How Vending Machines are Generating Millions & The Next Big Social App | My First Million #187

Sam Parr

So, I like these big software companies that can scale. But when I heard him describing this, I thought, "God, I want to get in on this!" This is the... you know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

What's up? Sean here. We got Sam, and in today's episode, we're going to talk about a blue-collar side hustle, aka the "Hillbilly of the Week," which is a vending machine business. Sam breaks down all the numbers behind it. We discuss the idea of creating the edible arrangements of DoorDash through ghost kitchens. We also talk about the new hottest app in the App Store, the number one app. Is this the next Snapchat? Is this the next Clubhouse? We don't know. It's called Paparazzi, and I tell a story around that. Additionally, we talk about Vimeo, a business you've probably heard of but may not realize is now an $8,000,000,000 business. At the end, we shoot the shit with Abreu and the new Abreu Dan, and you get to meet him a little bit. So that's the last, I don't know, 5 to 10 minutes of the episode. Alright, great episode. Enjoy!

Sam Parr

alright what's up

Shaan Puri

You know what's funny? I put out that thing for merch designs and somebody had a great one. The funny ones I thought were: 1. Somebody made a "Yada yada yada" shirt with your face on it, which I thought was funny. 2. Then somebody made one with both our faces, kind of illustrated, and it just says "Aubrey, are we good?" which is really... [Interrupted] "Do I really?" [This appears to be a response to the statement about saying "Are we good?" at the end of every episode]

Sam Parr

I and then another guy, Sean, we're doing this meetup in Miami. By the way, we... by the way, we... by the way, we call...

Shaan Puri

It’s a meetup. I feel like that undersells it, right? **Live show!** We're going on tour. That sounds more badass than just doing a meetup.

Sam Parr

Well, yes, you're right. But there are two things going on here. The first is that I was downplaying it because, frankly, I didn't know how many people were going to show up. So, we set the limit originally at 400, and then our venue is now changing. I don't know how many it's going to seat, right? We capped it now at 335 based on the RSVPs we have. If more spots open up, we're going to open it up. I was doing it to make it so if I failed, it would be okay. Also, when you're talking about the show, I know that you're pretty comfortable on stage, and you actually aspire to be kind of a professional comedian. I have no idea what we're actually going to talk about.

Shaan Puri

we haven't even we haven't even said a word to each other about what are we gonna do there

Sam Parr

Yeah, so we'll figure it out, but basically the way it's working... and as per usual, we agreed to stuff without thinking it through. Basically, we have a thing in Austin at 6 PM on Thursday that's probably gonna end at 10 PM. Then we have a 7 AM flight, and I think that flight is gonna land at 12:30 PM in Miami. And then these...

Shaan Puri

are the these are the logistics people came to listen for

Sam Parr

Well, and then it... well, sorry. But anyway, it's just we have a lot. We're going to be running them out a million miles an hour.

Shaan Puri

You know what I thought would be a fun idea? I just thought about it actually while I was putting my contacts in before this. I was wondering, "What are we going to say on stage? What would be a good live show?" I thought we could either do research and have a fire episode with great ideas, "Billy of the Week," and a business breakdown ready. Or we could do something different. You know how, when you go to a comedy show, they take your phone and zip it up so you can't record anything? I was thinking, if they showed up live, what can we give them that's special and can't just be said on air? So, I thought maybe each of us probably has a few business war stories that we could share. These stories could be entertaining and done in an off-the-record format. I feel like we could put out about five stories that we could tell—at least three or four—that would be entertaining. These would be stories about things that happened that you wouldn't just publish a blog post about because they aren't necessarily details you can share with everyone. But in a trusted group of some of our biggest fans, I think that would be cool.

Sam Parr

a a 400 person trust group but yeah

Shaan Puri

I think such a group of strangers

Sam Parr

I think it might default to like Q and A, but we'll see. It's going to be weird. I've never... I've talked in front of a lot of people; I think the most I've ever talked to is 5,000. That's not a big deal; I can do that all day. But I've never spoken to 5,000 people who came to see me just riff. So that's going to be weird. But we've got a lot of ideas. Do you want to get straight to it?

Shaan Puri

yeah let's do it where do you wanna start

Sam Parr

You want to actually start with... The Vimeo one's not an idea. You have this cool thing about paparazzi, or I don't actually know how to say it. Yeah, that's actually a lesson. I want to start with Vimeo because there's no lesson here, I just thought it was cool. So, Vimeo went public 2 days ago. I didn't even know this until I saw the tweet. It was an awesome tweet about the woman who was with her kid, saying like... wishing her mom a good day's work when it [Vimeo] goes public.

Shaan Puri

a good day's work to you

Sam Parr

or you

Shaan Puri

know like a you child

Sam Parr

Like, good luck! It was like a 3-year-old saying, you know, "Good luck!" as you ring the bell. I love that type of stuff. Anyway, there’s a background behind Vimeo. So, do you use Vimeo? I use it all the time.

Shaan Puri

I've used it. I think everybody runs into Vimeo once in a while. I don't use it to upload unless I'm like, "Oh, I need a high-quality, kind of private thing." I'm just surprised this company made it. It just seemed like Vimeo was dead. I think it literally died at some point. But they pivoted and made it actually into a great business. So, tell me about it.

Sam Parr

It never died, so it's always been kinda popular for a very particular type of person. I love watching it on my TV because I've got a fancy TV and they have fancy videos... like high-end videos. They particularly have weird stuff, weird music they've got.

Shaan Puri

what sort of fancy weird videos are you watching

Sam Parr

like like like

Shaan Puri

like nature stuff what do you what do

Sam Parr

you think there's like yeah tons of nature stuff

Shaan Puri

like men and women stuff like what are you watching

Sam Parr

oh like like like a drone flying around or something

Shaan Puri

gotcha

Sam Parr

Or, you know, stuff that's oddly entertaining. They have really unique art pieces, like an art video or something. It's very niche, but it's really neat. I love it. The way it started is actually interesting. There was a guy named Ricky Van, I think his name is Ricky Van Veen. He started with a guy named Josh and another guy named Zach. The three of them were only 18 when they started this company called CollegeHumor. You know CollegeHumor, of course. If you're around a similar age, you might remember it. If you're young and listening to this, you probably don't know it, but basically it was like you...

Shaan Puri

just fuck jerry but before instagram

Sam Parr

exactly or barstool sports but not sports

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

And it was like a kind of a smutty... it wasn't smut, but it was like SNL online. It was cool, and it was one of the first blogs. They started it, and it got going. They also had little side projects. These guys lived in New York and were just like your typical 20-year-old cool New Yorker. You would see their life, and they would start little side projects. It was really fun. One of their side projects was a video uploading tool that they built because they were uploading videos before YouTube was around, and that was Vimeo. Barry Diller, who we have to do a deep dive on—he's very fascinating—started this company called IAC. They're pretty huge. They've owned Match.com, which they spun out to be its own business. They own Tinder, and they've owned a ton of stuff, including Angie's List. Anyway, he bought Vimeo for $20,000,000 in 2006, and he's held it now for almost 15 years. They spun it out. So what Barry Diller and IAC do is they buy these companies, employ people to run them, and grow them—not like crazy fast, but they grow them and then spin them out to go public. It works often, and they went public recently. They bought this business for $20,000,000; it's now worth $8,000,000,000. Is that crazy?

