Frame Breaking Businesses: From Pomegranate Juice to VPNs

So in like 2012, 2013, 2014, 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 $10 million or so in revenue. He hired a CEO. The CEO kind of 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, but who's the best customer of a vitamin company? Dogs. Because you— this is it. I'm not disparaging him, but like, do they work? Yeah, why not? Like Fugazi, you know, like, yeah, welcome to Fugazi Inc.

We make supplements for dogs. They'll never tell you if it works or doesn't work.

What up?

What up?

Are we supposed to like start with like a catchphrase 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 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 going to live my life according to like where the low taxes are, but like, it's like the number 2 or number 3 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 $20 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 as your main residence and spend 4 or 5 months out of the year in New York. So that's not so bad.

That's not so bad. But yeah, 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 bear rule?

No, what's that? So I was asking my tax guy, I was like, where you keep your like possessions.

Yeah. Basically I was like, so what's the rule? Is it 6 months out of the year? 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 New York Yankees shortstop. They're like, Jeter wanted— Jeter played 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. Uh, blah, blah, blah. They're like, but you also have an apartment in New York and you play in New York. 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 ruled in court and they call it, I think the name they call it is the— I haven't looked this up. It was like the Teddy Bear 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 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 6 months and 1 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 Dateline, one of the easiest ways to catch the husband who kills the wife is like 3 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 going to know that I killed her. Yeah. 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 IRS really know? It's like somehow, somehow that's how it's like formatted in my search.

Like, yeah, like I would Google what like, dude, Google needs to understand italicized really.

Yeah. Like the asterisk and everything. It's like there's one browser that's just like, hmm, 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'm trying to Google like, when you get, you know, if the IRS does this to you, is that like jail or just a fine?

Yeah. Are we breaking a rule or a law?

Right. Are taxes a recommendation or a requirement?

Well, what I learned Googling this was the IRS and I, it makes sense, but I didn't even understand it. IRS is for federal. So like, 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 figure— I want to— I'm Googling that to follow the rule, but I am curious.

And I was like, to be clear, in case they also listen to podcasts, I'm Googling this, A, for a friend, and B, to enforce the law on my friend because 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 the same way. I, I'm the same way. We're all go down this rabbit hole. Then I'm like 30 minutes in, I'm like, why am I even looking for this? 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 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 do, 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, like I'll Google just like, you know, rich people don't pay taxes, dot, dot, dot. 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 want to have like an actual understanding of what's going on. And dude, it's so like, I have so little understanding about so many things on earth.

But it's so funny that you wrote, you brought that book. I actually wrote, I'm like doing the thing with Maven again, the Ideation Bootcamp course. And I started talking about the book that I had as a kid called How Stuff Works. And 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 a 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 I 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 an element of that I'm talking about just like Here's a perfect example. 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 want to know what happens?

Game of Dr. Mario. And then, yeah, I do know. Yeah, I'll 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, 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, what's that?

And same thing with like the, like, you know, 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?

Like, oh, actually there's a 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 way to repackage and resell those. And their brand is around lessening waste on Earth. 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 eats stuff off the whale's head or whatever. It's like, you know, 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 what I want to, I'm going to give you a bunch of examples of things that I've, I'm calling frame-breaking businesses. So like things that I've discovered that have changed how I thought about stuff. And there's a story. Uh, 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 got a, I've got like a side note, by the way, my mom yesterday, while I work out with my mom sometimes, and 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 like your first and last, but Sam Parr'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 MrBeast video, because you were wearing like shorts on the couch or whatever. I was just looking at his legs. I didn't hear anything. I was like, all right, Mom. All right, Mom.

Right, you signed an FDA, a full disclosure agreement, where you're like, I will put this on blast if you send this random shit to me. Yes, anonymous Twitter account.

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 27 million users. So what's that, 2 million a month? So, which is not a lot. The Hustle gets more than $2 million a month just on our website, and we don't even try to get traffic on our website. So $2 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 $1.3 or like, it was like $1.2, $1.3. Nothing.

Shit.

Crazy. Certified small boy shit.

