they did fifteen million in revenue. And 13.2 million in profit. The year before that. Ten million in revenue.

Nine point five million in profit. That's crazy. This is crazy, right? Right. Yeah, I I I'm a big fan of these now. Uh by the way, do you ever do you play with SEO a lot? Because

Um Growth tactics. Are like martial arts. It's like you could be a black belt in Jiu Jitsu and know nothing about karate. Right, or you know karate and you know nothing about Taekwondo or Judo. You don't know how to do any grappling and any throws.

And that's how I feel about growth channels. It's like I've spent a lot of my career figuring out virality. Spent a lot of my career figuring out paid marketing now with e commerce. Things like that. Uh

The thing I've never touched is SEL. I know I'm like a absolute novice on it. Absolute big. I know SEO like an Ivy League architect. knows about construction. Like maybe I can have a conversation with the construction worker who's gonna build my project and like kind of know, but like I'm not gonna be able to reference like which rivet to use. And you could kind of lie to me sometimes and I wouldn't exactly know if you were Right, right. You put me on the job site and um I'm gonna ask for some gloves because I don't know I don't wanna hurt my hands. Yeah, I'm just gonna everything's gonna be called a monkey wrench. So like I don't entirely understand SEO, but I do believe It's

Yeah. Maybe the Best one. Uh like it's like like if you nail it, I think it's the best thing to nail.

That seed in the office when Dwight's like uh you know, trying to ignore Jim and then Jim's like, Dwight. Oh, they're doing like a job in a rear which pair is best. Well there's basically school two schools of thoughts here. Wrong. Yeah. That's how I feel about like you know is SEO best? Like I don't know, is a brown bear best or is a black bear best, right? Like every ever every one of these growth channels is like has something awesome and then something terrible. The one you're in. You know it too well usually and you're like, This thing is awful. I wish I could just go on Facebook and spend money and get two spend a dollar, get two dollars back. And the Facebook guy's like

Oh my God, you can get free traffic on Google and the Google guy's like, Holy shit, this thing grows virally. Wow, what is that? You know, and so I think there's no there's no best. I yeah, I would agree. And but and by the way, this site compare tech. It was sold for uh yeah, it was sold for over A hundred million dollars, I believe this year in two thousand twenty two. Um

Give me a give me another frame breaker. That's a great first one. Alright, another one. A company collect Can I give a PS here just in case something good happens? A PS is Uh with the Milk Road today we run our like our business model is is newsletter ads. And I had asked Ben, I was like Ben, if we were going to sell a product, our own product, instead of

advertise other people's products. What what would be what product would work best? What bear is best, Ben? And he was like VPN, dude. He's like we should just launch our own VPN. Uh fits the audience. Yeah, amazing business model. We just have to buy an existing VPN and plug in our distribution. And so if anyone has a VPN they want to sell me, uh I would I'm happy to either buy one or build our own. Yeah, you gotta come up with like some cute branding like VP Nope. You know what I mean? Like you can't track me, you know, like you gotta come up with something cute just like you do with Milk Road and stuff like that. I think we gotta just get get rid of V P and N. That's just too whatever. It needs to be like, you know Uh whatever, Mysterio or like you know, some like

You know. You know, secret juice. And it's like oh juice. I'm on board with that. Don't tell don't tell, you know. Yeah, just call it don't tell mom. Uh all right, the next one. Quinn Street. Have you heard of Quinn Street? Hmm no.

All right, Google Quint Street and go to their website for me. All right, go on. And tell me like what my guess is I thought this was a fashion brand if you told me nothing else, but okay, I'm guessing it's not. All right, Quinn Street, I just see A guy and it says where performance drives digital. And then there's like another stock photo and it says accessing high intent prospects. This guy's a horrible stock mod. Like these guys on here.

Art. ugly enough to be like a stock model. They're not good looking enough to be Like they look like they're like out of like a like Spanish or Like geometry testing. Yeah. Like they they they just look like just normal

You know, it's like they it's s they're so normal that they don't even look at. Why does your skin have like you know normal people wrinkles and blemishes. That's not right. Stock photo, you need to be perfectly airbrushed. Right. Is this the founder? It looks like the founder. I don't know. I don't know who the founder is, but it's like a simple ass website that's not good looking. Dude I'm going through the slideshow. This slideshow is hilarious, dude. This looks like you know Meredith from the office. That's what I'm saying. They're like so normal that they're not That that it looks silly.

