Sam and Shaan host an office hours session with three high school entrepreneurs brought on by Anan Jayapal, founder of the Formidable Fellowship: Lincoln, a senior in Texas who built a home services business doing $60K in revenue; Ion, a 14-year-old in New Jersey who sells homemade baked goods wholesale to school suppliers; and Abigail, a 17-year-old in Missouri who grows and sells mums as a cash crop. Each entrepreneur presents their biggest business problem, and Sam and Shaan advise on paid ads, pricing, scaling, cold email, and whether to skip college.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host), Anan Jayapal (guest, Formidable Fellowship founder), Lincoln Snider (guest, high school entrepreneur), Ion (guest, high school entrepreneur), Abigail (guest, high school entrepreneur)
Introduction: Three High School Founders [00:00:00]
Shaan: All right, today we’re trying something new. We have three high school students — 9th graders, 10th graders, 11th graders — who are all running their own businesses while they’re in school. And not just like, “oh, here’s my idea.” These guys have real revenue. Tens of thousands of dollars in profit that they’re making. I know — 14-year-olds. It’s crazy. So we invited them in, we’re doing office hours with them. They bring us their biggest problem and we try to help them solve it in about 10 minutes. Whether you’re a high school or college student or you’re just running your own business, I think there’s going to be something in this for everybody. There’s a beauty to these kids — they’re like, “I just don’t know anything,” but they’re crushing it.
Sam: Yeah. There’s a lot of people who listen to this podcast that want to start something and they overthink it. There’s a beauty to being ignorant, and these kids are ignorant — and because of that they create amazing stuff. I think you should steal that attitude.
Shaan: All right, we’re doing something fun today. We have high school students who have existing businesses — they’re running businesses, they’re making a lot of revenue — and they’re here for office hours. This is all part of our buddy Anan, who’s here with us. He’s running this new thing called the Formidable Fellowship. Anan, this is like a precursor — you want to launch a school someday? A new school for entrepreneurship, and this is kind of your MVP? Is that right?
Anan: Yeah, so we’re building a national network of schools of entrepreneurship. It takes a while to build physical schools, so my friend Raj and I started something called the Formidable Fellowship. I think Gen Z is probably going to be the most entrepreneurial generation, and we saw a lot of them out there. So we started a nonprofit. With $500K, we’re giving $5,000 grants to middle and high school entrepreneurs. We had our first class — 23 grantees. You’ll meet three of the great ones today. Along the way, awesome entrepreneurs — Anesh from HubSpot, Sean Griffey from Industry Dive, a bunch of other folks — have been contributors. So we’ve got even more capital to give out to these young entrepreneurs.
Sam: This is like your Second Mountain. Basically, you started a company called CB Insights that’s in the range of $100 million in revenue or something like that. Now this is what you do after you’ve made a bunch of money and you want to impact the world positively — besides creating business intelligence tools.
Anan: Yeah. It’s the Second Mountain. I think that’s a good way of putting it. If you could build a system that increases human potential, that’s a pretty tremendous thing to do. And I think we can do it in a way that will make money and eventually rival the public school system. That’s our goal.
Sam: All right. $500K — and how did you find these kids? Did they reach out? Did you reach out to them?
Anan: We reached out to a lot of entrepreneurship teachers at schools — that was primarily the way. A little bit of social media, some parents who found us on Twitter and LinkedIn. We got a few hundred applicants the first go-around. One of the qualifications was that you had to have revenue — that was a hard filter. There were a lot of folks who had sort of a dream or were starting something to burnish a college application, and we didn’t want that. We wanted people who were actually building. So we narrowed it down pretty quickly.
Shaan: Did you have any revenue in middle school or high school?
Sam: I barely had facial hair.
Shaan: It’s pretty insane. When I was a kid in grade school, it was like, “make a business plan and fake-present it to a board of directors.” And you think that’s — you know, “Dear Board of Directors” — it was nonsense. And I’m seeing their bios. This is so much more interesting than what we were doing. When I was 14, I don’t even think I knew what the word “entrepreneur” meant.
Sam: Yeah, definitely didn’t. My business plan was like mac and cheese, but with double the cheese. That was the whole thing.
Lincoln’s Business: Home Services in Texas [00:05:30]
Shaan: All right, let’s go. Lincoln.
Lincoln: All right, my name is Lincoln Snider, I’m a senior at Lake Dallas High School. My business is Sunshine Exteriors — we clean windows, gutters, power wash, do fence staining, and holiday lighting. We’re located in Denton, Texas. The main goal is to help homeowners protect their investment — obviously, have a clean home year-round. My business is two years old. Last year we did $60,000 in revenue at just above 50% margins.
Shaan: Hold on. Pause real quick, Sam. You know why he’s good? Did you hear what he did there? That was some sophisticated, high-level stuff. He said he’s talking about cleaning gutters and he goes, “We help homeowners protect their investment.” He didn’t say “we clean your gutters.” What’s the biggest investment in your life? Your home. Wouldn’t you want to protect it? Wow. Lincoln, I’m already impressed. Continue.
Lincoln: So last year we did $60,000 at just above 50% margins. This year I plan to grow by 150%, to $150,000.
Sam: So you made $30,000 as a junior in high school? Is that about right?
Lincoln: I was a senior — this year. The 2024-25 school year.
Sam: Okay, wow. All right, that’s wild. So just to recap: you go to homeowners, you’ll power wash, you’ll clean their gutters, you’ll clean windows, you’ll put up Christmas lights, whatever you’ve got to do — home services. You did $60,000 last year as a high school senior, and you think you’re going to do $150K this year?
