Million $ Quilting Empire, Babyville, USA, And Rapid Fire Business Ideas

**Shaan Puri** (0:00)
It started off simple. So he was like, I need a building where they had like kind of a warehouse or production. So he bought one building. Okay, I'll grew that, bought a second building.
And he's from this very small town, Hamilton, Missouri, I think it is.
And so, he buys two buildings, and then at some point, they kind of realize, all right, why do this with nameless, faceless warehouses? What if we could turn this into content or marketing? Like the YouTube channel's working. So what if we do kind of YouTube behind the scenes, and what if we make this more interesting? So instead of just buying two warehouses and then just operating in stealth, what if we just bought all this land and we bought all the buildings that are in this area and we turn this into a tourist destination, a vacation, basically. So like, it's a themed town in the middle of nowhere, but it's like the quilting mecca, or like the people call it the Disneyland for quilters. And there's like 12, like Main Street is all about quilts. This is like quilt shop, quilt shop, quilt shop.
All right, what up, we got Ben Levy here. Sam is out today, but my business partner, Ben. So we got producer Ben, who's Ben Wilson, and then we got business partner, Ben, Ben Levy. And Ben is here today. We got a bunch of topics that we want to talk about, but first, welcome to the pod.

**Ben Levy** (1:22)
Yo, what's up, Sean? How's it going, man?

**Shaan Puri** (1:25)
I'm good. Your dad, who's a regular listener, is gonna be pleased, cause he's gonna hear you on here. And I'm sure he always sends you like a huge text message of notes every time you come on, is that right?

**Ben Levy** (1:35)
Yeah, it's more like six emails. He'll be like, hey, did you hear Sean say this thing? Or did you hear Sam say this? Or Su-We say this? And I'm like, love the notes, dad.

**Shaan Puri** (1:46)
So you were just in San Francisco last week, and we did a bunch of meetings, we hung out, worked a bunch, and then we hosted a meetup, we hosted a private dinner. I wanted to start with that. So I wanted to start with, give me as many nuggets of interesting things that came up, people you met, stories you heard, products you heard about, whatever you got from your trip to San Francisco. I'll let you take it away.

**Ben Levy** (2:13)
Yeah, so the first thing that comes to mind is one, San Francisco is awesome, but two, went to the Warriors game. So we went to the Warriors game on last Monday with this guy named Al Doan. I think he's been on the pod about nine months ago.
So for people that don't know, Al is the founder of a quilt company. And he said one thing, Sean, I'm sure you could talk more about Al, but I think the one thing that he said that was pretty interesting.

**Shaan Puri** (2:37)
By the way, Ben just said quilt. So, because you said it in passing, I think people wouldn't even register what you just said.
It actually, the way we met Al was pretty interesting. Patrick Campbell came on the pod and Patrick Campbell runs like a, he had ProfitWell, which does like SaaS payments, analytics, and all that good shit. So, he has data on what companies are crushing it in terms of their subscribers and their payments. And he had told us that quilting is a huge niche. And he came on the pod, he mentioned quilting, and from that we found Al Doan, who basically runs a multi-hundred million dollar quilting business that he co-founded with his mom.
So, that's the set up, but continue.

**Ben Levy** (3:23)
Yeah, I think his mom and his four brothers and sisters, so it's a family affair. So, we hung out with him. The last time we hung out with him was Camp MFM. And I think Al's an interesting dude. One, he's like six, seven, so he skies over you. Every time I see him, I think he could have played in the NBA.
But he said one thing that really, one, his business is doing great, but two, the thing that he said that really raised an eyebrow for me was he's in the Harvard Executive NBA program.
So most people, when I hear the word NBA, I think immediately that it's stupid. I just think it's a waste of money and you should go build something instead of building an NBA. But he was like, yeah, I just hung out with the air of Crystal Geyser water. So the place where the water, basically every water bottle you ever see in the airport or convenience store. And Shaan and I were both like, wait, how do you know them?