Sam and Shaan break down several “boring” high-revenue businesses — Jostens (class rings, ~$700M/year), Pantone (color standards, $100M+/year), and sketchy “couch cushion” businesses like TSA lost-item filing services and mugshot aggregators. They also cover trend-watching picks in stretching gyms, ephemeral tattoos, and ice baths, and discuss a content pivot toward longer-form YouTube-first strategy.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host, co-founder of The Hustle), Shaan Puri (host, investor)
Intro & Episode Overview [00:00:00]
Shaan: When we think of entrepreneurship and we think of starting stuff, we think: how can I be innovative, how can I be new? In reality, in order to make a lot of money, it’s: how do I get locked into this to the point where it’s going to be a pain in the ass to go anywhere else?
Sam: All right, everyone. We’ve got a good episode. We’re going to talk about class rings — the class ring business shockingly brings in close to a billion dollars a year, and we’re going to do a breakdown of the company behind it. We’re going to talk about stretching gyms. I’m a huge fan of paying $100 to go to StretchLab. We’re going to break that business down. We’re going to talk about the business of ephemeral tattoos — tattoos that only last a year. This is a trend I’ve been watching. And we talked about some of the podcast stuff — how we’re looking at YouTube, how we’re thinking about content right now. And then last but not least, we talk about a couple of businesses that are interesting — kind of Google-based businesses. I call them couch cushion businesses, because it’s like these little things in the cracks that you don’t really think about. Once you go look in the couch cushion, you find some money.
Shaan: Yeah. In my opinion, most of them are scams, but we actually do a breakdown of them around the 50th minute of this podcast. So wait till the end — you’ll love it. Talk soon.
Ben Malah: The Reluctant YouTube Real Estate Tycoon [00:01:30]
Shaan: Did you listen to the episode I released today? Today’s Monday — did you listen to it?
Sam: No, what is it?
Shaan: So I consumed like eight or nine pretty interesting pieces of content last week, and I talked about four or five of them. Did you see this guy named Ben Malah?
Sam: No, who’s that?
Shaan: Okay, so Ben Malah — I put it in the doc. If you listened to my Monday episode, this is a little bit of a repeat, but I cannot stop watching this guy. He’s this big, fat guy — like 400 pounds fat — because he’s probably like 6’3”. He’s disgusting. He smokes cigarettes, he looks like he smells, and he always hits people on the back really hard. He’s just gregarious and in your face. On the surface he appears incredibly dislikable and cocky.
But I love him. He turns out to be quite charming. He’s a real estate tycoon down in South Florida, and all he does is — yeah, should I Google this guy? Ben Malah.
Sam: Yeah. All the photos of him — it’s just an immediate turnoff. But then you get into the videos and he’s been — basically he’s a successful guy who’s now just starting to do YouTube. He’s probably in his mid-50s, so he’s not a YouTuber. He does it the right way, where he’s successful and now he’s doing YouTube. Very fascinating. I can’t stop watching this guy.
Shaan: You see what he looks like? So Ben Malah is his name. He looks like — what’s Joe Rogan’s friend’s name? Joey? Joey Diaz. He looks like Joey Diaz who moved to Florida and does real estate. He wears gaudy clothes and he’s sitting there smoking Marlboros outside of a Ramada Inn or some Holiday Inn that he’s about to buy for $20 million. But then he gets into a $500,000 Bentley. So it’s like a funny juxtaposition. Really interesting guy. Great advice on real estate and business.
Sam: Very fun YouTube. You’ll have to start watching this guy. He’s brilliant. I’m going to subscribe.
Shaan: He’s beautiful.
Going YouTube-First: Content Strategy Pivot [00:04:00]
Shaan: And that’s actually what we need to do with our podcast. I’ve got to figure out how to do this — we need to become a YouTube channel that happens to have a pod. You know what I mean?
Sam: Yes, I know what you mean. Explain why you say that though.
Shaan: For one, I’m just — I’ve been a YouTube fan for five years. I’ve been a paying subscriber and it’s my life. If it’s not on YouTube, I don’t watch it. I only watch YouTube. Including YouTube TV, which is basically TV — so that’s a little cheating. But the discoverability is so good.
I’ve been watching Gary Tan’s videos. You know Gary Tan, right?
Sam: Yeah, he’s wonderful.
Shaan: I don’t think his content is any better than ours, but I think it’s packaged better than ours. And there’s a lot to learn from that. Whenever I see a video he does, I’m like: oh man, I totally could have done that. He just packaged it in such a wonderful way. And the discoverability on YouTube is significantly better than podcasts.
Sam: It’s just more fun to watch a YouTube video. And I don’t know if we have it a little skewed, because we have YouTube Premium, so we’re able to go in the background and basically make it a podcast whenever we want. I think for a lot of people they don’t pay for that, so that’s probably the main difference. But once you pay for that, YouTube is just amazing. It’s so good.
Shaan: Yeah. We need to make that shift. I’m going to work on that this week, actually.
Walking 20,000 Steps a Day [00:06:30]
Sam: And then one last quick update — one thing that I’m trying to do that I’ve actually done for the last, tell me what you think about this. I’ve done it for the last five or six days, and I didn’t mean to do it at first, but now I don’t want to break it. I’ve walked 20,000 steps a day for the last five or six days.
Shaan: What are you using to track it?
Sam: Just my iPhone. I was using the Health app, then I downloaded an app for it — a pedometer. That’s what it is. A pedometer. It’s awesome. Have you ever tried to do like 10 to 15,000 a day?