Lincoln: Correct. It’s me and two 1099 subcontractor employees. I’m completely off the field right now — they’re doing all the jobs, and I’m in charge of booking, scheduling, and finding the clients.
Sam: And how do you get customers, Lincoln?
Lincoln: My primary acquisition source right now is Nextdoor — it’s a neighborhood platform. I kind of go on there and my angle is: “I’m a local high school student, I own a window cleaning and pressure washing business. If you’d like a free estimate, check out our website, we’d be happy to give you a quote.”
Shaan: How do you do that? My understanding is you can’t post on Nextdoor unless you’ve been verified as having an address in the neighborhood. They don’t want people from outside messaging. How do you do that? Is that a new feature?
Lincoln: I post in just my neighborhood, so in that area I am confined to my neighborhood on that app. But it’s been enough homes to keep me busy. I think we got maybe 90 customers last year off Nextdoor — just between March and September.
Sam: Dude. If you’re listening — how many people have we had on this pod saying “I don’t have an idea,” “this doesn’t scale,” all this stuff? He’s 18 years old. He made $30K from posting on Nextdoor. In his own personal neighborhood only.
Shaan: That’s insane.
Sam: And by the way, how did you hear about this? Anan is a tech guy in New York City. How does someone in Texas who does power washing hear about the Formidable Fellowship?
Lincoln: Very fortunate. There’s a teacher who’s part of a teacher blog. Some people at my school know that I own my own business and do power washing and window cleaning, so she told me about it. I submitted my application, and here I am.
Shaan: This is cool, dude. Okay. So what’s your question? Before I start brainstorming — I’m already fired up.
Lincoln’s Question: Paid Ads vs. Courses [00:12:00]
Lincoln: It’s a pretty deep question. I’m trying to figure out how to reliably acquire customers through paid advertising. My current struggle is advertising on a small budget without having the skills. My question is: should I pay to acquire those skills through paid courses? What I’ve been doing is learning on YouTube, but I don’t think it’s in-depth enough. So do I pay for paid courses and seminars? Or would it be smarter to just allocate a budget to paid advertising and learn the skill on my own, figuring it out as I go?
Sam: All right, I’ve got a bunch of opinions. You want to go first or should I?
Shaan: I think yes to all. Basically, do all. I don’t know what your definition of a “large budget” is, but the best way to learn is to do it. A lot of people will trash online courses — I think that’s nonsense. Most of what I’ve learned in this internet world has been from buying an online course. I bought a copywriting course that changed my life. I would suggest you do that. If there’s a local-services paid-marketing course, 100% do it. I don’t know what a lot of money is for you, but if you have to spend up to $2,000 — as long as it has good reviews — do it.
By the way, if you emailed anybody who runs that course and said, “Hey, I’m 18 years old, I badly want to learn this, I don’t have the cash right now, but I’m willing to pay next year using the profits from my business and I’ll be your best testimonial” — I think you can get those courses for free. So I wouldn’t even let cost be a barrier. Sam said it’s an attack on all fronts. You’ve done the right thing by figuring out what to learn, and if you’re committed to being obsessed with it, it’s: do it yourself, then watch free YouTube stuff, then do a paid course, buy a book, whatever.
The last one you didn’t mention — and this is what helped me when I went into e-commerce — five years ago I had never done a physical brand or paid ads before. What was the learning curve? One thing that really helped was, instead of going straight to a course, I started doing it myself on a very low-scale budget so I had my bearings and knew what I didn’t know. Then I found somebody who was already winning with that method. I found a friend or somebody nearby and said, “Hey, I really think what you’re doing is great. I’m young, I want to learn. Can I come by for the day and ask you a couple questions about paid ads?” They said sure. Then you come over and you end up opening their Facebook Ads account with them, asking questions. If you’re an earnest, genuine, likable person — like it seems you are — you’ll find somebody who’ll give you that kind of real-world, real-time mentorship. They’ll tell you the ins and outs. They’ll say, “Oh, your ad account got shut down? Email this guy.” Or, “Hey, that’s normal, here’s what happens.” Stuff you can’t find generically on the internet.
It’s a war on all fronts. Do all of them. Then the ones giving you a faster rate of learning, do more of those.
Sam: I would also suggest — I’m looking up Nextdoor right now. Nextdoor is not a big company. I would guess they have a thousand employees or less. I would Google “Nextdoor account manager,” or I’d go to the top and Google “Nextdoor CMO,” “Nextdoor director of marketing,” “VP or above” — and I would email them. I’d explain: “I built a business that is about to hit six figures as a senior in high school. I’m going to advertise on Nextdoor. Do you have any first-time customer credits?” I would bet a lot of money that they’ll give you $1,000 to $2,000 in ad credits to learn their platform. Then I would do the same thing for Thumbtack. Start with — have you run Nextdoor ads?
Lincoln: Yeah, that was part of my question. Last year for Christmas light installation I ran ads, and they did extremely well. Which is almost frustrating — it worked, and now I can’t get it working again.
Sam: Paid ads is a constant game of cat and mouse. Constantly trying things, constantly goes up then down. That is completely normal. But you just have to zoom out and say, “Wow, this is a magic money machine. I’m putting in a dollar and getting three back. How do I do more of that?” So that’s totally normal.
Shaan: Sam’s idea of reaching out to their marketing team — find their account rep and say, “Hey, I’m a kid, I got this great story, I want to learn. Who’s the smartest at this? Can you help me? Do you have ad credits?” Use your assets to make it happen. And if you need help, I think I know people at Nextdoor I might be able to connect you with.
