Episode #205 covers a range of business ideas: buying lottery tickets online via a TaskRabbit model, the NCAA NIL rule change and compliance software opportunity, Scooter Braun’s origin story, tech addiction apps, a chrome extension that pays users for browsing, and mug shot websites as a business. Sam and Shaan also riff on the “am I paying you or are you paying me?” mindset shift and why college is the ultimate side hustle playground.
Speakers: Shaan Puri (host), Sam Parr (host)
Opening: Lottery Tickets Online [00:00:00]
Sam: All right, I have a lot of stuff to cover. I got lottery tickets, I got mug shots, I got the athletic stuff.
Actually, let’s do lottery tickets first, and then I want to do the athletic stuff because you talked about that.
So I just talked to this guy — I don’t think I’m going to do anything with it, I don’t know yet — but I thought it was really amazing.
This company I’m going to tell you about deals with the Powerball and lotteries. My stance on it is I’m personally not in favor of it — I’m not on board — but I thought it was fascinating. There are two companies in this space.
The way it works normally: there’s two major lotteries — Powerball and Mega Millions — and then each state has a state lottery. You go to 7-Eleven, you go wherever, you buy a ticket.
So this company I just started talking to, they’re called Slips. Have you heard of them?
Shaan: I talked about them a few months ago on the show.
Sam: I didn’t remember. Okay, but you explain it better. How does it work?
Shaan: Basically, a lot of people play the lottery. You typically go to a 7-Eleven or a gas station. What these guys did was let you play the lottery from your phone — legally. Here’s how: wherever you are, you say “I’d like to buy a lottery ticket,” and they physically send somebody to a gas station to buy it for you. Like a TaskRabbit that goes buy the ticket in person. You can’t actually buy lottery tickets online, but you can pay somebody to go buy the ticket and then they give it to you — they take a photo, they sort of custody it online.
I think they simplified it even further where they just paid the guy at the gas station to be the TaskRabbit. When this thing rings, that’s somebody paying you to buy a lottery ticket. You pay a little premium on top — like 25 cents or a dollar — it’s not a huge amount of money, so people don’t care. It’s more convenient. You can get a push notification that says “The lottery is $200 million today, would you like a ticket?” and you just say yes. Low friction.
Sam: That’s brilliant. That’s the easiest possible solution.
Shaan: The main pro: this business is gonna get big fast. There are some cons too. You’d have similar customer acquisition dynamics as a mobile game — super aggressive, and if Facebook or Google bans you, you’re done. That’s the big risk.
Also, I’ve been looking at this for years — how would you bring the lottery online? I’ve talked to many people who claimed they could do it legally, and it wasn’t actually legal, or it was only legal in one state. So this is an example of: rule change equals opportunity. I’ve been keeping an eye out for rule changes, and that’s kind of a theme.
NCAA NIL: The Rule Change Opportunity [00:08:00]
Sam: Speaking of rule changes — NIL. Name, image, and likeness for college athletes. Did you see this article that went viral about the Alabama kid who hasn’t even thrown a pass, but supposedly had a million bucks in revenue booked for the year?
Shaan: The funny thing is, Coach Nick Saban came out and kind of said it himself. He’s like, “Our freshman quarterback has made seven figures. His teammates aren’t making that money.” It creates an awkward dynamic.
There are really three reactions to this. One: okay, maybe there’s some truth to that. Two: for years, people like Nick Saban have made tens of millions of dollars coaching, while the players played for free — and now that they’re making a buck, you have a problem with it? And three: the super strategic version — Saban added a line saying, “He’s making all this money because of our brand, because he’s the quarterback at Alabama.” And that became a recruiting pitch at the same time. He was fake-being outraged while actually dog-whistling to every high school athlete out there: come to Alabama, the checks are big. All the other coaches were mad at him. The media was mad at him. I loved it. A master stroke.
Sam: What I did was contact some folks in the compliance industry at schools. They said schools are explicitly banned from facilitating any deals for athletes. The school can’t be the middleman.
