Shaan walks through three businesses that sell something technically free — a water quality app called Oasis, labor law poster companies, and the GS1 nonprofit that controls barcodes. The episode expands into a broader conversation about “tradition hijacking” — how companies like Levi’s invented Casual Friday to sell Dockers, and how De Beers, Kellogg’s, and others manufactured cultural traditions to drive demand. The conversation ends with Sam recounting a weekend trip to Yale and reflections on legacy, institutions, and the history embedded in everyday objects.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host)
Introduction: Three Businesses Selling Free Things [00:00:00]
Shaan: All right, so check this out. I’m going to tell you about three businesses that are hidden in plain sight. The genius of these is that they take something that’s free and they sell it. I’m going to tell you about one example that makes hundreds of thousands of dollars, another one that makes millions of dollars, and then another one that’s made hundreds of millions of dollars.
Shaan: I want to tell you about a couple of business ideas. I’ll start with one that makes hundreds of thousands, one that makes millions, and one that makes hundreds of millions. They’re all products hidden in plain sight — we’ve all seen them, but you probably never even realized they were businesses. And the magic thing about all of them: they sell a product that’s actually free.
Sam: What inspired this? Did you just see something?
Shaan: Found one, found a second, found a third, drew a line. Three dots make a line. That’s kind of what happened here.
Business #1: Oasis — Selling Free Water Quality Data [00:01:30]
Shaan: So first — I’m on Twitter and I see Joe Gebbia, who’s the founder of Airbnb, friend of the podcast. I see Joe tweet out a screenshot of an app that was checking water quality, the cleanliness of water. It was this app called Oasis. I thought that sounds familiar. Sam mentioned that like six months ago in passing, but I never really paid much attention to it. What’s the story of this thing?
Sam: Oasis. So here’s one that’s making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year selling a product that is free, and it’s hidden in plain sight — it’s just water quality testing.
There’s a kid behind this, and we chatted with him. Oasis is an app that checks water quality. It’ll tell you if your city’s water is clean, if your county’s water is clean. You can hold up a bottle of water and it will tell you if it’s actually clean or if it contains forever chemicals — that whole deal.
Shaan: An app and a website?
Sam: An app and a website. It was started by this guy named Cormac. Cormac is from Minnesota, which is known for having really fresh water. He said growing up he would just drink tap water, no problem — drink hose water, like me. And then he moves to LA and starts doing the same thing. He starts drinking tap water, notices it tastes a little different, gets an upset stomach. Nothing life-threatening, but he’s like, “Dude, that’s weird. Why is the water so much different here?”
So he tries to look it up. He says, “How do I find out if my water is actually safe to drink out of the tap?” And it turns out you can go to any city and request a report about the water quality in your area. He does that and finds there are tons of contaminants in his water. So he stops drinking tap water, goes to Whole Foods, buys water there — and then says, “Let me see if this one is actually contaminated too.” Turns out you can contact any bottled water company and they have to provide you a report about their water testing. He finds that the water sold at Whole Foods also has lots of contaminants. And he’s like, “What is going on?”
So he creates an app, really for himself but for others too, to check the quality of water — whether it’s your city, your town, or bottled water you’re drinking. He’s basically just aggregating free data that already exists, that anybody could go find.
Shaan: When we first mentioned it, it was on the Jeremy Giffin episode a few months back. It was at $10,000 a month in revenue. The way you make revenue is he has an affiliate scheme where if you buy something he recommends, he gets a cut — and also you pay to access the full reports.
Sam: Yeah. So you can request a report, get some information free, but if you want the full report you pay $40, $45, $49 a year for an annual membership. And by the way, when I shared this people were like, “Who the hell would pay for this?” I was in that camp at first. Then I started clicking around the website and I’m like, “Oh my God, my town’s here — and it says it might be dirty, but I can’t see the results unless I give them $50.” So I understand why it’s actually incredibly valuable.
Shaan: Look at the numbers. He’s doing about $40,000 a month in revenue now — basically half a million a year. But if you do the math at $45 a year, he’s only got a few thousand subscribers. It’s not like everyone’s paying for this. A small number of people really care about water quality and are willing to pay to get the information.
Sam: And what he did was he started off with all the free reports. When he couldn’t get free reports or wanted to verify them, he’d do his own independent testing — but it’s expensive, like a couple grand to do independent testing of a product. So he’s slowly doing them one by one as he gets more money. He said, “We live in a world where we think we live in abundance. You could walk into Target or Trader Joe’s and find 20 different protein bars, 30 different waters. But the problem is most of it’s filled with toxins, none of it is actually healthy. My mission is to build a 100% independent platform to test products and provide healthy alternatives.”