Sam: Actually, before we move on — the first thing you should do is type out a letter and print 1,000 copies on your printer at home. Put it in an envelope. And I want it to look not professional. Not a polished business thing — a typed letter from you, maybe with a paper-clipped photo of yourself. Not act like a big company. Act like a mature senior in high school. Print it out, fold it up, put it in an envelope, and go put it in a thousand homes. Google the Gary Halbert dollar letter. Gary Halbert was a famous copywriter who wrote a letter and stapled a dollar bill to the top of it. That was very attention-getting. People had to open it — “Why is there a dollar on this?” A dollar took his open rate from basically zero to 95%. You could do your version of that.
Shaan: Sam’s idea is great. But I think there’s something to do even before that. You already have something working. We’re giving you new ideas — but why don’t you first just advertise in the neighborhood next to yours? You figured out how to go into a community’s Nextdoor, type something, and $60,000 came out the other side. How do you just do that again in the next neighborhood? Can you find a friend or a kid in that neighborhood and say, “I will pay you $100 to type this message on your Nextdoor account, on this sequence”? They can post because they live there. Go activate brand reps — affiliates — to clone the script you did in your neighborhood into the two neighborhoods next to you and see if that gives you another $60K per neighborhood.
Lincoln: Yeah, I’m doing something similar. I’m not sure I’d say exactly how I’m doing it because I know on Nextdoor you’re really supposed to be a neighbor in the community. But I’ve mapped out a radius of different Nextdoor neighborhood communities and I’m going from there.
Shaan: You’re hacking the system. That’s good. You’re great. Can we just become your angel investors real quick? I kind of want to see where the story goes over the next two years. Lincoln, have you heard of Brian Scudamore?
Lincoln: Sounds familiar.
Shaan: You should Google him. He started very similar to you. It took him 10 years to get traction. Now his company is called 1-800-GOT-JUNK, and he wholly owns it and it does a billion in sales a year. He’s a billionaire. You should write to him — I can introduce you. He’s a friend of mine and he will absolutely talk to you. But you’ve got to shut up and do this for about 20 years and the results are going to be pretty great. That’s how this business works. You just put your head down and you get after it.
Sam: The beauty is you don’t know it’s 20 years at the beginning. You just think it’s right around the corner — and you think that for the next 20 years.
Shaan: And you can get rich as you go if you own the whole thing. These companies can be great if you do it right.
Should Lincoln Skip College? [00:22:00]
Sam: Are you going to college? It sounds like you graduated or are about to.
Lincoln: I’m about to graduate. Yes, I’m planning to go to college. Michigan is the goal. Through the Formidable Fellowship I got introduced to someone at Michigan who’s going to connect me with people on campus.
Sam: Do they need their gutters cleaned? I don’t understand — why do you care about the professors?
Lincoln: I have good grades, but what it takes to get out-of-state into a school that good — I haven’t gotten accepted yet, it’s still in progress.
Shaan: What do your parents do?
Lincoln: My dad is a VP at Spectrum. My mom’s a nurse.
Sam: Do they understand? Are they like “this is a fun hobby, maybe consider something more serious”? Or are they like “hey, you’ve got a gift, this is working, keep going”?
Lincoln: They’re very traditional in the way that they want me to go to college. They think it’s a fun thing to do in high school, but yeah…
Anan: Do you have a service where you talk to these kids’ parents?
Sam: I mean, any of these guys could probably skip college and just go pro in business. But you’ve got to respect what they want to do. Lincoln, just to put it in perspective: you said you did $60K last year, you’ll do $150K this year. You’re going to make more money than your professors.
Lincoln: Yeah, exactly.
Sam: Roughly 50% profit margin — so last year was $30,000-plus in profit. Let’s say you can hold that. You’re getting close to having a million-dollar business already. If you’re doing $100K a year in profit right now and you basically 2x the business — that’s somewhere between a $400,000 and a million-dollar business. It’s like one more year after that and you’re a millionaire.
Shaan: Exactly. Just to put the opportunity in perspective. I wouldn’t have known that when I was your age. As a small business owner, you sort of value your business only on what you eat at the end of the day — “I made $30,000, I did a whole bunch of work, great.” Whereas you look at it and you’re like, “I’m one year away from being a millionaire if I just literally get two more neighborhoods on board.” You are very close to a very meaningful-size business.
Sam: If people understood this — it’s a huge generalization, but if you do roughly $300,000 of business-owner earnings, you’re worth about $1 million ballpark. If people understood that, they’d probably keep going a lot harder.
Lincoln: I definitely understand that. The way I think about it: $30,000 is entry-level salary anywhere. But going to the point of doubling it every year — and you’re not going to double it every year, but you’ll double it for a few more years.
Shaan: Actually, based on what you just described, you have a path where you could probably 4x this business in one year. Because you’ve done all of this in a single neighborhood. Businesses like yours — I call them “pond businesses.” It works in one pond, it’ll work in all ponds. Same way Snapchat got hot in two LA high schools and investors who were smart knew right away that if it works in one high school it’s going to work in 14,000 other high schools. Because all high schools are the same. In the same way, your neighborhood is probably similar to a thousand other neighborhoods across the country. You should be able to sell local services using the same blueprint. What you haven’t done yet is just replicate it.
Your Nextdoor ads from last year — walk us through the numbers.
Lincoln: $9 cost per lead, $30 customer acquisition cost, $600-$650 average transaction value. So 21-to-1 ROAS.
Shaan: 21-to-1? You said you didn’t know what you were doing! You have a huge margin of safety. It’ll go down — it won’t stay 21-to-1 — but it doesn’t matter. Three-to-one, you’re laughing. Have you seen his website, Sam?
