Sam, I have a list of what I'm calling dumb ideas that made a million dollars. These are obscure lists that really only people like you and me would ever even keep. But I have a list of dumb ideas that actually worked.
I say dumb not because I think they're dumb. I actually think they're genius because I think being clever and doing simple things is actually a form of genius. But I think other people would call these dumb ideas. So I want to run through them with you and I want you to give me your reaction to each one.
All right, let's hear it.
All right, first one came up. I was watching the NFL playoffs, which were on this weekend. I don't know if you've paid any attention, but like the Chicago Bears, who have sucked for a long time, are in the playoffs, and Chicago has this rival, the Green Bay Packers, and the Packers have been great for a long time, and the Bears have sucked for a very long time. And so it's like kind of a rivalry just by like location, but they're not really like close rivals. And so I'm watching the game and I look and in the crowd I just see a ton of people wearing like, I don't know how much you know about football, but do you know what the Packers fans wear on their head?
Cheese heads. So what do the Bears fans wear?
I don't know. Helmets. I don't know.
Cheese graters. And so I see all these fans wearing this like silver cheese grater hat and I'm like, 'Oh, that's clever.' Like we're about to shred the Green Bay Packers. We're going to shred the cheese heads. And I'm like, 'This is really smart.' So I started looking at what's the story behind this. And the story behind this is kind of crazy. So if you go to foampartyhats.com, this business started in 2017. So Grace Rojos and her son Manuel Rojos, they create this thing and they had actually for like, you know, 15 years, they had just for fun been making like fun party hats, like I think for their own daughter's party, they made fun party hats for all the guests. People loved it and they kind of gave it up and then they moved and then they like started again and they're like, 'We're going to make these foam hats for special events, parties, occasions, and sports.' And so they've been kind of like trucking along. They got on Shark Tank and they gave up 25% of their company for 100 grand, right? So like you know this deal with Mark Cuban.
Yeah. And you know birthdays, weddings, corporate events, they had all these like novelty hats and then came the boom. So this grater head thing has just taken off and become this like viral frenzy. So like basically the Bears, they have this coach. I don't know if you've seen this guy Ben Johnson. He's kind of got like if Sam Parr was into football energy a little bit. He's just basically this young coach who's supposed to be really really smart. He's super like ripped. So every time in the postgame, he'll like in the locker room he just like rips off his shirt, which like most of the old like 70-year-old coaches would never do. And he gets his team like really fired up, but he gives the game ball to this guy who comes out and I don't know if you can see this, but he's this wide receiver DJ Moore. He's wearing the hat. And so he's wearing this, this guy DJ Moore, and he starts, the whole team starts chanting, 'Go DJ, go DJ.' There's a little Wayne song. He starts dancing. This clip goes viral, right? This has 2.2 million views. And suddenly these hats are flying off the shelves. And they do like 10,000 orders in a week, which is like half a million dollars in a week. They have this huge wait list now, huge backlog because they make these by hand apparently. And this idea of like team-specific novelty merch, because like if like sports fans, like when I went to that Warriors game I walked out I bought my son a jersey a little ball but it's like all so like vanilla. It's all cookie cutter. It's like the same things over and over again. But with social media the teams now have little like trends, little meme moments. And if you could fast follow those meme moments and create stuff that's going to like kind of make somebody laugh or be worth sharing on social media, you can actually get a lot of spread. And so that's what this company's been doing with these hats and going viral. So they've built basically a, you know, million-dollar plus business now off of these like novelty foam hats. Isn't that wild? They do a really good job of making me into the story. Like it looks like it's a Hispanic like family and looks like the son is kind of the CEO and the mom is like one who is the brains and kind of came up with the idea and originally made it.