Shaan: Bro, walking — walking is the new running? No. I’ve never really liked step counters. I always found them kind of underwhelming. For example, I had a Fitbit, one of the early ones, and I hit 10,000 steps on what felt like a very lazy day. And immediately in my head I was like: oh, this is for like old, sedentary people. I can’t use this as a barometer of success for me.
But you’re really fit and you seem to care that you hit 20,000 steps. Who cares? Isn’t an hour of intense exercise really what you want, and not 20,000 steps?
Sam: Yes and no. So the con is that for walking that much, it takes forever — like three hours of straight walking. But the pro is — so basically, if you run 10 miles really fast, that’ll take you 60 minutes. If you walk 10 miles, that’s going to take you three or four hours. But you can actually burn the same amount of calories doing it, which is kind of interesting, right? It takes the same amount of energy to move your body that distance.
But when you walk that much, you don’t get that hungry. The problem whenever I run a lot or work out a lot is I get really hungry and I out-eat the calories I burned. With walking, I haven’t done that. So it’s been a really easy way to slim down.
Shaan: Anyway, I just thought I’d bring that up. You want to get into it?
Sam: Yeah, let’s do it. Which one do you want to go with first? Jostens?
Shaan’s Quick Life Updates: The Office Episode and Zigs vs. Zags [00:10:00]
Shaan: Actually, you just mentioned step counting, and I was remembering there’s this clip I watched on YouTube from The Office — about when Dwight gets a standing desk. Have you seen this?
Sam: I’m a normal 30-year-old, I could quote every single episode.
Shaan: So Dwight gets a standing desk and everybody who gets a standing desk — it’s like awesome for 15 minutes and then you start doing the thing where you’re on one foot while you let the other one chill, and you’re stretching out your ankle, and you’re kind of squatting because you’re tired of standing. Dwight at first is like talking trash on everybody: “Oh, you’re sitting — I feel like I’m working in a suicide cult.” And then they turn the tables on him when they know he’s getting tired. They’re like: “Dwight, wow, I can’t believe it — you’ve made such a great decision, you’re for sure going to do this forever, right?” And he’s like: “Of course,” but he’s secretly totally fatiguing from the standing desk. And he ends up with this hidden stool in his pants so he can sit while pretending to stand.
That reminds me of the step counting thing — these little phases that everybody goes through where you’re like, “I need to hit my 10,000 steps.” I feel like everybody has this phase of their life where they get into it, they buy the device, they do the thing for a bit, then they get off it.
Sam: For sure.
Shaan: Anyway. Over the weekend I was supposed to be working because I got back from a trip, but instead I was watching a bunch of content. I was watching Aaron Sorkin — you know Aaron Sorkin? He created West Wing, Newsroom, The Social Network. He’s known for his dialogue. I was trying to learn: what is dialogue, what makes it great, why is this guy so much better than everybody else?
So I was watching a bunch of videos where he talks about how he does it, and it really made me want to write a TV show. Not to make a career out of it — I just want to write one episode. So I decided I’m going to write an episode of The Office and release it. That’s my challenge for the next 30 days. Just text, stealing all the characters, and I’m going to release it to whoever follows me on Twitter or my newsletter.
Sam: My prediction is that it will at worst be mildly good. I think you’re good at it.
Shaan: I’m cocky about it. I feel like I can do a good job. Did you ever read this? Ross — he was an early Facebook employee, creator of Mozilla, Firefox — Blake Ross. He wrote an episode of the Silicon Valley HBO show, just for fun, and it’s amazing. If you’ve never read it, you should Google it. If you watch the show, when you read it it’s like as good as a normal episode of the show. It’s crazy.
Sam: What a polymath — the guy created a browser, early Facebook employee, and can just write a screenplay basically on his first try.
Shaan: I think at worst it’s going to be mildly good. At best you could actually have a home run. That’s my prediction.
Sam: So today’s July 19th — you now have until August 31st. You’re on the hook. Now in general, I’m thinking about content strategy, because I haven’t been posting much on Twitter. And I feel like once I started getting really into Twitter, I just noticed all the other wannabe-Twitter-thread people out there doing the same thing. It was really a turnoff.
I enjoyed doing it and I enjoyed the results, but what I told you was: I hated that everybody else was doing it. It made me feel like a schmuck. I felt like going to a club and being like “you need to get a table if you want in” — oh, okay, here’s my credit card. That “chump” feeling. Same thing happened with Twitter threads of generic business advice.
So now I’m going to zig and zag the opposite direction. I’m going to do a few pieces of content that I think are pretty badass — extremely challenging for me. If they flop, they flop. But I’m going to like write a rap song, or write a screenplay, try to create something that’s much more intense and possibly awesome.
Shaan: I think you’re right. And I’m going to take credit because I wrote about this and talked on this podcast about it six or seven months ago. I said these threads are killing me. I think longer-form blog posts are going to be coming. Everyone’s saying: “I want to start a newsletter, I want to get popular on Twitter.” I think the bigger opportunity is to create a more in-depth blog post.
Sam: Release one-tenth as much content but have it be ten times as good. Because of that, stand out from the crowd — and have more fun. I’m not constantly doing quick hits, I’m trying to do great work each time. Which is harder but more fun.
Shaan: Maybe. Something I’ve been thinking about is related to content and email. A lot of people think of email as like 2,300 words that you can fit in there or whatever. But you should actually think of it differently — say it’s 150 megabytes and it just so happens that 2,500 words is 150 megabytes. But what else can you fill that with?
