Every Business I Tried Before Making My First Million

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
All right, everyone, on this podcast, we talk a lot about the successes, but I want to talk about the failures. So here's about 10 different companies that I started before I made my first million. Almost all of them, they sucked, it didn't work. But I'm gonna explain how much I made for each idea and the lesson that I learned.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:16)
I know I could be what I want to. All right, what's up, Sam?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:24)
What's going on?

**SPEAKER_2** (0:25)
Let's set this up. Name of this podcast, My First Million. When did you make your first million?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:28)
So, cash, like cash million. I made it when my wife worked at Airbnb and it went public. And that's when we made our first. And then about three months later, I think it went later in December. My company sold in February and then we made a lot. Leading up to that, we were doing pretty good too, but I don't think we had crossed one million.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:45)
Okay, so you made your first million, let's call it 31 years old. Here's all the businesses you tried before that, before making your first million, which I think is pretty fascinating. I want to go down this list. Does it start in high school?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:57)
Yeah.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:58)
All right, go for it. Give me number one.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:59)
In high school, I made $2,500 one summer by buying graduating seniors' old sports equipment and selling it on eBay. And so what I used to do is I would just buy people's track spikes or whatever, and I would sell it on eBay. And most of the time, I didn't buy it. They would just give it to me. They would hand it to me. And on eBay, I made $2,500. So that was my first business where I actually started making online money.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:20)
And this is flipping, basically. This is flipping assets that other people not only undervalue, they might even not value it to the point where they're just happy you took it off their hands.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:31)
Yeah, and frankly, I did this in college, too, which I didn't list here, is when at the end of the college year, I would stay a few weeks after the end of the school year. And when people were moving out, I said, I have a storage unit. You can come and put it here and just give it to me. You're gonna throw it away. Just give it to me. And then I would resell it.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:46)
Exactly. I saw people doing this in college with textbooks. They would just say, oh, at the end of the year, you don't wanna take all these heavy textbooks home. You're done with that class. Well, guess what? The next semester, there's a bunch of people that are gonna need that exact textbook that we're happy to buy it used. And so they would just go buy up people's tech. They would just take people's textbooks and each book was like a $40 or $50 future sale that they were able to pick up for free.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:07)
Okay. And then at 20, I started a hot dog stand, which everyone makes fun of me for talking about. I have a hot dog stand. You have a sushi restaurant. They're sick of us talking about it. But I had one called Southern Sam's. Weiner's as big as a baby's arm. Basically, I knew a guy named Doc who had a hot dog stand. He let me rent it from him with very little money up front.
I was able to pay him on the 30th as opposed to the first of the month, so he hooked me up. With $500, I went to Restaurant Depot and I bought a bunch of Vienna sausages to get my supply. I was in business, baby, within a week of having this idea. I used to live in a bad neighborhood. Rydell was my next-door neighbor and he became my best friend. He had served 20 years in prison for attempted murder, and somehow we became best friends. He had the spare key to my house. This was my guy. Rydell ended up working with me at Southern Sam's, and we spent all day outside, and it was a pain in the butt. Some days, I would make 50 bucks. Other days, I would go to a concert or an outdoor place that was popping, and I would make $1,000. I did that when I was about 20 or 21

**SPEAKER_2** (3:01)
This is summer in college? What were you doing?

**SPEAKER_1** (3:03)
I was in college. I was in class, and so I would work until 3 PM. I would go to classes from 3 PM into 8 PM, and then I had a night session where I was out by all the bars, and that would be 9 PM to 1 AM.