Chapter 1: What are the dumb ideas that made people rich?
Sam, I have a list of what I'm calling dumb ideas that made a million dollars. These are obscure lists that really only people like you and me would ever even keep.
But I have a list of dumb ideas that actually worked.
I say dumb not because I think they're dumb. I actually think they're genius because I think being clever and doing simple things is actually a form of genius. But I think other people would call these dumb ideas. So I want to run through them with you, and I want you to give me your reaction to each one. All right. Let's hear it. All right.
Chapter 2: How did foam party hats become a viral business?
First one came up. I was watching the NFL playoffs, which were on this weekend. I don't know if you've paid any attention, but the Chicago Bears, who have sucked for a long time, are in the playoffs. And Chicago has this rival, the Green Bay Packers. And the Packers have been great for a long time, and the Bears have sucked for a very long time.
And so it's kind of a rivalry just by location, but they're not really close rivals. And so I'm watching the game and I look and in the crowd, I just see a ton of people wearing, like, I don't know how much you know about football, but do you know what the Packers fans wear on their head? Yeah, cheese heads.
Chapter 3: What is the story behind the International Star Registry?
Cheese heads. So what do the Bears fans wear? I don't know, helmets? Cheese graters. And so I see all these fans wearing this like silver cheese grater hat. And I'm like, oh, that's clever. Like we're about to shred the Green Bay Packers. We're going to shred the cheese heads.
Chapter 4: How did the 10-hour fireplace video become popular?
And I'm like, this is really smart. So I started looking, what's the story behind this? And the story behind this is kind of crazy. So if you go to foampartyhats.com,
this business started in 2017 so grace rojas and her son manuel rojas they they create this thing and they had actually for like you know 15 years they had just for fun been making like fun party hats like i think for their own daughters like party they made fun party hats for all the guests people loved it and they kind of gave it up and then they moved and then they like started again and they're like we're gonna make these foam hats for special events parties occasions and sports
And so they've been kind of like trucking along. They got on Shark Tank and they gave up 25% of their company for 100 grand, right? Did they really? Yeah. And, you know, birthdays, wedding, corporate events.
Chapter 5: What lessons can we learn from not getting bored of greatness?
They had all these like novelty hats. And then came the boom. So this greater head thing has just taken off and become this like viral frenzy. So like basically the Bears, they have this coach. I don't know if you've seen this guy, Ben Johnson. He's kind of got, like, if Sam Palmer's into football energy a little bit.
Chapter 6: How can feedback be perceived as a gift?
He's basically this young coach who's supposed to be really, really smart. He's super, like, ripped. So every time in the postgame, he'll, like, in the locker room, he just, like, rips off his shirt, which, like, most of the old, like, 70-year-old coaches would never do. And he gets his team, like, really fired up. But he gives the game ball to this guy who comes out.
And I don't know if you can see this, but he's getting this wide receiver, DJ Moore. He's wearing the hat. And so he's wearing this. This guy, DJ Moore, and he starts dancing. The whole team starts chanting, go DJ, go DJ. There's a Lil Wayne song. He starts dancing. This clip goes viral, right?
Chapter 7: Who is John Catsimatidis and what is his impact?
This has 2.2 million views. And suddenly, these hats are flying off the shelves. And they do like 10,000 orders in a week, which is like half a million dollars in a week. They have this huge wait list now, this huge backlog, because they make these by hand, apparently. And this idea of...
Chapter 8: What was the experience of taking a child to a basketball game?
like team specific novelty merch. Because like sports fans, like when I went to that Warriors game, I walked out, I bought my son a jersey, a little ball, but it's like all so like vanilla. It's all cookie cutter. It's like the same things over and over again. But with social media, Teams now have little like trends, little meme moments.
And if you can fast follow those meme moments and create stuff that's going to like kind of make somebody laugh or be worth sharing on social media, you can actually get a lot of spread. And so that's what this company has been doing with these hats and going viral. So they've built basically a million dollar plus business now off of these like novelty foam hats. Isn't that wild? Yeah.
They do a really good job of making me into the story. It looks like it's a Hispanic family and looks like the son is kind of the CEO and the mom is one who is the brains and kind of came up with the idea and originally made it. It looks pretty awesome. Yeah, but I think if somebody takes this idea... There was another company, like a t-shirt company, I can't remember the name, but...
They were doing this for sports teams where they realized like the dropshipping infrastructure has become so good that if anything happens in the game, like last night, within an hour after the game, they can have the store up for that product, for that slogan, for that thing. Linsanity happens in New York and then they go, they have like the Linsanity like line ready to go.
And so I forgot what the name of this company is, but they're basically like, rapidly, like much faster, like orders of magnitude faster than the typical like merch industry, creating team-specific, moment-specific merch. And I just think that's like a, it's not the best business, not a business I would want to be in, but it is like a simple man's business.
Like anybody can understand what they're doing and be able to like try to replicate that. And if you niche down, even all the way, forget t-shirts, like, to giant oversized foam hats. It's like there's a million dollar business sitting in oversized foam hats, which is pretty wild. All right, ready for the next one? Yeah, that was a quotable last line.
There's a million dollar business sitting in an oversized foam hat. All right. So a lot of people watch and listen to the show because they want to hear us just tell them exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business. And really, a lot of people who are listening, they have a full-time job and they want to start something on the side, a side hustle.
Now, a lot of people message Sean and I and they say, all right, I want to start something on the side. Is this a good idea? Is that a good idea? And again, what they're really just saying is just give me the ideas. Well, my friends... you're in luck. So my old company, The Hustle, they put together 100 different side hustle ideas.
And they have appropriately called it the side hustle idea database. It's a list of 100 pretty good ideas. Frankly, I went through them. They're awesome. And it gives you how to start them, how to grow them, things like that gives you a little bit of inspiration. So check it out. It's called the side hustle idea database. It's in the description below. You'll see the link, click it, check it out.
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