There’s some interesting technology I’ve tinkered with. You can actually host a GIF on your own server and — this might change with Apple’s new update — you can make it so when you send someone an email, you have a 30-second GIF on there. And a GIF is basically a video with text, which is the same thing as Instagram without sound.
What I’ve always wanted to do was put that on there, have part one, and then at the end of that 20-second thing you say: “All right, now hit refresh.” And you actually hit refresh and part two shows up. Interesting, right? I think that’s an interesting medium — it could be hacked into a really cool storytelling format.
Sam: Yeah, I think so. Another thing — if you were using Twitter for a longer-form blog post, what would it look like if you had a blog post on Twitter that was 500 tweets long? How do you hack the rules?
Shaan: That’s kind of interesting to me. All right. That’s my content — I’m putting my stake in the ground, announcing it publicly, so now I’m committed.
Trend Watch: Stretching Gyms and Slow Exercise [00:17:00]
Sam: You want to talk about stretching labs or stretching gyms?
Shaan: Yeah, let’s do it, because you were talking about walking. This is actually where I was going to transition — kind of the slow exercise movement.
I was working out with somebody who I think is 41, a former bodybuilder. I was like, “So what are you working on nowadays? Trying to get shredded, build muscle?” And he pointed at the bench press and pointed at the stretching table and said: “I want to spend more time there, not there.”
I noticed there’s a trend. I have a segment called trend-watching — I’ve got two trends today.
So the first one is stretching labs. There are gyms dedicated entirely to stretching. One is called StretchLab — it’s a franchise. I think they have 1,000 locations in just like five years, so franchising pretty hard nationwide. And there’s another one called Stretch Relief — kind of like “stress relief” — based in New York. With COVID they do online stuff now. But it’s a place you go, and it’s not yoga, not pilates, not cycling, not spin class, not high-intensity training. It’s just stretching.
I just think there’s a market for all of these. What do you think?
Sam: I am obsessed with stretching. I stretch a ton. I download all different types of apps because I enjoy trying them all, and I stretch on a consistent basis.
Shaan: You’re like trying to do the splits and stuff, right?
Sam: Yeah, yeah. I work really hard at it and I study different types of stretching. The only type — or one of the very few types — of stretching that’s proven to work: basically, if you want to stretch your hamstring in a split, you actually need to push down for 10 seconds really hard. You want your hamstring to flex for 10 seconds and then you release, and that allows you to stretch even further. It does something with the brain — I don’t entirely understand how it works, but I’ve read a lot of studies and it’s one of the few proven ways.
I’ve gone to StretchLab — it’s $100. Did it in San Francisco and in Austin. Totally fun, totally worth it, I loved it. I’ve been trying to go in Brooklyn and can’t find a place that does this.
I’ve also tried to buy different stretching machines. Stretching machines have always fascinated me because stretching is one of the few exercises where you don’t actually have to put that much effort in to get results. Someone can kind of do it to you. It’s not like running where I’ve just got to put in all the effort — I can just kind of be numb and someone can do it.
So there are split machines where you can do side splits, you sit in it and crank a wheel and your legs open up. That’s fine. But what I’ve been looking for is front machines and different types of stretching machines. I’ve found close to nothing. So at my gym in my house I was thinking about buying winches — like the ones that go on a Jeep to pull a cord — and put some on each side of my wall to create a stretching machine.
Shaan: It’s probably going to look like a sex machine.
Sam: I was going to say — I think you could just buy something else and use it for a different purpose. Anyway. I’m totally on board with this. I think stretching is a trend that’s going to continue to grow. We’ve talked about it for a year now — ROM WOD, Kelly Starrett, a lot of this. I’m totally on board with stretching.
Shaan: Stretch tech. I’m keeping an eye on that trend.
I have another trend if you’re ready. But actually, one more thing you could do with stretching — to run a franchise you really just need a table, some bands, that’s it.
Two other things in this space that are interesting to me: chanting and breathing work. I went to a breathwork class — I paid $30 and we just sat there with 30 other people doing breathing. And eventually you chant. I don’t entirely understand the science behind it but I know I felt great. It was fun, great experience for $30.
Sam: Before — not in a fitness context, but one time when I started the sushi restaurant — I was staying in LA with the sushi chef. His mandate was: “If I’m going to start this business with you guys, you’re each going to come live with me and work every day at my restaurant for three weeks, one at a time.”
So I went out there, and he’s kind of a life-altering character — very wise, like a Mr. Miyagi sort of figure for me. One of the things he said: “Are you religious?” I said, “No, I don’t believe.” He said, “I’m Buddhist.” I said, “Okay, cool.” He goes, “Tomorrow morning, 7 AM, meet me in the living room.” And I was like, “Oh, here we go.”
So I didn’t know anything about Buddhism and I still know very little, but Buddhists have this chant they do as part of their practice. It’s called Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. And you repeat that for like one hour straight. So we start, and I’m just trying to be nice. I’m like, “Okay, I guess I’ll just sit here.” What are these five words, what do I need to know about them, what do they mean?
He was just like, “You don’t need to know what they mean.”
I was like, “Oh, interesting.” Because in Hinduism you hear that in yoga a lot too. There’s something about the vibration of making this sound out loud — making the sound — that by the end of it you feel different than you did at the beginning. By the end of this hour I had this rush of euphoria. From chanting.
He said, “I do that every morning.” It’s a form of meditation — like transcendental meditation, where you quiet the mind by chanting the same thing on loop. And when you quiet the mind, you get a sense of peace that’s very hard to achieve otherwise. After I did that, I was a big believer in chanting. I’m not Buddhist, but I’ve continued doing this chanting thing on and off for the last 10 years of my life.