But they have to be in the loop about what you’re doing. The school will have to pay for compliance software — which is why you should build a tool with transparency, visibility, reporting, payments infrastructure. Because the schools will have to pay, and once they pay, they’re locked in. You’ll be the system of record for how athletes are making money.
Here’s why this gets complicated. Do you know American Top Team? The MMA gym in Florida?
Shaan: Yeah.
Sam: They offered $500 a month to Miami’s entire 90-scholarship football players to advertise their gym on social media. That’s $540,000. But the contract states they must advertise over social media — and if any of the 90 athletes fail to post, technically that’s pay-for-play, not an NIL deal, and it’s a major NCAA violation.
Shaan: I wonder if somebody can also build the other side — build the independent police task force that monitors this stuff, finds potential violations, and sells that visibility back to the schools. “Hey, we found some athletes out of compliance.” You diagnose the problem, then sell them the prescription.
Sam: When I talked about this before, did companies reach out?
Shaan: They didn’t reach out — they go, “Bro, we’re already doing this.”
Sam: In these markets, it’s whoever builds the first simple useful thing that gets a ton of adoption. Then it’s a race between the people trying to build the big comprehensive thing and the group that got early adoption trying to add more thorough features. Whoever gets there first wins. I like betting on the founders who said, “Here’s a simple thing we can get in the hands of every school right now, even if we give it away for free, just to get them hooked into our system.”
Sports Agents and the NIL Hustle [00:18:00]
Shaan: I do have an idea around this. Are you familiar with how sports agents make their money?
Sam: No.
Shaan: If I’m an agent for an NBA player, I’m going to take roughly 2 to 3% of the contract value. A max guy might make $40 million a year. If you have two guys — a max player and his buddy who’s a mid-level player — say $50 million a year combined, you make 2%, which is a million dollars a year as an agent.
It is an absolutely cutthroat, ruthless business. A lot of backstabbing, stealing each other’s clients, some shady stuff. But a few friends of Ben’s run an agency with three people, and their athletes under contract bring in about $3 million total a year in fees. The main agent is probably banking $2.5 million himself. The other $500K goes to operations and paying the other two.
The opportunity with NIL is: I think this is going to breed a whole new set of college hustlers who become sports agents. If I’m a player at a school, I’m a guy in the same dorm. I can go hustle. I can go to the local car dealership and say, “How much would you pay this player to be on your billboard? He’s a big name in this college town.” You get him $1,500, he just has to say yes and take a photo. Do that three more times and you’re basically this guy’s business manager within two months of being in college.
There’s some kid who’s the next Ari Gold sitting on Kentucky’s campus or Alabama’s campus who’s going to end up worth $50 to $100 million, and they’re going to get their start by selling NIL deals for local players.
Sam: That’s what a lot of people did with music. You know, Scooter Braun started that way.
Scooter Braun’s Origin Story [00:25:00]
Shaan: If you don’t know who Scooter Braun is — he’s most famous for being Justin Bieber’s manager, but he also managed Ariana Grande and a few other people. He’s only 35, 36 — very young. He recently sold his company Ithaca Holdings to HYBE — the Korean entertainment conglomerate that owns the rights to BTS — for about $1.05 billion.
He got his start out of Emory University. As a sophomore, he started throwing parties. In doing so, he met Jermaine Dupri’s mom. He started working in the music industry, bringing kids to college parties as a club promoter.
When he was 22 he had a little bit of money saved — less than $100K — and he found this kid on YouTube who was 7, 8, 9 years old, playing guitar and singing. Scooter goes, “This kid’s gonna be a winner.” He flies the kid and his mom down to Atlanta. He says, “I want to manage you.” The kid says, “I don’t have a career.” He goes, “You’re going to be a superstar one day.”
That was Justin Bieber. And he made tens of millions of dollars off that, then recently made a billion-plus from selling his company.
Sam: How do you feel now that you didn’t know about this?