So this this company, I'm gonna explain what they do, I'm gonna tell you how big they are. So what this company does is they used to own and I don't know if they still own these sites, but I'll tell you what they what they still own now. But they used to own websites like directory of schools.com or campuscorner.com. Or learning in life dot com or find the right school dot com. Just like these like boring websites that don't look that cool. And when you Google Ohio insurance Ohio Auto Insurance. They come up number one.

You enter an information and they sell that information to the highest bidder for Insurance people. This website It's like ugly looking, it's simple looking and you like a lot of people disrespect it. They made

About six hundred million. In revenue last year. It's publicly traded. It's publicly traded. That's crazy, right? This is this is another frame breaking company. Like they have

If you click their about page on Quinn Street. They're about or one of their forms, like it doesn't work. Like it's like it goes to like a four oh one like it it they don't have it set up. Dude, e okay, you know when you meet someone and you're like I can't tell if this person is absolutely a genius. Or

If they're completely idiotic. Or if you're in San Francisco, you see somebody walk into a fancy restaurant. With like a hoodie and like, you know, they're like wearing one Albert and one croc, and you're like, All right, this person's either homeless or a billionaire, right? Like that's like a pretty common situation in San Francisco. That's how I feel when I go to websites like this. I'm like These are either the biggest dummies on earth and don't because I can't I can't understand what they do, right? Their website is full of pages. It just says like performance R our product. Yeah, it's like going into a video game and like you talk you bump into one of the the stock characters that just like is like

Oh, hey, didn't see you there. Hello. And it's as I keep repeating to unloop some random shit that doesn't make any sense. That's their website. So these websites, they're either like absolute money printers. Or it's like, you know, someone's aunt who's got some dream of like, you know, being successful and then they're never gonna make it,'cause this makes no sense. I can't tell And now when I get to finally then I see the the key money tab. Investor relations.

If you got an investor relations tab On your on your website, like it's working, right? Like you know Put in the Bill Clinton clip where he's like, I did not have relations with that woman. That's how that's how I feel when I see the investor relations tab. I know some shit's going down. Our software's the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot? See, most CRMs are a cobbled together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM. Our software's the best. HubSpot, grow better. It's kinda th this whole website and this whole brand, it reminds me of like a fourth grade classroom with like the uh like

You know, like teamwork and like each letter, like it spells a certain word. Do you know what I mean? Or like uh teamwork. T is for teamwork. But it makes Five hundred, six hundred ish million in revenue. Market cap isn't very Great because it's a uh

Lee Gen company and those typically just don't have good market caps. But It's just crazy. They just Ignored all the unimportant stuff. Like how good does their Uh website. public facing brand website look.

And they only focus on just The results I guess and they own all these other websites that a don't look so bad and they clearly get results. But it it's like a really interesting company and and it's another frame breaking business where they just don't give a shit about the things that most people care about. And it works. It's effective. So I recently met

Two guys who Run a business like this? And they've run three other businesses like this and exited them. I'm gonna share I can't share the story now. But I

Hoping One month from today. I can share a kind of crazy story about them. So I'm just gonna put that there. Cra uh a teaser for a future one month from today. You know, there will be a s crazy story about these two guys. Um, I might even have them on the podcast. I don't know yet. But

Um But this is this is insane. This is a Sampar special. How did you find Quinn Street? Where where were you What was it in the what VPN and private browser did you have open when you were searching for this? Two ways. One, a guy named Jackie Chu, who uh I like just like tweeted at this uh at this uh tweeted me this a while ago and I just saved it. And then number two, Joe Spiser, my partner and a bunch of stuff. He told me he used to work with them. He owned an ad network and he was like

in the early two thousands. Like I worked with them. They basically Right now they do car insurance and things like that, but they used to do University of Phoenix. So University of Phoenix, you they would s you know, they owned all these school websites. You would Google like What's a good online degree. They figured out the and this w what the the the these guys look unsophisticated. They are not. They're very sophisticated. They like know how to get traffic to websites. They know how to do SEO. Like they look like a fat guy who like is trains jujitsu just like

Just like you talked about, like, oh this guy, he's good and but then he like, you know, can like put you in a headlock, but in three seconds. That's what these guys are. Uh, and so anyway, uh I found it just by goofing around and talking to people. This is crazy. So they own insurance.com, insure dot com, car insurance dot com, card ratings.com, money rates, bank tracker, and And one and modernize home services. And then they partner with way more. As wild. By the way, that's a really great source for info is talk to people at ad networks.