Shaan: Well, you feel like an idiot doing it, so if I told you to do it without your guy there you would feel like a fool.
Sam: I went and I felt like a fool too. I went to one of these classes, you do breathwork — but it felt awesome. It felt like a very mild drug. And part of it is chanting. When I talked to the guy running it, he was like, “Yeah, this is our MVP — we’re thinking about scaling this.” And I was like, dude, this is the greatest business ever. You just need a space for 50 people and nothing else. The floor.
Shaan: Yeah, you don’t need anything. I’m in.
Sam: So that’s interesting. I also think ice baths are interesting. I’ve been noticing on Instagram loads and loads of ice baths. We talked about this company — what was it called? Ice Barrel?
Shaan: Ice Barrel, yeah. IceBarrel.co or something. I know the guy who started it. They’re selling an ice barrel for like $1,200 to $1,300. I’m seeing them everywhere.
I think ice baths — particularly places where you can just go to take an ice bath — I think those are going to get quite popular. An ice bath also has a slightly meditative purpose to it.
Sam: Just yesterday I sent you this TikTok — this guy is like, “Hey guys, just want to take you through my morning routine.” He’s a 60-year-old dude who’s just absolutely chiseled, somehow. I’m like, “Okay, I don’t know how your body looks like that.” Was it Mark Sisson? No, he wasn’t a famous guy, he’s just like a guy.
He’s like, “First things first, I get in the cold plunge.” And then at three minutes he gets out, hops over to his jacuzzi — he’s like, “And then we’re gonna go to the sauna.”
All the comments are like: “Sir, I don’t have these amenities at my house.”
Shaan: And I think that’s the opportunity — when people have these things, they swear by them. Our friend Ramon swears by it. Tony Robbins always talked about this — how he starts his day, goes straight into the ice plunge then straight to heat. There’s definitely some anti-inflammatory and neurological effects from waking the body up with such a drastic physiological change. You don’t need caffeine, you don’t need drugs.
But the problem is they’re so inaccessible. We talked about Ice Barrel. And then somebody reached out — a guy in my LTV club, the e-commerce group I have for people with stores doing a million dollars and up. He said, “Yeah, I have this brand, but I’m starting a new brand. It’s going to do ice baths but it’s just a device you put into any bathtub.” Like your normal bathtub — and it makes the water really cold.
Sam: Oh, that’s way better. I don’t want to buy ice all the time. That’s a huge pain in the ass. And the Ice Barrel — you can’t use it if you have an apartment.
Shaan: Exactly. But if you already have a tub and you just fill it up with normal water and put this thing in for 10 minutes and it gets cold — that’s awesome. You’ve built like a $150 device that does this without the headache.
Sam: Is it electronic? You plug it in?
Shaan: Yeah, I don’t know how you put electric things in water, I’m a little suspicious —
Sam: Well, it’s like the opposite of a heating pad.
Shaan: Exactly, it cools water. So I’m very excited about this. But if anybody has either ice or sauna technology, send it to me. I want to try these things.
Sam: Great.
Trend Watch 2: Ephemeral Tattoos [00:27:00]
Shaan: Same. So the second trend-watching item is tattoos. Yeah, ephemeral tattoos specifically. If you go to Ephemeral — kind of hard to spell, E-P-H-E-M-E-R-A-L — ephemeral.tattoo — check that out.
So this is a trend I’ve been noticing. First there was a company called Inkbox that made temporary tattoos — basically like a body sticker. They started doing pretty well. They came out a while ago and they do like $20-30 million plus in revenue, last I heard, which was a few years ago.
And this new one, Ephemeral Tattoo, just raised $20 million. That got my attention. What these guys have is a biodegradable ink that can go into even a normal tattoo gun. So you actually have to go to a place. Inkbox is like a sticker you put on your skin and it fades away. This is like an actual legit tattoo, but it’s a one-year commitment instead of a 50-year commitment. You go, you actually get it tattooed onto your body, and it degrades after 12 to 15 months.
They have one studio open in LA, one in New York. They raised $20 million to do two things: one, release colored tattoos — right now it’s just black and white — and two, open more studios. The way it works is you put down a $20 deposit that lets you book a reservation, and they have like a million dollars worth of pre-booked reservations that they’re backlogged on.
What I thought was interesting — it’s some kind of material innovation on the ink. But I like that this can go into a normal tattoo gun. Because I think what would be best — rather than opening their own tattoo parlors — would be to sell this to every existing tattoo parlor. There are 21,000 tattoo parlors in the United States. That’s about the same number as high schools. You could roll out to 10,000 locations like this rather than opening up brick and mortar yourself.
Sam: I’ll 100% sign up for that. It looks pretty sick. They’re black and white, so — like, I would get it. But if you’re a cute girl and you want color, it’s not ideal. And it looks like they’re not fully colored in — they’re more like outlines. On the website you see like a cat, but it’s just the outline of a cat.
Shaan: Yeah, I’m into those.
Sam: Ephemeral Tattoo. I think you’re on board there. It just opens up the market, right? There’s a circle representing the number of people willing to get tattoos for life. Now there’s an option for a tattoo that only lasts a year and fades away. That circle just got like three or four times bigger. You’re just increasing the size of the addressable market for tattoos. Which is smart. You get to try something for a year that could potentially impact the rest of your life.