Sam: No, send it.
Lincoln: HHpressure cleaning.com — the URL’s a little funky, but the website’s great.
Shaan: Why not sunshineexteriors.com?
Lincoln: I have “Sunshine Exteriors Texas” but I need six months before I can transfer the domain because I just bought it on a different hosting platform because I needed emails with a branded domain.
Sam: You could definitely transfer a domain faster — it doesn’t take six months. But okay. Different question: do people come back? Do you have any repeat rate?
Lincoln: Didn’t do a great job of tracking it. Not quite enough data yet — I’ll start seeing the repeat rate this year because most of my customers were from last year. But first year to second year, I would say it’s probably around 10%.
Sam: Wow. Okay, this is great. Congratulations. Anything else before we let you go?
Lincoln: One question: if you guys were in my position and you were going to — against your parents’ judgment — not go to college, what advice do you have for someone in that position?
Sam: All right. The pitch goes like this. You sit them down and say, “Mom and Dad, let me show you the potential outcome.” What’s the median salary of a business administration graduate from A&M? Probably $60,000. You’re going to beat that this year. Go to Quiet Light Brokerage — that’s a broker we like, quietlightbrokerage.com — and say here’s how much these businesses sell for. I’m already going to be well above the average for a first, second, and third-year postgraduate.
“All I’m asking for is one year. You don’t need to support me financially. All I need is your blessing. I just want you to say, ‘Get after it. Go achieve your dreams.’ Because look — if it doesn’t work after one year, I’ll do what you asked me to do and go to a great school. But just give me 12 months to make this happen. I don’t want anything except your emotional support.” How’s that pitch, Shaan?
Shaan: It’s great. You want to ask for the gap year, not the full four. You don’t have to make this long-term life-altering decision. Just say, “I want to take a gap year and really give this my all. I think I’m going to learn a lot. School is about learning — the thing I’d go to school for is to learn about business, and I’m already learning a ton this way. Hey, at the end of this year, maybe I’ll actually decide college is the right move. I want to be around friends, have that experience — in which case, no harm done. One gap year.” I would start with that. The ask is a year, not “never go to college.”
Sam: And let them know how you’re thinking this through and that you want their support — that they believed in you up until this point, you just want them to keep believing in you. See how that lands. You’ve got your little emotional manipulation. You’ve got your puppy dog eyes. You’ve got it all under the hood.
At the end of the day, sometimes you just have to decide what’s most important to you. That’s the coming-of-age 18-year-old thing. There are plenty of stories of people who do it, and years later their parents are like, “I didn’t understand at the time.” You’ve got to take control of what you want for your life. But I think the one-year ask should land. I think you’ve got a 50-to-70% success rate with that.
Shaan: The median salary of an accounting student at A&M — that’s got to be the numbers you present to them.
Sam: Right. But they might not only care about money. Parents ultimately just want what’s good for you. So before you start arguing, get curious. Ask them: “It seems like school has a few different parts — the learning part, which I think I’m getting a lot of here. There’s friends and social life. There’s the safety net of having your degree. Which one is it for you? Why do you feel it’s so important? Help me understand.” Let them articulate it. Then you know exactly what you need to address because they’ve served it up to you.
Lincoln: That’ll work. I’ll give it a try.
Sam: Let’s see your audio and video. Let’s go.
Ion’s Business: Homemade Baked Goods [00:36:00]
Anan: So Ion is a ninth grader. Fun fact: he went to the same high school as me. He’s built an awesome baking business. He’ll fill you in — he’s a phenomenal entrepreneur.
Ion: Hi, my name is Ion. I’m a freshman at Hunter Central High School in Ringwood, New Jersey. I’m the founder and CEO of Teens to Table. We sell homemade baked goods to local establishments across New Jersey and school suppliers as well. My business is one year old. Last year I did $4K in revenue. This year I expect to grow over 600% and aim to do at least $25,000, which is really exciting.
In addition to my business, I’m also a competitive chess player. Right now I’m trying to figure out how to hire people to help with my production while also maintaining efficiency and quality. Currently I bake everything myself — from cookies to brownies — which ensures my consistency, but I’m considering bringing on a small team to keep up with the growing demand.
Sam: Before we go into your question, let’s get a little more context. It’s baked goods — you sell to who? You said classes and teachers?
Ion: Local establishments. Bakeries, ice cream shops, and also schools. When schools serve food at lunch, there’s usually my cookie on the shelf.
Sam: You’re making all the cookies right now. How are you in that sale — you’re going door-to-door, what’s the pitch?
Ion: The pitch right now is I usually either go in person to the bakeries and ice cream shops, or I call. I say, “Hey, I’m 14 years old” — that astonishes a lot of people, and I find that interesting. I say I’m 14 years old, I’m the founder of Teens to Table, and I tell them what I do. Usually when I go in I bring samples to make sure they like it, and then I start the pitch: can I put up a table, or can I put it on your shelves?
Sam: And you said you’re going to grow 600%, so how are you going to go from $4K to $25K? Is it just knocking on more doors?
Ion: Now it’s more about school suppliers. I’m currently supplying to Machos and Pomptonian, which are two school suppliers in my local area. I’m hoping to get more districts and more schools. I just got an order for 700 cookies between the two suppliers, and I’m in contact with two other suppliers — Aramark and another local one — so both of those plus Machos and Pomptonian should hopefully get me to $25,000.
Sam: And why do you have Curry and pizza and other random food items on your website? Are those placeholders or are you actually going to make more stuff?
Ion: That’s actually my future goal to bake more stuff. Those are things I’ve made so far. Apart from baking, I love to cook — Mediterranean food, Indian food, Mexican food. As I go later on in my business, I can incorporate those.