I think this is kind of awesome.
Shaan: And the way he’s growing this — you might wonder how he gets customers — he just does TikToks that go viral. He’ll post a video about a brand, like Liquid Death right here. Very simple, green screen over a product. He’s talking about how he used to think this was really healthy but actually it’s full of chemicals. “If you want to figure out which products are actually clean, use my app.” That video gets a million-plus views, drives a bunch of attention, drives people to download the app and sign up.
Very simple. And it’s something you can do over and over again. On TikTok and Instagram Reels, once you find a format that works, you can literally repost the same thing and the algorithm is just going to keep serving it up to people, even if they don’t follow you. I know several people building multi-million dollar businesses doing exactly this.
Sam: I’m so turned on right now. This is the greatest thing. So he shows his revenue on Twitter, which is pretty cool. Oasis metrics over the last 28 days — monthly gross revenue $25,000, and he shows his churn, he shows everything.
I actually predict this could be a significantly larger product — many tens of millions or even more. The reason: the way that review websites work, you typically have to hire a lot of freelancers to go write all the articles. But if you’re just using data organized as a table, it’s way more profitable. Also, he’s getting in early on a trend. I think this water quality thing is still tiny, tiny, tiny compared to what it’s going to be like in 10 and 20 years. I think he’s on to something life-changing for himself.
Shaan: Yeah, absolutely.
Business #2: Labor Law Posters — Selling Fear and Compliance [00:12:00]
Shaan: Okay, so I promised I’d tell you about a company that’s hidden in plain sight, selling free information and making hundreds of thousands. Check. Now I want to tell you about one that’s making millions, and then we’ll go to the hundreds of millions.
So the millions one — we’ve mentioned this once before but it was years ago. If you’ve ever been to a company’s office and you walk into their break room or their kitchen where they have snacks, you’ll always notice on the wall that there’s this poster. Our eyes just glaze over it. We don’t ever look at it. It looks like when you’re on an airplane and you see the safety card in the seat back in front of you — it looks like that, but it’s on the wall. And this is a labor law poster.
The reason all offices have it: it’s required by law that you have to post this in your employee break room or open area. These labor law posters update every year, so you have to get a new one every year. Required by law. That’s the good news. The bad news — you have to buy them. Or do you?
Sam: Here’s the interesting thing about this business. There are a couple of companies that do this. I remember finding one that was based in Minnesota. All the guy does is print labor law posters. What they’ll do is mail you a letter to your business, and the letter looks a little scary. It says, “Hey, if you don’t have this poster up, you are in violation of California labor laws right now. You must have this up — it is a requirement by law. It costs $45. Take this box, send it back to us, and we will send you your poster.” You send it, they send you the poster, you put it on your wall, you forget about it, you move on.
Shaan: And this is a private company sending that letter.
Sam: Correct. The thing is, these labor law posters are actually free. You could just go to your state’s labor law website and get them. But companies have realized that using this kind of awareness tactic — making it easy, scaring the hell out of you — is a way to make a couple million dollars a year on super high margins. Because all you do is print the same poster, single SKU, one product a year, and you just send it out to businesses.
Shaan: And figuring out how to order the poster for free is actually hard.
Sam: Of course. Just like filing your taxes is a little bit confusing, and TurboTax and others have made their buttons big and bright green while the government’s button is a small gray button you don’t know which one to click. There’s a tremendous amount of value in simply aggregating and structuring data and making it available for people, or helping you just comply without having to figure out how to comply. Maybe the $50 tax is worth it every year as your subscription. That’s what these companies do — labor law posters, a way to make millions of dollars selling a product that’s free, and a business again that’s hidden in plain sight.
Sam: And I bring this up because one of the great things about this podcast — what I hope we do for people — is take you from a mindset where success seems rare and hard to grasp, where you’re thinking, “I need a great idea and great ideas are rare,” to a mindset of: everything I see in my life, every object in my view, it’s not there by accident. That sign is there for a reason. That cable is there for a reason. Somebody realized you needed that and they created it.
