$1M By 19, $100M+ By 35 -- Here's How He Did It

Sam Parr (@theSamParr) sits down with Val Katayev (@ValKatayev) to talk about how he got his start making millions from a ringtone business, why he's currently launching a startup in the jewelry industry, what has fueled him to greatness along the way, and much more. ----- * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. ----- Show Notes: (00:23) - Val going viral on Twitter (1:35) - How he got his start (19:15) - How he builds launches new products (37:40) - Are you driven by money? (42:30) - How Sam accidentally exposed Val ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  It was strange. I was pulling up to my university or to the college and I would pull up in a I would pull up in like a drop top Lexus, like a $70,000 car and I was like 19, right?

• 0:23Sam Parr?

  Dude, so Val, Sean, he's not making it today, but that's okay. We, um, so your thing went viral today. How many likes did you get? Like 3,000, 3,300?

• 0:36Speaker 00

  Something like that. I had to turn off my notifications. I can't do when you work with, I don't know how you guys do it. I don't know how people do it while running full businesses, but I had to turn that off because I just can't concentrate. That thing just, my phone was just blowing up all day.

• 0:48Sam Parr?

  Now you know how I feel. It is crazy, right? It's crazy. So you, you had 3,000 followers and now you have like nine, maybe 9,000?

• 0:56Speaker 00

  Something like that, yeah. I mean, it took me how many years to get up to like 2,700?

• 1:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, now it's, I don't know. I didn't look to be honest with you, but I'm probably at like 8, 9,000 at this point.

• 1:09Sam Parr?

  So, all right, the background here is I met you through my, like, we, we share like a best friend, Joe, and Joe told me about you. He goes, "This guy's crazy." And so, Val, let me tell you what I know about you and you tell me if it's right or wrong and then I want to hear your story. But basically, he goes, "And I'll, I won't reveal too many numbers. I'll let you talk about any number that you want to talk about, because I don't know if what I know is confidential or not. So I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna mention them. But you, as a 19-year-old, you came from Russia, you came from Russia?

• 1:43Speaker 00

  I came from Uzbekistan.

• 1:45Sam Parr?

  Uzbekistan, okay. And then you come here, you get a computer at like 16 or 17, you start this affiliate marketing business. You're the only employee. By age like 22, 23, you've made something like 30 million in profit from this like one little business. From there, you parlayed that into, in, uh, A Lyric website that was like one of the biggest Lyric websites in the world, which doesn't sound that impressive, but most people don't realize that Lyric websites are some of the most biggest websites in the world. And so that made like another eight figures in profit. From there, you parlayed that into an ad network that now is like huge. From there, you've now launched a jewelry business that apparently Joe has said it's bigger than all your other companies,

• 2:30Sam Parr?

  but I don't know if that's true or not. And then throughout all this, you've acquired and sold and developed like a hundred plus million dollars of real estate. Is all this accurate?

• 2:40Speaker 00

  Uh, some of it. Okay. So, well, actually my first

• 2:43Sam Parr?

  And by the way, the reason I'm having you on here is because we've had a lot of really successful people on here do interesting stuff. And there are like, a lot of them are well-known, but you don't, I basically the other day begged you to like tweet something and I helped you write this tweet and it took like a few days and we got it out there. But like besides that, you've pretty much have never done any press. You've never talked about this publicly. And when I met you, I was like, this is a goldmine. This guy has so many interesting stories. We gotta tell this story. So anyway, what was wrong and what was right?

• 3:14Speaker 00

  So, okay, so, well, actually, the funny part is that the, the first business I had was a PlayStation, like a video game website. So it wasn't like huge, but you know, I was in high school and making like 5,000 bucks a month. Um, that actually taught me a lot of lessons. Um, so the, so the, the search market

• 3:35Sam Parr?

  And you actually told me, I actually tweeted another thing about you where you said, hey, my 12-year-old son has a website that's making like two Gs a day or something like that. Um, and he needs an email service provider. Which one should he use? And I tweeted that screenshot and it went viral.

• 3:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, that was anonymous. I guess it's not anonymous anymore, but uh, so he, he's, uh, yeah, that, that, that was interesting. I saw you post that. Um, and he still has a website. It's not doing as well, but uh, Not quite a two thousand a day anymore, but he's he's working on like coding this thing away. And he's like figuring out all these things. So it's actually amazing to see it, you know, at his age. At, you know, he's twelve years old.

• 4:16Sam Parr?

  Where'd you get? It's crazy that you and your family, you just find all these opportunities. Where did it start? So you your thing first thing was a PlayStation website, which what is that?

• 4:26Speaker 00

  So it was a site called PSX Extreme. Um, we, this is like, I launched like ninety eight, ninety nine or something like that. Actually, it was ninety nine. It was right before the the bubble, the dot com bubble burst. I was like about eight months into the the the bubble and it was doing really well. It was very easy to to generate revenue. And, you know, once I got the traffic, it was, the site was all about

• 4:48Speaker 00

  anything related to PlayStation. So like get cheat codes, your reviews, um, screenshots, whatever, right? Anything for like PlayStation fans. So it was like a PlayStation fan website. Then the dot com bubble hits. My revenues disappeared ninety percent. My traffic was still up there, but I had no revenues because all the ad revenue disappeared. Like it went from being three dollars CPM down to thirty cents CPM, if you could be lucky enough to get that.

• 5:15Sam Parr?

  How many people were going to this website?

• 5:16Speaker 00

  Um, it wasn't huge, but I had like, like ten thousand uniques a day, maybe twenty thousand.

• 5:22Sam Parr?

  In ninety, in ninety nine and ninety eight, that's gotta be a massive site.

• 5:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was good. It was a good amount of traffic and it was all free. Um, so it was interesting, like experience, because I had to quickly learn how to generate revenue. And I I had to go out there and sell advertising myself. And, you know, like I, and then once I figured out that I could sell advertising, I didn't have enough traffic. So I went, I started going to other video game sites and saying, who had much more traffic than me. I said, hey, I got all these advertisers who would spend more if I had more traffic, like, I'll, let me put ads on your sites.