Shaan Puri

that's insane

Sam Parr

publicly traded worth 8,000,000,000

Shaan Puri

By the way, if Vimeo is worth $8,000,000,000, YouTube's worth what? $88,100? Like, YouTube must be... YouTube is insanely more valuable than Vimeo. So that just seems a little off, right? Like, YouTube would be down.

Sam Parr

At 80, dude, Vimeo does like $400 million or $600 million. It's almost close to half a billion in revenue.

Shaan Puri

yeah but youtube does like 20,000,000,000 in revenue it's crazy right it's like yeah

Sam Parr

well I'm agreeing with you youtube should be worth a lot but I don't think vimeo is a

Shaan Puri

So, explain the niche. Vimeo basically... what did they do? They sort of pivoted from consumers uploading videos to more like businesses or creative people - filmmakers, you know, that type of people uploading videos. Is that right?

Sam Parr

Yeah, so if you want to upload a video quickly and in the highest quality possible, you'll use Vimeo and buy a trader's account. They also let you do some editing online, which makes it a little bit easier. You can add some captions and things like that. People will use it to store their portfolio. So, what you'll see if you go on there and type in "nature," you'll see some videos. Then you'll notice, "Oh wait, this is by Yeti," and it's Yeti hosting a lot of their cool videos that they'll pay a creator to make for them as an ad. I actually don't know where they even display those videos other than Vimeo, but you'll see what's the outdoor company led by people who go surfing... North Face! The North Face guy, like you'll see him fishing in a stream, telling a story about the background of the company.

Dan

right

Sam Parr

so it's

Shaan Puri

a lot

Sam Parr

It's pretty interesting, the niche. I don't actually know how to describe that niche, but it's kind of interesting. It's like it's all people who want to have higher quality stuff than YouTube in terms of resolution. They also do a couple things that go against their culture: - They don't have view counts - They don't have a "sort by popularity" feature So it makes it a little bit easier to discover stuff that you normally wouldn't have seen.

Shaan Puri

So, it's good for them because all the other video upload sites, whether it's like Dailymotion or all those other ones, they all died. YouTube just... YouTube took over. It ate everybody up. Vimeo squirted away and found a niche that works for them, which is actually like an $8,000,000,000 niche. It ended up working out, and not in a "oh, that's a lifestyle business" kind of way. So, you know, props to them because I don't think this was what most people would have bet would be the outcome once YouTube started growing like it did.

Sam Parr

So, the company Vimeo has **200,000,000** users. I believe **200,000,000** people a month go and use them. They also have **1,600,000** paying subscribers, which is pretty substantial. Another company that I didn't put on here but is killing it in video is Weebly.

Shaan Puri

yeah the website weeper

Sam Parr

Oh, sorry, not Weebly. What's the other one? It starts with a "W." Wix? Wistia! You know Wistia? So, Wistia is kind of an interesting company. They also started in 2006 and they were based out of Boston. They raised a significant amount of money and built this business to have around $30 million to $50 million in recurring revenue. Then, they bought out their shareholders. They raised money from KKR, the private equity company, and bought out their investors. I've actually thought that company could potentially be worth $1 billion as well, but they're kind of doing something similar.

Shaan Puri

yeah you know when well last episode I had this thing or or not the mark lower one but the one before that where I said you know one of my learn one of my learnings that one of the counterintuitive things that I learned is never underestimate these mega trends even when you feel like you're late you're early and there's another version of that which is even when you even when you're niche you're big with with a megatrend and so mark zuckerberg came out I don't know when it was I I didn't start using this term megatrend till I heard zuck use it I think 5 years ago when he goes video is a megatrend I thought oh that's interesting facebook's not even at that time facebook wasn't even about video they hadn't launched watch the feed was mostly photos and text updates and but they see everything right facebook knows what's going on on the internet they'd know exactly where all all the opportunities are whether they can capture them or not and for video I thought what does he mean by megatrend and I think what it means is like mobile like the internet like now video social these were they were like trends of trends meaning like they were gonna transform basically every space and so you saw this you saw this with video all of a sudden newspapers or you know the kind of the meme in for media companies was we're pivoting to video right which is like you used to write articles and now you produce videos you know same thing happened with with instagram you know more and more instagram content shifted from photos to videos either through stories or posts or now like reels or tiktoks and so video just has just eaten up more and more share of people's attention and what the internet is used for and I think that that's pretty pretty fascinating and I think this is a good example of video is such a big megatrend that even being the niche kind of like the the video uploading site for creative makers hobbyists fishermen and photographers is like boom $8,000,000 you know $8,000,000,000 company if you end up winning that space that niche and so yeah just another example of do not underestimate a megatrend don't think you're don't think you're late when it's a megatrend and don't be afraid of going niche because even the niches are big with megatrends I would say today's megatrends my personal bets are that today's megatrends are anything that's actually real in machine learning or ai as well as crypto I think those are the 2 megatrends that are happening right now

Sam Parr

Speaking of megatrends, something happened the other day. An app went crazy viral, and you kind of have an insider story about it.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, a little bit. Okay, so there's this app. I'll tell you kind of my learning here. A friend of the pod, actually, he's never come on, but one of our friends— I don't know if you know him very well— this guy Nikita Bier. He's an entrepreneur. His company, tbh, got acquired by Facebook for $100,000,000 in a really crazy way. They basically were grinding, trying to build social products, like you know, the next Twitter or the next Snapchat for many years. They were just getting really, really smart about it, learning a bunch of stuff, and never hitting the home run. I think about a few months before they ran out of money, they just threw in the towel. They were either going to wind it up, just say, "Alright, let's all go get jobs," or get acquihired somewhere. They made one last attempt and created this app called tbh. It went viral amongst high schoolers. It was an app where you could answer questions or polls about your friends, like "Who's most likely to...?" or "Who is your favorite person about...?" It was a place to go, you know, kind of post like a social network. The app took off, and Facebook bought it for, I think, $100,000,000, which was the reported price. How...

Sam Parr

Was that how you think that deal was structured? $100,000,000 for an app that doesn't... like, it's brand new?