Once you realize that, you realize: oh my God, business is everywhere. This is a business. This is a business. This is a business. And then you realize, wow, all I’ve got to do is figure out one of these that seems easy to start. It’s like, in a jar full of Skittles, picking one — it doesn’t seem that hard. That’s what I hope to achieve by bringing up these businesses. Because not only are they clever little business models, they just point out that your eyes are glazing over million-dollar opportunities everywhere you walk.
You go into a parking lot, look at the ground. Somebody painted those stripes. You can go ask the owner of the real estate, “Who paints the stripes for your parking lot?” They’ll say, “Oh, we use these guys.” You go talk to them, say, “Wow, you just paint straight lines in parking lots?” Yep. “How much money do you make? Is this a small business?” “Oh, we did $7 million last year revenue.” “Profit?” “Oh my God.” Right? And then you realize there’s somebody who makes $7 million a year painting white lines on the road.
Shaan: Dude, when I first moved to San Francisco, I lived with this guy — one of my roommates. He was a piece of work, but he was telling me how he was making hundreds of dollars a month because apparently the Church of Latter-day Saints — the Mormons — you can order a Bible for free on their website, but they’ll hand deliver it, and they’ll try to talk to you about their faith. And he created an online store selling Bibles for $20. He somehow ranked on Google. He would take the person’s information and put it into the Mormon’s website, and on his website it said, “We hand-deliver Bibles.” And I was like, “This is a horrible scam. That’s amazing.”
He was making like $500 a month doing this.
Sam: That is so funny. What happened to that guy?
Shaan: He’s one of those guys — you know how you have those friends who do hacky stuff and you’re like, “This is going to go one of two ways”? He went the wrong way. He kind of disappeared. He probably got in trouble for a crypto scam. But on his about page it said, “Why did the person who delivered my Bible want to talk to me?” and his FAQ said, “Yeah, they tend to do that.” So it just explained that you’re going to get hand-delivered by these Mormon guys.
Business #3: Barcodes and GS1 — The Nonprofit That Prints Money [00:21:00]
Sam: What’s the third one?
Shaan: Okay. Third one. Here’s a product that is used, I believe, a billion times a day. It is a product that Time Magazine said is in the 50 things that made the world economy work. Do you want to take a guess?
Sam: It’s a hard one. Do you have one or two more hints?
Shaan: Like many great inventions, it was invented maybe 20 years before it actually got used. Somebody invented this thing and was like, “This is cool, but what do we use it for?” They couldn’t find a use case. And then finally they found one. Here’s another hint: every time you buy a product, you use this.
Sam: I feel like I’m doing those annoying riddles. You know, “I’m awake at night but not during the day, what am I?” or “You can sit on me but not take me with you.”
Shaan: All right, I’ll end the suspense. It’s a barcode.
Sam: Oh, that’s cool. Do you know the story behind the barcode?
Shaan: No, let me give you a little history lesson. I know you like history.
The barcode is invented by these two guys — Norman Woodland and Bernard Silver. They’re inspired by Morse code. They realize Morse code is so simple — just dots and dashes. And they’re like, could we create another system like that, maybe a visual system? So they create a system — it actually looked like a circle at first. Thin lines and thick lines could create basically an infinite number of unique tags for something. They’re like, “Oh, this is great.” They patent it, but there’s not really a good use case for it.
Then people try to use it for a couple things. They realize, “Oh, we could track train containers — we’re always wondering where those containers are in the route.” So they put a barcode on the side of a train container. Works great, everyone’s really excited. And then the problem is: trains are outside, they get dirty, and as soon as any dirt gets on the thing it ruins the barcode. Bad idea, scrap it. They try it on some other things, none of them work, and for like a couple of decades nobody’s using barcodes.
At the same time, in another part of the world, you get the invention of the laser. The laser is a really great way to scan something — but they don’t really know what they’re scanning, or why.
And then in the third part of the world, grocery stores are having a really tough time. They’re trying to stock inventory and keeping track of it all by hand. Think about this — in a store with so many units, it’s taking so many hours of labor. And then if any customer checks out, it’s so slow, because I’ve got to punch every item into the register, either remember the prices or write them in, and then keep stock of inventory levels. It’s a pain.
Sam: Do you think that — Walmart was founded around this time. Do you think a barcode is one of the reasons companies were able to scale? Was the lack of it actually preventing scaling?
Shaan: Walmart opened their first store in 1962. This was now ten years later, so ‘74 is when this starts to happen. They’re hitting this problem — it’s too slow, too much labor, too expensive. So they create the Ad Hoc Committee for the Uniform Grocery Product Identification Code. They go into the lab and they’re like, “All right, we need something.” They find this technology and they’re like, “Oh, remember what that guy Norman is always talking about? That barcode? What if we use that? What if we use this laser?” They come together and they create the barcode — and they change the shape. Instead of the circle shape, they change it to the rectangular shape we all know and love today.