• 5:59Speaker 00

  So I went to all these other video game sites and like just was a broker for advertising. So that was kind of like my first, you know, making decent amount of money. Um, I was making five and like just from the site and I was making probably another ten a month from being a broker.

• 6:20Sam Parr?

  And then the thing that you tweeted today, or maybe last night, it basically you told the story about how when you were 19, after this PlayStation site, you built an affiliate ad site and it made like, I forget the, I forget the numbers, but in two or three years, it was like over 30 million in profit. So what were you, you were selling stuff on behalf of half.com or eBay? Who were you? Or no, New York Times? You had like 800, basically you had like 800 ad accounts that sold different stuff. So like a New York Times subscription for, or which sold for a hundred dollars, but you were able to sell it for only 30 bucks. So you were able to keep the difference, something like that?

• 6:58Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, you know, it's affiliate marketing, but I used page search, which was very new back then. And at the time, um, when after the dot com bubble burst, all the advertisers got all of a sudden advertising, digital advertising stopped being interesting. You know, for a sec, for, for a moment there, people thought, businesses thought it might, you know, internet might be over, overhyped, right? So all of a sudden you see kind of all these budgets get, ooh, you know, just get pulled back, right? Especially all the brand advertising and, but nobody really, you know, so everybody had to still figure out how to get customers. So they say, okay, you know what? We won't do brand advertising.

• 7:43Speaker 00

  But if you drive, if somebody drives as customers, we'll pay per customer. Like we can't lose on that, right? So performance marketing.

• 7:51Speaker 00

  So that was around and it was very accessible. And at the same time, the media wasn't expensive, right? Because the supply was there, but the demand wasn't there. So that's what I took advantage of. I started buying up a lot of the supply, mostly with search, search, page search.

• 8:12Speaker 00

  And that's what made everything so profitable because I was just playing into those supply, demand dynamics that were working in my favor.

• 8:22Speaker 00

  But yes, what I would do is I would find an advertiser that had a product. I would test it on, at the time, you know, kind of like the, the modern day Yahoo page search, or back then it was called go to dot com. And then later, Google came around. And so I would test that ad. If it works, I expand on it. If it doesn't work, right, I would figure out how to make it work, right? Uh, if there's a, if there's a, if there's a way to make it work. And yeah, just like, it just, uh, you know, I was like.

• 8:54Sam Parr?

  What products were you selling? And what, what things were you selling?

• 8:58Speaker 00

  Oh, man, everything, everything, um, yeah.

• 9:01Sam Parr?

  And all this, and all this was making like,

• 9:06Sam Parr?

  like many millions of dollars of sales for your little one person operation every year.

• 9:13Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 9:15Sam Parr?

  That's crazy.

• 9:15Ben?

  About, yeah, tell us a little bit about like, what was going on in your life at the time? Like, did you try and go to college? Were you doing this while you were at college? Did you drop out? Like, what, what are you doing with your life?

• 9:24Speaker 00

  Uh, So, um, I already had the business, um,

• 9:30Speaker 00

  and I went, I got into, like, I'll, I'll finance. So I was like, all right, so I'm gonna do business finance. And I didn't really feel like I should be, but I only did it because, and I had no time for it.

• 9:42Sam Parr?

  You seem like you'd be awful at that.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  I am, I was awful. I was actually interested in the topics, especially the topics I was interested in, like,

• 9:51Speaker 00

  law or finance or business, accounting, all those things were interesting. Like, I couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't sleep through biology. Uh, but even, even though they were interesting, I had no time to study, so I would suck the tests. My GPA was horrible. I can't remember what it was, but it was just horrible. Um, because I just didn't care to, you know, get prepared for the test. I slept in half the class of just catching up on sleep because I would go to sleep at four o'clock in the morning. And then I.

• 10:16Sam Parr?

  Don't you, don't you still do that? Don't you go to sleep at four and get up at noon?

• 10:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, I average four, five.

• 10:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, so if I go to sleep at, I think yesterday I went to sleep at four, today I woke up at eleven. So I try to get, uh, try to get seven hours of sleep. Doesn't happen all the time, you know, a lot of times I have to, you know, live on five, six hours.

• 10:37Speaker 00

  But yeah.

• 10:38Sam Parr?

  Do you recognize that you're a weirdo?

• 10:42Speaker 00

  Um, I'm used to, I'm used to it. You know what? I'm, I'm a weirdo. Um, I, I know. I'm, I'm do, I do everything in reverse. My wife keeps telling me like, like you do everything backwards.

• 10:54Sam Parr?

  So you, you're, you're studying, uh, finance, but you're not doing well because you're running these businesses.

• 10:59Speaker 00

  Well, I'm in school just because I have a Jewish mother and she wanted me to go to like.

• 11:06Sam Parr?

  Well, you gotta be in school.

• 11:07Speaker 00

  You have to be in college, right? Or you have to go.

• 11:09Sam Parr?

  But did they know that you're like, hey, mom, like I bet you I'm making more money than you?

• 11:14Speaker 00

  Uh, I, I, I think she, she kinda knew. I don't know if she knew, but, uh, what I was making, I don't remember. Um, but it was, it was strange. I was pulling up to my university or to the college. Uh, I went, I went to Baruch, um, um, New York City, Baruch Business of, uh, Finance. Ziklin Business of Finance. Um, and I would pull up in a, at some, I would pull up in like a drop top Lexus, like a $70,000 car. And I was like 19, right? So, or 18, whatever I was, I think I was 18 at that point. I think, I don't think I even started the paid surgery biz at this point.

• 11:49Sam Parr?