Sam: Have you thought about putting cookies on your website? I believe there are no cookies on there right now — there’s Italian food, tomatoes, and avocados. But a cookie would definitely be cool.
Shaan: All right, so it sounds like you’re going full Breaking Bad, dude. You’re going up the supply chain. You’re finding the distributors. How good are these cookies, by the way?
Ion: So the cookies — they’re really big. Have you ever tried Levain cookies from New York?
Shaan: Yes.
Ion: That’s how they are. That was my goal — to design those recipes. And I think I cracked the code.
Sam: How much money do you have in the bank? You did $4K last year — I imagine you’re just doing a checking account.
Ion: In my bank account I have around $2,100.
Sam: All right, understood. That’s pretty good. And your question was around scaling and hiring, right?
Advising Ion on Pricing and Hiring [00:41:00]
Ion: Right. I’m trying to hire people because with the new school suppliers and Machos and Pomptonian, it’s really hard to just do this myself. It’s going to be around 1,000 to 2,000 cookies per week projected. So I’m considering bringing on a small team to keep up with demand. My biggest concern: I use a commercial kitchen because I can’t do this at home, and they charge by the hour. If I hire people, am I going to lose all my profits because they won’t be as efficient as me? And I also worry the quality could suffer if they add one more teaspoon of baking powder — that might skew the whole recipe.
Sam: Wait, so you said you’re doing around 1,000 cookies a week — 52,000 a year — and how much in revenue?
Ion: Projected around $25K.
Sam: So pretty cheap, right? Let’s walk through it. A typical order is how many cookies?
Ion: Around 600 cookies.
Sam: On that 600-cookie order, what are you charging — wholesale?
Ion: Wholesale it’s 80 cents per cookie. So between 700 and 800 cookies, I make around $400 in revenue.
Sam: And what does it cost you to make those cookies?
Ion: I make two kinds — oatmeal chocolate chip and chocolate chip. The oatmeal costs 27 cents to make, the chocolate chip costs 28 cents. That includes everything — packaging, commercial kitchen, and ingredients.
Sam: So you’re basically at 66% gross margins on the cookie itself. Do you have an Excel file that shows your unit cost and percentages? When you add in labor, do your profits go to zero?
Ion: It really depends on minimum wage — $15 or $16 per hour — and how many people I hire. I’ve been experimenting with two or three people in a spreadsheet, and right now my profits are going pretty much to zero. I’m making like $20 to $30 per order. I wanted to see if there’s a better way to do this without choking all my profits.
Sam: Raise your prices. That’s the easiest way. There are really only two or three ways to grow a business: you sell more of what you already have, you sell the same stuff but get existing customers to buy more, or you raise prices. There’s a great book called Getting Everything You’ve Got Out of Everything You Got that walks through exactly this. It sounds like you’re going to sell a lot more stuff to grow 600%, but you probably should charge more. I don’t know anything about the cookie business, but 80 cents sounds really cheap. How easy is the sale? How often are you turned down?
Ion: It’s quite a bit of rejection. Right now with Machos and Pomptonian I signed a contract that’s going till the end of the school year, June. Pomptonian is only taking 40 cents per cookie — so I’m really making 12 or 13 cents of profit per cookie with them. With Machos on the other hand I make 80 cents, they charge a dollar.
Sam: I hope they’re not listening to this.
Ion: So my follow-up question: if I raise prices, is it possible they’d say they don’t want my products anymore?
Shaan: It’s definitely a possibility — but it’s one you’ve got to figure out. Two ways to do it. You can go to your existing customers, assume they’re happy, and say, “Hey, how’s this going for you?” They say, “Oh, it’s great.” “Awesome. I really love working with you. I’m 14 years old, I’m figuring this out as I go. One thing I’m learning is that I’m providing you guys hundreds of thousands of cookies, I cook all of these myself, and I need to bring somebody in. If I do that, I’m not going to make any profit. Could we raise the price to a dollar a cookie, or 95 cents?” See what they say. They might look at you with your puppy-dog eyes and just say yes. They might say no — and you’ll find out.
Then when you go to the next bakery cold, you never even mention the 80 cents. You go straight to them and say “It’s $1.10 a cookie.” And you say, “These cookies are amazing — have you ever had a Levain cookie from New York? This is a New York City cookie I’m bringing to you right here.” You up the perceived value through your packaging, your story, and the benefits. You can say, “I’m going to tell everybody in the local community that you guys support this young entrepreneur.” Find a way to charge a higher price.
The other thing: you don’t want to grow broke. If you have the wrong cost structure today and you go get bigger contracts and you’re cooking ten times more cookies, you’re literally going to grow broke if you don’t have the margin to support the labor. So: test it in Excel first, then test with one hire. You can always cut bait if it turns out you can’t optimize them. Go one step at a time. Start with one person, then move to two, move to three as you figure out the bottleneck.
Ion: That makes perfect sense. Thank you.
Sam: You might also want to try selling to a richer customer. Who’s less price-sensitive? Go to local businesses — the guy who’s killing it in real estate, dentists, local entrepreneurs who are making enough money where they don’t care if it’s 80 cents or $2 a cookie. They like the story, they like you, they want to be supportive. That might be helpful versus going to Aramark, which literally provides food to prisons and school cafeterias — it’s going to be hard to get wiggle room with them.
Shaan: Or local car dealerships. That story is so much better when you’ve got your face on it. Could you do a sign? If I’m a car dealership carrying your cookies, they could give away a free cookie to every customer who walks in.