Yeah, yeah. And but here's the thing is that this rep— this, this discrepancy, we're going to 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 in reality, that gap is huge. So instead I'm going to swap it and we're going to have some frame-breaking companies that we're going to talk about the actual good type of gap. Um, and I want to show you a few businesses that people don't talk about that are actually phenomenal and really interesting. So I'm going to give you the first one. The first one I, we maybe talked about before, but I was, uh, looking at Michael Bisping. Michael Bisping is 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 VPN? And maybe I'll start buying a VPN. Basically, a VPN, if you're in America and you want to 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 Koreas, whichever one would— this would apply to, and you want to act like you're in America, you use a VPN. That's an— that's a— that's like 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 is for. And so I Googled best VPN and I came across this website called CompareTech that was kind of intriguing. So I linked to it. Do you see comparetech.com/vpn? So I started reading it and I was like, this is kind of an interesting site. And I looked them up on SimilarWeb and they get millions of views. And I scroll all the way to the bottom and I noticed 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 tea, maybe you like the Queen, and you like the fact that all companies' 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 5, it could be as high as 10 million, and you do over 10 million in revenue, you have to there's this thing called Companies House, which is a very British name. It's like their— I don't know if it's like— is it like their 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 Companies House. Can you see what their financials are? Do you have it up?

I don't have it open now.

It's pretty new. And here, here's their financials. I went and found 'em on Companies House. In 2021, they did $15 million in revenue and $13.2 million in profit. The year before that, $10 million in revenue, $9.5 million in profit. That's crazy. This is crazy, right?

Right. Yeah. I, I'm a big fan of these now, by the way. Do you ever, do you play with SEO a lot? Cause, 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, or 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 SEO, dude. I know I'm like an absolute novice on it.

Absolutely. I know SEO like an Ivy League architect knows about construction. Like, maybe I can have a conversation with the construction worker who's going to build my project and like kind of know, but like I'm not going to 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 or were not.

Right, right, right. You put me on the job site and, um, I'm going to ask for some gloves cause I don't want to hurt my hands. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm just going to, everything's going to be called a monkey wrench. So like, I don't entirely understand SEO, but I do believe it's the, maybe the best one. Uh, like it's like, like if you nail it, I think it's the best thing to nail or one of.

It's like that, that scene in The Office when Dwight like, uh, you know, trying to ignore Jim and then Jim's like, Dwight, are you— they're doing like a job interview. Yeah. Which bear is best? He's like, that's a stupid question. There's— and he's like, basically school.

Yeah. Well, there's basically school, two schools of thoughts here. Wrong.

Yeah. That's, that's how I feel about like, you know, is SEO best? It's like, I don't know, is a brown bear best or is a black bear best? Right? Like every, every one of these growth channels is like, has something awesome and then something terrible. And 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 to spend a dollar, get $2 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 by the way, this site CompareTech, it was sold for, uh, yeah, it was sold for over $100 million, I believe this year in 2022. Um, for like one—

give me, give me another frame breaker. That's a great first one.

All right. Another one.

A company called— 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.

You gotta come up with a better name.

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'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 something.

I think we gotta just get, get rid of VPN and that's just too whatever it needs to be like, you know, whatever, Mysterio, or like, you know, some like, you know, you know, secret juice. And it's like, oh yeah, I use secret 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, QuinStreet. Have you heard of QuinStreet?

Um, no.

All right, Google QuinStreet and go to their website for me.

All right, I'm going.

And tell me like what the heck.

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, and this guy accessing high-intent prospects.

This guy's a horrible stock model. Like these guys on here aren't 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 geometry, Telemundo. Yeah. Like they, they just look like just normal, you know, it's like, it's, they're so normal that they don't even look—

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. All right.

This bit, dude, I'm going through the slideshow. This slideshow is hilarious, dude. This looks like, you know, Meredith from The Office.

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 Queen Street, they're about— or one of their forms, like, it doesn't work. Like, it's like, it goes to like a 401k. Like, they don't have it set up, dude.

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 Allbird 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 are our products or something like that.