Shaan Puri

I have no idea. Obviously, it was an overpay. You know, months later, to be honest, they shut down. It was kind of a fad, right? It didn't have legs. They shut it down and kept most of the talent. So, anyway, he's been there for a little while. He tweets out, "When the App Store refreshes, there's a new king: 500,000 installs on day one." Alright, you got my attention. I'll bite. What is it? People start speculating what it is, and I thought, sort of, I do some internet digging. I find out, okay, there's this app called **Paparazzi**. So, have you seen what the app is? The app is called **Paparazzi**. It's currently the number one app in the App Store. It's had over 1,000,000 installs in, I think, less than a week. Their waitlist basically... they were a TestFlight app, which is how you give it to beta testers. It's not even in the App Store. Their TestFlight app went viral, and they had half a million people ready and waiting to download the app as soon as it launched. So, they just rushed it onto the App Store, and bang! They hit number one. I think they're still number one on the free charts, above Snapchat, above TikTok, above Facebook, above everybody. And, okay, so what is **Paparazzi**? By the way, **Paparazzi** has almost the same story as **tbh**. These guys have been working on this for a while.

Sam Parr

like 3 years I think

Shaan Puri

years yeah they were just kinda grinding away you know small team I think they're in la and

Sam Parr

two brothers

Shaan Puri

They almost got acquired or kind of "acqui-hired" for single-digit millions of dollars. A couple of the big social networks were talking to them, and they could've taken that. They would have probably made around $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 amongst themselves if they did it. But they said, "Alright, fuck it, YOLO! One more try." They released this new app, Paparazzi, and it hits big. So, we'll see if this is going to last. Now, social apps could be like TBH or could be like Clubhouse. It could be the next Snapchat. That's the thing with social apps; they all sort of start out looking the same. They look kind of silly, they sound kind of dumb, and then, you know, you fast forward a year. Some people are proven right, saying, "I told you that was dumb," and it faded away. Then for some people, like me, I think I was right about Clubhouse. My famous Clubhouse prediction has been proven right. Their downloads went from 1,000,000 to 4,000,000 to 10,000,000, and then back to 2,000,000, 1,000,000, half a million, right?

Sam Parr

so do you have intel are you are you right

Shaan Puri

I mean, the download numbers would tell us a story that I'm right so far. Now, when I was saying it, it looked like this thing was going to take off. They had just had 10,000,000 downloads in a month, which is insane. Now it looks like I'm right, but of course, it could turn around. They may, you know, maybe they could get me wrong. But how did...

Sam Parr

this one app get get popular so so I don't know

Shaan Puri

Exactly how it got popular is very cleverly architected. The way their flow works encourages you to invite friends. I think it was just a novel hook. So, why is it called "Paparazzi"? It's called Paparazzi because on every other social network, you post about yourself. For example, I go post on Instagram; I post a photo from my camera that I took about me and my life. If I post a story, it's the same thing. Paparazzi, just like the name sounds, is about other people taking pictures of you, which is kind of funny, right? Your profile is not made up of pictures you upload about yourself, which tend to be you in a manicured setup, making yourself look good. With Paparazzi, it's other people taking pictures of you. That sort of acts like a photo tag on your wall. So, your whole profile is just pictures that other people took of you, and you can sort of accept or deny them if you don't like the photo. This creates a cool dynamic where now you're getting more candid shots because it's other people taking photos. This makes the content more interesting. It's more raw than what you're getting on Facebook. It's more raw than what you're getting on Instagram. It's even more raw than what Snapchat was. This is the game Snapchat played on Facebook. Snapchat was more raw and candid because the photos disappeared, so people had less of a filter on what they posted. But still, they wanted to post a certain type of thing that made themselves look good. This is even more raw than Snapchat. It's even more candid. Content that wouldn't have made it to Snapchat makes it onto Paparazzi, which is what makes it interesting. Now you're getting new stuff shared that you wouldn't have otherwise gotten. So, that's the premise of it. What do you think of this?

Sam Parr

Never in a million years did I think this was going to work. I can't decide if I just have bad taste or if I'm old. Is that the app?

Shaan Puri

I'm opening the app there's like a hype video

Sam Parr

do you

Shaan Puri

Which is cool! More apps should do that. They should have like a trailer instead of a boring onboarding. This thing is playing me music, it's like, "Let's get it poppin!" Then there are pictures of all these cute boys and girls. My phone is literally vibrating. It's like, that's the most excitement an app has ever shown me! So, do...

Sam Parr

You know, when you were looking at this, did you think that this... So, I get that it's popular now, and it's easy to say, "Yeah, I get it."

Shaan Puri

But no, I would have never predicted this, right? Like, okay, you would have told me, I'd have been like, "That's clever," but still probably not gonna fucking work. It seems so unlikely for anything to just hit like this. It's so unlikely, and it's not the expected things. So, by default, you sort of don't imagine that this would hit. Same thing with Clubhouse. I was like, "Oh, that's cool. I've seen a bunch of things like that. I don't really see why this one will go viral." But it did. It's very hard to predict with social. Even I spent maybe 5 or 6 years of my life trying to build social stuff. I knew everybody in the space, and I tried so many different things. So, I would say I'm not like a novice to this stuff, but it's very, very hard to predict. Our friend Jack Smith says this best. He goes, "If you look at even the guys who invested in Snapchat or WhatsApp or whatever, they go and they strut like, okay, Sequoia, the best venture fund that's ever existed basically, they invested in WhatsApp. They invested in every single round of WhatsApp. They led every round, which was a genius move. So when it exits for $19 or $20 billion, they were huge winners out of that. Cool, guess what? They also invested in Yik Yak, a social product that died, and Whisper, a social product that died, right? They have a graveyard of other things they tried that didn't work out. I don't know if those are the exact ones that they invested in, but they have a bunch. So Jack pointed out, he's like, "If even the best guys who have had the home runs have a bunch of swings and misses with social, it just shows how hard it is to correctly predict social before it plays out."

Sam Parr

I have a friend who was in the seed stage of Robinhood and a whole bunch of other stuff. He's probably worth multibillions—oh, for sure worth multibillions. Someone was asking him about social apps and consumer stuff, and he said, "Honestly, if the person's competent, maybe do it, but really it's just gambling. I have no idea which one's gonna work." He explained that with B2B stuff, he can kind of look at some things and think, "Okay, I understand. The likelihood that you can make this at least a mild success is quite high." But with social and some basic consumer stuff, it's just rolling dice, and he has very little confidence in any of it.

Shaan Puri

So, the beautiful thing about social media is... who would try this, right? Because you're right, it's so hard to predict. If you're a great entrepreneur and you go into this space, your intent is like going to a casino. You're saying, "Alright, my odds at the craps table are, you know, 51%. I'm a 49 to 51 underdog." In blackjack, I'm 49 to 51. Oh, you have, you know, whatever, Chinese backgammon over here. Okay, I want to go play Pai Gow. I'm going to go play Pai Gow even though the odds are an 80% chance of loss. It's like, why do you do that? Because it's fun! And when you get social, right? You're the freaking king of the universe! It's like, "Yeah, my app is the one that's used by like a billion people every day of their lives." Their whole social scene is on here. They use it with their mom, their friends, their girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever. So, it just hits different when you hit social. And that's why I love even talking about things that are social that hit, because it's a rare type of game that you kind of have to be a madman to go play.