It’s always freaked me out — as a society we accept that it’s normal. Buying a home, you go into it for like 10 minutes and you’re willing to spend all of your money and 30 years of your life based on a 15-minute walk-through. You actually get a 100-page disclosure that you can’t understand, and you read some scary stuff in there and you’re just like: “I guess I just live with that termite issue.” I always thought it was mind-boggling.
Shaan: So this is that same feeling, but for tattoos. That’s good.
Sam: I’ve got four homemade tattoos. The way you do homemade ones is you use a sewing needle and ink and just make a ton of dots — stick and poke. I did that when I was like 21 and partying, highly intoxicated. I don’t entirely regret them but they look silly. I have one on my foot that says “wow” or “mom,” depending how you look at it. And I have foot tattoos that say “act now,” which are kind of cool. Self-administered tattoos. It’s actually called stick-and-poke, and I think it’s more popular than people realize.
Shaan: I’ll 100% sign up for Ephemeral. It looks pretty sick.
Business Breakdown: Jostens and the Class Ring Monopoly [00:32:00]
Sam: All right, you want to know about Jostens? So somebody — Ben shared a tweet with me that was just a meme. And if people want to know how we get ideas for this: me and Ben just send each other stuff off Twitter all day, and some of it’s just memes. But I started thinking about it. This guy Coleman Oates goes: “Y’all remember when a company would come to your high school and gaslight you into buying a $400 class ring?” About 100 likes on this tweet, and I just thought it was so funny.
I remember buying a class ring and losing it. It was a waste of money. It’s so ugly. I was never going to wear it. But I bought it because I thought: I guess this is the moment I’m supposed to commemorate these four years, and it’s now or never.
So I started thinking about this class ring business. Let me tell you some things I discovered.
The first guy is called Otto Josten. Otto Josten is the founder of Jostens — the number one class ring maker. He invents the class ring basically from scratch. He started this thing in 1897. Over 100 years old.
Shaan: So how does this work? When you’re a senior, you get a magazine? Like, they hand a pamphlet to all seniors?
Sam: I remember buying it from a table — there was like a table set up with a little tablecloth and a bunch of rings on it. I think they had a brochure, like “here are all the different models you can order.” You try them on, place your order, pay, and it arrives months later. And your school knows who’s ordering.
Shaan: I didn’t order one. I was like, “I don’t like high school this much. I don’t want a ring.” And my school came to me and said, “Are you having trouble at home?” I was like, “No.” They were like, “Do you need money? We’ll buy it for you.” I was like, “No, that’s lovely, I appreciate it, but I just think it’s stupid.”
Then they had a ring ceremony, and they just handed me a plain box. I went to a Catholic school and it had a cross or something in it. They just had something to give me. And I was like, “I appreciate you guys, but I don’t want any of this stuff.”
Sam: Anyway. The school knows who orders, right? So the company basically existed for a long time, goes public in like 1965 or whatever, stays public for a while, ends up getting acquired by private equity. Gets acquired by something called Newell Brands.
This is an interesting company — they own Rubbermaid, Crockpot, Oster, like all these home appliance companies. They own Elmer’s Glue, Sharpie, Yankee Candles — all these brands we know. They have $10 billion in revenue across their portfolio. They bought Jostens — this company makes about $700 million a year, but it’s been flat or declining. The yearbook and class ring industry is declining about 5% a year.
So they buy it for $1.5 billion, try to turn it around for a few years, can’t do anything with it, and sell it to a company called Platinum Equity for $1.3 billion — taking a $200 million loss.
Shaan: So it’s still owned by Platinum Equity?
Sam: Yeah, it just exists. Which started getting me interested — how does this whole business model work? And what I couldn’t find is what’s in it for the schools. The schools definitely give these people real estate on campus to sell this stuff, so I wonder if there’s a rev share. I couldn’t find that detail.
But it got me thinking: how would I compete with this if I was going to?
So, boring business brainstorm time. How would you compete with Jostens?
Shaan: Walk me through how seniors come into this. You mentioned distribution and product.
Sam: Right. On the distribution side, I would definitely try to figure out how to partner with either the school itself or a sub-entity in the school. Did you invest in that company Copper that I sent you?
Shaan: We passed.
Sam: Okay. So one of the clever things they do — they make what’s essentially a debit card for high school students. One piece of their playbook for getting high schoolers on board: they go to one of the organizations in the school. They can’t partner with the school itself — too complicated. But they’ll go to like the baseball team or volleyball team and say: “You guys need $500 for uniforms this year? Great, we’ll sponsor it. In exchange, you guys help us promote our thing. You guys become an affiliate — for every additional student you bring on board, you get more money for your org.”
So it ends up being a direct affiliate deal with student groups who are highly motivated because they need to pay for their stuff.
Similarly, for distribution, I would partner with either the school or with some group — the band, whatever — and say: “If you guys help us sell this, you get a rev share.” That’s how I’d get my foot in the door.
Then the question is: what product? Because I think class rings are incredibly ugly.
Shaan: They’re not ugly, they just all look alike. Every class ring since 1890 is the exact same thing. If you see someone wearing a class ring, it’s like: okay, Al Bundy. You peaked. It’s a dork move.
Sam: Unless you were like one of the early classes of Harvard.
Shaan: Or you won the NCAA championship. Even then you should probably just keep that on a shelf.
Sam: So here’s the opportunity I see. My best idea — I came up with this like an hour before we started recording — is class sneakers.