Yeah. It's like going into a video game and like you talk, you bump into one of the stock characters that just like, is like, oh, hey, didn't see you there. Hello. And this is like, keeps repeating on loop 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 they're never going to make it because this makes no sense. I can't tell. And now when I get to finally, then I see 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. That's hilarious.

Our software is the worst.

Have you heard of HubSpot?

See, most CRMs are a cobbled-together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous.

I think I love our new CRM.

Our software is the best. HubSpot, grow better. It's kind of— this whole website and this whole brand, it reminds me of like a 4th 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, it's like teamwork. T is for teamwork. E is for everybody.

So I recently met two guys who run a business like this. And they've run 3 other businesses like this and exited them. I'm gonna share, I can't share the story now, but I'm hoping 1 month from today I can share a kind of crazy story about them. So I'm just gonna put that there.

Cra—

a teaser for a future 1 month from today, you know, there will be a crazy story about these 2 guys. Um, I might even have 'em 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 QuinStreet? 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, tweeted me this a while ago and I just saved it. And then number two, Joe Spicer, my partner in 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 2000s, 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, you know, they owned all these school websites. You would Google like, what's a good online degree? They figured out that— and this— what— what 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 trains jiu-jitsu, just like— just like you talked about, like, oh, this guy, he's good. But then he like, you know, can like put you in a headlock, but in 3 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.com, carinsurance.com, cardratings.com, moneyrates, banktracker, AM1, and Modernize Home Services.

And then they partner with way more.

It's wild. By the way, that's a really great source for info is talk to people at ad networks.

Yeah. They know everything.

Dude, there's a website.

Going to a barber shop and you see like the number, like, I'll take the number 12, the fuckboy 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 12 then. That's so funny, dude. All right, the next one is in your world, not just because he's an Indian guy, but because he's, he's an e-com guy.

Come up with some reason, 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 guys all are part of the same tribe. You know one another, kinda. There's only a billion of you. So this guy. All right. So I was looking at the Inc. 5000 list. Of all the lists, that's the only one that like kind of matters. It's still— you could still game it.

Really, dude? I see this all the time. I see the random ass— some digital agency that I've worked with that does nothing like nothing special. They're like, we're a 3-time Inc. 5000 winner.

I'm like, well, you guys don't game. You could still— 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, like, okay, let's I clicked the link for 2022.

BlockFi is number 1. BlockFi basically just went out of business like 3 months ago. So I think that tells me everything I need to know about you and your goddamn list.

They had already written the story though.

Greatest active athletes, Bill Russell. Like, he just passed away 2 weeks ago.

They like created the list and someone who works here like Hey, we got to remove BlockFi from number 1. And they're like, huh, seems like a lot of work. They're like, look, I don't make up the rules here. I just think them up and write them down.

According to us is 245,000% this year. It's like, yeah, you forgot the negative side.

Like, but it's like so far away, the computer.

I don't know where my charger is.

That's what the 85000 is. You go to their office.

No one knows what the charger is at 85000. We can order one, but we would need our computer to do that. I guess I could swing by Best Buy on my way home.

Yeah, but they're like, oh, it's happy hour. Daiquiris. 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 I'm going to act on this.

Yeah, I'm going to fucking kill someone. Like, this is livid. And then you hear about it, like when you're laughing at happy hour, you're like, huh? Yeah. And like, that's what happened. You know what I'm talking about? You ever been at like a company happy hour? Do you like hear bad news and you're like, 100%?

We used to do ours on Friday. It was called the Friday Wine Down and it was like wine and cheese and like whatever, you know, that office. You guys, posh.

So it seems like a bunch of wine and cheese types of guys though.

Like, I know, but 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 because 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 office bar and just drink for a bit. Like, oh, server's down. It's like How much traffic you think we get on the weekends anyways? Yeah, one guy would go back to his desk to like fix the thing or like check. They check their email like, oh, we got to go fix this. And then everybody else would be like, sort of watch them walk away, be like, all right, if he looks like he's having trouble, I'll go too.

