Sam reveals the full story of Sarah Moore, who bought eggcartons.com — a profitable specialty packaging business — using 100% debt financing with no money down. He reads her email responses to five questions he sent her, which reveal an extraordinary backstory: 50 unpaid Craigslist interns, fake library IDs, a fax photo of herself in a “I want to buy your business” sweatshirt, going temporarily blind during a deodorant study, and nearly getting buried in India after rejecting a vendor shipment.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host), Sarah Moore (guest, via email)
Sam Tracks Down Sarah Moore [00:00:00]
Sam: So a while back — maybe a month ago — I came on here and I was like, “Dude, there’s this business. Have you heard of this business called—” and you were like, “No, what is that?”
Well, that’s exactly what it sounds like. You go to eggcartons.com and it’s a place where you can buy the packaging — the carton — for eggs. But also packaging for a bunch of different varieties of eggs: huge shipments, small ones, eco-friendly, not eco-friendly. And also just general packaging materials as well.
So I was like, yeah, fascinating business, right? You go there, it’s an old-school-looking website. It’s like, dial 1-800-eggs.com, you know, call us to place an order. And I was like, this is fascinating. So I dug in. I was like, who’s behind this?
I basically found that it used to be owned by this guy who ran it for 24 years. I was like, okay, this sounds about right. His LinkedIn picture was him with a corded phone up to his ear, sitting at a messy desk. I was like, yeah, this looks like the guy who started eggcartons.com 25 years ago.
But then I noticed — oh, it says he ended his ownership one year ago. So who’s behind this now? And I saw that there was this woman named Sarah Moore, who was not what you would expect. It’s like — she should be the CEO of Lululemon or something. Why is she getting into egg cartons?
Shaan: Beautiful Harvard graduate. Yeah, she looks like a celebrity a little bit.
Sam: So I tried to reach out to her, couldn’t get a hold of her. But I couldn’t resist, so I came on the pod and told the story. It’s like, yeah, so basically it looks like she purchased this business — she did like one tiny interview about it.
But I had done one thing that I didn’t tell you about that day. I’ve been experimenting with a format that I wish more people used when they reach out to me. When people reach out to me they’re like, “Oh, I’d love to talk to you sometime.” If you have a question, just send me the question. In fact, if you have a bunch of questions, just send me a Google doc. I’m going to look at it, and if I want to answer, I’ll answer. If I don’t, I don’t.
So that’s what I did to her. I sent her an email. I said “Egg cartons!!!!!” — like, five exclamation points. I said, “That’s hilarious, what a hilarious niche. We’ve got this podcast, I’d love to feature you on it. I have five questions for you in this Google doc — if you answer them with bullet points, I’ll tell your story on the podcast. We get 20 million downloads a year, it’ll be great for your business.” I sent it. No reply for 20 days.
Then she emails me out of the blue. She goes, “I couldn’t have paid someone to make me sound as cool as you and Sam did on the podcast last week. Thank you so much. I filled out your Google doc — I think they’ll answer your questions. I would have responded earlier if I didn’t think this was spam. Send me your address, I’ll send you some world-class egg cartons.”
The Google Doc Answers [00:04:30]
Sam: So I want to read you what she replied. But first — did you want any? Are you going to accept those cartons?
Shaan: Very nice. Very nice of you, Sarah. But thank you, but no thank you. No, dude — everything in the house would turn into a toy storage container. They have toys of all shapes and sizes.
Sam: All right, so here’s what she said.
My first question: “Did you buy eggcartons.com alone, or as part of a PE firm?”
She goes: “Alone-ish. I started a PE firm — alone — to buy a business, but it wasn’t your typical PE firm. My office — quote-unquote office — was just a library at school. There was no fund, no money. I had a lot of help though. I had over 50 unpaid interns who came from Craigslist, and I had them sift through over 400,000 private companies for a year and a half before I found eggcartons.com.”
Shaan: What?
Sam: Yeah, I know.
Then I go — second question: “Why the heck did you buy it? What about the business made you want to buy it? Was it the name, the customer retention — what drove you to it?”
She goes: “My goal was to buy a business with all debt, so I could have 100% ownership. I had no collateral though, except for my 2012 RAV4. So I was trying to find something already stable enough that I could pitch a bank that the business itself was the collateral instead of my RAV4. I needed historical cash flows. This business fit because it had been profitable since it started in 2001, had a high barrier to entry given the domain name and 100-plus other similar domain names they own — like eggcartons misspelled, carton.com — the founder had purchased all these domains over the years to protect their moat. It was also simple enough that somebody with zero operational experience — me — and average intelligence — me — could operate it if they tried hard enough.”
I was like, wow, this is incredible.