Sneakers are hot right now. And I don’t know if you’ve seen people who make custom sneakers for celebrities or brands — they have like a paint gun, like a tattoo gun. You can create a graffiti mural on a pair of Air Force Ones. So that’s the first thing I would try: class sneakers. How do I come up with a base model — maybe Converse or Air Force Ones or something — a plain white shoe, and then everybody’s graduating. Say it’s the Class of ‘21. I’m going to have “Class of ‘21” and then different color schemes for different schools. And if you pay extra, your name gets embroidered on the thing, whatever phrase you want on the back.
Basically selling commemorative class sneakers that can either be worn or put on the wall as a piece of art.
Shaan: Which shoe, which brand and model?
Sam: Maybe I’m out of touch, but I like kind of just the old school plain white Air Force Ones. They’re one of the best canvases for something like this. But in reality, if I was doing this, I’d probably find something shaped like that but not already a $100 shoe. I need to get the shoe for like $12 and then do the custom paint work for another $8, then sell it for $180 or $200.
I think you could do this with Instagram ads, Facebook ads, and partnering with school organizations for rev shares. And I think it’s a status symbol. That’s how I’d attack Jostens. If they’re making $700-800 million a year on their ugly class rings, I’d start with class sneakers.
Shaan: Yeah, I think that’s good. I’m looking at their site — they sell some ugly stuff. I cannot believe this business is in place.
Sam: Here’s the takeaway: once you get locked into something — once you’re the boring default — it’s so good. Such a good position to be in. When we think of entrepreneurship, we think: how can I be innovative, how can I be new? In reality, in order to make a lot of money, it’s: how do I get locked in to the point where it’s going to be a pain in the ass to go anywhere else?
That’s the takeaway here. I’m looking at Jostens — they started in 1897. If you started something 124 years ago and you’re still in cahoots with these high schools, this is significantly better than any enterprise SaaS company. This is significantly better than a newsletter. When I think of what I should build — I want to create something that people buy forever and I have to innovate on the product zero. That’s exactly what they’ve done.
Shaan: The best example of this that we’ve come up with on this podcast was the workplace compliance poster. You know the poster that every office has in the break room? That poster — you just have to buy it every year. It’s like $100, and you have to get it every year otherwise you’re out of compliance. It’s basically an auto-renew where you send this one-cent poster for $100. Such a beautiful business.
Sam: Actually, this is my next idea live on the podcast: what’s another boring compliance poster I could make and sell to every company? Maybe it’s something with modern-day stuff — anti-harassment and like pronouns and everything — just reminders of how not to get canceled. So it’s basically a reminders poster that gets updated every year with the latest cancellation policy. You need to make it seem like a totally boring corporate thing and just sell this to every office.
Shaan: And then you get them on file to have this in their restrooms every year.
Sam: If you work for a company like Jostens — I’m looking at Glassdoor, they’ve got 1,000 to 5,000 employees — dude, you’ve been asleep for 65 years. What do you make up there in hibernation? Why do they even need employees? You could fire most everyone and automate it. You just need salespeople to go sell the stuff.
Shaan: I’m looking at their Glassdoor — what is even the point of having a person here?
Sam: If you’re the CEO of this company, what do you do every day? Are you like: “This week we’re going to try this”? No. You’re just keeping the lights on.
And I’m okay with that. It sounds like I’m criticizing it — I’m not. I want to start something like this where I never have to innovate. The best example: the little mini putting green you sometimes see in offices. That CEO has one of those. He’s probably listening to this right now looking at his putting green going, “God damn it — those guys are right about the putting green, I gotta get rid of this thing.”
Shaan: I think you could just advertise on Facebook and Instagram: “Hey seniors, don’t get ripped off by Jostens. Same ring, half the price.” I have none of the employees and I’m going to drop-ship this out of China.
Sam: “Don’t get ripped off by Jostens” — that’s my ad creative. If somebody wants to do this, keep me up to date. I just want to hear how it plays out.
Shaan: I was looking and there’s another person already trying to compete — they’re just making a class ring that doesn’t look tacky. It’s someone called J. Hannah, or J.hanna on Instagram. They seem to have gotten meaningful traction.
Sam: Yeah, these are class rings but they just look better. They look cool when you wear them. That’s another way to go about it.
Business Breakdown: Pantone and the Color Standard That Owns Taste [00:46:00]
Sam: All right. Here’s another company you’re going to be mind blown about. Do you know what the Pantone color chart is? The Pantone Matching System?
Shaan: I Googled it. I see things I recognize — like a color wheel.
Sam: Okay, so here’s the story you need to know. A guy named Frank — he’s got like an egg profile on Twitter, but he listens to the podcast — he just goes: “Hey, Pantone — this has got to be a huge business. These guys sell this color book for $500.” And I said, “Wait, I have one of those color books on my desk. There’s a business behind this?”
Sure enough. So here’s the backstory. The founder’s name is Lawrence Herbert. These guys owned a printing company and they got tired of the inconsistencies in colors. You’d try to describe a color — it’s a blue color, but which shade of blue? All these different inks, keeping track of names. So they said: “Screw it. We’re going to create the global standard for colors.”
All they did was take every single shade of color, put a number on it, and give this to every manufacturer, fashion house, architecture firm. You’re picking the colors for your curtains — what Pantone color are you going to use? You’re picking the color of your fabric for your clothing brand — what color? Ben & Jerry’s uses the color chart for quality assurance. They have a group that basically looks at the brownies going into Brownie Fudge Bites, and if the brownie color is between Brown 690 and Brown 669, it’s good — properly baked. If it’s outside that range, it’s too baked or underbaked. They just hold this thing up, look at the brownie, and check: does this match this color or not?
