The Wild Story Of ‘Mr. Tull’ - From Laundromats To $3.5B Hollywood Production Company

**Sam Parr** (0:00)
Really, here's the hook. Okay, so this is my Billy of The Week.
We used to have a Billy of The Week theme song. I don't know if we still have. We should dig one up, or get AI to make a Billy of The Week jingle for us.

**Shaan Puri** (0:17)
A billion dollars.

**Sam Parr** (0:20)
Okay, so let me tell you how I got hooked on this. I read the story in the information, and I don't really read the information normally.
In fact, I can't read, I don't pay for the information, but you know, like, it gives you the preview, and then it starts to fade.

**Shaan Puri** (0:32)
You're saying, by the way, theinformation.com. Yeah, and it fades, it totally gets you hooked.

**Sam Parr** (0:38)
It gets me hooked, but I'm reading the fading part, and as it's fading away, there's a line that just caught my attention. It goes, it's like, residents of this small town in Idaho were complaining because suddenly dozens of private jets were suddenly flying into this private airport, and basically armored vehicles were showing up, and they're wondering what is going on. They called the mayor, and they're like, did something happen? And they're like, oh, it's just Thomas Tull.

**Shaan Puri** (1:04)
Who's that?

**Sam Parr** (1:06)
Exactly. Who's that? And then it faded out, and I was like, oh, I have to ask my friend who's got an information account to bootleg me a copy of this story, and so he did.

**Shaan Puri** (1:15)
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**Sam Parr** (2:24)
So this guy is, I think, kind of a legend. He is a stealthy billionaire. He starts off his career in laundromats. Shout out to Codie Sanchez.
Then shifts to auto repair shops, then shifts to buying small accounting practices and does basically a roll-up, and ends up with 500 worldwide locations for his accounting thing. I put it all under one banner like American Financial Services or some shit like that.

**Shaan Puri** (2:53)
And no private equity background, just like a blue collar.

**Sam Parr** (2:57)
He first was blue collar. Then at some point, he did have a stint in private equity. He learned a little bit about the private equity business, either as an internship or something else.
But I'm pretty sure he quit college or just like was moonlighting while he's at college doing the laundromat thing.
Grows up, single mom, doesn't have a lot of money. So he's basically like, I need to fill a need. So he's like, okay, I'll start with laundromats. Okay, this is not a very good business, but gets me going. And the whole time he's kind of a data nerd. So even with the laundromat business, he starts buying these washing machines that can do surge pricing. So it's like when there's more demand, the cost goes up.
He's like, why wouldn't it do that? All the rush comes in at one period of time. That's why I need to make money. And so he's a little bit of a data nerd. And he ends up becoming famous because he takes that same data philosophy and he applies it to a business that never had it, which is the movie business. And so he does what's called Moneyball for movies. So the Moneyball strategy that was famous in baseball to find undervalued assets and to build a team, construct a team with using data as an edge rather than these old school scouts that are spitting sunflower seeds and looking at a prospect and being like, I like his ass. He's got something. I always trust a guy with a big ass. It's like, what are you talking about?