My 50-Year-Old Mother-in-Law Makes $1M/Year. The Product? You'd Never Guess
My First Million episode 794, in which Sam Parr talks with his mother-in-law, Smithy Sodine, about how she built a business of more than a million dollars a year in her 50s by selling pillows. Sam says she started with about 10 thousand dollars after asking him for advice, then researched better advice herself and learned the internet and Shopify from scratch. Smithy tells her immigrant story from Haiti to New York, says immigrants feel they have nothing to lose, and describes how she evaluates offers, saying no one will give you anything for free. She explains pulling her pillows from Bed Bath and Beyond after two or three months because she did not like the business model, while doing well on Wayfair. Sponsor named in the description: HubSpot and its side hustle idea database from The Hustle. PARTIAL COVERAGE: this note draws on the opening, origin, immigrant story, retailer sections and closing, and may miss parts of the roughly 40 minute video. Revenue and personal stories are the speakers' own and not independently checked. Nothing here is financial, investment or legal advice.
Executive Summary (TL;DR)
My First Million episode 794, in which Sam Parr talks with his mother-in-law, Smithy Sodine, about how she built a business of more than a million dollars a year in her 50s by selling pillows. Sam says she started with about 10 thousand dollars after asking him for advice, then researched better advice herself and learned the internet and Shopify from scratch. Smithy tells her immigrant story from Haiti to New York, says immigrants feel they have nothing to lose, and describes how she evaluates offers, saying no one will give you anything for free. She explains pulling her pillows from Bed Bath and Beyond after two or three months because she did not like the business model, while doing well on Wayfair. Sponsor named in the description: HubSpot and its side hustle idea database from The Hustle. PARTIAL COVERAGE: this note draws on the opening, origin, immigrant story, retailer sections and closing, and may miss parts of the roughly 40 minute video. Revenue and personal stories are the speakers' own and not independently checked. Nothing here is financial, investment or legal advice.