Yeah. But I think if somebody takes this idea, there was another company like a t-shirt company. I can't remember the name, but they were doing this for sports teams where they realized like the drop shipping infrastructure has become so good that if anything happens in the game like last night, within an hour after the game, they can have the store up for that product, for that slogan, for that thing. Linsanity happens in New York. And then they go they have like the Linsanity like line ready to go. And so I forgot what the name of this company is, but they're basically like rapidly like much faster, like orders of magnitude faster than the typical like merch industry creating team-specific moment-specific merch. And I just think that's like a, it's not the best business, not a business I would want to be in, but it is like a simple man's business. Like anybody can understand what they're doing and be able to like try to replicate that. And then if you niche down even all the way, forget t-shirts, like to giant oversized foam hats. It's like, there's a million-dollar business sitting in oversized foam hats, which is pretty wild. All right, ready for the next one?
Yeah, that was a quotable last line. There's a million-dollar business sitting in oversized foam hats.
All right, so a lot of people watch and listen to this show because they want to hear us just tell them exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business. And really, a lot of people who are listening, they have a full-time job and they want to start something on the side, a side hustle. Now, a lot of people message Shaan and I and they say, 'All right, I want to start something on the side. Is this a good idea? Is that a good idea?' And again, what they're really just saying is, 'Just give me the ideas.' Well, my friends, you're in luck. So, my old company, The Hustle, they put together a hundred different side hustle ideas. And they have appropriately called it the Side Hustle Idea Database. It's a list of a hundred pretty good ideas. Frankly, I went through them. They're awesome. And it gives you how to start them, how to grow them, things like that. That gives you a little bit of inspiration. So, check it out. It's called the Side Hustle Idea Database. It's in the description below. You'll see the link. Click it. Check it out. Let me know in the comments what you think. All right, here's the next one. So, as you know, a long time ago, I was running a business called birthdayalarm.com. This was a business started by Michael and Zoe Burch. It had been going for 20 plus years, printing, you know, millions of dollars a year. It was one of the earliest viral businesses ever. So I think Birthday Alarm has had like 50 million plus members with zero marketing spend because Michael was one of the pioneers of viral marketing and so he understood how to get this business to grow virally.
How much revenue has this done over the course? It's 20 years, it's 20 years old.
Yeah, I think it's more than that. It's probably 25 years old now.
And so has this done like 100 million over 25 years?
Probably not 100, probably like over 50. So maybe 75 million is my guess.
And hyper profitably by the way, like that's not just revenue, it's profit for a business like this.
So 3 million every year for 25 years is...
Not exactly, but yeah, average, let's say average two to three.
Because the business model is very simple. So it's reminders for your friends and family's birthdays. Fantastic. And then I was like, but the reminders are free. So you make the money when people pay to send a card. And I remember when we were trying to like grow the business or revitalize the business, I was brainstorming ideas with him and I was like, you know, I try not to be too smart. So I always just like, what's already working or has worked in the past or is working for other people? And so that was my first question. Before I tell you any of my bad ideas, tell me about some things that are already proven to work. And he goes, you know, at the beginning, these guys approached us with this goofy idea that I thought was a total scam. He's like, 'But I think they've actually made even more money than we did without the 50 million members.' And I go, 'What is it?' He goes, 'It's this thing called the International Star Registry.'
Oh my gosh, I have heard of this.
So he goes, 'They let you for like a special occasion for your friend, you know, friend's birthday or whatever, you can gift them their name on a star. You can name a star in the universe after your friend. It'll show you the star. It'll tell you the location of it. And for the low price of $25, that star is yours. Technically, not technically yours at all. Not even officially named. Just named in our book that we're going to keep in our office.' And so these guys have been printing millions of dollars for also 20 plus years just naming stars after people. And this got popular. It was like it's been referenced in movies. It was like in A Walk to Remember. They like someone is dying. They name a star after her. Like it's this emotional sentimental thing. And I love it because it's a pure play marketing product. There is no product. Like you don't get to have the star. There's nothing, nothing changes hands. It's literally not even officially naming the star after them. It's literally just we are going to write it down in our book permanently. It's like something I would trick my kids with.
