Sam and Shaan riff on a series of “hidden in plain sight” businesses — ideas hiding in the mundane objects and systems most people walk past without asking how they got there. They cover solar panel tax credit deals for schools, turf replacement for highway medians, and the Unclaimed Baggage company in Alabama that built a retail empire out of lost luggage. The throughline: train your brain to ask “how did this get here?” and a business will reveal itself.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host)
Solar Panels on School Roofs — A Tax Credit Arbitrage Business [00:00:00]
Sam: My father-in-law was telling me about solar. He said, “Yeah, you know, if you own real estate you can depreciate it, you can do solar.” I said, “I don’t own a building — what do you want me to do?” He goes, “Well, technically you could buy solar for another building, lease it to them, and write off your whole capex.”
So I started digging into this, and here’s what I found. Have you ever noticed — and there’s a long way of saying you’ve never noticed this — when you drive by schools, basically every school has solar panels on the roof? In California especially, every middle school and high school is just covered in panels. Here’s how that actually works.
Companies like Chevron or Exxon want tax credits. So they go to a school and say, “Hey, we will buy solar for your school.” They put up the panels. It becomes a tax write-off for Chevron. The school then leases the system back from Chevron, so Chevron gets a monthly payment from the school, and the school gets lower utility bills without ever taking a dollar out of its own pocket.
Sam: I thought this was really interesting, and I don’t know much about this space yet — I’m going to dig into it. But it seems like there’s a business to be built here: basically pairing up the two sides of this marketplace. On one side, a physical building — a school, a church, whatever — that wants solar, doesn’t want to pay any money, doesn’t want to do any work. On the other side, a company that’s looking for tax write-offs and is willing to install solar at that building in exchange for the deduction. You push a button, the project happens, and you get your paperwork: here’s your deduction, here’s your income stream from the lease.
Turfing Highway Medians — Another Government Property Play [00:05:30]
Shaan: I’m going to tell you something in the same vein — half-baked, 10% baked, maybe 1% baked.
Most highway medians and government property are covered in grass. And grass is the cheapest way to cover land — but it is incredibly expensive to maintain. You have to mow it constantly. The math works out to be a significant cost, and then on top of that, you’re watering it. In LA, I think something like 20 or 30 percent of all water went to watering lawns. So what they did was they tested giving residents artificial turf — just gave it away, said here, we’ll do it for you. And it reduced water usage by a significant amount.
So I started thinking: what if you just went to the government and said, “We’re going to turf all the medians in America”? Because I heard this whole NPR piece about how bad grass is and I’m like, that’s amazing, I have to look into this. I have not looked into it. I sound like an idiot this whole episode.
The Hidden Business Under Every Object [00:08:45]
Sam: Let me give you the general theme of all these random topics we’re talking about. When you look around the world — and this is what I’m now training my brain to do — when you see some item, or object, or patch of grass, just ask yourself: how did this get here?
What you realize is there is a business underneath every single thing. Going back to what we said about those labor law posters in offices — you know the ones, the HR hazard posters you have to display. I was completely blind to this. I just saw the poster. I didn’t ask how it got there, why every office has to have it. But whoever asked that question realized there was an opportunity. They started laminating those posters, making fifty million dollars a year selling you this annual poster that you’re required to update in your office.
So that’s the test for the listener: start looking at the world and asking, “How did this get here? Who wanted this here? What’s the economics of this?”
Shaan: A lot of times when you dig into something like that, you realize there was some bureaucratic decision that turned out to be a terrible call — and there could be an opportunity in that. Sometimes it’s a scrappy entrepreneur who came up with something clever. Other times it’s like — why did they make the screws five inches instead of six? Because the six on the keyboard was worn out.
Unclaimed Baggage — The Nation’s Only Lost Luggage Retailer [00:11:30]
Shaan: Alright, here’s another hidden in plain sight business. You go to the airport, take a flight, go to baggage claim. Nine times out of ten, your bag is there. And most of the time when it’s not, they recover it. But there still ends up being this 0.3% of luggage that is never claimed. So 99.7% of luggage gets claimed — and 0.3% just sits there.
There’s a business called Unclaimed Baggage. What they did was partner with every airline and say, “We will take the unclaimed baggage.” Because after 21 days or whatever, the airline’s protocol is — they’re just stuck with this stuff. And someone was like, “That’s not garbage — that’s a suitcase with stuff inside it.”
Sam: Did you see the 60 Minutes episode on this? They’re based in Scottsboro, Alabama. I know this company well. I love it.
Shaan: Yeah. You can go to UnclaimedBaggage.com — they call themselves “the nation’s only retailer of lost luggage.” And any time you see the word “only,” that means someone locked up an exclusive. Which means they’re going to extract a lot of value, because there’s no competition.
What they do: they donate a bunch of stuff to charity — there’s a feel-good component. They take orphaned bags and recycle them or sell them. And those three things combined are a business. It’s such a cool, clever idea. I couldn’t find their revenue, but you can go on the site and there’s stuff like a Rolling Stones limited edition leather motorcycle jacket up for auction at five hundred bucks.
Sam: I remember 60 Minutes did a big exposé on this. They have tens of thousands of square feet — it’s a huge facility.
The Doyle Owens Appreciation Moment [00:16:00]
Shaan: So I just Googled it — Doyle Owens is the founder of Unclaimed Baggage. He died recently.
Sam: He’s dead? Damn.
Shaan: Yeah. But I love this story, and I love him. Because I think people tend to overcomplicate things. This guy just took something that other people saw as a problem and turned it into gold. It’s a super simple business, it’s in Alabama — and yeah, people in Silicon Valley might look down on that, but this man reduced waste significantly, got very wealthy doing it, and probably created thousands of jobs for working people. This guy’s the best.
Sam: Three seconds of silence for Doyle. Don’t anyone go into this market — I want this family to run it forever.
The Shampoo Bottle Recycler [00:17:45]
Shaan: The other one like this, which more people know about, is the hotel shampoo recycling business. You go to a hotel, you use two squirts of shampoo from the mini bottle, and there are still three squirts left. You check out and they can’t give a half-empty bottle to the next guest, so they throw it away. And some guy was like, “That’s a lot of wasted plastic and shampoo.”
So someone started going into hotels and partnering with them: “I will take all your used shampoo bottles, conditioner, body wash — whatever.” They built a huge business just recycling this. They take the goods, reuse what they can, donate certain things to charity. It’s doing good while doing well. I love that.
Training Your Brain to See Opportunities [00:20:00]
Sam: If you know about a business like this — I’ll call it “hidden in plain sight” — super simple ideas, things that when you look around the world most people just take for granted, and then somebody out there says, “No, wait. How did this get here? Who picks this up when it’s done? What’s the business of that?” — tweet those at me. I want to know what other businesses are like this.
Shaan: Did you make that term up? “Hidden in plain sight”?
Sam: No, I think they use that for serial killers — like criminals who are just living in society. That’s where I’ve heard it. But yeah, it’s a phrase.
The Mannequin Lady in Oakland [00:21:15]
Sam: An example of this that we covered on The Hustle is the mannequin lady in Oakland. She takes used or damaged mannequins out of stores — because again, what are you going to do with this hunk of plastic? Who needs a mannequin? She’s got a warehouse full of them and ships them out, and she makes a killing. That’s another example: a part of the world you didn’t realize was a business.