This thing is used ubiquitously. They created this Pantone color system with like 2,500 colors. They make over $100 million a year just sending out this little booklet.
Shaan: How did this product start?
Sam: So the guy owns the printing company, decides to create the Pantone Matching System. And the number one way they got the word out was this marketing stunt — like the Michelin Star. They started coming out with “Color of the Year.” They put a ton of money and effort behind it. 2016 — Rose Quartz. 2015 — Marsala. 2012 — Tangerine Tango. 2011 — Honeysuckle.
They do this big marketing blitz around “What is the color of the year?” And they have this hush-hush process where they invite 12 trend spotters to their office and each gives presentations, they debate around culture and where society is moving, and they come out with it: “Honeysuckle is it.” Then they immediately blitz the market — they send it to all the fashion houses and ad agencies, who start using it in their campaigns. You’ll start getting emails: “Buy our thing — it’s got the Color of the Year. This is Honeysuckle, the Color of the Year, for this dress.” And so brands start using that for their own marketing and it spreads.
They sell these booklets for like $85 up to $500. And every year they launch like a hundred new colors, so you’ve got to get a new booklet with all the new colors. It’s like the dictionary.
Shaan: I’m going to blow your mind right back. Go to WGSN.com. Do you see that?
Sam: Yeah, I think you’ve told me about this one. These are the trend makers, right?
Shaan: Colors as well. They do exactly what you described, except it’s really one or two reports a year and it’s a subscription service. They sell to businesses. They’re a public company — their revenue last year was about 90 million euros, so roughly $100 million. And it’s been around that for a long time.
We had the founder of David’s Tea on here, and he was talking about how he used a service like this. I asked him: “Is it just BS or why are you buying this?” He said, “Oh, totally worth it — that’s how we got the new flavors and fragrances for the new teas every year.”
So it’s called WGSN. To dumb it down: Starbucks, who will buy 10 million coffee sleeves, wants to know which color for Christmas — what shade of red is going to be interesting enough. By the way, the Starbucks red cup thing — my wife loves Starbucks, she goes whenever she can, and she literally looks forward to the red cup moment where they switch the cups. It’s like an emotional thing: “Oh, the season has changed. Christmas time is here. I get these warm fuzzy feelings.” And part of that is the red cups.
Sam: Well, it just means it’s winter time.
Shaan: Companies pay about $18 grand a year for WGSN, and they also have people you can talk to — an advisory service. The way the business works: they look at data on what types of colors are selling well. I imagine it’s just someone else’s data. And the second thing is they survey people they deem as experts, ask questions, and create a survey response: “Here, according to all the experts, these colors for this type of niche are going to be the colors you use in the future.”
And if you have a company that’s not growing that much but it’s worth 90 million euros in subscription revenue, that’s like a $300-500 million company making maybe $30 million a year in profit. Only off colors.
Sam: And by the way, these guys — the Pantone guys — then partnered with some firm to come out with the Pantone of taste and the Pantone of smell. How do you describe a fragrance? They tried to own that space too. To be kind of the global authority — the naming of a color — and somehow a private company owns that. Which is insane. It’s like owning the periodic table.
Shaan: I agree. And you called it boring — I think this is actually kind of fun. You can shape culture. We were talking about the Starbucks red cup, or the Coca-Cola red, or the fact that — do you know that Coca-Cola invented Santa Claus, pretty much? Like, the way we envision Santa Claus?
Sam: I don’t want to go too much off the cuff because I didn’t research this, but I’ve read stories about this. The modern-day Santa with the red suit, fat guy, white beard — Coca-Cola invented that.
Shaan: We need to go deep on that one. We should come back.
Couch Cushion Businesses: TSA Filing Services [00:55:00]
Sam: All right. So I’m going to call this next category “couch cushion businesses.” I discovered this the hard way.
We were traveling, left something at the TSA security checkpoint — where you’re putting all your stuff in the bins. We left something in there. We get on the plane. My wife’s like, “Uh oh, where’s that thing?” Don’t worry, I figured we could just call them or file a report.
So I Google it: “item left TSA Las Vegas airport.” And the first thing that comes up is a thing called InstaFile: “Get your claim handled, get your thing back.” I click it and it’s like, “Oh, just tell us what your item is and we’ll get it back to you.” I go through the flow, and then at the end it tries to charge me $29.
As I’m going through this, I start to get my spidey sense tingling. I scroll down and see: “InstaFile is not associated with any airport, TSA, or government entity.” And I’m like: what is this?
Shaan: Pretty interesting business.
Sam: So first, I think it’s a clever move. These little cracks in the system where you can just slip right in. Of course one out of a thousand people are going to lose something at TSA. What are they going to do? They’re going to Google it. And these guys are the top-ranking result for that search at every airport.
All they do is file the claim. Filing a claim is actually free. They just rank at the top, get you to pay, file the claim on your behalf, forward your report to TSA, and then forward TSA’s response back to you.
Shaan: So it’s not a scam — it’s a kind of managed service. Very misrepresentative, but technically not a scam. And you go read the reviews — people are very angry at them.
Sam: I don’t get angry about this sort of thing. I’m actually like: oh, clever. You’ve found a way to capitalize on this. There is some value-added service in that there’s an agent in the middle. But it depends if they’re actually better at it — if they actually save you time or increase your odds of getting your thing back. If they’re really just forwarding your report and their response back to you, there’s zero value add. But if they’re actually filing it right, following up, calling and getting the answer — then great.