Dude, what's really funny is if you Google star registry, you could see they're buying ads against each other. There's like dozens of these companies which begs the question like, you know, whose book is like the more permanent book? But is this the one that was founded in 1979?
Yeah, 1979 when like kind of space was hot and the moon and all that. So you get a certificate, you get a map of where the thing is and you get to have that forever in their book. And so the funny thing is like they are like kind of the details of this which I think are like pretty funny. You know, think about it from a marketing point of view. How do you legitimize this, you know, frankly illegitimate thing? And what they did was they basically like they made their book so official. They're like it's placed in the Library of Congress and we store the official book in a Swiss vault in a Swiss bank in a vault and right like just leveraging like prestige and...
Like are any of those things impressive? Like how do you get a book into the library?
You probably donate a copy.
Like one of my favorite copywriters, Joe Sugarman, wrote this famous ad for Casio watches and he asked the guys who made the watch. He was like, 'Explain to me how this watch is made.' And they say, 'Well, we use a quartz movement and then we use this type of aluminum.' And he goes, 'Hold on, did you say quartz movement?' And they go, 'Yeah, it's like a movement that every $10 watch uses.' He's like, 'But tell me more about quartz.' And he finds out what quartz means. And then he's like, 'Tell me about the steel.' He's like, 'Yeah, or this metal.' He's like, 'Oh, it's just aluminum. It's just like, you know, we use it. This pen company uses it. Hell, even like NASA uses it. Did you just say space-grade aluminum?' And so if you read this old ad for the Casio watch, he was like made with the same aluminum that's grade or is like it's space-grade aluminum. It is called that because NASA uses it on their rocket ships to make it so strong with the quartz movement which is the most precise movement. It's the same thing that Rolex uses or like something like that. And so he like took like a truth and made it sound a lot cooler than it is. Sort of like in a Swiss bank account.
Took a fact and he made it value.
By the way, I think this is the uh what's that thing called? The Rorschach test or whatever the ink blot and you're like is this a bunny rabbit or a serial killer? Right. Like to me that's what you just described is the thing for this podcast. It's like if there was like a speakeasy and you had to come in and like we had to decide who gets in and who gets out. I'd tell this Joseph Sugarman story and I'd be like, 'Do you find that amazing or repulsive?' They're like, 'Well, that's bullshit.' And they're like, 'Cool. You should just head to the next bar.' And if they're like, 'That's amazing. How do I do that?' Like, 'Come on in. Welcome to MFM.'
That's pretty good. How long, who did you ever look up who owned this company? Do they have like some crazy story like Michael Burch?
Yeah. So, it was owned by this Canadian advertising executive, but only for like a year. I think he like passed away two years later. And then this mom of 12 who gifted a star to her husband, loved it, finds out that like the business is like, you know, for sale. She buys it and then they've grown it as a family business. Now her son is the operator of it or something like that. So this mom of 12 did it, which by the way, if you're a mom of 12, you're hired. You're capable of doing anything if you can be a mother of 12. Like is there a like I don't know what Navy Seal training is like, but it does not compare to being a mother of 12.
Dude, on their uh on their on it's called starregistry.com on their about us page, they explain how they're democratizing the cosmos and all this stuff. And then they have a line that says, 'Do not be fooled by the impostors.' And it's this and it's those other guys. It's this big uh paragraph. It says uh in the vast experience of celestial naming and uh there are also impostors seeking to capitalize on the allure of the stars. Numerous companies have attempted to copy us and they go on to say why they are the more official one.
Yeah. Snake oil salesman says other guys' oil is terrible for you.
Did I tell you how he came up with this idea?