Yeah, they know everything. work at Google Cloud or AWS. They know everything. They see everything. They right they they know who's making money and who's not. They know uh who's getting traffic and who's not.

And uh like if you ever wanted to go figure out your next gig Go be like, uh yeah, I'll be janitor at this like mobile ad network. Or I'm gonna go be janitor at AWS. Uh by payment, all I need is like login credentials into the dashboard, right? Like to I'll be a account rep for high value clients, and therefore I need that list of the high value accounts that we have. And you basically just mind that and you're like, all right. Which one of the

Yeah. Who am I gonna copy? Dude, there's a website. Like going to a going to a barber shop and you see like the the number I'll take the number twelve. The the fuck boy fade, please. Yeah. The line on the side. Exactly like that, please. Do you guys do eyebrow lightning bolts? No? Yeah. Okay, fine. I'll take the number twelve then.

Dude, all right. The next one. Is in your world. Not just because She's an Indian guy. But because he's e he's an e combat. Come up with some reason that it's not just that. I don't know, man. Indian entrepreneurs, you guys are taking over the world. I'm sure you you you guys all are part of the same tribe. You know one another kinda. There's only a billion of you.

Um So this guy all right, so I was looking at the Inc five thousand list. Of all the list, that's the only one. That like kinda matters. It's still you can still do it. Does it really, dude? I see this all the time. P I see the random ass Some digital agency that I've worked with that does not like nothing special. They're like we're a three time Inc. five thousand winner. I'm like, What is this list based off of

You could still it's but it's supposed to be based on revenue. And they're supposed so I don't trust Inc. anymore, but I used to and when I did I click the link for twenty twenty two. Blockfi is number one. Blockfi basically just went out of business three months ago. That tells me everything I need to know about you in your goddamn list. They had already written the story though. Greatest active athletes, Bill Russell. He just passed away two weeks ago. Like a third one. They're they like created the list and someone in work here like Hey, uh we gotta remove block five from number one. And they're like

Huh. Seems like a lot of work. They're like look. Yeah. I don't make up the rules here. I just think them up and write them down. According to us is two hundred and forty five thousand percent this year. It's like yeah you forgot the negative side, dude. Like but it's like It's so far away the computer. I don't know where my charger is. That's what the eight five thousand is you go to their office.

No one knows what the charger is, I'm Ha ha ha. We can order one, but we would need our computer to do that. I guess I could swing my best bot on my way home. Yeah, but they're like oh it's happy hour. Have you ever been at a uh Have you ever been at like a company happy hour and like you'll hear news that something really, really bad has happened. And had you heard about that during the day, you'd be like livid and like on this. Yeah, I'm gonna fucking kill someone. Like this is livid. And then you hear about it like when you're laughing at happy hour and you're like

Hm. Yeah. And like the the That's like what happened to you. You know what I'm talking about? You ever been at like a company Happy Howard do you like hear bad news and you're like, We used to do ours on Friday. It was called the Friday window and it was like wine and cheese and like whatever you know, that office. Seems like a bunch of wine and cheese types of guy though. I know, but the the office Before I joined, the office was pretty, you know, adult and mature and like sophisticated people. And then I joined, I started hiring people that would sleep at the office. And so like It became this crazy culture clash. We ended up ending it, but It was so funny'cause it would be like Friday, you look at the numbers like well

Still don't have product market fit, I guess. All right, let's just head over to the to the office bar. Just drink for a bit. Like oh servers down, it's like How much traffic do you think we get on the weekends anyways? Yeah, like one guy would go back to his desk to like fix the thing or like they check they check their email like oh we gotta go fix this. And then everybody else would be like Watch them walk away and be like, Alright, if he looks like he's having trouble, I'll go too That's not your talk. It's just the voice of like, Well, let me know if you need anything.