The first barcode ever gets scanned as a pack of Wrigley’s gum in 1974. And they’re like, “Wow — that took one second, it knew the price, it deducted my stock level by one. Oh my God, this is magic.”
So then — you know, this is like the blockchain getting invented — how do they convince all of the manufacturers to put this on their products? The retailers are the ones with the hair-on-fire problem. They’re spending all this money and time on labor. So they say, “Hey, if you want to be in our store, you’ve got to start adding these things to your product.” And for a manufacturer, you’re like, “Oh, if I want shelf space — which is the most important thing for me — oh great, I’ll happily stick this on here.”
But the problem is: where do they get the code, and how do I make sure your code is not the same as mine? We all have to go through some central thing that gives us the barcodes we can use for our product, so nobody else can use the same one. It’s like reserving a namespace, or a license plate — how do I get my exact plate that nobody else is going to have?
And that became what’s known today as GS1. GS1 is the nonprofit that issues these barcodes and keeps track of who owns the barcode space. And to get barcode space, you’ve got to pay. But remember, every store has standardized on one thing — so if you want to be in a store, or you want your goods in an Amazon warehouse, you need to use their system. They have infinite pricing leverage.
Sam: And that’s GS1 who’s charging?
Shaan: GS1. Let me tell you a little bit about this nonprofit. You can go look them up — they’re a nonprofit, so the financials are public. Last year: $81 million in revenue. Barcode sales make up 90-93% of this. And again, a barcode is literally just a set of lines. They’re selling that for $90 million a year. They now have $460 million in assets that they’ve just been stockpiling. The CEO makes $3 million a year. The CFO makes a million a year. The SVP of Community Engagement — God knows what that guy’s doing — makes $800,000 a year.
Sam: This might be the job of all time. He just does happy hours.
Shaan: Exactly. And they stash $30 million in overseas places like the Caribbean and Central America. Half of their expenses are basically staff salaries.
Sam: Is there like a barcode vs. QR code lobby? Where they’re just fighting each other?
Shaan: I think QR codes are just a type of barcode — they’re just 2D. So yeah.
Isn’t that crazy? This nonprofit now has nearly half a billion dollars in assets just selling barcodes. And any retailer, anybody who’s ever had to get their products on shelves — if you want to sell on Amazon, Amazon says you’ve got to use this. It’s a racket. You end up just having to pay whatever they demand.
Sam: Do you know how there have been a lot of cool movies lately? There was one on the guy who created BlackBerry, one on the person who helped create Tetris, another one on the person who helped create the Pop-Tart — these cool product creation stories. I wonder if there’s an interesting one here. Somebody’s like, “What if podcasts were movies?” and they just turn every episode of Acquired or How I Built This into a documentary.
Shaan: Well, this guy Bernard Silver — this is actually a way more interesting story than I would have thought. Because this is something that changed culture, changed so many things. We talk about inflection points — how the iPhone was invented and had all these ramifications, including GPS being there, which now means Uber has the ability to exist. This barcode is one of those inflections. It made Walmart possible. It literally shaped history.
Sam: Exactly. And this is just a space where you don’t even think — “Where does this little thing come from?” It doesn’t come from nowhere. Somebody creates it, and then that person who creates it now has something they can charge for. And there’s business everywhere.
Casual Friday: How Levi’s Invented a Cultural Tradition [00:35:00]
Sam: It’s so funny that this episode is accidentally turning into a theme — a theme of things you don’t really think about, but how they became a thing. I actually have an example of one of those. Can I tell you?
Shaan: Yeah, go.
Sam: So in the 1960s in Hawaii, it started to become common — I think it was because of one hotel — where employees were allowed to wear a Hawaiian shirt to work on Friday. Because for the most part you had to wear a suit to work. Dressing formal was how business people operated all of the time. And this Casual Friday idea sort of started getting popular in mainland America. By the 1980s, HP was like, “Hey, everyone can wear a Hawaiian shirt to work on a Friday” — which was a big deal because they employed tens of thousands of people.