Shaan: I feel great. I love it.
Anyway, he got started in college promoting. And by the way — one thing I want to say:
Sam: I have one regret — I did not hustle in college. I had tiny little schemes. I was a schemer, but I was a goldfish-guppy schemer back then. I was trying to figure out how to win the McDonald’s Monopoly game. Thinking small.
But now that I think about it — college is this four-year playground with a whole bunch of potential co-founders all around you, potential customers all around you, nothing but free time, nothing but energy. No mortgage. Nothing. It’s paid for. It’s a giant summer camp. That was the time to take some shots.
Shaan: If you’re listening to this and you know someone in college, send them this clip. It’s also the time to get drunk, hook up, try on different hats, explore yourself. I’m not saying become successful — I’m saying take some shots. Hustle a little bit. The way I prioritized things was dumb: sleep first, class second, friends third. I thought college was about the classes, and college is obviously almost not about the classes at all.
Tech Addiction Apps [00:38:00]
Shaan: All right, let me tell you about this quick thing. So back to the app — the main app that’s blowing up for this company is called BlockerX. You go on your phone and basically set it to disable your ability to go to adult sites, either on a timer or permanently. Blocking these sites is actually not that easy — you want to be able to block them without blocking other sites accidentally and without letting you get through.
So they have this combination of things: a community of peers like Alcoholics Anonymous, a blocker tool, and gamification — a streak or points for continuing.
I thought this was kind of interesting: if people are right that social media is the new smoking — that this overload of digital news and information is making us unhappy and lonely — isn’t somebody going to build the AAA equivalent for that?
Sam: Actually, I use a site like this. Not for that, but for Facebook and Twitter. If I go to Twitter right now it says “Shouldn’t you be busy working?” It’s called StayFocusd — it’s a Google Chrome extension. I love it.
According to StayFocusd, they have roughly 600,000 users. But the biggest player in this space is called Block Site. How many users does that have?
Shaan: One million-plus users. That’s crazy. Chrome extensions are not mainstream or easy to install, so if a Chrome extension has a million users, that is strong validation of demand.
Sam: What’s the company called? I’m looking it up. Altmana? Their name’s not the best.
Shaan: They used to be called Fun Switch Technologies. When I heard that name — Fun Switch — I went to their LinkedIn. It says: “Mobile first solution aimed at helping millennials overcome digital addictions.” It started as a Chrome-type plugin and they spun it to focus on the addiction thing because they saw that was the bigger market.
The Chrome Extension That Pays You [00:48:00]
Shaan: Okay, I had this idea while I was laying in bed this morning. My trainer has me do this exercise — kind of a kegel for my brain — where you spend two minutes imagining your day going the way you want. I was doing it this morning imagining this podcast going great, imagining you saying “that’s a great idea,” and then an actual great idea came to my brain within like 20 seconds.
Here it is: a chrome extension that pays you for the sites you go to.
Why would a Chrome extension pay you to visit a website? Well, websites want traffic. I have an ecommerce store — I know a visitor is worth maybe $3 to $5 based on my conversion rate and average order value. So I’d be willing to pay a dollar for you to come visit my site.
Imagine: you install the Chrome extension, it tells you — “Hey, ESPN will pay you 30 cents to go to their website. Reddit will pay you 20 cents. That pet store you buy from will pay you a dollar to come visit.” You click the button, you go there, you have to be there for 30 to 60 seconds, and then you unlock the bounty, which goes into a little piggy bank icon in your browser.
On one side you get brands buying traffic through a Chrome extension, with the money going to the user. The user visits the site — they’ve bought their attention, they may see something new, they may convert.
Now here’s the interesting part. Let’s say my wife is a big shopper — her traffic is worth a lot more than mine because I barely spend. How does the extension know what to bid? It sits in your browser, sees how much you spend, what sites you go to, creates a value score for you. It knows what you’re worth.