I'm sorry, dude. I was looking at this A five thousand. Which apparently it's just bullshit Black P I didn't realize I thought Black Fan I didn't I didn't realize that that was The company that like went out of business with So yeah, the list is kinda null at this point. Doesn't really matter.

I d I saw someone who's number six or number seven. It's called high key. It's like a keto cookie business type of thing. And the la the guy's last name, I don't know if it says it on this list, but this other list I was looking at, it was Patel. And they use his real name, but I was like, Wait, I think that sounds like AJ Patel. So Who I recognize and high key was like six or five. Do you see what it is on the list? Yeah, it's f number five or six, yeah. And it grew by forty

One thousand percent. I think that just means forty one X, right? So like if it was a million, they'd do forty two million now or forty one million. Yeah, again, these numbers. My new my new favorite word, Fugazi. Yeah, it just means like uh fake, right? Yeah. But I'm I'm all about the word for gaze. I feel like I can own this corner. I don't know anyone who says it and Absolute pleasure. Absolute treat. Sa say that. Fugazi, Fugazi. Yeah, because it's all fake. You know, just carry the twelve, you know, like I just can't do this type of math. So this guy, uh AJ Patel, he started this thing called high key, which I would imagine is in the thirty or forty million range, but listen to this guy.

So he's probably in his later thirties, probably thirty five or thirty six. So in like twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, he started a vitamin brand. And it only did okay And then he started also tinkering with the skincare brand, which it actually did much better. It got to like ten million or so of re in revenue. He hired a CEO, the CEO kinda like drove it into the ground and didn't really do that well. And so he started focusing again to his vitamin brand. And he's like, Look, it's doing okay. No.

Who's the best customer of a vitamin company? Dogs. Because you This is a I'm not disparaging him, but like

Do do they work? Yeah, why not? Like Fugazi, you know like Yeah. Fugaz Welcome to Fugazi Inc. Yeah. Supplements for dogs. They'll never tell you if it works or doesn't work. Yeah, you know what I mean? It's like uh it's like uh what's that memory loss game uh where it's like brain teasers. You know, brain dasity or brain acid. It's called Neurosity. No. It's like having like like a like a like an ad campaign towards those with amnesia, like does or or or with like Alzheimer's. Like does it work? Yeah, maybe. Uh so that's like what what like these vitamins for dogs are. Like who knows if it actually works.

And He starts growing this company and he pivots from like, you know, normal vitamins to dog vitamins and he starts growing this thing and it takes off after a while and he and it and he cr and he kills it. He gets to twenty five million in revenue and And then he sells part of it. uh to a PE company and he took sixty million dollars off the table. Then he grew up for another three years and sold it for like six hundred and fifty million dollars and he still owned Like half of it.

So collectively he made three hundred, four hundred million dollars. At the age of thirty two. And this guy isn't in Silicon Valley. He's not in New York, he's not in Brooklyn. He's in.

Orlando, Florida. Capital of George. George City, USA. White New Balance Town US. Twenty two listeners in Orlando, they all just collectively looked out at their lap and came back and nodded, like facts a fact, baby. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you know, the England or uh Illinois is the land of Lincoln. Florida's like land of dog the bounty hunter. You know? Like and that's where this this he he's born in India, Indian immigrant. Came over, decided for some reason the Florida's the place.

And Knocked it out the park. And Not really well known. And I was just like researching him.

And High key. Is now Number six on this list. They grew forty one Percent.

Forty one thousand percent. So forty one X. So if they were doing a million in revenue or five hundred thousand in revenue, they're doing twenty to forty million in revenue now. So it's another nine figure in value brand. And this guy's just quietly crushing it. And I love it. And I watched a talk with him. Uh there's this. Thing there's this website called capitalism.com. Dude, I'm reading the transcript of that talk right now as you speak. It's pretty crazy. So so l let me just recap. This guy's known mostly for he sold Zesti Paws that that company for six hundred million, I think. Right. So the the pay. It was over. In the in the in the transcript he he says yeah, the public number is six six hundred, but it actually got raised

Uh a little bit higher. Wow. And he um He also has high key snacks. He i in this thing it says his first business

Uh like his first kinda h side hustle was he was selling he's like I played Zinga poker And I got to a million by the way, I did this exact same thing. That's why this stood out to me. I told you you guys are brothers, man. You guys are. Yeah, now I know the connection. So he got to a million chips. He sold it for thirty seven bucks. I I did this on Poker Stars. I grinded my way, I got I I accumulated a million. That was my actual first million. It was a million fake poker chips on poker stars. And I sold it for thirteen dollars.