Sam Parr

So, let me bring up something that's the total opposite of this. You don't have to be a madman, and the likelihood that it's going to succeed is incredibly high. But it may not be like a huge winner. Okay, I guess just with that information, do you know where I'm going with this?

Shaan Puri

I see vending machines on our thing, and I think that a vending machine business is probably the most predictable, simple, understandable, and guaranteed type of business you could do. Is that what you're going to do?

Sam Parr

Yes, so these two folks came to me and they pitched this idea. They're raising money for a vending machine business that primarily offers female products, like tampons and other items in bathrooms. Oddly enough, I had another guy email me a deck about a vending machine business, but I'm not going to pursue that one. However, this first one was kind of intriguing. They've got some traction and they're making money, which is interesting. I started doing some research and tweeted out, "Who knows everything about this? Who's the person we need to talk to?" It got a ton of traction for some reason, and I think it's because a lot of people are interested in this. A guy named Quinn Miller reached out to me, and I had a call with him this morning. It was very fascinating. He worked in this field, and I just want to bring this up because this is the exact opposite of what we were just talking about.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

But it's oddly as compelling and as interesting, even though it's two totally different parts of the world. So this guy, he's 27. He worked in software sales and quit about a year ago to start this business. He's got a vending machine business, and he gave me all of his numbers and said I can reveal them. He's about 10 months into the venture and is currently doing $15,000 in monthly revenue across 27 machines. His startup costs were $600—$500 to buy a machine and $200 to fix it and move it to the place where it had to go.

Shaan Puri

By the way, this is our weekly blue-collar side hustle. This is the perfect blue-collar side hustle!

Sam Parr

So, on the $15,000 in revenue, 65% is profit. He's doing around $9,700 to $9,800 a month in profit so far. The total investment into the business, after he already bought his first machine, has been $50,000. His time involvement per week is relatively high, about 20 hours a week, because he's actually delivering all the stuff. I asked him all about it. I was like, "How does this work?" The reason I reached out to this guy was that I was like, "Hey, there's this tampon startup. It kind of looks interesting. What's your opinion on this tampon vending machine startup?" He goes, "Yeah, I mean, I obviously don't know anything about that too much, but basically my opinion is the world—or he goes, America—runs on Coke and Monster Energy drink."

Shaan Puri

and I

Sam Parr

was like what do you mean he goes let me let me explain so I put these vending machines that I buy

Shaan Puri

So let's slow down. The guy basically buys vending machines, like you and I are used to—just a snack vending machine. Nothing innovative there.

Sam Parr

Well, he does one quote innovative thing. He installs a credit card machine on him. For about $250, you can get a credit card machine.

Shaan Puri

Okay, so he gets a vending machine. He says, "Alright, people aren't carrying quarters, so I'm gonna take cards." He puts them... he buys each machine, you said, for $5,500. That was...

Sam Parr

The first one was 500. He has 27 machines with $50,000 each, so whatever that math is... So what's that?

Shaan Puri

He buys a machine that costs roughly $1,000 to $2,000. He puts it in places like office buildings or departments.

Sam Parr

So, he cold calls lower-income hotels, motels, assisted living places, and low-income apartments. Sorry, low-income apartments, motels, and assisted living places.

Shaan Puri

okay

Sam Parr

great and and

Shaan Puri

So, he goes and he basically says, "Hey, put this here." Is there a revenue split, or does he pay rent? How does that work?

Sam Parr

So, most of these businesses, the way that they work is they give 10% to 20% to the real estate folks. This guy said, "I actually am, because I sold software, I'm pretty good at sales, and I do what's called a value sell." He was basically saying, "Look, your tenants are... if I just improve your tenant experience by just a small percentage, maybe you're going to make more money because someone will want to stay or want to rent here."

Shaan Puri

he gives them

Sam Parr

Nothing. He gives them nothing, but he keeps. So, he's got a bunch of machines in like 10 different locations, and he just cold calls them. It's so unsophisticated. Where does he get his stuff? Costco. So, he buys a can of Coke from Costco for 33¢ and he charges a dollar for it. Right? It's very simple, not complicated at all.

Shaan Puri

By the way, my grandfather used to have a vending machine. This was probably the first business I ever encountered. I think I was probably 5 years old, and my parents worked. My dad would work in an office building and needed me to be babysat. Old people also kind of need babysitting, so my dad went for a two-for-one deal. He basically bought or rented out a little corner store, kind of like a deli, inside the office building. My grandfather ran it, and we used to go work the register at the age of 7. He basically occupied his grandparents and his kids without having to pay for any caretakers. In fact, it made a little bit of money. My grandfather had this vending machine that we used to refill. We would go to Costco, buy the Cokes, put them in, and he would collect a bag of change. Then we would go to the bank and exchange the change. I remember thinking, "What is this?" He had one vending machine as his business.

Sam Parr

It sounds awesome! I asked the guy, by the way, this guy's name is **Quinn Miller**. I'll give him a shout out: **Quinn Miller**. I asked him, "How big can this get?" He goes, "Look, I'm not trying to be offensive or anything, but the operators of these businesses typically are pretty hillbilly."

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

And so, they're pretty unsophisticated, which doesn't mean they're dumb. They're just not sophisticated in terms of technology or anything like that. They want a low-key, easy life. He goes, "But I met a guy in Palm Springs who had about 1,600 machines, and he was making anywhere from $5 to $10 million in revenue, with about half in profit." Right? And I was like, "Well, that's pretty amazing. How else can it get big? Like, what else is big?" He said that there's a company called Canteen, and I looked it up. I think it's public, but they do about $15 billion in sales, and they're the largest vending machine company in America.

Shaan Puri

they operate them

Sam Parr

Yeah, and they do distribution. So the thing is, what this guy does, Quinn, is he finds his route. He finds a route, so he's like, "Alright, if I go from destination A to B, it's a straight line. I'll do everything in between." So I try to find locations on the way so one truck can do all of it in an easy, short amount of time. He's very specific about where he chooses, and that's where you make a lot of money. You can be very efficient with your time. So basically, that's what he does. He said this company team just does that on a huge scale. Ultimately, at the end of the day, they're a logistics company and a bit of a supply chain company. Quinn told me he rented a small warehouse now because he's getting so much freaking Coke. He goes, "The reason I like doing that..." and back to tampons, he says, "You have to look at what the repeat purchase rate is." He goes, "If I go to a lower-income area, these folks love Coke and love Monster."

Sam Parr

That one guy will drink 5 Cokes today. I'm getting $5 from them. You have to ask yourself, can you get that for tampons or other products? In fact, a lot of the guys, once they move from Coke and Monster Energy, are starting to go into what's called the honesty market. So basically, at a WeWork, you know how they like you swipe your credit card and you only take one sandwich for $8?