Michael had a, they were both I think working at an insurance company and he's like we were making really good money because he's like computers were new and like not many people knew how to do programming for computers. The internet was new. Insurance companies needed somebody who could do like database programming or whatever. So he's doing that. I think he told me they were making like a really good salary like maybe like 200 grand a year maybe combined. Maybe the two of them. I don't know. They were doing well. So the internet boom starts kind of like 1998 1999 and he's like what am I doing sitting here at an insurance company I got to be a part of this which I'm sure today many people feel that way about AI and uh you know the way the robotics and the way the world is going. So he said his friend sends him a site a link to some friend store or something like that. He's like wow this is incredible. I got to get in there. I got to start doing things. And so he decides, I'm going to create a self-updating address book. So like, you know, today, this is still an unsolved problem, by the way. Sam, you move. I don't have your new address. I have to keep asking you for your address. I don't know when you move. So he had this idea. Well, the way it should work is when Sam moves, he changes his address once and it changes automatically and anybody who he's already accepted like to have his address, like it changes for everybody. A great idea. Still a great idea. This is the idea that he had. Many like Sean Parker, you know, who's famous from The Social Network and, you know, Facebook, he tried to start a company doing this, too. Like a bunch of smart people have been like, we're going to solve this problem. It just turns out people don't really care enough to do it. But he's building this thing. It's called Lemon Link. He's like, you know, the best thing that ever happened was he's like, we had no money. So, he's like, I'm the programmer. I'm the designer, I'm the product manager, I'm customer service, I'm the janitor, I'm everything, right? Because there's nobody else. And he told his wife when he quit his job, he's like, 'Give me three months to try this computer thing and like this internet thing.' And like if it doesn't work in three months, I promise like we'll go back to having a job because I think they were like pregnant with their second or third kid. And so it was like, you know, not super like stable time to just quit your job. Well, two years goes by and he's like, I'm so close. I just need another three months. Let me keep going. So he's still trying. He's doing customer service and Lemon Link is not growing. He's like, 'The only thing I'm getting in customer service is basically like, shut down my account. I don't need this.' Or, 'Hey, thanks for that birthday reminder. You saved my butt.' You know, because he's like, 'I added this one feature in addition to the address thing like, oh, by the way, like save their birthday, too, and I'll tell you when it's their birthday.' That's a good feature. And he's like, 'I kept seeing that.' And this was pre-Facebook so people didn't have an easy online way to know when their friend's birthday was and so he realized oh this is a thing and that was because he was doing customer service and because he finally faced reality which is like nobody wants my idea but they do seem to want this. Then, you know, overnight he creates birthdayalarm.com and like within a couple of weeks he gets like 10,000 members and he's like oh my god. He's like this was because he figured out a viral loop and he's like to this day you know that was still the best feeling that but even before we made any money getting to 10,000 members like that was crazy.
It's pretty crazy he had the audacity to stop working on that and work on Bebo like most everyone else would say all right birthday alarm. How do we make anniversary alarm? How do we do this? How do we do that?
It was working and it starts making a little bit of money, not much, but a little bit of money and his friend Morgan sends him a link to Friendster at the time and he's like, 'Oh, of course people are going to want to like this internet thing. It's not just looking up information. They're going to want to talk to their friends and post photos about each other, you know, like stuff like that.' Like that makes total sense. So, he created a, before Bebo, he created a Friendster-like product. It goes viral again because he really understands virality, but he's losing money because the more members that sign up, the more his bandwidth costs. And at the time, social networks didn't have any way of making money. Like today, Facebook is known for like Facebook ads. There was no ads at the time. And so there was no ad network. Nobody had ever done that before. Nobody knew how to make money off of those things. So he went to a meetup and he sold the business to James Currier for like 2 million bucks. And he went and worked for them for a year. And then kind of like as social networking was maturing, he's seeing what MySpace is doing. He's like, 'Oh, okay. I think I know what I should be doing. I learned even more about virality here now. I'm going to go start Bebo.' Then he started Bebo. And that was the one that took off.
And that was like in two or three years. He grew it from nothing to like a $800 million exit, right?
