Jun 25, 2021 · 1h 8m · my-first-million
How to launch a $100M DTC brand | My First Million #194
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Serial entrepreneur Justin Mares joins Sam Parr and Shaan Puri on My First Million to deconstruct his $100M+ CPG empire, his four-part side hustle framework, and actionable strategies for platform arbitrage, virtual assistant automation, and venture studio incubation.
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 53.2% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 4.9 Guest teaching 3.9 Guest disagreement 1.5 The hosts pushing back 2.2
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 49:56 Rejecting testosterone replacement therapy in favor of addressing environmental roots
Justin dismisses the hosts' interest in TRT telemedicine startups, arguing forcefully that clinics merely treat symptoms while ignoring root causes like endocrine-disrupting chemicals and lifestyle factors.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 28:36 Sam confronts Justin on running multiple side ventures as a funded CEOSam refuses the romanticized venture studio framing, pointedly asking how outside investors would not be furious with a CEO actively pursuing external startups.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 55:23 Justin breaks down vegetable oils and linoleic acid inflammationJustin educates the hosts on the cellular damage caused by linoleic acid in industrial seed oils, comparing the coming dietary shift to historical fringe trends that later entered the mainstream.
The host holds their own ▶ 14:50 Sam details software pricing doubling and enterprise upselling tacticsSam demonstrates concrete operational expertise by detailing how engineer-led micro-SaaS businesses underprice their tools and how to extract revenue by doubling rates and targeting corporate domains.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Show Hook and Crooked Picture Banter | 5 | 1 | 1 | 2 | The hosts and guest engage in nostalgic banter about their early entrepreneurial hustles in San Francisco. Sam and Shaan showcase familiarity with typical first-time founder tropes like roommate finders and transit apps. | |
| The Hundred Million Dollar Scale of Kettle and Fire | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Shaan presses Justin on whether Kettle and Fire and Perfect Keto hit a nine-figure revenue mark. Justin confirms they surpassed one hundred million dollars combined in 2019 and outlines his bootstrapped-to-venture funding trajectory. | |
| Side Hustle Framework: Buying Existing Cash-Flow Assets | 7 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Justin outlines his playbook for acquiring under-optimized digital and physical assets using seller financing. Sam actively demonstrates domain knowledge by detailing how doubling prices on acquired software drastically increases cash flow. | |
| Side Hustle Framework: Emerging Platform Arbitrage | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Justin shares how being early on Udemy created passive revenue from a basic SQL course. Shaan adds extensive color with a case study on owning zero-competition search terms on YouTube for waist trainers. | |
| Side Hustle Framework: Niche DTC Products via Paid Acquisition | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Justin details launching niche DTC products by finding unserved demand through Google keyword data, such as coyote-proof spiky dog vests. Shaan elaborates with an analogy comparing keyword research tools to Aladdin's magic lamp. | |
| The Venture Studio Model and Raising Secondary Capital | 5 | 3 | 2 | 6 | Justin explains his studio model of incubating businesses like Shirley non-alcoholic wines while running Kettle and Fire. Sam directly pushes back from an investor perspective, questioning how VCs tolerate a founder splitting attention across multiple side ventures. | |
| The CGM Accountability Challenge and Habit Incentive Models | 5 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Justin and the hosts review their continuous glucose monitor accountability experiment using financial forfeits. The conversation expands into digital commitment devices like Stickk and habit wagering models. | |
| The Long Compound Growth of DuckDuckGo | 4 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Justin provides insider context on Gabriel Weinberg's multi-year compounding effort building DuckDuckGo into a privacy powerhouse. The hosts discuss how long-term tailwinds against Big Tech enabled the company's hundred million dollar growth. | |
| Business Idea: Hipcamp Land Rental and Camping Arbitrage | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Justin presents a business model around listing campsites on Hipcamp with high cash-on-cash yields. Shaan enthusiastically offers on-air to capitalize RV purchases for any listener willing to act as the operator. | |
| The Booming Non-Alcoholic Beverage and Euphoric Market | 4 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Justin describes launching Shirley non-alcoholic wine with low upfront capital to capture shifts in drinking culture. The hosts and guest explore macro trends around declining alcohol consumption, alternative euphorics, and Gen Z behavioral shifts. | |
| Biohacking, Endocrine Disruptors, and The Wirecutter for Health | 4 | 7 | 4 | 3 | Justin rejects symptom-treating TRT clinics in favor of addressing environmental causes like phthalates, endocrine disruptors, and linoleic acid in seed oils. He educates the hosts on his extreme lifestyle protocols, prompting Sam to propose a Wirecutter-style site for evidence-based wellness. | |
| Business Idea: Compatibility Dating Based on Spending Habits | 6 | 2 | 3 | 7 | Justin pitches matching prospective partners based on credit card purchase history rather than surface-level profile photos. Sam forcefully shuts down the concept, arguing that user behavior in roommate and dating apps invariably favors immediate physical attraction over rational compatibility criteria. | |
| Scaling Productivity: Chief Automation Officer and Virtual Assistants | 5 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Justin breaks down his company's operational leverage of maintaining one virtual assistant for every two employees, enabling a 33-person team to support significant revenue. The hosts express strong admiration and urge him to document the operational system publicly. |
Statements from this episode (27)
Parr: Startup concepts launched straight out of college rarely succeed
“There's like three things that you start right when you graduate college and like, that's like one of them. And so they never work out well, like they're never that good.”
Mares: Perfect Keto hit $20,000 in monthly revenue in 45 days
“We thought it would take like a year or two to get to 20 grand a month, and we did it in the first like 45 days.”
Mares: Kettle & Fire's 2018 $16M round was half founder secondary
“So we raised sixteen million dollars in 2018 about half of that went to secondary, and the other half went to, like, actually putting money into the business.”