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah

Sam Parr

he's like that's where the money is right now

Shaan Puri

That's interesting. Yeah, it's almost like there are "whales" for the vending machine. It's not like everybody buys one every three days. It's like one guy drinks nine Cokes a day or, you know, four Red Bulls a week. That's where you make your money: on the 10% of the residents who buy like 90% of the goods or something like that, probably.

Sam Parr

Yeah, this guy was interesting. He's only 27 and was in San Diego, working in tech sales. He told me, "Basically, I'm pretty... I was pretty good at selling software. I'm not the best, but I'm pretty good." In this industry that I went into, they're just kind of not that great at many things, and I could outsell relatively easily. I could kind of outwork relatively easily. So anyway, fascinating story.

Shaan Puri

So, you know, we have the "Billy of the Week." I think this needs to be the "Hilly of the Week." It's the hillbilly business that's actually...

Sam Parr

billy of the week

Shaan Puri

That's actually great! So, Quinn Miller, you are the **Hilly of the Week**. Congratulations! I love this business. Just to summarize: buy the thing for $1,000. Cold call apartment complexes, motels, hotels—lower income the better, I guess, is the way that this market works. Then you're trying to generate... he's generating off of what you said, **27 machines**. He's generating about **$100,000 to $120,000** of profit a year. So that's, you know, that's the business. And then what's the work? It sounds like it could be easily delegated, but it sounds like he wants to do it and keep his margins. So, you go, you buy the stuff wholesale, and then you stock all the machines on some regular cadence. You collect the payments on the other side. So that's it.

Sam Parr

I was so fascinated. So, like, I get when people call me a "tech guy." I'm like, "Not really. I work in publishing. I'm a publisher." But I guess compared to someone who works in a vending machine, I am a tech guy. I like these big software companies that can scale. But when I heard him describing this, I'm like, "God, I want to get in on this!" This is so... you know what I mean? It's like we just started talking about paparazzi and how this young guy named Nikita sold an app for $100,000,000 to Facebook and is probably 26 years old. Baller! Like, you'll die a billionaire if you just breathe. Okay, that's it. But then I hear about this guy who spent $50 and is going to make $150,000 a year in profit. I'm like, "Fuck yeah! Sign me up! Let's get into this." So, I think it's kind of interesting. I like hearing about it.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, whatever floats your boat. You know, I okay, let's do some quick brainstorming on other ideas. First of all, I'll say the beauty of this is that you don't need to come up with a genius twist on it. You just do the same thing in your local market, and it would work. Okay, so that's cool. But if you were going to do a twist, right? I like to dabble in ideas, so let's come up with some ideas. Here are a couple that I think might be interesting as twists. You mentioned the honesty market. What do you call it? The honesty market?

Sam Parr

that's what he called it yeah

Shaan Puri

So, I've seen this at big companies. They do this, like at the Adobe office. I remember they had a bunch of sandwiches in a thing. You take it out and you pay, and nobody's watching you. So, there's no labor cost, and they just hope that you're not going to steal anything. That works in certain types of high-end places, like WeWork and things like that. Okay, I think that's cool. So maybe there's an opportunity there. What about subscription? If you're taking my credit card and you have this vending machine, how do you get me to say, "Hey, you could buy this one can of Coke for a dollar, but for $6 a week, you can get unlimited Coke"? You can get unlimited vending machine swipes, and you basically set up a recurring revenue business off of the residents in the place. It's like a breakage model, so they just can't empty you out.

Sam Parr

dude I think that's the move but you're wrong it's not unlimited

Shaan Puri

No, no, it's capped, right? But the machine caps you. It's like, "Oh hey, it's user..." whatever. I don't know how they would know that you're you. I guess that's a little bit of a tricky one. You'd have to swipe your card every time, which feels bad.

Sam Parr

you just need like a metro card you know like a like a like a metro card or

Shaan Puri

like a like a you make clipper card or whatever where where you basically get a certain amount

Sam Parr

So, the question is this: if someone's going to... if you're going to spend... when I lived in college, I had a vending machine. Would I spend $30 a month on that vending machine? I think yes, I think I did.

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah

Sam Parr

I think I did

Shaan Puri

we had snapples and I couldn't resist

Sam Parr

Right, so then the question is: Are you willing to give up 15% of your revenue in order to give the customer a discount if they pay upfront?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, but you know, I think it works both ways. So you get two benefits. **One** is they prepay, so you float all the money that way and you're able to cash flow the business better. **The second thing** is not everybody's going to maximize the value. There's like a breakage model where some people use the full amount, great. If 30% of people don't max out, that's just free money for you that you didn't have to spend a dime on. Easily, you know, most of... I think this is the ugly side of most subscription businesses. People don't use the subscription; they just don't remember, they don't cancel, they're either too lazy or they forgot. You sit here thinking you have all these happy customers, and in reality, go look at your usage numbers. How happy are they if they haven't used you in a year and a half and you're just charging their card? So that's the truth about subscription businesses. Why do people love them? It's because people set it and forget it. And so, yeah, I think the same thing would happen here. Alright, so that's another idea. The last one I'll bring up with this vending machine thing is I'm buddies with the guy who started LifeAID. He came on the podcast. They have...

Sam Parr

I remember that

Shaan Puri

Fit Aid, Party Aid, Recovery Aid... whatever you call them, they have a bunch of different drinks. I'm like addicted to Fit Aid; it's like my whole mini fridge in my gym here is stocked with them. He got his break by giving. He basically went to CrossFit gyms and said, "Hey CrossFit, you don't have a mini fridge? I will give you a free mini fridge and a case of Fit Aid. Here you go! You know, here's a $79 mini fridge and a case of Fit Aid. Try it out, give it to your people, let me know what they think. If they like it, or if you like it, and you guys are making a little bit of income off this, just give me a callback. Or, you know, I'll send you a second case next month." So this is how he grew the brand: through the CrossFit gym network. Specifically, with this idea that they didn't have fridges. They didn't have a vending machine, and they couldn't have a vending machine because you can't be CrossFit and then sell KitKat bars; that doesn't work. But what you could do is make the post-workout machine and put it in every gym. What's in the post-workout machine? It's Gatorade, Propel, Fit Aid... it's all the essentials.

Sam Parr

did that

Shaan Puri

All the... no, no. I'm just saying you could do this. This is an idea. You have the BCAAs, like the branched-chain amino acids, which you should take post-workout as a little supplement. You could have hydration options for your hydration needs. So, you could put a whole bunch of post-workout items that people take—protein powders, protein premixed drinks—and put it all in a vending machine. You could place it in gyms. I think you have a similar model.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I think that could work. I don't know actually what the margins are on health food versus a Coke. I imagine they're the same, to be honest, but I'm going to do it. I think that those honesty market things work shockingly well.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I remember when we were doing the sushi restaurant. We met the guys who started, like, I don't know, Panera or something like that. Panera Bread was doing this, actually. I think in Saint Louis, they opened up the first one.