Sam: Yeah, this is the rule of reciprocity. When I would go negotiate with somebody off Craigslist, the first thing I’d do was bring a Coke. “Hey, you want a Coke?” The rule of reciprocity states that when you do something nice for someone, they will almost always do something nice back — often not in proportion to the gift. You do one small thing nice, they’ll do something much bigger in return.
So go to a local car dealer and say, “Hey, I want to provide you guys cookies every week that you can give out to customers. Have you ever heard of the rule of reciprocity? People are much more likely to buy when they’re eating a delicious cookie and feeling taken care of. This is going to cost you a dollar. But if you close even one more sale this whole year, that’s a $35,000 sale for you — this pays itself back in spades.” You can get actual contracts with people who are willing to pay more. Simple rule of business: sell to the people who have money.
Shaan: One piece of advice I’d give you: this probably won’t be your last business. This is your starter business. You’re going to learn a whole bunch. You’re going to get more value out of the story you’re creating than out of the cookies you sell.
My first business was a Sushi business. We probably made $14,000 of profit in the one year we were running it. But the story I told about how we cold-called a Food Network chef, how I went door-to-door selling sushi, how we reverse-engineered the POS systems to figure out the sales of every Chipotle in Colorado — those stories got me bigger and bigger opportunities. They got me speaking opportunities, accelerators, other doors.
So one tip: while you sell the cookies, be building the story. The story of “I went into the car dealership and gave a talk called ‘How to Increase Sales by 600%’ and I explained the rule of reciprocity to car salesmen, and they carry my cookies” — even if it’s not a lot of cookies, that’s an awesome story. Putting yourself in those positions builds your skill and builds your story, which ultimately will be more valuable than the cookies.
Ion: That sounds really great. Even with the suppliers, it’s good to start thinking about more places to sell. That’s really helpful.
Shaan: All right. You’re killing it. Keep going. It’s amazing how far you are at 14.
Abigail’s Business: Growing and Selling Mums [00:54:00]
Sam: All right, next. Abigail, where you at?
Abigail: Hi.
Sam: Where are you from?
Abigail: Odessa, Missouri.
Sam: Oh nice! I’m from Missouri too. Hey Shaan — I posted Abigail’s Instagram, click it and scroll down. You’re going to see what looks like some prom photos, but keep scrolling and you’re going to see that in her free time she’s a race car driver.
Shaan: What?! Okay. Triple threat: student, entrepreneur, sprint car driver. How did you get into that, Abigail?
Abigail: I’m actually a third-generation sprint car driver. My grandpa drove race cars, my dad has driven race cars, and then it was passed down to me.
Sam: That is amazing. Okay, so Abigail — how old are you and what’s your business?
Abigail: I’m a senior at Odessa High School, 17 years old. My business is growing and selling chrysanthemums — mums — which are plants you’d put on your front porch during the fall season and Halloween. My business is two years old. Last summer I made $15,000 in revenue, and this year I expect to grow by 100% and do at least $30,000 in revenue.
Sam: Okay. Explain the business. Where do the flowers come from, who do you sell them to?
Abigail: I order the mums — we call them “plugs” because they’re about this big — from a company in North Carolina. I also order fertilizer, soil, and pots. That all goes into the price. Then there’s about a two-week process of putting it all together: mix the soil, put them into color blocks, put the mums in. Then we put them on “runs” — big tarps with watering lines — and for the next three to four months I spend watering. After they’re ready, fertilized, and grown to about as big as they can get, we market them to schools, fundraisers, and also retail at my own house — posting on social media and handing out flyers to local towns and businesses.
Sam: That is a lot of work. I’m looking at this picture, which is just like a field of long rows of potted plants with a watering system. Where do you do this — is this your backyard?
Abigail: I live on 40 acres. About 30 acres is leased out for farmland, and the rest is for my mums pretty much. Anywhere we can put them on the yard, we put them there. We’re also in the process of building a greenhouse with my profits, so I have a place to start the mums and also a steady revenue stream for the other six months of the year when I’m not growing mums.
Sam: Sorry — you said you’re selling to school fundraisers, businesses, and handing out flyers. Who’s the core customer?
Abigail: Right now we’re trying to do wholesale as our core customer. I’m in FFA, so FFA chapters will sell it as a fundraiser.
Shaan: What’s the FFA?
Sam: FFA used to stand for Future Farmers of America, but they’ve kind of veered away from that — they don’t want it to be the stereotypical cows-and-farming thing. What they really do is promote youth in agriculture and leadership. They’re growing the next generation of agriculturalists. If you grew up in a more rural environment, in high school you kind of by default join the FFA. There are millions and millions of members. It was kind of like Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts for rural areas. You join the FFA, get your FFA jacket. They’re pretty famous.
Shaan: What do you do once you join?
Abigail: For me, I currently serve as my local chapter president and I’m running for a Missouri FFA State office. I do public speaking events and stuff like that. It’s really shaped who I am. Right now, talking to you guys, I’m not nervous — and I know that my freshman year I would have been completely nervous because I never did public speaking. It shapes you for life skills you need in the long run.
Sam: College acceptance letter right there. All right. So your core customers are wholesale — what does that mean? Who’s the buyer?
Abigail: Right now we’re trying to do contracts with hardware stores — a couple of local hometown hardware stores and some bigger ones that are all across Missouri. Right now we’re just focused on Missouri because delivering is one of the hardest parts. We actually get to use my sprint car trailer to deliver all the mums — so that’s kind of funny how it clashes.
Sam: How much profit did you do last year?