And I tell you what, I've never felt like more of a prostitute in my life. I was like, wow, I just worked so hard. for like three months to g get you know, like just grinding the free money game. And I got to a million chips and I sold it for thirteen dollars via PayPal. And then I proceeded to lose the thirteen dollars immediately on the real money tables and I was like I had never felt like you know you said to go take a shower. I just I feel dirty. Yeah, I Googled like can I declare bankruptcy just out of embarrassment? Like, you know, is there is there some like version of that? Because I was so embarrassed at like the um the terrible trade I had done. He said he did that same thing and he started d doing that as a like

as a market based on eBay and I think he made like a hundred or two hundred grand Just doing the The fake poker chips like buying and selling, basically. Which is it's kinda like uh You know, it's kinda like a a kid being good at chess when they're six. Like if you're doing that on ebay, it's like Yeah, you're gonna Yeah, well just here's all my money. Just hopefully you'll figure it out one day. Just get me back when you can.

Like that's what you do when you when you meet people doing things like that. That's like a just a thousand. We we need this guy on. Uh and I'll give you two. I'm talking to him. I've been talking to him on Facebook. I got him. He's g he clearly has You know, he comes from our he's cut from the same uh the same cloth. I don't know what w what kind of cloth that is, but but it's definitely our cloth. Uh but dude, this guy He I started becoming friends with them on Facebook, never talked to him in my life.

There's a software that I needed to use. I don't wanna out'em, but there's a software I needed to use and it's like ten grand a year. And I mentioned to him that I use it. He goes, Oh, here, I have an annual subscription. Here's my password. And he's been let me use his free like ten thousand dollar a year subscription. So this guy this guy's my guy. Yeah. Yeah. And so wait what's the second reason why why we need him on here? Because I just Googled his name, AJ Patel. Now here's a guy sold a company for over six hundred million, sold another company, got high key snacks, you know, he's sitting on store shelves everywhere in across the country.

Guess what Google puts up in the the the like Google thinks I'm talking about Patel AJ M D, the doctor in San Francisco. Dude. No matter what an Indian guy does in business, the doctor is still number one. He's still at the top of the ranks. And so he needs to come on this pod so we can we can get this guy's SEO. But it's like he's number one.

What's the Jessica Albos company, honest? The guy who started that, his name's Brian Lee. He started like that, Shoe Dazzle and like Legal Zoom. If you google Brian Lee, like he ain't coming up. Oh dude, it's uh a wrestler. It's a it's a guy who looks like Undertaker or like the Big Show or something. Yeah, like Brian Lee. Like it doesn't matter if you're a billion or not. Which by the way, fame is always way better than than money. So wrestle wrestling beats m uh being a billionaire. But this guy in his talk He said something amazing. So he like he hired the CEO to run his skincare brand. And he says yeah, like it's

Dunk. This guy, like I gave him the reins and I told him to do it and he totally talked slick to me and I thought he knew what he was doing and he And it didn't work. And the guy goes, um The interviewer goes, Well, was it a sad day when you fired him? Like it must have been hard, right? And AJ goes No, it was awesome. Firing him was so easy because he was so bad and I felt so great like getting rid of all the dead weight.

And I look at business as a living organism and like I have zero emotional attachment. If someone doesn't serve the business And I'm willing to fire myself or anyone else, and I have zero sadness about it. And I saw that and I was like Hell yeah. I call that. You know what I call? I call that Korean. Convenience store owner energy. You remember you remember

Here's why. You remember um During remember like the Rodney King riots like in the nineties? You remember like these pictures of like the Korean store business owners with like shotguns standing on top of their like they're like no. I was talking to like some people I invested in the other day and they were telling me about their business and like how they're like Things aren't going that well. I'm like, Well can you do me a favor, like do a screen share, let me see your calendar. And like it was totally open and like they hadn't booked a lot. Like I'm like w I'm like every morning meditation, afternoon walk.