Sam Parr

they're from saint louis

Shaan Puri

The first "pay what you want" restaurant, or "pay what you can," I think is what they called it at the time, allowed anyone to go in and eat. You could pick what you wanted, and at the end, you just paid whatever you wanted. The average person pays $12. What he said was that the average ticket price in that restaurant was higher than their normal ticket prices at other restaurants where they have fixed prices. You would think, "Oh, people are going to scam you and cheat you." But anybody who says that is looking at a bell curve: 20% of people go over, 20% of people go under, and most people pay the exact same amount. However, when you look at how the exact numbers break down, it's a little bit higher because people eat more and because they feel like they're getting a deal. The customers were happier because they didn't feel pressured. It's kind of like a feel-good story, so I thought that was kind of interesting. Then again, when he was talking, I was like, "This sounds a little bit like PR," so I'm going to discount what you're saying by about 30% here.

Sam Parr

I might do this for fun

Shaan Puri

do what I might

Sam Parr

do this vending

Shaan Puri

I think it's a great idea to build a vending machine for fun. You should do it as a project for the podcast. I believe you should give us updates on how the vending machine business is going.

Sam Parr

I think I will I think I'm gonna do it

Shaan Puri

I love it

Sam Parr

I think this is a fun weekend thing you wanna talk about one more thing you wanna do ghost kitchens for gifting

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so it was my trainer's birthday yesterday or two days ago, and I was like, "Ah, shit! I want to get him something. What do I get him?" So I was like, "Okay, I'm not great at buying gifts. Buying gifts is like a huge pain in the ass. I'm a procrastinator." Today is his birthday, so I can't order something online. It's not going to arrive in time. It's going to clearly be like, "I ordered this on your birthday," and it's going to arrive three days later.

Sam Parr

that's fucked up

Shaan Puri

yeah that's who I am I'm fucked up right like that's just the reality of the situation and so I was like okay well what do I do that what can I do now that will like arrive today and how do I be a good friend who's also a lazy bastard and so my go to recently has just been I just surprise order people postmates or uber eats stuff like I'll just like I'll just order you know like 22 jamba juices to somebody's house and they're like and I'm just texting and be like hey they think you know they're still the free outside and they're like what and they go and they pick it up or they you know the person rings the doorbell and says hey this is for you and people love this shit I it happened to me somebody on my birthday instead of giving me a birthday gift they just ordered me food from one of a restaurant that I like and I was like this is fantastic and like sometimes the logistics don't work because you're like not there or whatever like it's not perfect but these the food ordering apps I think they recognize this because now like recently in all their apps they kinda have like a gift a meal like option but what it made me think of was oh what's the actual business what's if this is you know what that phrase is where have you ever seen this diagram where there's like a street or like a walkway where you're walking and it's like a l right like I walk straight then I turn left and then there's like if you cut across you get there faster and you could see in the grass people so many people have cut across it's like worn out it's called like a happy path or something like that like a desire path it's basically like you show what people actually wanna do it's called the desire path and so similarly I think the desire path here is not to randomly order food have to ask your friend for their exact address hope that they're there to receive it so you can't really surprise them but instead why don't people make why doesn't somebody make the version of like edible arrangements or like one of these like gift basket products on top of uber eats and postmates and all these companies that we all already use so if if you're on top of doordash it already has my credit card I'm already opening the app every day why doesn't somebody make the best way to just send a gift product to somebody else as a ghost kitchen on top of this I think this is a no brainer successful idea

Sam Parr

what does edible arrangements do

Shaan Puri

Oh, you never had that? Basically, it sends a kind of platter or a gift basket to somebody. And it... yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sam Parr

yeah I know that

Shaan Puri

In a cool format, this business does like $100 million. It's a very, very successful, old-school business.

Sam Parr

No, I get that. But how do they... how is this any different than you just ordering food for someone?

Shaan Puri

so what edible arrange it looks like a gift like it's a it's like a a gift basket it's got like a whole lot

Sam Parr

do that for a restaurant

Shaan Puri

No, I think somebody should make a ghost kitchen on top of Uber Eats and DoorDash that is specifically a way to send food gifts to other people. It looks like a gift; it's like a giant chocolate thing.

Sam Parr

right oh interesting

Shaan Puri

It's like a giant fruit arrangement. It's just, you know, hearts and strawberries and chocolate-covered strawberries or whatever, right? It's stuff like that. Instead of, you know, when in DoorDash where it says "customize your order," you're like, "I'm allergic to gluten." Instead of this, it's like, "What's your gift message?" We print it out and put it in there. The thing you want to be is a thoughtful person, and it's like a cool-looking thing that looks like a gift. It comes with a little message, but I want it as a last-minute option. The way to do that is as a ghost kitchen, I think.

Sam Parr

So, I was talking to Andrew during this last podcast, and then I talked to him afterwards. I called him and said, "Hey, what we were talking about was pretty interesting. Tell me more." So, he started this bakery. Basically, Andrew is being Andrew; he's always tinkering. He was like, "I want low carb, like something to satisfy me, like bread."

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

And so, he uses this thing called sucrose. I think some are monk fruit or some alternative sweetener, right? He got the guy to... he hired a chef and he paid him a small amount of money, single-digit low hundreds of dollars, to come to his house for a few hours and make these recipes.

Shaan Puri

the single digits low of 100 of dollars what does that mean

Sam Parr

I don't like 2, 3, or 4. No, like single digits, as in not like 800 or... I guess that, yeah, okay, you've been.

Shaan Puri

a few hundred bucks gotcha

Sam Parr

yeah a few $100 to come and make a bunch of muffins I think is what he made

Shaan Puri

okay and

Sam Parr

He had them use this monk fruit thing. He goes, "This is sick!" and he designed a website called... I forget what it was called, something like that. He made a little website on Shopify for the brand and then he put it on DoorDash or Uber Eats. He sent it to a bunch of friends and he only did local delivery in Victoria. He had the meal delivery come through. Dude, he sold like $3 worth of stuff in month one. He invested $8,000 into it, but he didn't make a profit. But it's kind of sick that he was able to test this idea very easily. I'm like, man, of all the stuff that you do—this agency that makes way more money—this bakery thing is so much more fascinating than just doing design work for someone. This is way neater to me, right? Anyway, I think you could test this so easily.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, totally! Because you could just rent out a commissary kitchen for the hour, right? You don't even have to commit to a very long time. You can rent these things by the hour, so you could rent it for a couple of weeks for a few hundred dollars, maybe $1,000 max. You list your restaurant on your Fiverr logo, and you list your ghost kitchen on DoorDash or Uber Eats. You pick one city and you start. If this works, you basically become the easiest way for people in that city to send a thoughtful little gift to others. The key is, you don't have to spend the money acquiring customers, right? You could have always done this business, but you would be competing against, you know, 1-800-Flowers and Edible Arrangements. I forgot what the other ones are, like David something, where you send chocolate. I did this for my neighbor. My neighbor lets us use their playground with my kid, so I sent them a big chocolate gift basket or something like that because, like, I don't know, I needed to do something nice and I didn't want to make anything. So, you know, how do I spend $100 and give a thoughtful, nice gift to somebody to make them happy for five minutes? I did the same. That's what I want to do, but I don't want to have to Google search and figure out the brand, then go through their website, input my credit card. No! I already opened DoorDash six times a week. It should just be there. My credit card's saved, I push the button, and it goes to that person. It's done.