Like, no, don't. That's how you 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 Inc. 5000, which apparently is just bullshit. BlockFi. I didn't realize I saw BlockFi was number 1. I didn't realize that that was the company that like went out of business. So yeah, the list is kind of null at this point. It doesn't really matter. I saw someone who's number 6 or number 7. It's called Haiki. It's like a keto cookie business type of thing. And 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 6 or 5. Do you see what it is on the list?

Yeah, it's number 5 or 6. Yeah.

And they grew by 41,000%. I think that just means 41x, right? So like if it was a million, they do 42 million now or 41 million.

Yeah. Again, these numbers. My new favorite word, fugazi. Have you ever heard this word?

Yeah, it just means like fake, right?

Yeah, but I'm all about the word fugazi. I feel like I can own this corner. I don't know anyone who says it and absolute pleasure, absolute treat to say that word.

Yeah, forgot. Welcome to Fugazi Inc. We make supplements for dogs. They'll never tell you if it works or doesn't work.

We have like 22 listeners in Orlando. They all just collectively looked down at their lap and came back and nodded like, "Facts a fact, baby." Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, Like, you know, the England or Illinois is the land of Lincoln. Florida is like land of Dog the Bounty Hunter, you know, like, and that's where this, this— he's born in India, Indian immigrant, came over, decided for some reason Florida's the place and knocked it out the park. And not really well known. And I was just like researching him and Haikyuu is now Number 6 on this list, they grew 41%, 41,000%. So 41x. So if they were doing $1 million in revenue or $500,000 in revenue, they're doing $20 to $40 million in revenue now. So it's another 9-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 was 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 let me just recap. This guy's known mostly for— he sold Zesty Paws, that, that company for $600 million, I think. Right.

So it was over in the, in the, in the transcript, he says, yeah, the public number is $600, but it actually got raised a little bit higher.

Wow. And he, he also has Hikey Snacks. In this thing, it says his first business, like his first kind of side hustle was he was selling— he's like, I played Zynga 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, I told you, you guys are brothers, man. You guys are cousins.

Yeah. Now I know the connection. So he got to a million chips. He sold it for $37. I, I did this on PokerStars. 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 PokerStars, and I sold it for $13. 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 3 months to get, you know, like just grinding the free money game. And I got to a million chips and I sold it for $13 via PayPal. And then I proceeded to lose the $13 immediately on the real money tables.

And I was like, I had never felt like, you know, you should take a shower. 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? Cause I was so embarrassed at like The terrible trade I had done. He said he did that same thing and he started doing that as a, like, as a market basically on eBay. And I think he made like $100,000 or $200,000 just doing the fake poker chips, like buying and selling basically, which is, it's kind of like, uh, you know, it's kind of like a kid being good at chess when they're 6.

Like if you're doing that on eBay, it's like, yeah, you're going to, yeah, we'll 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, we need this guy on and I'll give you—

I'm talking to him. I've been talking to him on Facebook. I got him.

He's— he clearly has, you know, he comes from our— he's cut from the same, the same cloth. I know what kind of cloth that is, but it's definitely our cloth.

Yeah, we'll assume it's silk. But dude, this guy, he— I started becoming friends with him on Facebook. Never talked to him in my life. There's a software that I needed to use. I don't want to out him, but there's a software I needed to use and it's like $10,000 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 letting me use his free, like, $10,000 a year subscription. So this guy, this guy's my guy.

My man.

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 $600 million, sold another company, got Heike Snacks, you know, he's sitting on store shelves everywhere across the country. Guess what Google puts up in the, the, the, like, Google thinks I'm talking about Patel AJ MD, 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 up so he's number one.

What's, uh, Jessica Alba's company? Honest. The guy who started that, his name's Brian Lee. He started like that, ShoeDazzle and like LegalZoom. If you Google Brian Lee, like He ain't coming up.

Oh, dude, it's a wrestler. It's a— it's a guy who looks like Undertaker or like Big Show or something.

starvation with a side of deportation is how Sam likes his dishes served.

