4 dumb ideas that made people rich

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:32)
All right, let's hear it.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:34)
All right, 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?

**SPEAKER_3** (1:11)
Yeah, cheese heads.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:12)
Cheese heads. So, what do the Bears fans wear?

**SPEAKER_3** (1:16)
I don't know. Helmets?

**SPEAKER_1** (1:18)
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 gonna shred the cheese heads. And I'm like, this is really smart. So, I'm starting to look at it. 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 create this thing. And they had actually, for 15 years, they had just for fun been making fun party hats. I think for their own daughters' 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 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 trucking along. They got on Shark Tank and they gave up 25% of their company for 100 grand, right? So like, you know, this deal with Mark Cuban. Yeah. And you know, birthdays, wedding, corporate events, 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 at 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 Parr was into football energy a little bit. He's basically this young coach who's supposed to be really, really smart. He's super like ripped. So every time in the post game, 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 this wide receiver, DJ Moore. He's wearing the hat. And so he's wearing this.
This guy DJ Moore and he starts danc- The whole team starts chanting go DJ, go DJ. There's a Lil Wayne song. He starts dancing. This clip goes viral, right? 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 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 cutters, like the same things over and over again. But with social media, the teams now have little like trends, little meme moments. And if you could fast follow those meme moments and create stuff that's gonna 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.