  So this business is just like crushing it. So like a few years in, you've, in your tweet, you said it made over 30 million in profits. Like three, four, five years in. So it's gone really well. You're paying like a crazy amount of taxes, you said. So you decided to move, uh, to the burbs a little bit outside of New York City and you like buy a, a cheap house in cash. So things are going well, right? Like it's, but you, you said, you know, I'm a little bored with this or I'm, I'm, I don't really want to go much further into this. In this racket, I want to try something new. And then the next business was, uh, Mobile Fuse, which is around today, right?

• 12:26Speaker 00

  Um, so I actually launched around the same time, um, we launched two businesses. So after, so hold on. So I I launched I launched the, let's call the the the the music content distribution company.

• 12:39Sam Parr?

  Oh, that's right, sorry.

• 12:40Speaker 00

  Right, so that, so we didn't own, I didn't own actually lyric sites. What I did is I built a service, I built a system that connects, called Ringtone Matcher. And what I realized was there was demand for ringtones and there was all this traffic for for all this music related traffic, especially in lyrics. And so what I did is I built a service and the other thing I realized was the the traffic was very much international, like seventy percent of a of a music site or lyric site was non-US.

• 13:19Speaker 00

  And I noticed that some of the advertisers, like ringtone advertisers, were advertised, they'll they'll do okay, but they would have only you, they could only accept US customers and they could only accept like Verizon customer or only T-Mobile customer. So I built this thing called Ringtone Matcher and Ringtone Matcher basically integrated like sixty countries into one system. So if you have a music site, you could drive that those users to Ringtone Matcher and Ringtone Matcher will figure out, based on geo, like what country you're in, right? Based on what carrier you use, because it's carrier billing, so it's important that,

• 14:04Speaker 00

  you know, I figure out like if you have T-Mobile and to match you up to a ringtone service that actually is compatible with T-Mobile. And then the third thing would look for that content is available. So if you're clicking on, hey, get this, get Toxic by Britney Spears ringtone on your phone, I need to make sure that that song is also available in their catalog. Because some some ringtone providers had, like Warner Music and some of some of them maybe just had the EMI, there were like four major music companies at the time. And, you know, these ringtone providers didn't have all those catalogs, so they they might have one or two at a time.

• 14:46Speaker 00

  So I would take all that data and put it into one simple link.

• 14:53Speaker 00

  And

• 14:54Sam Parr?

  And how big did that get? How big did that business get?

• 14:57Speaker 00

  I wasn't in front of, Ringtone Matcha was in front of a half a billion people a month.

• 15:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, half a billion. So, um, and it was everywhere. I mean, it wasn't just lyric sites. I was on CBS Radio, AOL Radio, Yahoo Radio, Last FM, like every, pretty much every music site. I remember even talking to Musically, which is TikTok now, right? I remember even talking to those guys. I was talking to, uh, we were talking to WhatsApp in the early days, like when they were just two guys or something like we wanted to integrate because anytime somebody mentions music or a song or something like I wanted to be, I want my, I want Ringtone Matcha there to show up. So,

• 15:38Sam Parr?

  And but, but, but you're, you're using the word we. Again, it's not we.

• 15:43Speaker 00

  No, no, this company was, so actually that company, I started Ringtone Matcha myself. Again, I was a one man show.

• 15:52Speaker 00

  At some point, I, um,

• 15:55Speaker 00

  we, you, you know, there was one little group of guys who were pretty good at dealing with advertisers. And, uh, or actually ringtone providers and I felt like I need help on that front. And, uh, so I merged those guys in. So there were five guys that merged into my company, um, to form.

• 16:16Sam Parr?

  When you say merge, who bought who?

• 16:19Speaker 00

  I was a majority owner of the company and then the, the five guys had, the, like they, they, they had a third of the company. I had two thirds.

• 16:28Sam Parr?

  How big was it when it was just you?

• 16:32Speaker 00

  Um, it was just, I was going nuts, uh, but, uh, I think, I believe the, the year, I think the year we merged, it was 10 million.

• 16:47Sam Parr?

  Again, just you.

• 16:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:49Sam Parr?

  10 billion profit with just you. Do you, why do you think, so this is the, we'll get to the rest in a minute, but why do you think that you find this weird stuff? And why don't you hire people? Two different questions, but how on earth do you find this type of stuff?

• 17:04Speaker 00

  You know, it's funny, like, I know, I see how organized you are, right? Like, you make your goals, you lay everything out on paper, right? You're very organized and you could think about it, you ask people for feedback. I'm totally opposite of that.

• 17:22Speaker 00

  I just kind of go with where, like, I like to test things. And I guess I'm very curious.

• 17:30Speaker 00

  And I could be very, very focused, but if I get distracted, I get very easily distracted. Right?

• 17:39Speaker 00

  So it could be like, sometimes it's a curse, but sometimes it's a blessing. A lot of times it's a blessing.

• 17:45Speaker 00

  And I come across these interesting things and my curiosity just takes it further. So when I, when I, so the way I actually came across

• 17:58Speaker 00

  this thing was because I felt that there was a point of my life where I was seeing Google was just too dominant part of my business and I didn't like that because I didn't want to rely on any one thing.

• 18:12Speaker 00

  So I started looking outside of paid search for supply.

• 18:19Speaker 00

  And I came across these music sites and I actually started testing Rhapsody on them. Because I had such a good deal with Rhapsody, I was like, let me start marketing outside of search.

• 18:30Speaker 00

  It did okay.

• 18:33Speaker 00

  And I had these, you know, started building these relationships with the music sites. And then, then I kind of tested a ringtone service and it just crushed. Like, it was not even close. Like, it did three times better. And I was like, wow, this thing did three times better than Rhapsody?

• 18:49Speaker 00

  And that ringtone provider was just covering US, just like one or two music labels. And like two carriers out of four, I think I had four, there were four major carriers at the time. I was like, hold on a second. If it's already doing three times as well, what happens if I start integrating everything globally, right? So that's how Ringtone Matcher came about.