But in reality, up until the late ’80s and early ’90s, virtually everyone wore suits to work all of the time. However, this marketing executive at Levi’s — Levi’s had just launched Dockers, which were khaki pants. Up until then, khaki pants were basically casual wear. Even though now we don’t look at them as casual, that’s what they were. And Levi’s creates Dockers because they want the khaki business. But still people are like, “This is too casual, we can’t wear these any other time except Saturday and Sunday.”
So this marketing executive at Levi’s has this brilliant idea. They print up 40,000 pamphlets that explain to HR professionals: here’s this new thing called business casual and Casual Friday, and here are the rules. It was just an eight-page pamphlet. It didn’t promote Levi’s or Dockers — but in all the photos, you’d see a picture of someone wearing jeans and there’d be a Levi’s logo, or you’d see someone wearing khakis and you’d just assume it’s Dockers.
Shaan: We’ve got to read this. “A Guide to Casual Businesswear: Ideas for Dressing Professionally at Work.” And then it basically shows pants, jeans — showing options. Are there rules?
Sam: Yeah. It says don’t wear tattered jeans, they should be nice new jeans. No sleeveless, no tanks —
Shaan: I mean — discrimination. Baby steps. We’re going from suits to khakis. It takes time.
Sam: Should we push “Guns Out Wednesday”? Do you think we can make that happen?
Shaan: Actually, I’ve got to talk about that in a second. Avoid lingerie —
Sam: Fair enough. Save athletic wear for after work. And don’t forget footwear — sandals are not appropriate.
Shaan: So they sent this out to 40,000 HR executives. And they even went as far as creating an HR hotline. So if you work at IBM and you’re like, “I actually don’t know the protocol — are sandals allowed?” you could call this hotline and ask. And it takes off. Casual Friday officially becomes a thing. It literally shaped culture — and it was all because Levi’s needed to move some product.
Sam: Back then, the American apparel industry was in a bit of a rut. And this changed everything. People started buying Dockers, buying Levi’s, because this movement of Casual Friday totally picked up.
It got me thinking: this is some pretty brilliant marketing. I call it “tradition hijacking” — you find or create a little tradition, you blow it up, and then you say, “And by the way, if you want to participate in this idea, we just so happen to have the thing that can make your life a little better.”
There are a few other examples of this. The first is De Beers — they’re a diamond company that’s been around for hundreds of years. In the 1940s they ran this campaign: “A Diamond Is Forever.” And they came up with the idea of how much you should spend on a diamond — roughly two to three months of your salary, which is outrageous. But that campaign alone is credited with helping shape the entire diamond industry. They even ran further campaigns saying on certain anniversaries you have to get your wife a diamond.
Another one: breakfast being the most important meal of the day. Kellogg’s invented that idea. Prior to that, people didn’t always think that way.
Two more: baby showers weren’t a thing until Johnson & Johnson started running ad campaigns. And wedding registries — Macy’s came up with that. They said, “You’re gonna get married, people have to buy you stuff — and you don’t want people buying you random stuff, what if two guests buy the same thing? That’s ridiculous. Create a registry at Macy’s.” And finally, spring cleaning really wasn’t a thing until Lysol came up with it.
Shaan: Wow, dude. These are great. I get so fired up about these. I think because it’s the same idea as those hidden businesses — this object didn’t just get here, someone made it come here. All of these occasions, these sayings, these holidays — they didn’t just pop up out of nowhere. Somebody made them happen. And when you find out it’s some marketing person in a room somewhere who was like, “Spring sales are slow… spring cleaning! That’s how we get people to buy cleaning products in the spring.” I love that.
Craig Clemens and the Seven Human Hijacks [00:47:00]
Sam: We did an episode with Craig Clemens about exactly this.
Shaan: Right — he talked about why we eat bacon for breakfast, where orange juice came from, all these things that today just seem like, “I don’t know, it’s just what we do.” And it’s like, no, that wasn’t tradition. The classic one is toothpaste. At a certain time only about 6% of the population brushed their teeth. When they wanted to increase sales of toothpaste, they said, “We can’t just sell more to the 6% who already brush. We need to get the other 94% to start. How do we do that?”
That’s when Claude Hopkins came up with the campaign — “Rub your tongue on your teeth. You feel that film?” And people did it as soon as they read it. They stick their tongue there and it’s gross. And you’re like, “There’s a way to get that off and you’ll have that Hollywood smile.” People wanted that. By the end of that campaign, something like 70 or 80% of people in America were brushing their teeth. Huge shift, off of one big idea from one ad man.