Sam Parr

what's your grocery bill every month

Shaan Puri

Dude, groceries are insane! I don't know if I'm insane or if inflation has happened, but I went to the grocery store. No joke, the last two times I went, it was $450 to $500 for me and my wife. We have a baby who drinks breast milk, and that doesn't even count. Then we have a 20-month-old, so...

Sam Parr

go to whole foods

Shaan Puri

It's Whole Foods, but like, Whole Foods... you didn't, it wasn't a $500 trip for me before. It was like a $200 trip. So I think we got a little crazy being like, "Yeah, let's buy these $9 juices" or something like that. I don't know what's happening, but it's crazy. What's yours?

Sam Parr

I would have to look but I imagine it would be between 1,000 to $1500 a month

Shaan Puri

1,000 okay so that's like $400 a week so about the same

Sam Parr

Yeah, but my thing is, even before I had anything, I would always spend a lot on it. Because my logic was, what's the point of living if you don't feel good? So, I'm going to buy the highest quality stuff. I know I don't care about the price.

Shaan Puri

yeah my logic was I want this I really want to eat this right now

Sam Parr

No, look, when it comes to books, I don't care what the price is. Same. I don't even care if I read it. If I just get one sentence from it...

Shaan Puri

end built

Sam Parr

Yeah, it could change my life forever. So I don't care. There was one time I saw this book and it was $80. I'm like, "Oh my God!" I'm like, "Nope, I don't care. I'm buying it." Yeah, mostly it's the same thing with groceries. I want the healthiest, freshest stuff. For example, I used to buy Kroger, which is the grocery store in Nashville. I used to buy Kroger's generic cheese, and if I think about that now, I'm like, "Oh, I can't even think about eating that right now."

Shaan Puri

Well, do you do the thing where you look at your parents and you're like, "Yo, what were you thinking?" Like, yes, cheese in a can. This was like our every Thursday. Yeah, every Thursday we used to eat, you know, like Totino's pizza rolls and like, yes, Tacquitos or whatever those things are, or like yogurt.

Sam Parr

yes same exact thing

Dan

because the

Shaan Puri

garlic the regular food we ate that was a like the one off thing

Sam Parr

if you ask my mom what a carb is I don't think she could still tell you so like I just

Shaan Puri

My mom just straight up says, "This is good, it has carbs." I'm like, "No, Mom, see that's the problem. You know this has carbs, and you're like, 'Yeah, pasta, that's a good hearty meal.'" I'm like, "No, no, no, no, no, Mom, that's not it." But I can't even blame her, dude. The food pyramid... how big of a lie was that? That was like a middle finger to America. The bottom of the food pyramid is all about getting your grains, carbs, cereals, and pastas. Then, vegetables have this small little half slice on the third layer. Fruits and vegetables just got shoved in last minute, right next to dessert. It's crazy.

Sam Parr

yeah like if you how many grams of sugar are are in a can of coke ballpark you know

Shaan Puri

I think it's like 30 40 grams yeah it's a great thing

Sam Parr

So, that's the ballpark. Yeah, I think it's a little bit more. It's 40. If you ask my family, like growing up, how many grams are the big... I have no idea. A million? I don't know. What is it?

Shaan Puri

the what is the gram

Sam Parr

Yeah, like I don't know. And also, if I told them 45, they'd be like, "I don't know, is that right? 45%? Is that good?" Like, we're not 100%, so it sounds good to me. They wouldn't know. So I think that there's something here, but like growing up...

Shaan Puri

I had middle school in Texas. I grew up in Houston, Texas, and this was my first time where my mom stopped packing my lunch, and I started to buy the school lunch in 6th and 7th grade. Straight up, every single day, I ate a Frito pie. By the way, that's not even like a meal. You can't go to a restaurant and order a Frito pie because all it is, is a bag of Fritos emptied into a basket, and then chili and cheese put on it like nachos. I ate that every day. It tastes amazing, by the way! But I ate that every single day as a kid, and my parents... where was the intervention? That's what I want to know. Where was the intervention? That should not have happened.

Sam Parr

I definitely think it's changing now I don't think it's changed entirely at all but I think it has

Shaan Puri

yeah jamie oliver died for this man he tried to change the schools or whatever

Sam Parr

Yeah, the Naked Chef. So, when it comes to budgeting for food, I just... whatever. Because, like, I'm putting this in my body. Okay? I need it to be like the best stuff. So, but I did just drink a Diet Dr. Pepper.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I was gonna say, I'm pretty sure I've seen you just house a whole Halloween haul. That's a small child's Halloween haul! I did a podcast one time.

Sam Parr

It's a huge weakness of mine, but whatever. I mostly do good. We'll have to do an update. So, I've been taking TRT now for about a year. Yeah, and both Sean and I invested in this TRT company called...

Shaan Puri

it's switching its name now but

Sam Parr

It's switching its name, and I'll do an update on it. But basically, I took it not to change my body. I took it because I was feeling down, and I got tested. They were like, "Oh, your testosterone is low." It has made me jacked—like totally jacked. I feel like a...

Shaan Puri

still feeling down but dude I'm just

Sam Parr

have to do an update on this and I like

Shaan Puri

I told these guys I was like you know like I don't know if I

Sam Parr

I want to post a shirtless pic, but I might be open to it if you want to do like a... because they're appealing, like nerds.

Shaan Puri

right and

Sam Parr

I'm like, if I look like a kind of a shredded nerd right now, maybe I could be like your... you want me to post a pic, like a before and after? I will! But oh my god, this TRT stuff... I feel amazing!

Shaan Puri

that is crazy so you were taking this before but you switched peak is that what you did

Sam Parr

I took it for a little while and then I got off of it when I got Lyme disease because I couldn't get a refill or something like that. Then I got back on it again, and I started using Peak. It's a pretty cool service. I'm not telling anyone to take this, by the way. Don't... I mean, just like this is some doctor stuff. Yeah, but it's pretty awesome.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, don't come to our podcast for either financial or medical advice, to be honest. We just say what we do and what works for us. That doesn't mean it's going to work for anybody else. No promises for anybody.

Sam Parr

I'm eating whole foods and I'm shooting up with TRT (testosterone replacement therapy). My body's transforming; it has completely transformed in the last 6 months. I'm just crazy strong. I have pretty low body fat, around 15%, which isn't that low but still pretty low. I just feel like a professional athlete, so it's pretty awesome.

Shaan Puri

That's amazing! Congratulations! I think now we know what to do with the live show. You just need to take off your shirt. I think that's going to be your contribution, and then I'll prepare some content.