Yeah. Like, dude. From eight AM to eight PM, it's gotta you have to have sales calls set up with prospective customers. And like don't give me this nonsense of like Oh, well, you know, it went out of business but we learned a lot. Or like, you know, like we just can

I'm like No no no no no dude right now You need to have that Korean store owner. energy where it's just like if you don't make this work, you don't feed your family. And maybe you're gonna get deported. Like you need to have that like like that that energy of like starvation with a side of deportation is his dishes served. You have to have that energy sometimes. Like of course, like when things go well, yeah, you gotta get like beyond like scale and all that stuff, but like early on, it doesn't call yourself a startup, call yourself it it didn't matter what you call yourself.

You're just a convenience store owner and like Some convenience stores you go there and they have every type of kind bar you could ever imagine. That's where I'm going. Other type of convenience stores, like, you know, they don't have what what I want. I ain't ever going there again. You gotta be that convenience store that has every kind bar, every cliff bar, has a stick and is just grinding and knows your name. They are willing to call me like you know, like what do you want, the usual? That type of that's what like m a lot of startup uh uh founders need. And so Uh this guy, AJ Patel, he's got that Korean store business owner energy, you know, that like immigrant hustle. I love it.

Yeah, he he's great and that's great. And I feel like we know so many people That it's like I meet with them and I hear them talking and it's like, Oh, um let's just fast forward to the part where you write a medium article called My Next Chapter or Our Next Our Next Adventure. And then you're gonna sign off saying onwards. Yeah. Captain of a ship in the seventeen hundreds, like

Ahoy, Matey, your business is failing. Wake up. Do something. Don't just sit there and lose and then go work at Facebook and write my next chapter. I'm so excited to lead. you know, you know, digital digital ad products at Facebook now for the next two years of my life. Before I go out and do this same stupid thing again. It's like Wake up! Go figure this out, right? Figure out something that's gonna work. I don't care what you do, I don't even care if it's bad.

But like I need to see some like Some serious action being taken. Uh uh you know, and like realize your shit is not working. And like I invest in startups and I know that the name of the game is you're gonna lose most of your money and only a few are gonna like return all the money. But when I hear like their updates, I'm like all right. I I I'm okay with swing and missing. I'm not actually okay with it, but I know that's part of the game. And it's just a numbers game. But for those not swinging, it doesn't matter if I only invested five thousand dollars. I reply and I'm like, Oh, you're losing and you suck for these reasons and you need to improve because I gave you my hard earned money.

So you can have a good shot at trying something and you are not trying or taking a good shot and that's pissing me off. And I told some of my other Angel Investor friends and like, Well, I kinda feel that way, but I never say that. I'm like what do you Like Wha what? Why not? Why wouldn't you say this? It doesn't matter how little or how much you invest in, you gave your hard earned money to someone.

So Like take a swing. Step to the plate, dog, like swing, but don't like give me this nonsense. We um Uh

We have this phrase I use in in all my companies, which is that Uh All right, people are gonna make mistakes. But there's two types of mistakes and you have to dis you have to decide when you when you make a mistake which one is it. Did you make an error of action?

Or a error of inaction. An error of action is you tried something and you did it wrong or it didn't work or had a bad result. You you know, you were trying really hard to do something and you just messed it up. That's okay, that's a fumble, no problem. Then there's an error of inaction, which is your mistake was that you didn't do something. You didn't think about something, you didn't anticipate it. You didn't plan.

You know, y you just forgot to do something, you dropped the ball. And that's the unforgivable run, right? So it's like I'm always like number one to be like, bro, no problem. This was an era of action. That's great. I love errors of action. That's how you get better. And like never feel bad or sorry for an error of action.

For an error of inaction, I now have a problem. And so I feel the same way with founders that I invest in. It's like Some of'em, I'm like, oh man, they're just banging their head against this wall. I will only ever say something to somebody if I feel like if it's a if it they're making errors of action. When they're making errors of inaction, my experience, I did it twice now. And I was just like, Hey guys.

Like Your s like your update makes it sound like everything's okay, but like Read what you said. Everything is not okay. And like you gotta do something. What can we do here? And I like rolled up my sleeves and I was like helping them with their

strategy and their pivot and then their investor deck to raise money'cause they're running out of money. And I same with thing with the other one. I was like, hey Guys, like this is just not working. Like you don't have product market fit. You have like two customers after two years, like What's going on? And they're like, No, we're really excited about the pipeline. We think that's that doesn't that's not fair.