• 19:16Sam Parr?

  Was there, when you launch stuff, what's your first version like?

• 19:21Speaker 00

  Junk.

• 19:21Sam Parr?

  Like, do you get the idea and it's alive in 12 hours?

• 19:24Speaker 00

  It was a kiddie script. I wrote, um, this, you know, guy was kind of freelancing for me a little bit. Um, I just, I didn't even want to tell him about the idea. He's actually a CTO of one of my companies now. Um, he was like 15, 16 years old.

• 19:44Speaker 00

  And I didn't want to tell him the idea. So I said, hey, how do you script this? How do you script that? So I scripted it myself.

• 19:51Speaker 00

  And, um, and, uh, so yeah, so it was pure junk. It was literally just a bunch of if and then statements on and, and ASP. It was, we were running Windows, um, Windows server on ASP, uh, infrastructure. So I, uh, I had a bunch of redirects that were just doing a bunch of if and then statements and redirecting people based on certain parameters.

• 20:15Sam Parr?

  Wouldn't, and when you're doing it, are you like, see, every time I've hung out with you, the reason I like hanging out with you and Joe, I consider Joe one of my best friends. And so I have like his attitude, you and Joe have the same attitude, which is like,

• 20:28Speaker 00

  He's a little more laid back than me and you, I think.

• 20:32Sam Parr?

  He is, he is, I've never seen him lose his temper. He is very calm. And I'm like, hey, this didn't work out for this reason. He goes, oh, that's okay. Like he's super calm, but you have that too. I think, I think that like, I think that what it, you have this like, I don't know if it, the right word is like chutzpah, if the right word is like, I don't know what the word is, but it's almost like things. I've heard, we're going to get to the rest of the stories because, because there's like this jewelry business that you started, which is like, seems like even bigger than all the other things that you've done potentially. And you like do these things where I'm like, but like Val, you don't know anything about that.

• 21:11Sam Parr?

  And like, you don't even have any employees, like you don't know anything. And, but you just are like, yeah, but, uh, you know, whatever. I'll just, we'll just go a little bit further and then we'll see what happens. And then if it, if it sucks, I'll bail. You know what I mean? Like you have this like, Aw shucks attitude like, oh, you know, yeah, we'll see what happens. It's very interesting, whereas like if I was doing what you were doing and I started seeing those results. I'm like, is this illegal? Am I breaking the law? Am I gonna go to jail? What is going on? Like it would, oh, it's almost like I would have, most people would have self-destructive tendencies when they see this like going so well.

• 21:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, that, look, I see that all the time. Uh, I feel like people tend to overthink things and spend a lot of time like analysis paralysis. And the reason I think a lot of people are successful,

• 22:01Speaker 00

  like especially somebody like me, is while somebody's thinking about making, perfecting one thing, which by the way, will still have a, you know, 60% failure, right? On that one thing that you just overthought. I'd rather test 10 things by, uh, within that same time period. And I will likely have, I have a better, um, accuracy, or I'll have a better, um, chance of hitting it out of the ballpark with one of those 10 things, uh, maybe more than one of those things.

• 22:35Sam Parr?

  Yeah, how, how did you get into the jewelry business to start with?

• 22:39Speaker 00

  Um, so after I sold those two music-related companies, um, which, uh, I took like three years off, off, you know? I thought I retired, I'll retire, um, but it was anything but. I just got, start, start getting like, my, my curiosity was just taking me into all different like, I was on all these boards and I was like, you know, investing into a bunch of things and, um, and I realized that's the three years I need to build something again.

• 23:11Speaker 00

  So I started looking at, I knew that I wanted to do something where it's, uh, fixing or disrupting a fragmented space. I didn't really wanna go after like corporate America. Um, I wanted to go after like, uh, mom and pops that, when I say mom and pops, it could be like, you know, I'm thinking like car dealerships, right? They do tens of millions of dollars. It doesn't mean they're tiny, right? So I wanted to go after something like along those lines.

• 23:40Speaker 00

  And I had some investments in the jewelry space, had some family in the jewelry space. It's a pretty tight knit community. I just happened to be, had some family that, too, that knows that, that, that business. I actually worked, as a teenager, I worked, um, every weekend, I worked in a, in a jewel, in a jewelry store. I knew how to fix, like, I knew how to fix jewelry. I mean, I would sit on a bench, um, with a blowtorch at like fifteen years old. Uh, cause my cousin taught me, it was my, it was a, it was a family business, uh, my, my, my aunt and uncle's business. They had a couple, um, jewelry stores.

• 24:20Speaker 00

  And, um, they taught me how to fix jewelry and, um, to, you know, so I knew the business a, a bit from the retailer's perspective. It always seemed like a very weird way to do business. I, I always had questioned everything like they're doing. And, um, so, so, um, so the idea was, hey, like, these retailers, um, if we could integrate, build a platform and services, and we could integrate into them. And this is a three hundred billion dollar industry, by the way, globally.

• 24:56Speaker 00

  Which fragmented, but controls is actually bigger, um, independents are bigger part of the business, uh, fine jewelry than, uh, the majors, the chains.

• 25:07Speaker 00

  So I knew that, again, if I could build distribution, but I had to bring, um, then, then there's a lot of power there. But I have to bring value and that's where my expertise in data and marketing, digital, all that came into, uh, to fruition. You know, so we basically put this thing together, we integrate into the stores and help them grow, help them bring customers, cut costs, increase their revenue. How much did you invest to start it?

• 25:33Speaker 00

  Um, to start it, uh, I don't, I mean, to start it, I think I, we started off a couple of million.

• 25:41Sam Parr?

  So you put $2 million of your own money?

• 25:42Speaker 00

  In the beginning, yeah.

• 25:42Sam Parr?

  How big is this? And but you've done more. I think you put more in since. How big is this gonna be?