Dude, you have to have that energy sometimes. Like, of course, like once things going well. Yeah, you got to get like beyond like scale and all that stuff. But like early on, call yourself a startup, call yourself— it doesn'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 I want. I ain't ever going there again. You got to be that convenience store that has every Kind Bar, every Clif Bar, has a shtick 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 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. Like you're a fucking captain of a ship in the 1700s. 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 2 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, 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'm okay with swinging 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 $5,000, 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 they're like, well, I kind of feel that way, but I never say that. I'm like, what do you— Like, what, what? Why not? Why wouldn't you say this? It doesn't matter how little or how much you invested. You gave your hard-earned money to someone to like take a swing. Step to the plate, dog. Like swing, but don't like give me this nonsense.

As the great Dr. 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 got that gap. And 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 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.

Does he really? Yeah. That was my— that was a joke.

Yeah, basically. Good job. So basically, like in the '60s, '70s, '80s, and even up into the '90s, like all the Marilyn Monroe coins and Elvis Presley coins, the Franklin Mint, they, they're the ones who started it or who produced a lot of them.. And so from there he parlayed that into a couple of things. And now at this point, his company, it's called Wonderful Brands. They own a bunch of really interesting brands. They own Landmark Wines. That's not that interesting. Teleflora. Do you know what Teleflora is? It's a pretty big $350 million a year business where you call— it's like 1-800-Flowers, a competitor. But here's the big ones that they own. The first is Wonderful pistachios. You've seen those at the store, right? The second is Pom Wonderful. You know, Pom Wonderful?

Yeah. Pom juice. Yeah.

Pomegranates. Yeah.

And so basically the wife, Linda, She, she's like, you know, I love pomegranates, but there's no— this was like in the, in the '80s. She's like, there's not really a good pomegranate juice. Let's, let's do this juice. And she goes, you know what, pomegranate, it's good for your heart. It's— 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 hourglass figure. Like it like is like good for you and like, you know, it makes you feel good, I guess. And so they made— she made the bottle like a, you know, it's like a— if you 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, 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 $4 billion a year in revenue.

And so this says in 2018, 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 like an old, like, you know, Faulkner novel. Like, she reminds me of like a character in Forrest Gump movie. And, and but they're based out of California, and then he's got like a little New York vibe where he like kind of comes off as like cool and hip, 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 81 or 82 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, 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 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 Billys 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 just went, what just happened?

Yeah, yeah. I love those women. They always smell so good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like going to the bathroom at one of the, at a woman like that's house is just an absolute pleasure. There's so many things you didn't even know. So many scents, scents you didn't even know existed. Like you'll spend 15 minutes just trying to wash your hands to get out of there. Cause it's like, oh wow, this is, this is like a handkerchief instead of like a, you know, a towel. This is amazing.

Yeah. At the end of this, you're going to be an expert on butterscotch candy. Like, you're gonna know all about— and like those little like red, green, and yellow candies that like, what the fuck? What are these things? It's like fruit punch candies. Uh, so I love this brand.

You know, that's a great idea.

Friend machine.

Noah Kagan, for my birthday, gifted me like $200 worth of 16-ounce bottles of Topo Chico from Costco. And I like, that was, it was like a, it was easy. It was like a month and a half supply of Topo Chico and it's like all I drank for 2 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 it was tough. It was really tough to find anything that would work.

Yeah. Yeah. That's so funny.

I was like, can I open a tab in my friend's name at your gas station? He'll walk in from time to time and You guys sell dip and like, yeah, Coke Zero, nacho cheese.

What are you, just the nacho cheese spoons?

If he brings his own cup, can he just walk out with some hot cheese?

That's awesome. That's disgusting.

That's the episode. That was good, dude. You really did carry that episode. That was amazing. This is, this is, this entire episode is going to be called the Sampar Special. And it's just Sam bringing hit after hit after hit.

You want to know those quads to work? You want to know what I'm most proud about? Guess how long that took me to prepare.

I think you would be proud if you spent a long time, like 45 minutes. Oh, that went the other way.

It's 1 p.m. now. We started recording at noon. I block off my schedule from 11 to noon is my research time. I did all of this in that 1-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 like 45 minutes?

Uh, I just got a good brain. I don't know. I just, yeah, I just, my brain's good. I just was on fire today. I drank a bunch of coffee.

Nice.

But that's it. All right.

We're outta here.