I'm not sure how many years. Yeah. Three, four years probably.
What a baller. Damn. And now he's just the sole proprietor of a little birthdayalarm.com.
Yeah. Just trying to make it make ends meet.
I have one more very dumb idea that I admire for its simplicity. So you probably are a subscriber to this YouTube channel. Can you just type in 10-hour fireplace?
Of course. I mean everyone is, aren't they?
So there what you will see. Describe what you see when you type in 10-hour fireplace and then click their YouTube channel.
They have done a very good job of naming it. So I see, oh my god, I didn't realize it was that big. Okay. Holy moly. Okay, so obviously it's what you guys expect. It's a 10-hour video of a fireplace with 157 million views.
Exactly. There's how many videos on this channel, Sam? So they posted this 10 years ago and shockingly they have 120,000 subscribers and there is one video and it is, it's so funny. There's like points in the video that you know how when you scroll over YouTube there's points where it spikes like where the viewers are like why is...
Where the viewers are just loving it.
Look at the most replayed section like...
Oh they don't even add logs. They don't even add logs to the fire. So it must be like a 30-second loop just done over and over and over again. Like there's parts where it spikes. Do you see this? The part at 5 hours and 55 minutes.
Thrilling. Everybody knows about that part.
Oh, the top comment. Bro is a millionaire.
Bro is a millionaire because this guy is a... This channel was started by one person in Romania. It's a channel with one video. So, this guy just hit it and quit it. This is the one hit wonder.
Did you just... of the business world? He posted one video of a 30-second loop of a fireplace or I don't know if it's a 30-second loop but a 10-hour video of a fireplace crackling and this guy made a million dollars in Romania and did he try to follow it up with another video and then turn it into an empire and then create... No, he just put the video up, let it run, baby. I admire this. I admire the restraint maybe more than I admire the ingenuity.
Dude, have you noticed on YouTube what's been going on with these types of things? So, I don't know. I guess we can call it an ambient channel. Let's call it these. Let's categorize them as ambient channels. I love ambient channels. I listen to like the weird music.
Yeah. It started as white noise. There's this company called Brain FM. Do you know Brain FM?
I love Brain FM. So, they make some of my favorite noise. Just great noise.
I was a paying subscriber to Brain FM years ago. Oh my god. So, I love Brain FM, but then I started going down the rabbit hole of like other music. So, there's like they call it like, is it like lo-fi Mac Miller? It's basically just Mac Miller for some reason. I don't know how I got... I like Mac Miller, but not enough that I would think he'd start popping up on my channel. So, it's tons of like lo-fi Mac Miller, which I love. But what I'm noticing is like a huge graph where it's like, let's do old money, let's do 1980s, let's do this, and then it's like now select country. So, for example, I keep getting targeted with old money Brazil or 1980s finance or like it's like and they create the best AI thumbnail. So, type in old money Brazil music.
Trust me, it's so strange.
All right, I see this gentleman in this nice suit with a cigar and old money Brazil. Elegant Bossa Nova timeless luxury instrumental playlist. 74,000 views.
I get targeted with so many of these. There was another one where it was like...
You get targeted or you select, you beg for them.
You make the algorithm. So yeah, like if I see that image, but it might get...
Shape our algorithm then our algorithm shapes us. The old Winston Churchill.
But then there was like there's even crazier ones where it's like greedy American Revolution. Like I don't know like locked in American Revolution or something like that. Like it's crazy how like specific they get, but they basically just take like...
You are joking. This is real.
90 minutes of American War revolutionary music liberty song playlist.
And they like is like do you see like a good one?
Define good. Bro, I'm never going to click any of these.
Like the thumbnails are so funny. Like I'll have to find a different one, but the thumbnail I tweeted out the other day I was like, 'The thumbnail gods have been smiling on me.' And it's like an American Revolution music, but the best thumbnail ever, and I keep getting targeted over and over and over again. These guys must be doing well. You've never seen these?