Sam: I’ve really actually toyed with the idea of writing a book just about these — the crazy ad men and the ways they’ve shifted culture.
Shaan: Another one is the Wall Street Journal. They sort of tried it — the idea that once you graduate college, the gift you get is a Wall Street Journal subscription. I think Rolex did something similar — once you hit President’s Club, once you hit some sales quota, you get a Rolex. So I was thinking: what other things haven’t been hijacked yet?
My first example: Friendsgiving. Friendsgiving is what 20-somethings who are single celebrate instead of Thanksgiving with family. They do it in their city. I think Friendsgiving is one where there’s not a clear winner who owns it — but we could make it an entire week of being thankful for your friends. You do various gestures — have them over for dinner, and we could sell gift boxes, gratitude journals, digital cards, all types of stuff.
The other one: graduation season. Turning it into a life transition celebration — “What do you get for graduation season?” Financial planning subscriptions, productivity tools, career coaching, travel discounts.
Sam: You said you’ve thought about this — what are other ones that you’ve thought about?
Shaan: Like examples of things where you’re like, “That’s amazing that they pulled it off”? Craig talked about the Otis Elevator one. Did you remember that?
He basically talks about how back when elevators were invented, people didn’t want to use them. They were scared — because there were situations where elevators would just plummet, and you’d plummet to your death. The consequence: if you don’t have elevators, you don’t have tall buildings. People are only going to go up so many flights of stairs. So cities were kind of limited — New York was like four stories high. No buildings taller than that.
This guy Otis ends up creating an elevator with automatic brakes. He’s like, “This is it. This is going to be amazing. Everybody’s going to buy my elevators.” But it didn’t happen right away. He couldn’t figure out why. He’s like, “This has automatic brakes, it solves the problem, but nobody believed it.”
So Craig talks about how the World’s Fair was going on and Otis decides to go all in. He creates this exhibit — an elevator suspended in the air, hanging by cables — and he was kind of inspired by Cirque du Soleil. He said, “Their stunts and spectacles are so awe-inspiring, you can’t help but look. I’ve got to do that.”
So he gets someone up there, he stands in the elevator, and he says, “Ladies and gentlemen, I have created the world’s first safe elevator — the elevator with automatic brakes.” He gets the guy at the top to swing an ax and cut one rope. The elevator starts swaying and swinging, hanging by a thread. Everyone’s gasping. And he says, “Cut the rope.” The guy swings, cuts the rope — the elevator starts to go down two feet, and then the automatic brakes kick in and it stops. And he says, “All safe, gentlemen.”
Elevator sales take off from there. When elevator sales take off, buildings can be taller. It literally reshaped the way cities work — all because this guy realized he needed to do something that would actually shift perception about a product in a dramatic way.
Sam: Does Craig have a book?
Shaan: After that episode I hit Craig up and I was like, “Hey, I want to write this book with you.” We talked about it, we both got really excited, but we’re both busy. So this might be the motivation to rekindle that project. The Seven Human Hijacks. I wrote the intro for it.
Sam: That is awesome. I’m going to have to go listen to that because that was like two years ago, and I remember listening to it thinking he’s amazing. Can I read you the intro to this book?
Shaan: Yeah, we can cut this out if it’s boring, but I want your opinion.
Sam: All right. It’s called “Seven Human Hijacks: Confessions of a Billion Dollar Marketer.” Craig sold over a billion dollars of products online himself. So it goes:
“If you read this book, I need you to make me a promise. Repeat after me: I promise to use these tactics only for good and not evil. Because the techniques in this book — not just tactics, they are hijacks. The same way a terrorist can hijack an airplane, marketers can hijack the minds of consumers to get them to buy products they didn’t even know they wanted.
You might be skeptical. In fact, I think you should be skeptical — skeptical of somebody making such a bold claim. But I can tell you that these hijacks have been used to sell — I’ve used these hijacks to sell over a billion dollars of products personally. That’s one billion with a B, in case you lost count.
But rather than let me convince you, let me ask you: did you brush your teeth this morning? More importantly, why? Who told you to do that? Who told you to brush your teeth in the morning? Your mom. Well, who told her? Her mom. Before that, who told all the moms? It must be the dentist, right? But wait — who told the dentist?
