Shaan Puri walks Sam through every failed business he attempted before making his first million at age 30 — from a Chipotle-of-sushi concept to biotech coal gasification in Australia. Each failure comes with a “Shaan the Elder” lesson, and together they extract principles about constraints, finding your edge, and why your first business is always your worst business.
Speakers: Shaan Puri (host, presenting his failures), Sam Parr (host, roasting)
The Setup [00:00:00]
Shaan: I made my first million when I turned 30 years old. But I’m going to walk you through every single business I tried before I made something that worked. Sam, you can roast me for how bad my ideas were.
Sam: So I did this previously — you totally one-upped me by having a presentation, which is a little unfair. It’s like in Mean Girls where she shows up to the Halloween party and doesn’t know you’re supposed to dress a certain way and shows up in a scary costume. That’s kind of how I feel right now. But I’m incredibly excited.
Business #1: Sabi Sushi — The Chipotle of Sushi [00:01:30]
Shaan: Business number one: I tried to create the Chipotle of sushi. My first big harebrained idea. It was called Sabi Sushi. Even though I didn’t know anything about sushi — I had just tried sushi for the first time a month prior — I thought: this is it. This is the big idea. We partnered with a Food Network Chef. We launched. I learned how to make spicy tuna and all kinds of stuff.
Sam: That was the guy who — what was your buddy’s name who bought the bag company?
Shaan: Dan. If you’ve seen the episode with Dan the Bagman — who bought a paper bag company and is thriving — he was right next to me in the sushi trenches.
Just kind of the summary of that whole venture: restaurants suck as a business. 10% operating margins. You’re working morning, afternoon, and night. You’re open on weekends. No letup. My hands smelled like tuna all the time. It was a brutal business.
And we did every dumb thing you could possibly think of. A buffet tour of all the possible mistakes. Grade for this: A for effort, F for the business. We made something like $20,000 of profit before we voluntarily shut it down. That’s $182 an hour for a full year of work.
Sam: How much did it cost to start?
Shaan: We got lucky. It was going to cost half a million to build out the restaurant — signing the lease with a personal guarantee, which is bad because restaurants fail.
Sam: And you had nothing to guarantee.
Shaan: Nothing. You’re on the hook for 10 years unless you declare bankruptcy. We hired an architect who built the Vdara in Vegas — because he was the best, so obviously he should design our restaurant. He came up with a plan that would cost half a million to execute.
Sam: That’s like hiring the guy who built the World Trade Center to make your kid’s backyard playset.
Shaan: We were doing everything wrong with maximal effort. Luckily, this wonderful man named John Prendergast met us and said, “Hey, guys — maybe test your concept before you commit 10 years and a personal guarantee.” We’d never heard of a test. He convinced us to do a delivery-only restaurant out of a commissary kitchen. What today would be called a cloud kitchen. Back then, with no Uber Eats or DoorDash, we just looked like bums who couldn’t afford a real restaurant.
That’s why it actually cost us almost nothing to start. We made $20,000 of profit in a month or two. But every day of success was another day we were trapped in this business. I’m only 21 — not too late to escape.
Shaan (the Elder): Lesson number one: your first business is your worst business, and that’s okay. The most important thing was that I started and got the itch and got some momentum. If I can make that much progress on something I knew nothing about, the next thing won’t scare me. All success requires a start.
Business #2: The Fatband — Dropshipping Wristbands [00:10:00]
Shaan: Number two: I tried selling wristbands online.
Sam: Been there — Livestrong.
Shaan: I saw the Livestrong trend. This time I said: everything I did wrong in the first business, I’m doing the opposite. We set a 48-hour time constraint. Last time we spent nine months planning and researching with no action. This time it’s all action.
The rule was: I don’t care what business we do. We launch it and we make a dollar of revenue from a real customer in 48 hours.
So what did we do? We discovered Alibaba. I realized: all the stuff we buy comes from China, and there’s a website where you can just go talk to the factory and they’ll ship straight to the customer. We stumbled into dropshipping before it was called dropshipping.
Our website: thefatband.com. “1-inch silicone wristbands. Free shipping. As seen on TV.” I was a huge liar already.
The three products? London 2012 Olympics wristbands — no license, but hey, if we’re already lying why not also steal. GTL wristbands — from Jersey Shore, “Gym, Tan, Laundry.” And Bieber Fever.
Sam: Back then, you didn’t gym. You were tan. And you definitely weren’t doing laundry.
Shaan: In 48 hours, we got two orders and made $750. I learned how to make a website, take payments online, use Alibaba. Way better in two days than the previous year had been.
I give it an A. Though I’m pretty sure one of the orders was my buddy Trevor who was trying to get back together with a girl who ordered it. But a win’s a win.
Shaan (the Elder): Lesson two: creativity loves constraints. The power of setting a time-box constraint. If we’d said, “This will be our next big business,” we’d have spent six more months planning. But when we said come hell or high water we’re making real revenue in 48 hours, all our ideas had to fit in that box.
The lie in creativity is: “think outside the box.” No. What the pros do is put themselves in a tight box and watch how they MacGyver their way out.
Business #3: Biotech Coal Gasification in Australia [00:18:00]
Shaan: Number three: I tried to start a biotech company with a billionaire in Australia.
Sam: How old were you?
Shaan: 21, 22 years old.
Sam: Was he, like, a criminal?
Shaan: No. Standup guy. He had just sold his company — it wasn’t a billion, actually. Mid-nine figures — and he had a non-compete. His parents’ company originally, so he had a chip on his shoulder. Guy had cash, a chip on his shoulder, and was non-competed out of his industry. Biotech sounded interesting.
Sam: And you actually graduated from Duke with a biology major. It’s not like you were just a dumb e-commerce bro.
Shaan: Well, there was still some stupidity in this. I thought: I’m a bio major, I should do something in bio. Wrong heuristic. What I really should have valued — which I got accidentally — is getting around smart people. This guy was really smart and working with him was actually cool. That mattered far more than the biotech angle.
The idea: 90% of the world’s coal is unminable — too deep, too uneconomic. The idea was that microbes could go down, eat the coal underground, and basically fart out natural gas. You could collect the gas without mining the coal. Kind of a cool idea, though unproven.
Sam: How’d you even get connected to this guy?
Shaan: He was reading our blog. He met my dad, asked what his kids did, went and checked out our blog, thought the hustle was cool. It was the first time content or building in public mattered more than a resume. And this was before that was a normal thing — before 2025. I failed forward in that way.
The second thing that happened: I got to Australia and realized I knew nothing about oil and gas. How are you going to catch up to 20 years of experience? So I had a different idea. Instead of being the worst in the room at what everyone else is good at — how do I become the best in the room at something they don’t know how to do?
Me and my buddy Trevor started learning to animate videos. We’d take their ideas and turn them into one-minute explainer videos they could show investors or prospects. The owner was like, “Oh, my video guys.” We had found our edge. We couldn’t compete on domain expertise, but we could compete on communication.
Shaan (the Elder): Lesson three: when you don’t have the most experience in the room, find the one skill nobody else has and become the best at that.
[Episode continues with additional business failures through number twelve]