Nov 1, 2022 · 1h 2m · my-first-million
8 Profitable Side Hustles For The Halloween & Christmas Season (#381)
Shaan Puri · 38m spoken Sam Parr · 15m spoken Ben Wilson · 3s spoken HubSpot Ad Actor 1 · 3s spoken HubSpot Ad Actor 2 · 2s spoken
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode, Shaan Puri and Sam Parr explore high-margin seasonal business models and viral side hustles across Halloween and Christmas, while breaking down Elon Musk's Twitter takeover and the future of post-smartphone wearable tech.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 99.5% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 5.3 Guest teaching 4.1 Guest disagreement 1.7 The hosts pushing back 2.0
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:00:38 Pushback on gendered work drive
Shaan directly pushes back against Sam's generalization that men specifically need continuous work to avoid dying early, asserting women are often more active.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 47:45 Skepticism of overfunded stealth startupsSam firmly challenges the viability of heavily funded stealth companies like Humane, pointing out that almost all historical precedents like Quibi and Magic Leap have crashed.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 20:50 Masterclass on Spirit Halloween kickout clausesShaan educates on the operational brilliance of Spirit Halloween negotiating two-month leases with landlord kickout clauses to scale pop-up real estate.
The host holds their own ▶ 25:30 Demonstrating trend forecasting industry knowledgeSam demonstrates domain expertise by introducing WGSN's lucrative subscription model for corporate color and aesthetic forecasting to complement Shaan's costume licensing history.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Twitter 'Ligma' Firing Hoax | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Shaan and Sam break down the viral Rahul Ligma Twitter firing hoax, sharing behind-the-scenes group chat text messages. The dialogue is lighthearted and collaborative banter. | |
| Inside Elon Musk's Twitter 'War Room' | 5 | 3 | 2 | 2 | The hosts discuss Elon Musk's transition war room and the operational changes at Twitter. Shaan articulates Twitter's fundamental product bottleneck regarding mainstream appeal versus power-user features. | |
| Sponsor Break: HubSpot CRM | 5 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Following a sponsor read, Shaan traces the commercial history of Halloween from Celtic pagan roots to a ten-billion-dollar retail anchor designed to bridge dead sales quarters. | |
| The Spirit Halloween Pop-Up Masterclass | 6 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Shaan breaks down the Spirit Halloween business model, including short-term two-month leases and landlord kickout clauses. Sam adds commentary on the high stakes of hyper-seasonal businesses. | |
| Rubie's Costumes and Trend Forecasting | 5 | 5 | 1 | 2 | Shaan recounts how Rubie's consolidated Halloween licensing post-Tylenol tampering scandal. Sam matches the analysis by explaining WGSN's trend forecasting business model. | |
| Niche Halloween Side Hustles and Viral Products | 6 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Shaan highlights seasonal side hustles including Zombie Pumpkins, molded Pumpkinsteins, and Home Depot's viral giant skeleton, framing them through social media shareability. | |
| Suburban Lighting Hustles and the VR Haunted House Concept | 5 | 4 | 2 | 3 | Shaan shares the economics of neighborhood Christmas light hanging and pitches a VR haunted house concept. Sam critiques the installer's pricing and missed upselling opportunities. | |
| 'Spirit for Christmas' and The Psychology of Seasonal Nesting | 5 | 3 | 2 | 2 | Shaan explores extending the pop-up model into Christmas retail while Sam connects seasonal consumer buying surges to biological nesting behavior. | |
| Debating Humane and The Post-Smartphone Era | 7 | 5 | 2 | 3 | Sam introduces stealth startup Humane, raising skepticism over mega-funded stealth hardware projects. Shaan counters with Zuckerberg's law of sharing and post-phone form factors. | |
| Suli's Story: Opting Out, Sabbaticals, and Creative Drive | 6 | 5 | 3 | 3 | Shaan relates a viral story about an engineer buying a game app to retire at 31, prompting a philosophical debate with Sam on sabbaticals, human productivity, and creative purpose. |
Statements from this episode (19)
Puri: Ready to invest in Twitter prankster's startup at any valuation
“I am ready to invest in his things as like stealth startups. I'm like, I'm ready to invest in whatever he's doing. Any valuation.”