• 25:47Speaker 00

  I put in way more. I mean, at this point, I put in eight figures into this business.

• 25:53Speaker 00

  I think it's a multi-billion dollar company in the future.

• 25:57Sam Parr?

  For real? You think it's a multi-billion dollar company, like to sell?

• 26:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, market cap. I, I, I believe that, A, I don't know if there's anybody big enough to buy my company or this, or this company. We, we actually have a lot of people this time around. It's not, it's no longer just Val. Uh, we have a lot of employees.

• 26:13Speaker 00

  Um, I, I believe this company will be, um, if it's successful and we could do what we need to do and we could really help, um, all these retailers step up their game.

• 26:25Speaker 00

  I, I, I don't think that there's really a company in that space that would be big enough to acquire us. So like, but.

• 26:33Sam Parr?

  But are you, are you the CEO of that company? Is that smart? I mean, that doesn't seem like you're, you're just, you get up at 11 a.m. and like you go to bed at four. How are you the CEO of a company that could be a billion dollar company?

• 26:48Speaker 00

  Um, yeah, no, good question. Look, I, um, we have a great team that is able to execute.

• 26:57Sam Parr?

  How many people?

• 26:59Speaker 00

  Um, it's hard to say. We, we became pretty global, but you know, our, our, our offices outside of U.S. are not all, um, mostly, they're not employees, right? So they're, so all, all, all in, um, if I had to talk about factories, our, our, our tech teams, our marketing teams, our, um, we're probably talking about 70 people at this point.

• 27:21Sam Parr?

  Wow. And who's like, but you're not running the day to day of the business, are you?

• 27:25Speaker 00

  Oh, hell, yeah. Yeah. Ninety-five percent of the time goes into this business.

• 27:29Sam Parr?

  So then are you like talking with the employees and things like that? I mean, you're like running all hands meetings and things like that?

• 27:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm not big on meetings, I'll be, you know, to be honest with you. But, but I'm very accessible to all my team. I mean, everybody on my teams have access to me. I go into the office in the city. We actually had the, we were in the office June, June 2020. I mean, we had, you know, COVID, like it was ghost town in the city and we had to figure out how to be in the office because it's not an econ, it's not just a digital ad business that I could just operate from, from work from home, right? We had to have people in the offices and we did all kinds of things. We, we, we, we got cars to car, um, to, to, to pull people in to the office. But, um,

• 28:16Speaker 00

  but anyway, we, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm there. I'm, I'm in the weeds.

• 28:22Sam Parr?

  But it's not like you're kind of downplaying it. I invested in one of their, your properties. We bought a six-plex in Greenpoint. I think, I forget.

• 28:30Speaker 00

  Well, we essentially bought land, right? We bought a house because it's going to be knocked down. We're going to build a brand new. Uh, we're going to ground up construction. It's going to be like a, a nice, a nice condo building.

• 28:43Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, that's what I mean. But I didn't even look at the details. I was just like, anything that Val does, I'm part of. But it's, it's way bigger than you're, you're just saying like it's a project. I mean, I think you've bought like a hundred million dollars with the real estate, right?

• 28:55Speaker 00

  No, I haven't, I haven't bought a hundred million. Uh, we have six projects, couple of them are already completed. Third one is just about to be completed. Uh, actually two, the first two were completed and completely sold out. Uh, the third one is about to be completed and go on the market. Um, and then we have three other projects and they're all getting bigger and bigger. The value of, um, the, this, the, the combined sale value, of value of those projects would be approaching a hundred million dollars.

• 29:25Sam Parr?

  Do, what do you, what do you think carrying on now? What excites you now? What, and, and someone asked a good question, which is, what is the, uh, the equivalent of ringtones today?

• 29:38Speaker 00

  What's the equivalence of?

• 29:41Sam Parr?

  Like, it's just crazy that it's just like, you're kind of like this like digital cowboy. You're just like this like one guy in the wild west doing this shit with like no rules. It it's just, I just think it's hilarious that you are just a pirate who's taking it to the extreme. Where are the digital pirates at right now?

• 29:59Speaker 00

  Uh, it has to be like TikTok.

• 30:02Sam Parr?

  Um. What do you mean?

• 30:04Speaker 00

  It it's.

• 30:07Speaker 00

  You know, I I you look for like those spaces that haven't been touched, right? Um. Because people ask me, and I think I think what that's what you're saying, like, what's what? What can you, what can be marketed these days and how? To get that kind of scale?

• 30:24Speaker 00

  And I I don't, it's hard because what I've seen over over my career is that the windows of opportunity, those white spaces, right? The wind, those windows are becoming shorter and shorter and shorter every iteration. Right? There was the page search probably lasted a good six years. After that,

• 30:48Speaker 00

  or around that same time, there was display. That probably lasted a little less. And then there was social media. That that window probably, you know, the arbitrage window, right?

• 30:58Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 30:58Speaker 00

  That probably lasted two, three years at best. Now you're talking, you know, now you got like

• 31:05Speaker 00

  Instagram and TikTok and you got the Instagram reels. Um, I mean, those are probably also one year windows of opportunity. If you could kind of catch that lightning and build on it, then you got something, but your your window.

• 31:18Sam Parr?

  And it's all rooted in distribution, which is how do you get distribution quickly? And you're saying that you think that's TikTok. Do you think that window is still open?

• 31:25Speaker 00

  Um, I I think if you have a knack for understanding how get virality or get content, then then you have your own distribution. If you don't have that knack, you got to figure out how to work with people that have that that access. So if there's one company that could work with all the same parts. Like all the podcasters, uh, how much is that worth? Like, we're using a platform here right now, right? That is a smart, they're, they're, they're doing the right thing. Like they're focusing on guys like you who have all this access, but they're not selling anything, right? They're just selling you a platform.