The answer turns out to be a man named Claude Hopkins. Because before Claude Hopkins, only 7% of the population brushed their teeth. Sidebar: can you imagine — dating back to 1913, nobody brushed their teeth. Feel bad for Grandpa. After Claude Hopkins, 65% of the population brushed their teeth. And Claude didn’t just sell toothpaste — he literally changed the world. He got millions of people to change their daily habits with one brilliant marketing campaign. I’ll show you in Chapter Two…”
And then the chapters are like, “How Diamonds Became a Girl’s Best Friend” — each of the different products that got embedded into culture.
Shaan: What are the seven human hijacks? Like what actually are they?
Sam: Sounds like I succeeded and got you curious. You’re going to have to pay $499 to get the book. But it’s literally seven different tactics, and each one has examples, and then you stack them. So one of the tactics is “a spectacle” — like the Otis Elevator. Spectacle is one of the seven.
And there’s also the thing about taking your tongue and putting it on your teeth — that’s more like a magic trick, a powerful demonstration. You can demonstrate on the person themselves, get them to feel it themselves, in order to want to buy a product.
Shaan: Did Craig come up with the idea of seven human hijacks, or did you come up with it on the pod?
Sam: He was gonna come on, and I said, “I’m going to ask you one question: what’s the best talk you’ve given recently?” He’s like, “Oh dude, I did this one talk inside my company just to get them fired up.” He said, “Basically my company is a giant marketing company and I wanted them to come to work and not just feel like, ‘Oh, we need to raise sales by 7% this quarter.’ I wanted them to realize: yo, a marketer can literally change the way that society works.”
So to get them fired up, he told them these stories. And when he was putting them together he realized, it’s the same set of techniques — across eight, ten examples — the same set of hijacks they’ve been using. And he’s like, “That could be cool.” And I was like, “Yes, do that on the pod.”
Shaan: Check this out — if you Google “seven human hijacks Craig Clemens,” the first post is on Reddit. It says, “Craig Clemens on MFM talking about the seven human hijacks and how to use them in your marketing.” And it links to this amazing post where this guy listed all seven on r/marketing. It’s so good.
One of them, for example: the act of rebellion. How do you make your consumer feel like they’re giving the middle finger to The Man by buying your product? The example he gives is back in the day when cigarette sales were flat. Cigarette sales were flat because cigarettes were only smoked by men. The market was already super-saturated — you can’t really get more men to smoke. So they realized the only way to grow sales was by getting the other 50% of the population to start smoking. How do you get women to start smoking when it was seen as a kind of dirty, masculine thing to do?
What they did was use influencers. So they got all the Kardashians of their time — about 30 of them, all at once — and they were at the parade that happens in New York. They all stood on this float, and he gave them all cigarettes. He said, “When you turn this corner, you’re going to light that cigarette right when the journalists are all there with their cameras pointed at you. You’re going to defiantly smoke the cigarette — you’re going to do this thing that women aren’t supposed to do.” He called them “Torches of Freedom.”
Shaan: Exactly — and then he had someone in the crowd with the journalists who said that out loud, so the journalists went and wrote “Torches of Freedom” in their stories.
Sam: And then I think it was Lucky Strike — their brand color was green, which was not in vogue at the time. He’s like, “Do we need to rebrand?” He said, “Hold my beer — don’t rebrand.” Instead, he got those same women to go to whatever the big fashion event was — the Met Gala type of thing — and all of them wore green. All wore the same green color. And then green became cool for women, basically became in trend, and the sales of that brand went up.
It’s just cool to see somebody who can puppeteer society in this way.
Shaan: This Reddit poster said, “A lot of these stories are documented in this amazing book called Propaganda.”
Sam: That’s the Bernays book, right? It’s a hard read. I’ve wanted to read it but it seems intimidating.
Shaan: These old books are just so dense. My brain is very simple — a lot of people recommend books to me, like, “Oh, have you read René Girard? Mimetic theory?” And I’m like, I’m too dumb to read this. I read the Malcolm Gladwell version of Girard and I read the whole thing and I’m like, “So… I want what other people want? Is that it?”
Sam: I’ll try and read this. The guy who wrote it — born 1891, died 1995. Wow. He saw a lot.
Sam’s Yale Weekend and Reflections on Legacy [01:07:00]
Shaan: All right, let me tell you about something I did. Did you see — you probably didn’t — but on Friday I tweeted that I’m going to Yale’s campus. I tweeted that I’m going to check it out because it’s an old historical place and I wanted to do something interesting for the weekend. I got a lot of replies, it was kind of overwhelming with suggestions. So Saturday morning we just drive up there.