Puri: Musk Ordered Twitter Engineers to Print Out Months of Code
“He told every engineer to print out all the code that they've committed and they've written in the last three or six months and have it ready for review.”
Puri: Twitter's Growth Is Capped Because It Only Serves Power Users
“That's the core problem with Twitter is that the core needed addresses is only for like people like us. And like, it doesn't address the need for a whole bunch of other people on the planet. And if they wanted it to be more valuable, then they would need to do…”
Puri: Halloween spending reaches $10B annually, trailing only Christmas's $1T
“People are spending ten billion dollars a year now on Halloween is what gets spent, which is kind of crazy. That's more than almost any other holiday except for Christmas, which is Off the charts at almost a trillion dollars gets spent on Christmas.”
Puri: $3B spent on costumes and $700M on pet costumes for Halloween
“About ten billion in spending three billion of that is costumes. Seven hundred million of that is pet costumes, which is kind of crazy. There's basically like, you know, three million on three billion on candy.”
Parr: An acquaintance runs a nine-figure Christmas light show business
“I know a guy who owns a Christmas tree light show business that I can't reveal how big it is, But whatever number you're thinking of, how much revenue does, times it by, no, times it by 20. We're talking like nine figures.”
Puri: Spirit Halloween generates about $1 billion in annual revenue
“They do like a billion dollars a year in revenue the spirit store.”
Puri: Movie studios make hundreds of millions from 8-10% costume royalties
“The movie industry makes hundreds of millions off of Halloween costume royalties. They get like an eight to 10% royalty.”
Parr: Trend forecasting firm WGSN generates $100M revenue and $30M profit
“It's a hundred million dollar a year business that does like thirty million in profit.”
Puri: Haunted houses generate $300M in revenue annually
“So haunted houses apparently do three hundred million dollars a year.”
Puri: Zombie Pumpkins attracts 2 million visitors annually
“So two million people a year go to this site just to print out a stencil that they can use to carve their pumpkin.”
Puri: Pumpkinsteins generated $4M to $5M in sales on 90K orders
“He said he got 90,000 orders last year. So that's like four or five million dollars in sales of these pumpkins.”
Puri: Businesses enabling adults to act like kids will consistently thrive
“And also it's an excuse to act like a kid. And I'm bullish on anything that gives people an excuse to act like a kid. I think that's why Burning Man is popular. I think that's why Halloween is popular. And you know, even things like the ice cream museum and st…”
Puri: About 100 VR apps generate over $1M annually
“There are, I think a hundred VR apps that do over a million dollars a year.”
Parr: Society will view smartphone usage like smoking cigarettes in 10-20 years
“But I do think in like, 1020 years, we, we're going to be anti-phone. We're going to be like, what the fuck? You're looking at this shit. This is like cancer. Why are you doing this? Why are you, you're smoking? What are you doing smoking? That's kind of like,…”
Parr: Stealth startups raising $100M without showing products usually fail
“I think any company that raises that much money and has a site that says change everything and has raised a hundred and twenty million dollars and has never shown anything, I think they always fail. Nine out of 10 times. I think that they're gonna fail because…”
Puri: Acquired TinyCo legacy games generated over $3M in post-sale profit
“The business has generated more than three million in profits since he bought it. The purchase price assumed that revenue would go down over time, but it remained steady and actually grew during COVID.”
Shaan Puri: Willingness to Lose Money Signals What You Truly Want to Build
“I kind of want to go look at like what's something I would be willing to lose money doing because it's that fun to me or that intriguing to me because I think that that's probably a better signal of like what I really want to do and therefore we'll take an int…”
Sam Parr: Humans Are Built to Work About 30 Hours a Week
“We are not built to sit idle. We are, you know, created to work. I don't think we're actually created to work a hundred hours a week, but I think we are created to work like 30 hours a week. And like, that's the minimum where it's like, you just have to produc…”