And I was just like Oh my God not only were you like not aware of it, you're actually in denial of it. Uh wow, this is like, you know, a complete waste of my time and You know, sure enough, in both cases they you know Uh my like Several days worth of like full time effort to try to help them.

uh resulted in nothing. And so you know I I now I'm picky I'm a little bit picky, where I'll test the waters and I'll see Does this person if given a dose of reality Do they take it and say more please? Or are they like, Oh, I don't want this. And it's like, Oh, if you don't want reality, then I don't wanna, you know, uh I was just uh it was a mistake on my part. I I judged wrong, you know. My my my my check was written to the wrong person here.

As the great Doctor Phil once said. Don't piss on my back and tell me it's rain. All right, I got one last one.

Um I have an interesting one. So it's like a Billy of the Week, but someone who like People never talk about or at least they don't talk about a lot. And he's he's got that gap.

And it when I say he, it's actually him and his wife. And his wife is actually the more interesting person, but uh this guy a little bit is uh more front facing. His name's Stuart Resnick. Have you ever heard of Stuart Resnick? Do you know have we talked about him? I don't know the name, but I just Googled it and now I know they do the the wonderful company or whatever. So so give me his story. All right, so listen to this guy's name's Stuart Resnick, him and his wife, his wife's name is Linda. They're they're based out of California, and so in the nineteen seventies, he started a janitor business. And he just basically like was a janitor at one point, I think, and then he eventually hired a few more and he got contracts with buildings. And once he was in those buildings and had the contracts, he expanded

to uh security guards. And at one point he had a thousand armed security guards on staff. So he like drew this jander business into a security guard business. And it was amazing. He got some lucrative contracts to uh LAX and it turned out to be a a great business and he ended up selling it and he made a little bit of money. And with that money, he eventually bought the Franklin Mint. Which at the time was one of the world's largest

Sellers of Uh Coins, collectible coins. And oddly enough, you know who owns the Franklin Mitt right now? No, no idea. Former MFM guest.

Ty Lopez. Does he really? Yeah. That was my that was a joke. Yeah, basically good job. So basically like in the sixties, seventies, eighties, and even up into the nineties, like all the Marilyn Monroe coins and Elvis Presley coins The Franklin Mint. They uh they're the ones who uh started it or uh who uh produced a lot of them. And so from there he parlayed that to a couple of things, and now at this point. His company. It's called uh Wonderful Bramps. They own a a bunch of really interesting brands. So they own landmark wines. That's not that interesting. Telleflora. Do you know what Teleflora is?

It's a pretty big three hundred fifty million dollar a year business where you call it's like one eight hundred flowers a competitor, but he but here's the big ones that they own. The first is wonderful Pistachos. You've seen those at the store, right? The second is Palm Wonderful. You know what Palm Wonderful? Yeah, Palm Juice. Yeah, pomegranate. Yeah, Palm Juice. And so basically the wife Linda She uh

She's like, you know, I love pomegranates, but there's no this was like in the in the eighties. She's like, there's not really a good pomegranate juice. Let's let's do this juice. And she goes, You know what? Uh pomegranate, it's good for your heart. It's uh What else is it? And she like learns about what it's good for and she was like, you know, it makes women have like an hour glass figure. Like it like is like good for you and like it's you know makes you feel good, I guess. And so they made she made the bottle like a you know, it's like a if you've ever seen it, it's like a signature bottle, yeah. Yeah, it's like a signature bottle. Well, they own another company that has A wonderful signature bottle called

Fiji Water. So they uh they also own Fiji, which has a square bottle. And At this point. They're privately owned.

They're one of the largest producers of uh one of the largest farm owners in America. So they own uh almond and pistachio farms and they do four billion dollars a year in revenue. And In twenty eighteen, they were the wealthiest farmers in the country. Yeah. And this guy there you know, the the I believe the the wife, Linda, she's Jewish, but she's got this like Southern Belle charm to her. Like she's from like Alabama or something. She reminds me of like an old like we know Faulkner novel. Like she reminds me of like a character in four scump movie.