• 32:10Speaker 00

  If somebody could sell, figure out how to sell a product across number of podcasts,

• 32:20Speaker 00

  that's worth a lot and you could sell, uh, remove a lot of product. And by the way, it doesn't have to be podcasts. What about all the TikTokers who are doing all those dances, right? I know, um,

• 32:36Speaker 00

  I know, uh, like for one company, they, they scaled to like 80 million in sales a few years ago. I'm not gonna mention the name of it, but, um, they, they scaled to like 80 million in sales,

• 32:48Speaker 00

  just on the back of YouTube influencers.

• 32:51Ben?

  What was the product?

• 32:52Speaker 00

  It was cosmetics related product. And they just, was that?

• 32:57Ben?

  Cosmetics, it was just like makeup or something or lotion.

• 32:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, the numbers were just insane.

• 33:03Speaker 00

  And, um, yeah, it, it was just a long tail. Like it wasn't just the big influencers, e- e- even the, like thousands of mediocre, uh, influencers or the smaller, um, ones that just drove it.

• 33:18Speaker 00

  So stuff like that, like latch on to something that is big. Um, especially if you could, uh, latch on to the, like the long tail of it. Because not, not, not a lot of people look at the long tail part of, uh, businesses.

• 33:35Ben?

  Well, so one thing I wonder, you know, like this thing that Val talks about of testing out 10 different things before the other guy can put his pants on, right? Like you're, you're building your, uh, perfect thing that's gonna take you six months before you even get to market. Great, I'm gonna test 10 things in that time. That sounds really nice, but also like. I guess I'll actually ask Sam first, then I'll ask you Val. Like, what do you think it is about Val? What do you think it is about either his skillset or his personality that allows him to do that much testing where other people just like can't figure that out apparently?

• 34:09Sam Parr?

  The, I think that this is a common thread that I've seen. My buddy Joe is just like this. There's this thing particularly, I find it amongst immigrants or children of immigrants. And maybe because they've like experienced some type of hardship where they're like,

• 34:28Sam Parr?

  like dude, I've experienced some crazy shit or my family has experiencing, has experienced crazy shit. I have zero fear in looking like a fool. If that's the worst, if the worst that's gonna happen is I'm gonna look stupid or lose a tiny amount of money, I'm okay with that. And I don't, so I don't have any fear about that.

• 34:45Sam Parr?

  That's what, that's what I think I've noticed. That's the trend I've noticed amongst people like Val.

• 34:50Speaker 00

  Look, I think there's a, I think that's, I think there's a huge, that's a huge factor. And one of the things I look at, like I'm raising kids now, right? How do I make sure that they kind of, because they're not gonna grow up the same way I grew up, right? They're not gonna come out, the resources they have, the access they have, it's very different from what I grew up with. So what I think I realized is the power is in resourcefulness. Okay? I was able to make a lot or do a lot, I should say. Whether it's money or whatever it is, right? It doesn't have to be just money.

• 35:33Speaker 00

  It could be whatever, whatever excites you, right? But I was able to do a lot with very little. But it's because I had no choice and I had very little. Like, we weren't poor, like, I didn't come from poverty or anything like that, but, but again, my parents couldn't afford a computer for me for the first six years of my life here, right?

• 35:54Speaker 00

  Um, so I I I got to think like, how do I recreate that? And you can't really recreate that for your kids, but I figured, okay, I'm not, you know, I'm not gonna give my kids everything on a silver platter. So, so you, I mean, you just talked about my son, like, he is, uh, he, he, he, he's, his DNA is very like my, like mine, like, he, he's way ahead of me, because he has all these tools, like, you know, he has a computer way before me. I didn't buy him a computer. I made him save up the money. I don't care how he does it, birthdays, work, whatever.

• 36:36Speaker 00

  During that time, he researched all parts and everything. I think at the age of like, seven or eight, he built a computer, bought the parts by himself. He built a computer from scratch by himself. I didn't even help him. That's crazy. So, he now built two computers, like, and he taught himself how to code and, um, so I, I suppress resources for my kids systematically. Not like I don't feed him, like, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're very, they're, they're doing just fine, like, That's good to hear. They live in a nice neighborhood, but I systematically, uh, make sure that they're not, uh, given all the resources,

• 37:21Speaker 00

  because that's how you naturally learn to become resourceful. What do you think it is?

• 37:29Ben?

  Yeah, fundamentally, it's about doing more with less, essentially, you're saying.

• 37:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, but, but it has to start from day one. Are you driven by money? Yes and no. Um, I, I.

• 37:47Speaker 00

  Yes, because it's uh, it's it's it's it's uh, it's kind of like a score.

• 37:52Speaker 00

  Right? I I I don't see no money. It's like a nu- it's a number in a bank account, right? Like, you don't, it's not like back in the days where you look, you know, you, you know, it's not like we're Scrooge McDuck, like, and you get to jump through the through the vault of cash, right? Like, I I um, we watched it as a kid and I was like, wow, I want to be that guy one day. Um, um, and um, but uh, no, I I think I think what I'm driven really is by just winning.

• 38:21Speaker 00

  And um, there there is, I think there is a bit of sense in me of um, that

• 38:29Speaker 00

  I'm one step from losing it all.

• 38:32Sam Parr?

  You still feel that way?

• 38:35Speaker 00

  Uh, I feel like it's still possible. I I thi- I think it's a, I think it's like an immigrant thing, um, probably.

• 38:42Sam Parr?

  By the way, I feel exactly the same way. I was like, in bed last night, telling my wife, I was like, I need to go to like, a therapist or something. I'm like, I'm freaking out. We're gonna lose everything. Is, this is all going away. I feel the exact, I feel, like, I, for a long time, I like, had a plan on where I would go if I was homeless.

• 39:02Sam Parr?

  Like, I s- I still believe that it's all going away.

• 39:04Speaker 00

  In some ways, in in a, in a weird way, kind of excites you, not about homeless, but that you got a chance to figure it out from scratch again?