Sizing Up the Business [00:07:15]
Sam: Then I said: “I live in Silicon Valley — people here are obsessed with crypto, AI, blah blah blah. They would underestimate eggcartons.com. Can you give us a sense of the scale of the business?”
Shaan: That’s a really good way to find that out. That’s a beautiful way to frame that question, because you nagged her a little bit. You said something a little rude — like, “Yeah, you know, it’s probably not that big, but maybe it is. Impress me, right? I’d think this is small, but I’d love to be surprised.”
Sam: So she came back with: “I’m in the middle of something that prevents me from sharing the numbers publicly. All I can say is that our revenue is less than 50 million.”
And I was like — okay, okay. But that… not less than 20. If it was less than 20, I feel like she would’ve said less than 20. I feel like that would’ve been the case.
The Deal Structure [00:08:30]
Sam: I said, “How did you negotiate the deal?”
She goes: “In summary — I harassed the owner until he replied. Then we hit it off. We came up with the valuation together. Then I contacted over 100 banks, most of which told me to f*** off. One of them threw me a bone and agreed to an uncollateralized loan. The final deal was 75% bank debt and 25% seller’s note.”
She bought this with no money down. The bank financed it and the seller financed it.
She said: “Before buying the business, I overpaid an accountant to check my work and do an audit because, frankly, I had no idea what I was doing. His fees got rolled into the deal itself.”
So she used an accountant to cover her ass — but paid him out of the deal itself.
The Insane Details [00:10:00]
Sam: This one is amazing. “Any other fun tidbits or anecdotes you could share?”
Here’s what she says — this is where it gets great.
“While searching for the business, I participated in several research studies just to make money while I was doing my search. I went legally blind from a deodorant study for a bit, so I had to take a break from working until I could read again.
My response rate was awful. I started doing borderline insane things to get a reply. At one point I took a photo of myself wearing a sweatshirt that said ‘I want to buy your business’ with a massive grin, and I faxed it out to thousands of businesses a day. To this day I run into owners who recognize me from those faxes. One of those owners is actually my neighbor now.
The library we worked out of required a school ID to enter. Most of my interns didn’t go to the school, so we had to get fake IDs for all the interns to get into the library. Every time we hired someone, there was a lag because we’d need to get more IDs.
Before COVID, I used to fly to China and India to examine the egg cartons. On my first trip to India, I got held by Indian customs for hours because they didn’t believe I was coming to India alone to investigate egg cartons. I almost got killed there — I rejected a shipment from an Indian vendor. His whole family lived there. He was furious and started chasing after me. The hotel put me in incognito mode for my safety. My driver was luckily at the door I ran out of, otherwise I’d probably still be there, buried underground.
When I bought the business I thought of it as an egg company, but now I think of it as specialty packaging. Forty percent of our business comes from things entirely unrelated to eggs. You’d be very surprised by our customer base — think big brands like Boeing, SpaceX, Disney, Madison Square Garden, Crayola. Anything that requires protection and separation is fair game.”
Is Sarah Moore Our Hero? [00:13:00]
Sam: Dude — is Sarah Moore my hero? Is she not my hero? This woman is wonderful. Why doesn’t she talk about this publicly more often?
Shaan: You know, there are some people who are so in the game that they’re like, “What am I going to stop and chat about the game for? I’m in the game.” That’s the feeling I get from her. I’ve met some people like this. It’s a combination of: they kind of don’t realize how story-worthy their story is until quite a bit later. And the second thing — they either just prefer privacy, or they’re like, “I don’t really know why I need to do that. It’s going to be kind of braggy and weird. What’s the benefit? Maybe I’d just rather stay personal.”
I know a handful of people where I’m like, “Dude, I wish I could tell their story on the podcast, because they’re epic.” But they just don’t see value in it. And they’re also not consumers of it — that’s the other thing I’ve noticed. Most of those people don’t listen to a bunch of podcasts or take inspiration from them, so it’s kind of a foreign idea to them. They’re like, “People will care?” And it’s like — yeah, of course people will care. This is awesome.
Sam: So anyway, I was totally inspired by the story, and she is kind of amazing. She is one of us. No small-boy stuff for Sarah Moore.
If you Google her, you basically can’t find anything. There’s next to nothing on her — like one or two pictures, very little. I found one article where it says she’s 28. She answered the question “What inspired you to start buying companies?” — she says: “Freedom.” And her mantra: “Don’t take counsel from your fears.”
That’s pretty much all she said. This woman is amazing.
Shaan: There’s a lot going on with her. We need to convince her to come on.
Sam: There’s a 30% chance she’s a fat guy named Craig, so — you know, we could be getting catfished here. I wouldn’t put it past her. But I’m going to go with what I see. I think she’s amazing.