Shaan: I can’t find anyone online who works at this company. You can’t find the owner, you can’t find an about page.
Sam: Yeah. So probably more towards scam. But I just think this is fascinating. How many different businesses are there like this? There are probably a ton that are just hyper-specific scenario searches that you can rank number one for, and when you do, you probably print money. I bet this business is a profitable seven-figure business just off this one thing.
Mugshot Sites and the Dark Parts of the Internet [01:00:00]
Sam: Like mugshot websites. What is that? To look up mugshots?
Shaan: Yeah, you’ve never tried to look at someone’s mugshot? Oh my God, it’s littered with scams. Go Google like “find mugshot California.” Imagine a friend gets arrested and you’re trying to find a mugshot. Google whatever you’re going to Google.
Sam: All right, I’m seeing a bunch of ads. Four ads at the top. “Find mugshots for free.” Looks like a search bar. I can search their name and it finds public records. I’m guessing it’s going to charge me something at some point.
Shaan: Yeah, a lot of these mugshots are just public. If you know where someone got arrested, you can sometimes go to like Alameda County’s website and they just aggregate it. But they have super slick onboarding ways to get you to give them money, and the website is super optimized. Right next to the search bar it says “Norton Security” and “McAfee Secure.” Why do I need a virus scanning protocol next to me typing in someone’s name? But they’re just random trust-building badges to get me to click through.
Sam: And it’s not actually going to be free. Incredibly scammy.
Shaan: It’s very similar to what you’re describing. The person who can own one of these businesses can make like $10-15 million a year in profit — although you’ve got to live this life where you’re kind of a piece of work. But it’s fascinating. I think the mugshot businesses crush it.
Sam: Do you know who Naveen Jain is?
Shaan: Yes. He’s like a billionaire guy now. He’s done a good job of rebranding himself as this inspirational Tony Robbins type.
Sam: He owned a bunch of businesses that were controversial. I believe some were ponzi-adjacent. During the dot-com boom there was a company called InfoSpace and he was the CEO. Before InfoSpace crashed in the dot-com crash, he had sold a bunch of his stock. He ended up doing great. All of his employees kind of lost their shirts, the company went under. That’s the long and short of it.
Shaan: I don’t know if it was some kind of underhanded stuff. I’m not sure. But there’s a long report on it — pretty hard to Google because I think he’s scrubbed it, but you can find it from the old Seattle Times or something.
Then he started another company called Intelius. Intelius is probably what you’re thinking about. It sold for over $100 million. What it was is sort of a way for people to peruse criminal records and conduct background searches online. But the way it worked — if you Google “Intelius scam” or “Intelius shady” — it looked like a free credit report service. Like, “Oh, just type your name, you’ll get your report.” And there’s this tiny checkbox: “You agree to pay $19.99 for the rest of your life if you do this.” And so they were basically aggregating public records, making them slightly more searchable, with this hard-to-see subscription at the end.
Sam: There was a bunch of controversy around Intelius. I remember.
Shaan: Now he’s got Moon Express, sending rockets to the moon. He’s got something called Viome — “Imagine a world where illness is optional.” Trying to save the world type of guy. And if you hear him talk, he’s extremely charismatic — as people who tend to run schemes often tend to be. I don’t really have an opinion myself. I just know there’s controversy. But I find him a pretty fascinating character. Very inspirational speaker. Now doing these big-picture Elon Musk type of things, but got his start doing something much less savory.
Sam: We should have someone come on and talk about some of this stuff.
Shaan: Yeah. And I didn’t realize — I knew what Intelius was, but whenever I do these background checks, I actually kind of like doing background check stuff. Don’t you ever do it, like: “Have my parents ever been arrested? Let’s find out.”
Sam: No, I never do anything like that. I’m not like ancestry.com or 23andMe. I think there are a lot of people who are just into self-exploration, their past, other people’s past. I haven’t done that a ton.
Shaan: So I understand there are people who do that. And Answers.com is a huge business too.
I thought someone could make $10 or $20 million a year from this. But now that I remember Intelius, I think it was doing hundreds of millions from this.
Sam: Yeah. I ran into another business like this — looking for people’s addresses. When I came on the pod and talked about somebody stealing from us, we knew who they were and we were going to find them and send the cops to their house. I needed to find somebody’s address. So if you have like a name, a phone number — there are these websites that come up. They say, “Yeah, we’ll give you this, we have a huge database of everyone’s address.” And then you get three steps down the funnel and: “To unblur the address, you gotta pay $9.99 a month.” Like, why do I need this monthly? I’m not doing this every month. But: “You’ll probably forget to cancel this.”
Shaan: A slogan a lot of times with those services. And you can do a good enough job of cross-referencing a ton of them — because they’ll show you three possible options, and the third one, which is likely right, is blurred. But then you can do some weird triangulation and figure out which one it is.
Sam: I’ve done it before as well. Yeah, this is like the dark parts of the internet. All they’re doing — like you said — is taking stuff that’s public record, or taking guesses, aggregating it, putting a fancy search bar on it, and doing a good job of ranking in Google or paying for Google Ads. That’s their business model.
Shaan: I’ve never thought about doing a business like this, but when I run into them as a customer I’m always like: hmm, what’s underneath this? How does this thing work?
Sam: Me too. Fascinating. Me too. Mugshots is a classic. I’m going to do some research on mugshot stuff — I’ll tell Jake to look into it.
Wrap-Up [01:09:00]
Shaan: That’s a great one. All right. I think that’s the episode, right?
Sam: Yeah, let’s wrap it.