• 39:14Sam Parr?

  It, yeah, cuz I like, uh, it does kind of make me, it, because when you have nothing, it's kind of fun to play games, because it's just easier to bet sometimes. You can't bet as much, but it's kind of exciting to be like, just like a hood rat with nothing, like, which I, which I was. Um, it is kind of exciting, but I get fear of, like, the anxiety I I feel of losing everything. Like, I, like, I have so many spreadsheets that map out, like, alright, when the money gets to this number, then I gotta go and panic and get a job and start, like, Ubering. Like, I have like, a plan for that. We um, the reason why I had you on, and Ben, the reason why I-

• 39:56Sam Parr?

  Wanted to show you this guy is now it's he's hard to explain, but I wanted people to understand like a truly unique and original thinker. And I don't, you know, I, you're gonna have to come on again, but like, do you, does it, do you understand what I'm saying, Ben? It's very original thinking.

• 40:17Ben?

  Yeah, and you, you can see that just in the way that like you've out have attacked, have tackled like a a different set of problems than anyone else I've ever talked to. Uh, just like, I've never talked to someone who's like, yeah, I tackled bring tones. And then ad networks and then peer to peer lending and then the jewelry business. Like, I just think that kind of belies how your mind functions differently than other people. Do you, do you feel that way? Like, do you feel that you just have a unique perspective? Have you met anyone that looks at the world the way you do?

• 40:49Sam Parr?

  And if you acknowledge that it's weird because and you're saying that you didn't, you didn't actually realize it was weird until I talked about you in the podcast like half a year ago, which is weird because how old are you? Like 39, 38 and you're now just realizing that you're, you're, you're an oddball.

• 41:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I, I, I didn't see myself that way until you did the whole expose with that show on that, on that one episode.

• 41:16Speaker 00

  That you didn't tell me about, but after our lunch, but um,

• 41:20Sam Parr?

  I know, I, by the way, I, I, I told Joe, I was like, dude, I'd never do that. I almost always ask for permission before I talk about it, but I just was too excited and I forgot.

• 41:30Speaker 00

  It was, I have a, I have a story, but I'll tell you that after, um, on that. But, um, so to me, like when you said like, oh, this guy goes from this industry to that industry is like jumping all over the place and he's, you know, kind of successful or, or successful and doing it is like crazy. I was like, huh. I, I didn't, I never thought of it myself that way, but it makes sense. Like, I, I, I don't know. I keep jumping different categories. I guess again, I'm at that curiosity just kicks in and, and, and I just, but I, I, I go after it instead of just what if, you know, I just kind of go after it. But, um, No, I, I, I, until now, I really haven't realized that, that how odd that is.

• 42:14Speaker 00

  But thank, thank you for letting me know that I'm, I'm really strange.

• 42:20Sam Parr?

  I just think that like, there, there's just a bunch of unique, there's just a bunch of unique things about you. And I think it's so cool. And when I say weird and odd, that's a really good compliment, by the way.

• 42:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I know you well enough now to, to know that's a compliment. And, um, so, so the funny story about,

• 42:38Speaker 00

  again, before you, I, I was pretty under, under the radar, right? Like, yeah, you could find stuff on me, you have to really look, like, nobody really put it out there, right? And so then Joe tells me, like, you're gonna do, they did a podcast and I didn't tell my wife. And then the podcast comes out, I'm like, hey, Sarah, um, um, the, the, the, um, this guy did a podcast on me. She's like, and who cares about a podcast? She's like, you know, but he's gonna talk about me. She's like, who cares? Like, what, what a couple hundred people gonna listen? I'm like, apparently this guy has like a million people listening. She's like, oh, great. Um, she's like, did he ask you permission?

• 43:22Speaker 00

  I was like, not really. So I don't really know what he's gonna talk about.

• 43:27Speaker 00

  So she's like, okay. So the thing comes out, I was like, so we're listening to it. And, and you keep saying Val, you keep saying Val, Val, Val, like, you never say, uh, right? Never say my last name. And then you, you and Sean go into like this tangent, talking about red pill and blue pill or whatever. So she's like, and so we thought like it said, Val part is over, right? She's like, okay, it wasn't so bad. He never mentioned your last name. Who'd have, who'd have gonna figure out who's Val? And then after you went off to a tangent with the, about the pills, and you're like, oh, by the way, I forgot to mention his full name. Let me spell, let me spell it out for you. And you literally spelled my last name. So she's like, I'm gonna kill this guy.

• 44:09Sam Parr?

  Oh, she was bad?

• 44:10Speaker 00

  No, she wasn't bad. She's very, she's very, she's very nice.

• 44:13Sam Parr?

  Everything, I thought that everything we said you could find publicly and we didn't reveal anything like crazy. And I tried to only, like, I just read your LinkedIn. That's basically all I did.

• 44:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, you could find stuff, but it's, you know, it's one thing to, the information to be out there for somebody to look for it.

• 44:32Speaker 00

  But it's another one when you're on full blast, right? Like, and it's being discovered. So, right, by audiences. So, so that's all new to me.

• 44:46Sam Parr?

  I know. I, I felt like an asshole when that happened. I, I'm normally always good about that. So like, if someone, if we're out with friends and people are talking about stuff, I'm like, hey, is this private or not? Like, they have to make sure they say it's private around me.

• 44:59Speaker 00

  You're, you're, you're a nice guy, so I'll, I'll let it slide.

• 45:03Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I blew up your spot. And, and, yeah, I, that's something, I remembered the day that happened. I was like, oh my God, Joe, I didn't even realize it. Because sometimes when Sean and I were recording, I forget that it's a podcast. I just like, it's just like friends talking to one of them. And I forget, I'm like, oh my God, I forgot. That was, I just said that on air. I can't believe that. So that, that was one of those examples. But, um, dude, this was awesome. What do you think, Ben? This is, this is pretty badass.