Sam Parr

well I sent you a pic and tom was like you look like a white ape you look like

Shaan Puri

a white gorilla

Sam Parr

yeah you do look

Shaan Puri

Like a gorilla, you looked stunning. When you wear your shirt like right now, if somebody's watching on our YouTube channel—which you should check out at youtube.com/hustlecon—they're going to be like, "Not meaning this as an insult, but you just look like an average person right now." Yes, you sent me that picture, and you looked like my bodyguard. You looked like somebody I would hire to protect me, which is insane.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it was crazy. So anyway, we'll do an update about that. My birthday is coming up in June, and I thought about maybe posting a shirtless pic just to celebrate.

Shaan Puri

Why don't you wear shirts that make you look more jacked? Do you wear stuff that makes you look non-jacked? Are you trying to do some Clark Kent/Superman shit? I don't know, it's not intentional.

Sam Parr

I don't think it's intentional. I don't think about it, so we meandered a bit. We'll see if this turns out to be any good.

Shaan Puri

No, dude, that was great! The vending machine stuff alone was worth the price of entry. I think people will, you know, go check out Paparazzi on Vimeo. That was okay. Then, the ghost kitchens for gifting—I think that's a cool idea, but nobody's going to go do that. However, I think the vending machine thing was the star of the show today.

Sam Parr

what do you think abreu

Shaan Puri

Or should we ask Dan? Because Abreu, you know, is handing off the baton to Dan. So let's start with Dan, and then let's go to Abreu. Let's go for the apprentice and then the master.

Dan

Alright, I liked the paparazzi. I like the Vimeo and the vending machines. I don't know, I looked at that when I was in high school actually.

Shaan Puri

oh damn the contrarian I love it

Dan

Yeah, and then the ghost kitchens. I don't know if you guys use DoorDash and stuff. Maybe I'm just too old; I don't use that stuff.

Shaan Puri

I feel like that's one thing that I'm always like, "Yeah, everybody uses DoorDash six times a week." I'm like, "Oh wait, probably not. Probably most people don't."

Sam Parr

wait wait wait I don't dan you don't use doordash or you don't use

Dan

I like to cook

Shaan Puri

yeah but what do you do

Sam Parr

when you don't wanna cook

Dan

we go out to eat or I'll pick something up

Shaan Puri

I don't think that you like to cook all the time yeah

Sam Parr

he's like I I like to cook it's like dude but you eat what do you do for the other 18 times

Dan

yeah exactly I'm intermittent fasting

Shaan Puri

I also like to cook yeah

Sam Parr

I also like to cook

Shaan Puri

we have that in common dan yeah

Sam Parr

yeah I I I did I cooked too last month

Abreu Andrade

I don't think it's even an older person thing. It's just expensive. You're just paying so much for the delivery.

Sam Parr

yeah but like what do you do when it's like

Shaan Puri

what do you do when you're hungry

Sam Parr

When I have an 8-finger hand, I guess.

Shaan Puri

yeah you cook every meal

Abreu Andrade

yeah just about but I also eat like chicken nuggets for lunch so

Shaan Puri

I'm, yeah, yeah, okay. So, give me yesterday's menu. What did you eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack? I want to know.

Abreu Andrade

Yesterday, I'll start with dinner. It was mashed potatoes, kielbasa, frozen veggies, and toasted Hawaiian bread—whatever it's called. Lunch is always the same thing: it's carrots and chicken nuggets every single day.

Shaan Puri

so so I feed my dog too yeah

Abreu Andrade

and then morning it's just like coffee

Shaan Puri

okay what's kielbasa

Abreu Andrade

it's like a it's like a polish sausage yeah

Shaan Puri

Yeah, the Polish sausage with Hawaiian bread and mashed potatoes, frozen veggies.

Sam Parr

dude so you're not on the whole foods tip

Shaan Puri

Dude, that's... yeah, you're eating like my mom. My mom taught me to eat like that.

Sam Parr

You're starting a company, Abreu. It's like, at least go in for the Whole Foods scholarship and eat. When you're on the Whole Foods scholarship, you fill the plate with the hot food, and then you take a cart and walk around while you're eating it. Then you just bounce. I'll try that! You could pay them back when you're done. Okay, but like, that's crazy to me.

Shaan Puri

Damn, what do you eat? I feel like an asshole now. Is this what I'm supposed to be doing? I'm supposed to be eating kielbasa for dinner? What do I have?

Dan

A little Instant Pot spice pack business. So, I make an Instant Pot meal a few times a week. I got Dan coming in hot with the plug. What is it? It's spices.com and anispices.com.

Shaan Puri

so you put spices into this pot and then what you put just like chicken in there or what

Dan

Yeah, so the biggest challenge I found with the Instant Pot was measuring out all the spices if you wanted to make something. I had a butter chicken recipe that took 2 minutes to do everything but the spices. So, we sell a pack that's compostable, has the recipe, and includes all the spices. You just open it up, dump it in, and it makes using an Instant Pot much easier.

Shaan Puri

that's not a bad idea okay what's how's the business doing

Dan

I kinda went on hold when covid hit so I'm spinning it back up

Shaan Puri

why would it go on hold for covid like you had to go on hold

Dan

I ended up losing all my clients. I was doing consulting for events, and that kind of disappeared overnight.

Shaan Puri

I see, I see. Okay, gotcha. So you paused the business. But are we talking... are we in the tens of dollars, hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars, or tens of thousands of dollars?

Dan

we're in like the 100 of dollars a month so

Shaan Puri

Okay, alright. So everybody go to Ani Spices, order something. Let's get them into the thousands of dollars. I'll get one. What's your best one? Is it butter?

Sam Parr

chicken recipe

Dan

Butter chicken. I have a little Indian 3-pack. We have Rogan Josh, Indian curried lentils, and butter chicken.

Shaan Puri

if I take off my shirt I also have a little indian

Sam Parr

Yeah, that's my nickname for Sean. What? I mean, that was easy.

Shaan Puri

you just yeah thank you for the assist

Sam Parr

dan what's the url anispices.com anispices.com

Shaan Puri

Yep, alright. And Dan, so Aubrey, you grade us at the end of every episode. Aubrey, what'd you give this one?

Abreu Andrade

I thought the vending machine thing was worth it. That made it an A. Everything else was so in the A's, thanks to the vending machine.

Shaan Puri

And then, Dan, are you more Simon Cowell? Are you harsh, or are you Paula Abdul, who just gives everybody A's? What's your grading style?

Dan

let's do this one as a b + I feel like there's okay

Sam Parr

Abreu has literally never given us a B, only an A. It's an A or an A-.

Abreu Andrade

dude it only used to be b's you guys started actually doing some work and you got some a's

Shaan Puri

Alright, fair enough. Good stuff! Let's leave all this in; this is fine. People can enjoy this. So, alright, we're out of here. See you in Austin, see you in Miami. I bought my tickets this morning.