Abigail: About $7,000 to $8,000. Just because each year it fluctuates — how much the soil is going to cost, how much the pots will cost. Our big cost this year was making the runs, but now we have those, so we can pack them away for fall and winter and put them out next year. That’s a cost we don’t have to pay for again.
Advising Abigail: Use Your Story to Land Big Deals [01:02:00]
Sam: Abigail, if you wanted to sell 10 times more mums, how would you do that? You said you’re going to double your sales — but what if you wanted to go 10x bigger?
Abigail: I think that’s kind of what my question for you was going to be about. I like the wholesale part of it, but I also know I can’t grow how much I want to just doing wholesale. I think my biggest thing right now is getting my company out there and promoting it better to other companies so they’d possibly sign a contract.
Sam: You mentioned you went to Farmcon — that conference. If they’d heard your story on stage, I think a lot of people would have handed you a card and said, “Hey, let me know how I can help. Love what you’re doing. I’m so excited that somebody in the next generation is excited about agriculture.” I wonder if the faster way to 10x your sales would be: who’s the CEO of Home Depot? What’s the wholesale store? How do you go to them and say, “I want to be in your store. That’s my goal, that’s my dream. How do I make that happen?” I think if you hustled more to the top, you could get more growth faster than going bottoms-up.
Shaan: Your story is your asset. The flowers might be great, but your story is the real differentiator. How many other people have your story? Zero. So how are you using your story to unlock the growth?
Whether it’s telling your own story on TikTok, getting on stage at Farmcon or the FFA annual event, or sending cold emails every single day to the CEOs of all the major distributors or retailers until one of them takes your meeting and puts you on their shelves.
We did this episode with Nick Mow — he was a guy in New Zealand, literally on the other side of the earth, making toys by himself. He said, “I emailed every retailer in every country every single day.” They kept saying no. And one day they’d be like, “Can I see a sample?” or “Are you going to be at that show? I’ll take 15 minutes and meet with you.” He would fly there and make it happen.
If you 10x your approach toward getting a major distributor, you might leapfrog into a much bigger space. Otherwise — I’m tired just hearing how you grow these things. It’s so much work to just get the product made. It’s only worth doing that if you’re going to land some major sales. Going to every school fundraiser and every mom-and-pop is just too much work on top of that.
Sam: Also — for all of you — there’s a small window where you’re like this prodigy. You’re young and lovable. That’s going to go away. You’ve got maybe a two-to-six-year window where you pestering people is just cute and awesome. And then in a few years it’s going to be annoying and weird. We have a friend who was 18 and got written up in TechCrunch as the young hot-shot prodigy. He’s 23 now and he feels washed up. He’s like, “I can’t use my story anymore — my whole stick was that I was young.” Nobody wants to hear about a 23-year-old prodigy. There’s no such thing. You’re not a phenom anymore.
While that window is open, take it. Use everything you can use.
Shaan: You can get away with a lot right now. And the same stuff you’re going to be able to get away with now, you won’t be able to in the future. Go hard on going to the top.
Sam: Abigail, in the next 30 days — do you think you could get a meeting with the CEO of either Ace Hardware or Home Depot?
Abigail: I mean… that just sounds crazy to me. I think I probably could, just because I’m a very well-spoken person and good with words, but right now I just have a lot of other things going on. It’s hard to focus all my time on the business because I am a senior this year.
Sam: That’s the only time this excuse is valid. That is the only time I will accept that excuse.
I want to give everyone listening a little piece of feedback I learned when I was younger: the most powerful people on Earth are one cold email away. Because of email and Instagram — things you guys have grown up on — you would be shocked at how small the world is. It sounds insane to say “email the CEO of a multi-billion-dollar company” — but I think you are one email and 20 follow-ups away from just about everyone on Earth. There have been times I even emailed jeff@amazon.com. I followed up about 20 times. I got a “no thank you.” But it’s just proof that you are much closer than you think to just about every person you want to reach — particularly any executive.
All right, let me show you something real quick. There’s this guy on Twitter, his handle is @sonith, he’s building something called Zows — another young student program, I think at Stanford. Check out this cold email. My friend Nico, who’s now a famous venture capitalist and invested in Snapchat really early — also off a cold email — emailed Elon Musk.
You might not be able to read this but I’ll read it. “Dear Mr. Musk — I’m a graduate student at Stanford taking a class. I’m writing a paper about Tesla’s strategy because I think you’re such an innovative company, and we’re going to put together our recommendations on the future of your corporate strategy. Since you’re the chairman of Tesla, I thought it’d be great if we could do a short interview with you in the next few weeks. I’m aware that you receive dozens of similar requests on a daily basis — that’s why I’ll do my best to make this not only useful but an entertaining experience for you and your company’s execs. Hopefully we can contribute first-class recommendations. I’m happy to sign an NDA. I look forward to hearing from you. — Nico.”
And Elon writes back: “Okay, if you can limit the meeting to 20 minutes or schedule for late in the evening.”
And that’s not even a good email, by the way.
Here’s another one I literally saw today. This is Corey Levy, who runs ZFace now. He emailed Andy Roddick’s mom — not Andy Roddick, his mom. He finds her email address. “Dear Mrs. Roddick — as you already know from my previous emails, my name is Corey Levy from Houston, Texas. I’m 12 turning 13 and I’m a big fan of your son Andy. I know Andy’s playing the tournament in Houston. I was wondering if I could meet him and hit with him. Please email me back. — Corey.”
She says: “Corey, thanks for the note. Andy’s going to be in Houston as the tournament gets closer. Reach out again — I’ll definitely arrange for you to meet him. Can’t promise you’ll hit with him, but I’ll try. Please keep in touch and keep playing tennis.”