The second part: let’s say I’m a news website. News websites always wanted this micro-payment thing — they want me to subscribe for $10.99 a month, but I don’t want that. I would pay like 4 cents per article. If you first did the piggy bank thing — letting users get paid — then you could go to publishers and say: pay-wall this for 2 cents using that same plugin. We have 6 million members whose piggy banks have money in them — they can make tiny micro-payments on their favorite sites without ever putting in a credit card.
Sam: I believe you — that this idea’s been tried. If I wanted to open up my browser and see offers to make money by going to websites, there’s the Penny Hoarder, kind of like that. They’d show all the latest deals and make money by sending people there via affiliate.
There’s also this guy Dan — one of our friends invested in him — and it’s called Current Mobile. Similar promise: you get paid for browsing the internet passively. I’m almost positive it was the number one app in the App Store for like a very short time. He raised like $40 million through an ICO. But it sounds like it’s not exactly crushing it now.
Shaan: The Brave browser also has a similar idea — the Basic Attention Token. You earn it by going to sites, advertisers buy the token to get your attention. Brave has like 10 million users or something.
Sam: Yeah, this is a great idea — you’re just suggesting it on Chrome.
Shaan: Exactly. Like Honey — Honey is the Chrome extension that says, “You’re shopping online, we’ll tell you when there’s a discount or coupon.” They then started adding ad slots. I think you could build a pretty interesting business doing this. You’d be changing the way the internet works.
The “Who’s Paying Whom” Mindset [00:58:00]
Shaan: Let me tell you this quick story I heard about Earl Nightingale. He was around in the ’40s and ’50s — a radio host and business thinker, kind of the Tony Robbins of his day.
He told a story about how he went to a farmer’s house right when phones were first being created. He was at this farmer’s house when the phone started ringing and ringing. Earl was looking at the farmer, and the farmer just kept having a normal conversation with him. The phone went away, then started ringing again. Earl finally goes, “Hey, your phone’s been going off — aren’t you going to answer it?” And the farmer goes, “Why would I answer that?” Earl says, “Well, someone’s calling you.” And the farmer says, “Sir, I installed this phone in here for my convenience — not theirs.”
That’s now how I feel about my phone. This is here for me, not for anyone else.
Similarly, I picked up a phrase from my brother-in-law. I was talking to him about my tax accountant and how I run that relationship. He goes, “Are they paying you or are you paying them?” I said, “I’m paying them.” He goes, “Okay, so we’re going to do this a certain way. If I’m paying you, then you’re going to do it my way. If you’re paying me, we’ll do it your way.”
He goes, “So many times you see people who pay someone for a service and then cater to that person as if they’re being paid by them.”
I started using this like 10 or 15 times over the last two months — just reminding myself: what is the arrangement here? Person from the bank is calling me. Hold on — do I work for you, or do you work for me? Let me remember. Okay, now I remember. Let’s do it this way.
It fights my “nice guy who gets pushed around” instincts.
Mug Shot Websites as a Business [01:05:00]
Sam: Okay, mug shots. How do these websites make money? Why are they posting mug shots online? Is it scummy or is it legitimate?
So mug shots are public records. Once you’re arrested, your mugshot is public information. These companies go and aggregate that data and put it online. They show up in search results when someone Googles your name.
Here’s the business model: you can pay to have your mug shot removed. So a company aggregates thousands of mug shots, and if you want yours taken down, you pay. Some sites charge hundreds of dollars to have it removed.
Shaan: So they’re essentially creating the problem and selling the solution?
Sam: Essentially. They get traffic from people searching these names, sell ads against that traffic, and also sell the removal service. It’s a weird two-sided business. Morally gray, but technically legal since it’s all public record.
Shaan: The question is: is this like a rite of passage where you just have to accept that someone dug up your mugshot and pay to remove it? Or is this predatory behavior that should be regulated?
Sam: I think it’ll eventually get regulated. But until then, it’s a real business. The arbitrage is: public information, massive search demand, and people who really, really want their name off those sites.