#129 - Why Elon Musk Is the Greatest Dropshipper and A Low Key Company Making Millions From Politics

**Sam Parr** (0:00)
All right, everyone, we have a quick ad for HubSpot. But I want to let you know, I actually use HubSpot and I use their sales tool, which is what this ad is for. HubSpot sales platform, it makes it just easier to sell stuff, to do it faster, to look at your pipeline, to see what sales are going to happen, just prospect to cold outreach and get more customers faster and easier. Plus, it's easy to learn and free to start. So you guys can check it out, hubspot.com/sales.

**Shaan Puri** (0:45)
I don't wanna hide it. You look like you're in a phone booth or something.

**Sam Parr** (0:52)
Where are you? We have, so there's this office there. You can see how big it is. That's me touching it.
And so I'm setting up a little studio in there.

**Shaan Puri** (1:04)
Okay, great.
I don't know why I was asking where you are to start the episode. It's probably the most boring way to start an episode.

**Sam Parr** (1:10)
I'm gonna be in Austin for a while.

**Shaan Puri** (1:12)
Okay, fair enough. We have a bunch of topics because we have a bunch of things on this list and I did prep. So I'm doing 30 minutes of prep for every podcast now. You will notice the difference. The listeners will notice the difference.
Yeah, pick one of these things on this list and I'll talk about it.

**Sam Parr** (1:32)
Let's do Spy Guy.

**Shaan Puri** (1:34)
Spy Guy, okay. So I don't remember. Have we talked about Spy Guy on the pod before?

**Sam Parr** (1:38)
No, but I know him, Alan.

**Shaan Puri** (1:41)
Yeah, so I was DMing him just before this actually as well. I was like, yo, I'm gonna shout you out on the podcast probably.
So what is Spy Guy? So Spy Guy is, if you go to spyguy.com, it's a website that basically sells like spy gear or like anti-spy gear also. So like if you go to the website right now, the first thing on the site is like this little tool that will help you detect hidden cameras in your hotel room or your Airbnb, which is kind of creepy, but surprisingly just like is a problem. There was a famous Airbnb thing that came out not long ago. Some girl found a hidden camera in her Airbnb where the host was creepily like filming her.
And so Spy Guy basically is a niche e-commerce site started by this guy, Alan, and he just really owns this niche. And so I thought this was awesome because it's a seven-figure store. So I think he's doing over 3 million top line revenue now. So probably about a million bucks of profit a year. And he's been at it for a while, like initially got started in the space in like 2009 So it's been like over 10 years.
2014, he basically found Four-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss and was like, oh, okay, I need to like systematize this. And like, this can be my muse. This is my cashflow thing. And like got like reinvigorated by that and had a little more strategy behind it. And it started to take off. And it's very different than I would say most e-commerce things because A, it's this niche that most people don't think about. B, I love the name. C, he doesn't use Facebook to drive traffic. So he's basically like, Facebook has never worked for me.
Not because it can't work, like it just hasn't worked and the business has worked despite it.
But he's like, we haven't quite gotten cold traffic to work on Facebook yet. So I think it's mostly Google and word of mouth of people knowing the spy guy name.

**Sam Parr** (3:32)
What does spy guy do exactly? Can you explain to me?

**Shaan Puri** (3:34)
He basically sells other people's products. So he sells things like audio surveillance, hidden cameras, bug detection, hidden camera detection, stuff for your car. Let's say there's a use case. So I think there's one smart thing on the website where he says like shop by concern.
So what's your concern? Is your concern workplace harassment or watching the babysitter to see if they're doing a good job with the baby or tracking your car in case or tracking somebody else's car in case you want to see where they're going.
And so it's gadgets that are for these, like wannabe James Bond use cases, right? Like it's like having your own little Alfred and your Batman and you get to have these little gadgets that help you do cool shit.

**Sam Parr** (4:16)
Do you have a security system at home?