Turns out Corey was like 34 when he wrote that, so it was kind of weird when he showed up.
Shaan: He still has a baby face, though.
Sam: I say all that to say: one, you should follow that guy, because if you see a cold email that works every day, it’ll go from “that sounds crazy” to “this is perfectly normal.” That’s one of the reasons you should follow people on Twitter who are inspiring — they will make the crazy seem normal, and that’s all you need to actually make it happen.
The second thing: you described the multi-month potting and moving and arranging and watering process that you’re doing by yourself. And then I said, “Could you send a cold email?” And you were like, “I don’t know, I’ve got a lot of class coming up.” That’s the challenge I’m giving you: this email is going to be the least of your worries.
Sending a cold email every day will take you literally no more than 10 minutes. And I think you’ve got that 10 minutes — you just showed me your 10-acre farm that you’re running by yourself. Familiar work feels comfortable and easy. Unfamiliar work feels hard, and you talk yourself out of it and tell yourself stories about why your senior year doesn’t have time. In reality, the thing I’m telling you is a lot easier than the stuff you’re already doing.
Here’s my challenge: pick 100 people you want to reach. Spend only 30 minutes a day for the next month, and follow up with each of them 10 times until they say “no thank you” or “yes.” Your reply rate, if you’re any good, is going to be about 10%. Most everyone will say no or not reply, but I promise you 10 out of 100 is going to be awesome. It’ll change your life.
One more thing: go Google “Sam Parr cold email.” Read the cold emails I sent to recruit speakers to Hustle Con — this random conference I was starting. Read the follow-ups. The follow-ups are where the magic is. There’s the initial email, which a few brave people are willing to do, and then there are the four follow-ups that basically nobody is willing to do. Go read those.
Shaan: There’s also a great Tim Ferriss story. He went to a Stanford Business School course and offered a challenge: an all-expense-paid round-the-world plane ticket to whoever could cold-email and get a meeting with the most hard-to-reach person by the end of the class. I’ll butcher the exact story, but by the end of the class most people got nobody. Only four or five people even reached anyone. And one person got to Bill Clinton or something like that. Tim asked: “What was the difference? Was it the cold email script?” It was basically that 85-90% of the class didn’t even try. They perceived it as too hard. Anybody that tried reached somebody. Some people literally reached a former sitting president.
The lesson: most people won’t even try. This sounds hard but it’s actually not that hard — especially when you have your type of story. The CEO of Ace Hardware? You will be the most interesting email he gets that day. Because there are not a lot of other 18-year-old sprint car drivers who are young entrepreneurs interested in agriculture who are actually out there doing it. Nobody else is emailing him. So I think it’s going to be a lot easier than you think.
Abigail: It’s something I’ll definitely give a try.
Sam: I’ll take that. Hey, thank you — you’re fantastic. I’m going to cold-email you every day until you cold-email them.
Abigail: That’ll be a good reminder.
Sam: And you’ll have to invite us to Odessa. I want to watch one of your races. I want to drive the damn thing.
Abigail: Definitely, definitely.
Sam: Where did you say you’re from — Missouri? I’m from St. Louis.
Abigail: I’m from Odessa, which is just a little bit east of Kansas City.
Sam: Yeah. The difference between KC and St. Louis is like LA and SF, Shaan. They’re not that similar.
Shaan: All right. Just to recap, Abigail: shoot your shot, cold email, use your story to go to the top, think about how to 10x instead of 2x, and follow up until you die.
Sam: Sam cold-emailed his way out of Missouri. And you can too.
Wrap-Up: Formidable Fellowship [01:18:00]
Sam: All right, Anan — thank you for bringing these folks to us.
Anan: Absolutely. Let me just plug real quick — March 14th is our next deadline. Formidablefellowship.org. And this has given me an amazing amount of hope in the next generation. The stories you hear are like, “everyone’s just scrolling on TikTok, wasting away their life” — and we see honestly hundreds of amazing young people. You met just three of them today.
Sam: You’re just doing good in the world now? Is that what happened?
Anan: I mean, this is fun. This is a lot of fun. It puts a lot of wind in my sails.
Sam: He put up about $500K or something — his and his partner’s money. This is amazing. It’s called the Second Mountain. This is what you do when you’ve made it.
Anan: We’ve got $700K in donations now. So we’ve got lots of money for grants. If there are young entrepreneurs, or if parents are hearing this — we’ve had a lot of parents reach out saying this inspired their kids to start a business, so hopefully we’ll see them in six or 12 months. And we’re only four and a half months in.
Sam: Why are you doing this?
Anan: That’s a great question. It’s what I’m asking myself. But it’s pretty dope what’s started to happen. The infrastructure took the longest to set up. We just need a hype man now.
Shaan: That’s kind of my skill. I don’t have much else, but yeah.
Sam: Dude, it’s also awesome not to hear about AI, you know? These guys are actually doing the damn thing in real life. It sounds great to hear different stuff.
Anan: And what they learn out of building their businesses is phenomenal. Ion goes through a story of emailing and going door-to-door a hundred times getting rejected. Abigail walks through this horticulture issue about mums getting overwatered in one area — the problem-solving they’re doing is unreal compared to anything they’d be doing in an academic setting.
Sam: I’m going to send you guys a copy of our boy Nick Huber’s book, The Sweaty Startup: How to Get Rich Doing Boring Things, because you guys are all doing sweaty startups. I’ll send you a copy — you’re way ahead of the curve. We’ll joke and tease you, but you’re doing amazing stuff. I hope you’re proud of yourselves and thanks for coming on the pod.
Shaan: All right, that’s it.