Well, I've seen just a normal lo-fi. So, like lo-fi girl, for example, lo-fi girl, I think, is probably the biggest channel in this category. 15 million subscribers, 2 and a half billion views on the channel making about a hundred grand a month on this channel right now. And that's just that's like one channel right now. She's live.
There's 30,000 people just listening to this right now while we're recording this.
It's the best. So look at the look at the...
Why don't we just do this?
It sounds... Why are we talking?
Look at the thumbnail that I sent to you.
Oh, this is incredible. What is this?
I mean, I don't even have a word for this. It looks like, you know, like that what's the painting at the top of the Sistine Chapel where like the naked man's reaching out to like God and their fingers are about to touch. It looks like that guy, but he's got his dukes up like he's about to fight and he's like a hairless naked man with like half a mullet and it just says classical music that goes hard.
Yeah. Or I'll see them where it looks like paintings like that and they're giving like the shocker sign. And so I just get like so many of these and I think it's just such there's like this weird underground world. There's that underground world and there's the underground world of the comments. So if you look at MFM's comments, people can't see this, but on the back end we've tried to ban them where it's like, I can't believe no one has blessed me before. Like they've just blessed me after I read this book called like you know Millionaires R Us like or it'll be like I totally agree with this video and it's so funny that this video that you guys start making these points because I read about this exact thing in the Millionaires R Us book by this person who's a total saint.
Dude, this is... those guys are like the bane of my existence by the way. It's the worst.
I just sit there and like manually try to get rid of them. Have you seen this guy Yang Mun on Instagram? It's like an AI monk and he's got this like healing guide. He's got a million...
So into it. He's got like one to two million followers and it's a monk who's just doing like talking head advice videos and then he sells a healing guide and again it's like you know it's a guy who's like you know it's a kid who's 17 with like the broccoli haircut who had just moved to Miami and he's in a house with seven other guys and they're all creating these accounts that are like there's one of just...
Sold on Whoop, you know what's that thing called, or Whoop where you buy like financial newsletters if you go to Yang Mun's link entry you click on...
Because that's what a monk would do, right?
The ebook Time to Heal Young Man.
And it's like things you might love and then it's like newsletters that's like 10x your wealth with this stock tip.
Yeah, people are doing this with fake grandparents. So they have like an account that's like wisdom from like grandparents but they're all AI and it's like what I wish I knew when I was younger like the one thing you know the love that got away and they just post content like that. They're just printing views right now.
Dude, this stuff gets me every time. It sucks. I love this stuff. I fall victim to this worse than like a grandparent falls victim to like buying the top listing on an Amazon. Like every birthday for every gift giving experience at my house right now from grandparents. It's like you guys all just typed in kids bike and bought the exact same thing.
All right, I got to show you one more. This is the best one. All right, so I'm on YouTube the other day and you know when the algorithm just like has a commission and five-star experience for you. So this is one the most intense shoe salesman you'll ever meet. It's a CBS News archive from 1983. Shoe store here in Sharon, Pennsylvania is just, you know, a shoe store. Oh no, that's the playing field of a champion. Here he comes now out of the bullpen. The hottest pitcher of the retail shoe game today. Big number one, Larry Jolton.
Let me see. Coming up. I'm...
All right. To this video. It was of this guy Larry Jolton who was the number one shoe salesman in America. And he sold, this is back in 1983. He sold $400,000 worth of shoes at this physical shoe store himself by hand. It's in Pennsylvania. It's some like Ryers or something like that. It's a famous shoe store. And so he was the number one hustler. And this video is amazing because I just play on him. I want to see.
The hook is great. I'm in. I'm bought in here. Here you go. I wouldn't go any bigger than that. You got some nice dress shoes 20% off. Like a light better. I do too. Especially for the summer time. Listen to me. You order the two shoes whatever color you want. If it comes in, it don't fit. If you don't like it, you're not obligated to take...