And and But you the base out of California. And then he's got like a little New York vibe where he like kinda comes off as like cool and hit. But they're farmers. They own they're they're huge farmers and they're like have the best brands out there. Fiji is a great brand. And they created these. They're not just acquiring these, right? No, they made them. Yeah. They they make these brands and they own way more. Wonderful's a really good brand. I love Wonderful pistachios. And so these guys just kill it. They're just quietly crushing it. And I think at this point, I think they're like eighty one or eighty two years old. And I still watch talks with them and they talk about how They go, Well, how do you stay close to their customers? And they're like, Well I just read Twitter all day and I like read about

And like I sometimes I'll like they're just like us. Yeah, they're just like us. And so sometimes they they just like look at like what customer they're like we use Facebook and we just like skim like our page and we just see like which complaints are actually good and which are our are nonsense and we reply and then we make changes and we just run our business that way. And they're really interesting people. So that's the billies of the week. Stuart Resnick and his wife Linda. Linda. Wow. Yeah, she looks like the type of person that would give you a kiss on the cheek and then wipe off the lipstick. Yeah, you're just like Yeah. Yeah. I love those women. They always smell so good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like going to the bathroom at one of the the at a woman like that's house is just an absolute pleasure. There's so many things you need to know, so many sense

Since you didn't even know existed. Like you'll spend fifteen minutes just trying to wash your hands to get out of there because it's like, Oh wow, this is It this is like a handkerchief instead of like a towel. This is amazing. Yeah, at the end of this, you're gonna be an expert on butterscotch candy. Like you're gonna go all about and like those little like red, green, and yellow candies that like What the fuck? What are these things? Fruit punch candies. Uh so I love this brand. Um by the way.

This Teleflora one eight hundred flowers thing, why doesn't somebody create Like one eight hundred flowers of teleflow flowers as just a ghost kitchen on DoorDash and on Uber Eats. Like why Is it does that exist? Like what why can't I just order flowers I've seen a flower thing when I go on there, but I think it's like DoorDash's own.

I think you could create like either edible and random flower thing and just partner with local florists. To fulfill the demand. Um And it's like it's like way better than food. But uh I know, uh whenever there's like a birthday or something like that, that's my go to thing now. It's just like

I'm gonna door dash them something. Right,'cause like I never played. Um What's like a good enough Like I'll do like like the last one I did was like, you know, like a a a bunch of boba tea. Like this person like really likes boba tees. So I sent them a bunch of boba. Or I'll send them like, you know, uh pizza and wings, or I'll send them a Cinnabon and whatever, or

I'll send them, you know, a bunch of ice cream or chocolate or whatever. 'Cause it's like I can procrastinate until thirty minutes before Like their birthday, you know, is over and I could push this button and still be a great friend. Uh, so let me do that. You know, that's a great friend machine. Noah Kagan for my birthday gifted me like

Two hundred bucks worth of sixteen ounce bottles of Topo Chico from Kafka. And I like that was it was like a mu it was ease it was like a month and a half supp supply of Topo Chico and it's like all I drank for Two and a half months or something. It was awesome. Yeah, on your birthday I tried to see like is there such a thing as gas station gift cards? But they it was really tough to find anything that would work. Yeah. I was like, can I open a tab in my friend's name at your at your gas station? He'll walk in from time to time and Dicen.

Dip and like cookies. If he brings his own cup, can he just quit walk out with some hot cheese? That's awesome. That's disgusting. That's the episode. That was dude, you you really did carry that episode. That was amazing. This is this is this entire episode is gonna be called the Sam Par Special. And uh it's just Sam bringing hit after hit after hit. You want those quads to work. You wanna know what I'm most proud about? Guess how long uh uh that took me to prepare?

I think you would be proud if you spent a long time. Like forty five minutes. Oh that went the other way. It's one PM now. We started recording at noon. I block off of my schedule from eleven to noon is my research time. I did all of this in that one hour time. And I even took a bathroom break and I definitely did some pull ups.

So Yeah. Did you like take the limitless pill? How did you do all that in the forty five minutes? Uh, I just got a good brain. I don't know. I just Yeah, I I just My brain's good. I just was on fire today. I drank a bunch of coffee. Nice. That's all right, we're out of here.

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