lystn

Nasir and Matt end the week by talking about businesses based on pranks, including exploding glitter and mailing animal feces. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business legal news. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. NASIR: Welcome to our program – probably the best podcast that is hosted by us. MATT: I hope so. It’s definitely in the top ten. NASIR: Well, twenty. MATT: So, I have a question for you. Do you have any enemies? NASIR: Do I have any enemies? I can name one person that I blacklisted. He’s not even an enemy. It’s just somebody that did something wrong and I don’t like, but I don’t really put much thought into him. That’s it. MATT: Okay. So… NASIR: You know who I’m talking about too, right? MATT: Yeah, I do. So, I mean, you say you don’t put too much thought into it, but would you put enough thought into it to possibly send him or her a secret envelope that would possibly explode with glitter upon opening? NASIR: Yes, of course. I do that to my friends, too. So, I don’t even know what you’re talking about. MATT: I saw that you sent one to your wife and you were just sitting there watching her open it. The real prank was on you because you had to clean it up. Well, you could be in luck – and I say “could be” and we’ll get to that – but I think a lot of people might have seen this – well, I guess this would have been last week by the time this episode comes out – this kid – and this guy is definitely a kid as well, especially how he’s handled it – he started this business where basically you pay $9.99 and he would essentially stuff an envelope with glitter and it would be sent to someone – whoever you pay to send it to – and it would just explode and glitter goes everywhere when you open it. Yeah, it’s a nice, funny prank. I could see it being pretty funny. NASIR: It’s somewhat harmless. MATT: Yeah. Once his website went live, it just went insanely viral. I think he said one million page visits; over a quarter of a million social media shares; five figures in sales which, like I said, it’s ten bucks per thing so that’s quite a few purchases there; and that was only the first 24 hours. So, this 22-year-old was very overwhelmed and just kind of went on – I think – the Twitter page and said, “All right.” I think he took the ability to purchase down on the site. Basically, he went on Twitter pleading for people to stop purchasing this which has to be one of the first times ever that someone’s just pleading with their customers to stop giving them money. NASIR: I know. That doesn’t happen often. And what was the reason? It was just too much for him to handle or he just thought it was ridiculous that people were doing this or what? MATT: From what I understand, it was too much to handle because I think I saw an interview with him where, like, they asked him his process on how it works. Like, “I literally just stuff the envelopes with glitter,” and so I guess he was like, “Well, I have thousands of orders to fill so all my time’s going to be spent just stuffing envelopes with glitter and I just don’t feel like doing that even if I’m making a good amount of money.” I mean, if you break it down to amount of money per hour, it’s probably not bad if you got fairly efficient with it. NASIR: Yeah, I imagine in the interview, “So, what’s your approach on how you handle this?” “Well, I take an envelope and I stuff it with glitter and then I close the envelope and then I address it and put it in the mail and that’s what I do for people.” MATT: Yeah. So, I don’t know how it necessarily explodes. I would think that the post office would have a problem with that. NASIR: I don’t think you can ship things that explode. MATT: Yeah. NASIR: I would assume that how you open it is such that it just goes everywhere, I assume. MATT: I wish there was a video. NASIR: Oh, I’m sure we can find someone. Let’s see. YouTube… what is it called?