• 45:30Ben?

  This is great. It's got me fired up to go, I know you're doing your Airbnbs this year, Sam, that's kind of your thing.

• 45:36Sam Parr?

  Val told me not to do it, though. Right before this podcast, he said, don't do it.

• 45:39Ben?

  Oh, really?

• 45:40Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I think I'm gonna do it anyway, but he, I told him these two ideas that I might work on, and he basically said, uh,

• 45:47Sam Parr?

  dude, I was like, should I work on going hard on content? Should I work on this job board idea or this Airbnb thing? And he goes, do content. And I was like, oh, that's what I don't want to do.

• 45:57Speaker 00

  I said, don't do it now.

• 46:00Sam Parr?

  Well, I didn't actually, he literally sent me his response like three minutes before the podcast. So I didn't entirely read the, I haven't read the whole, his whole reply, but he's, he's like the, he's like the, the, the, the layout thing. That's just gonna bog you down. That's what he said.

• 46:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think, I, I, I think so. I think something you could do in the future, but not now.

• 46:19Sam Parr?

  I do feel inspired after hearing about and from Val of like, I need to be trying more things, like just taking more swings and like putting more experiments out there to see kind of what, what lands. I like that.

• 46:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. Listen, throw stuff against the wall, like see what sticks. Um, what's the worst?

• 46:35Sam Parr?

  But when you throw, when most people throw stuff against the wall, it's a half ass attempt. When you throw stuff against the wall, like you, you spend money or you like, you said that when you were like, when you didn't have much, you spent like six or $7,000 on ads to see if this X thing could work. Whereas most people will like, like, oh, that's, I'll lose a couple hundred bucks. I don't want to do that. It's like you, you actually try.

• 46:57Speaker 00

  But that was an accident. Like, like in that thread, that was an accident. There were no budget caps back then. So I turned it on, I go to sleep and I woke up to a $6,000 spend.

• 47:07Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but you still did it. I mean, I guess, just like most people just don't do, you, your, your attempts are like good.

• 47:14Speaker 00

  So when I was going to all these music sites, you know how I get their attention?

• 47:23Speaker 00

  I would go to a site and I would just kind of through Alexa or whatever, I kind of knew how much traffic they have. And I knew these guys were outside the country and to get their attention, I would literally email them and say, hey, I'll give you a hundred thousand dollars. I'll give you $50,000. I'll give you $20,000 prepaid. I'll wire it tomorrow, just so you could tech, uh, test my ringtone matcher link for seven days. If you don't like it, it doesn't make you enough money, take the link off, we never talk again. If you, if you like how much it generates, we'll sign, you'll sign a contract.

• 47:58Speaker 00

  And everybody signed a contract. Because those two text links were generating like five times, like somebody who was making like a like there were sites that were making like top sites were making like a hundred thousand dollars a month. I would pay him four hundred thousand a month on top of that.

• 48:14Sam Parr?

  And and how many people actually took you up and said, all right, fine, wire me the money and then I'll put yours. They all wanted the money first.

• 48:21Speaker 00

  Oh, the money. Um, my success rate on that email was just, I mean, who the hell is going to take money like upfront?

• 48:30Sam Parr?

  I would be like, you know what? I don't need you to do it upfront. I'll give it a try just because you're serious. And you actually told a story on Palm's podcast because you like, you were like bold, but you have high integrity. Because like, I think there was a guy who you owed a lot of money to because they were a customer of your, or they were a vendor. And you just had a bill that you had to pay them. And they like changed their address or something and you're like, dude, I can't find you. I owe you sixty thousand dollars and you like held on to the sixty thousand dollars for like a long time. And you just were seeking them out everywhere like, hey, where'd you go? I need to pay you your money.

• 49:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. It pays off like, um, what, um, it's, it's, it's we, because we had so many international people um, in the music business. When the great recession hit and they were, they were in all these countries and where their, their banks, a lot of them were, banks were located in weird areas. Uh, we're, we're, we're countries like Cyprus. And they would literally tell us, hey, stop, stop wiring us money. We, we don't trust the bank we're working with. I gotta get a new bank account. Like we held their money for, they told us to hold their money for, I mean, we had millions in, in our bank account that didn't belong to us. And all these sites basically told me, told me, like, I was kind of like their bank for, for a while because they didn't want to get paid.

• 49:46Speaker 00

  And they didn't, they didn't trust the bank. It was phenomenal to me like I couldn't understand that they, they, they trust us, trust me with their money. Uh, for, I mean, it was, I think some, in some cases up to a year, we, we, we were holding their money because he had nowhere to send it.

• 50:03Sam Parr?

  That's crazy. Dude, this is a good conversation. I'm happy you came on.

• 50:07Speaker 00

  This is awesome. Listen, you're doing... I told you before, I love your podcast. It's very like... It's very like... Lame in terms, right? It actually takes a lot of intellect, in my opinion, to dumb things down.

• 50:24Sam Parr?

  Well, thank you. I appreciate that. It helps... Yeah, oftentimes I wonder like... A lot of my friends are... English as a second language. Maybe it's like... I'm always amazed... Can you imagine coming to another country where you don't speak the language at like 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and then like just crushing it? So I think that's just like amazing. I've got a bunch of friends who are ESLs and they're like... I'll help them write stuff because they're just a little rough. And I'm like, dude, how are you so badass? I'm amazed that you're... I'm just amazed at some of these stuff. And you're one of those people.

• 50:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, whether you're a sell... Like, my English is pretty good now, but I still can't put my thoughts together in a way that makes it so interesting for people to understand. And you know how to break that down. So like, you know, you help me with some of my... So my, you know, one of my, you know, pieces on that. So that's... That's power.

• 51:21Sam Parr?

  Well, thank you. I appreciate you coming on. This is badass.

• 51:24Speaker 00

  Listen, I appreciate you guys having me on.