Mares: Kettle & Fire and Perfect Keto combined topped $100M in 2019
“I can say in 2019, like the two businesses combined did north of a hundred.”
Mares made $15K-$18K monthly via Airbnb arbitrage in San Francisco in 2013
“In 2013, we had, like, the number third, like, the third ranked Airbnb in San Francisco, and so we were we were, like, renting out either our living room most nights, or you know, over summers, we'd rent it out for, like, 15, 18 grand a month, and then we just…”
Mares acquired Shopify app FOMO for under $400K at $14K MRR
“A partner and I bought a Shopify app called FOMO. It was doing 14 K a month at the time we bought it. You know, we bought it. We paid less than 400.”
Mares acquired 85% of Shopify app FOMO with zero out-of-pocket capital
“We bought 85% of the business. We bought it and then we were basically like, we're going to buy this and pay you in monthly chunks for the next 20 months. And so every like month for 20 months, we use the revenue that we were making from FOMO to make our payme…”
Shopify app FOMO now generates approximately $95,000 per month in revenue
“Now it does about 95 grand a month.”
Parr: Engineer-led software businesses can typically double prices without hurting revenue
“Engineer led businesses typically are priced poorly. And if you just double the price it works.”
Mares converted a 14-unit Las Vegas building to Airbnb, tripling cash flow
“We ended up doing this too with an apartment building in, in Vegas where we bought a 14 unit apartment building, could put it all on Airbnb basically like tripled the cashflow and then sold it. 18 months later for, you know, it's 70% more than what we paid.”
Puri: Waist trainer business made $1M annual profit via YouTube search
“So she just created like the YouTube channel to be the answer to every search question about waist trainers on YouTube. And you can go, if you just go search waist trainers right now on YouTube, you'll find all her videos. And so all her sales just come just f…”
Mares has completely stepped away from day-to-day operations at Perfect Keto
“Some of these things like perfect keto, like I don't have a day to day role in it anymore, you know, so I like co-founded it, but I've completely stepped away.”
Mares will take zero cash from incubated startup Surely Wines until exit
“A company I incubated Shirley wines, it's like a non-alcoholic wine company we launched earlier this year. I recruited, I like basically had the idea, tested it, validated it, lined up supply chain, hired in the operator the operator and CEO, he's taking a sal…”
Mares: Venture capital beats bootstrapping because elite talent is prohibitively expensive
“I think I will probably raise for most things that I do going forward or invest my own money just because, The caliber of the team that we were able to hire around us, like what we were doing on a shoestring budget versus what we could do after was just night …”
Puri: Investors judge multi-company CEOs purely through outcome-based resulting bias
“It's like Elon can run Tesla and SpaceX and everyone's like, wow, he's amazing. And those businesses are amazing. And then Jack does the same thing with Twitter and square. And if Twitter's misses its earnings, it's like off with his head. How dare he, you kno…”
Mares: Wearable Challenge filled 50-person cohorts monthly with zero marketing
“We have had with literally no marketing, you know, we've filled up 50 person cohorts every month since launching that in February.”
Parr: Most Toodledo customers came from one mention in Getting Things Done
“When I when we owned Tootledoo, there was this one guy, an author, I think he wrote a book, Getting Things Done... And he mentioned Tootledoo, this app that me and Ramon bought. And most of our customers came to us because they read about Tootledoo. Like, it j…”
Parr estimates DuckDuckGo generates over $100 million in annual revenue
“They do north of a hundred million in revenue, I believe.”
Mares estimates Hipcamp land rentals can generate 30% to 40% cash-on-cash returns
“So I was mainly modeling it from like a NOI basis which is net operating income, which is like a term that's used a lot in real estate. But basically I think that you could get like 30 to 40% cash on cash returns by following this strategy.”
Mares invested around $100k to start Surely non-alcoholic wine
“So I put in a close to a hundred K to make this happen. And some portion of that was a loan that, that I got out just as like revenue started to come in, but yeah, it was about a hundred K to spin up.”
Mares: Male testosterone has declined by 50% over the last 40 years
“Male testosterone is down 50% over the last, like, 40 years.”
Mares: Superior recreational drugs are driving the non-alcoholic beverage market boom
“I honestly think one of the reasons I'm bullish on the non-alc space is, like, we are getting to the point where there are just better drugs. Like, if people want to, you know, alter their state of consciousness, I'm seeing a lot more friends that are like, Op…”
Mares: Phthalates in plastics significantly damage human testosterone and endocrine systems
“The whole class of something called phthalates, which is P H T P T H L A T E S. That, that effectively have like a really Strong negative impact on one's testosterone, ones like endocrine and hormonal systems, and they're, that are in like everything.”
Mares predicts massive surge in public backlash against vegetable oils
“You know, five years from now, 10 years from now, a lot of people are going to be way more conscious about vegetable oils and the damage that they specifically, like, a compound called linoleic acid in there that, the damage that that does to, like, your infla…”
Mares: Credit card purchase history predicts dating compatibility better than Hinge
“I think that, like, where you spend your resources tells a lot about someone that a Hinge profile doesn't, and so I suspect if, like, you were to say, hey, we are matching the two of you up because you spend an absurd amount of your income at this, like, weird…”
Kettle & Fire employs one virtual assistant for every two full-time staff
“Like, we have basically one virtual assistant hire for every two people that we have that are on the team, and we give them, like, a training that's like, here's how to use virtual assistants, get all of the repetitive stuff off your plate”
Puri: Most business operators and content creators rarely excel at both disciplines
“People are good at one of the, I know a bunch of amazing business people who don't want to or suck at creating content. And I know some great content people that I'm like, once I meet them, I'm like, oh, you've, this is what, this is your business. You've neve…”