I show up, I see a student tour — like when you’re a prospective student and your mom and dad are there. I just tag along. It’s pretty funny because it’s Sarah and I, and I don’t think either of us look young enough to be students, and I’ve got my baby strapped to my chest.
And then out of nowhere this kid — well, he’s like 20 years old — he goes, “Hey, Sam.” I go, “What’s up?” He goes, “I’m a big fan of the pod. I listen religiously. I saw that you were going to be here, so — can I show you around?” And I was like, “Yeah, I’d love that. What are you doing here?” He goes, “I saw that you were coming, and I just went to the busiest place there was and hoped I was going to see you.”
So this kid gave me a whole tour. By the way, that’s the third time something like that has happened, and I love it. He’s doing me a favor — I would love a local to show me around.
Sam: Have you heard of Skull and Bones? The secret society at Yale? Is it legit?
Shaan: It’s a “secret society,” but I don’t know how much of a secret it is when there’s a building and it’s like a nonprofit with an endowment. I don’t know what the secret is. But it was just cool to see this building I’ve read about.
We went and saw the oldest graveyard in America. I’m going to explain to you why I’m obsessed with old stuff, particularly the Ivy League. I’ve been to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, a bunch of others — because I just love touring these old schools.
We go to this old graveyard and we saw Noah Webster’s grave. You know who Noah Webster is?
Sam: Have you heard that name? Dictionary — Merriam-Webster’s? The guy who invented the dictionary?
Shaan: Yeah. And right next to him was Charles Goodyear — the guy who created vulcanized rubber, which created Goodyear Tires. And I’m standing there in this old graveyard thinking: someone came up with something and they literally invented or standardized the English language. Something that shaped history.
I’m actually envious of you that you went to Duke — this old historical institution. Because it was so cool to be around history like this. It was a really awesome weekend.
Sam: Most white person hobby ever, going to a graveyard. You will never see non-white tourists hanging out in the graveyard — it’s just not a thing.
Shaan: Dude, it was great. So you saw Webster’s Dictionary, Goodyear — and you’re like, “All right, I’m going to come back and podcast.” What’s the move?
Sam: It kind of put me into a little bit of a crisis. This podcast is definitely part of it. But I sometimes think — like, we’re talking to guys who are inventing robots, going to the moon. And a lot of these guys whose graves I saw were authors, and I was still inspired by them. There was a little bit of a crisis of like, “Oh man, it’s important to do something that can impact people for centuries.”
Shaan: Roget’s Thesaurus. Just putting that out there. See how that lands. I feel like you’re good with coming up with alternative phrases for things.
Sam: Did you get this feeling at Duke? Being around old things that have lasted for a long time?
Shaan: I know exactly what you mean. There’s definitely a vibe when you’re at something that is not just bigger than yourself but sort of timeless. The problem with Duke and other Southern schools is you’re like, “Oh wow, what is this?” And it’s like, “This is the slave wall.” Or, “What’s the name of this road?” “This is Tobacco Road, we had tobacco plantations.” Everything has sort of a dark side to a lot of the history. But the rest of it — I used to go to the chapel in the center of Duke’s campus all the time, even though I’m not religious. Just the aura. The vibe of a church is kind of unmatched.
Sam: Here’s why I love Silicon Valley and why I love old stuff — it’s kind of similar. I love thinking about things we take for granted. Buildings that have been there for a long time, or really large ones. Streets. Institutions like Yale. And I’m like, “How did someone create something that became such an institution that we take it for granted and don’t even reflect on how it became a thing?”
Silicon Valley is cool because ideally the outcome is that you are creating something in real time that will become an institution — like Airbnb, like Google, where it becomes a verb. You get to see that happening. And then also going and seeing the old stuff — this is how it’s done.
We just had Gary Tan on — don’t you think that YC should have a campus? This sort of Gothic, old-school institutional vibe? And even if they’re not going to do it, why wouldn’t I just go create a campus — a small micro-campus for YC people? Free room and board, free healthy food, and all I do is just cherry-pick investments from people on campus. I just get to invest in their companies.
Shaan: Or even just a museum. Have you ever heard of the Museum of American Finance? It’s in New York City, it’s a museum for the history of finance. If you look at a photo, it shows what stock tickers used to look like, and people would stand there and trade in the 1800s, and then it switched to phones, and it tells the history. It’s in downtown Manhattan.
Sam: That’s cool. I like that.
Shaan: Dude, this is a fun episode.
Sam: Yeah, that was a banger. All right — that’s it. That’s the pod.