The world is full of hidden businesses and opportunities in the 'weird nooks and crannies' of the economy, and finding them requires developing the art of noticing.
The speakers discuss how there are many profitable businesses hidden in plain sight, like monkey breeding for lab testing or conveyor belt manufacturing, and that developing the ability to notice these opportunities is a superpower for entrepreneurs. ✦ AI generated
Sam Parr · My First Million · 2026-08-12 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 9:48
“And it's always bigger than you think. Can you imagine someone making $500 million by creating a breeding monkey?”
It rewires your brain to realize like it's just the world is full of gaps and then founders who plug them. And so you start to realize, oh, that was a gap and someone plugged it. That was a gap and someone plugged it. So you start finding gaps and thinking, could I plug that? And it changes you. That's what an entrepreneur's brain really like comes down to, is seeing the world not as this like set, fixed, solved thing that mommy and daddy have like they'll take care of, but like, no, no, no, there's tons of opportunity. You can go and just change it. You can literally just bend the world and make it make it anew. And then the other side, you realize like wow, there's a lot of business in the weird nooks and crannies of the world. There's a lot of money to be made doing things that are just off the beaten path because there's this arbitrage between what smart people learn about in their day-to-day life or school.
verbatim transcript · starts at 9:48
9:33little like the lead that goes in this this mechanical pencils. There's a company that makes that. There's a guy who you'll meet on a boat somewhere whose business is just to provide these lead and he knows everything about the lead business and he goes to meet sits in meetings and they talk about 3 mm lead and 6 mm lead and everything is a business. It would not exist if there
9:53wasn't a entrepreneur behind it making it exist. And the world is full of these projects and everywhere. >> than you think. >> And it's always bigger than you think. It's always bigger than >> Can you imagine someone making $500 million by creating a breeding monkey? And when you look at the photos, it it looked like a huge shed almost, that photo that he showed me. >> It's crazy and you know, you I remember
10:16meeting people who were like the richest guy in my neighborhood growing up. It's like, "What do you do? What's your job?" And he laughed. He's like, "No, there's no job." He's like, "I sell you know, in a factory where there's like a conveyor belt or like you know, where you go through TSA and there's like a conveyor belt? He's like, "The tread of that conveyor conveyor belt. We make the
10:34tread." And I was like, "What? How? What? How did you even start that? Where does that even come from?" You know, like "I own an almond farm, a mushroom farm." I met a guy who makes the dye that makes the color blue because blue is not really a naturally occurring you know, chem substance you find. You have to like make it. He's like, "I make blue." And he's like, "Well, I love lamp, sir.
- ·World is full of gaps founders can plug
- ·Profitable businesses hide in 'weird nooks and crannies'
- ·Money made 'off the beaten path' by those who notice
- ·Entrepreneur's brain sees opportunity, not a fixed world
- ·Gaps exist in places smart people overlook
- ·Daily life knowledge creates arbitrage opportunities
- ·Seeing gaps becomes a superpower for founders
- ·You can 'bend the world and make it anew'