290 - Best of 2025! The Catfish That Launched a Business: The Story of Sam's List with Kimi Green

0:00You thought you were being catfished because there's no way Sam Parr is texting you? The first four months, I was not convinced. I answer the FaceTime and I see his face. My heart drops. And I just go, oh my gosh, it's really you? He pans to his wife in the background. I work for WordGo. Are you being held hostage to his wife's chair? That is when I knew I was talking to Sam. He made it very clear that this is either going to be such an incredible opportunity for me or the funniest story for me, and we never speak again.

0:35What is your business and how do you make money? So Sam's List is a platform where you can easily find and connect with accountants, fractional CFOs, and financial advisors as of two months ago. So that's the premise of Sam's List. And then the way we make money is basically sending leads to the professionals on our platform. How did you get into this? I can answer that a couple of ways. Do you think I should answer it like, how did I meet Sam to start this business or how did I get into the marketplace arena? Which one is earlier? Okay. This will tie in both, to be honest with you. I accidentally started a marketplace over a year ago for run clubs.

1:17And then a few months later, so that was back in September, September For 2023, I was building a marketplace specifically for run clubs across the US. And while I was working my W2, fast forward to February of 2024, I get this random text message from a guy named Sam that was like, hey, I have this idea. It's called Sam's List and people can find a CPA. I thought I was getting catfished. Hold on. Let's set the context here. So the The cool thing about your business is Sam's List is named after Sampar. My first million tech investor. I don't even know his whole background. I've heard about Sam's List for a couple of years, I think, maybe a year and a half, where he's like, hey, I have this thing called Sam's List because it's based off of this other list that his wife, what's his wife's name?

2:08Sarah. Sarah's List, right? Which is about top VC companies and I think, I don't know, recommendations on who they should invest in. I can't remember exactly what it is. But the gist is Sam Parr is the Sam in Sam's list. So when you're saying you have this run club that you made and you get this random text from Sam, you thought you're being catfished because there's no way Sam Parr is texting you? Correct. So a few years ago, Sam had sent on a podcast on My First Million or he posted on Twitter that he was looking for someone who can just send him podcast ideas every week. It would just be a couple hours a week.

2:43And I felt, I still kind of think that I have a good pulse on interesting people or cool business ideas that aren't public companies. They aren't raising capital yet. So through my name and the hat and all you have to do is create this one pager of what you would have sent him for that week's episode. There were, I don't know, three, 500 people who did this. It was just a Google form that you had to do or submit it through. Got through the last round. It was me and two other people. I didn't end up getting it. And I also wasn't speaking to Sam like one-on-one how we are right now. It was legitimately, hey, email me this one pager and I'm just going to let you know, yay or nay.

3:25So that's what I did. I would submit that one pager and wait for Sam to reply back. Great. Next round. What was the idea? I actually was looking at this the other day. One of them was around the financial meme account liquidity and how he had basically gone from an investment banker building a meme platform on Instagram, turned that into a six-figure business just from memes alone, turned it into a newsletter. And now he is investing in companies. He has built this whole media and investment hub for himself. So he was one of them. Mark from Facebook, that's his name, right? Mark Zuckerberg? And wait, who's the Facebook guy?

4:09No, MySpace guy. Oh, Tom? Tom, yeah. I had a little... Dude, that's so funny. The way you said that, you're like, you know, Mark from Facebook. I'm like, are you just on a first-name basis with Mark Zuckerberg? I wish Marky Mark. No, Tom from MySpace. I had done a blurb about him building MySpace and then people building social media today. Like now it's pretty social media is quite self-absorbed. Tom from MySpace just wanted to help us curate our own little like mini business brands. So I had some write up on him. And then there's another guy, Pump, Anthony Pompliano. Somehow I saw that he was discontinuing all of his advertisers for his podcast.

4:56And it was a pretty big deal because that was his main revenue driver. and people didn't know that at the time. So that was one of the things that stuck out to Sam. It's, he literally was like, I don't know how you knew that. There was this call of like, from Sam, like, Hey, I want interesting guests. Send me your ideas of who I should have on. And so then you fill out these, this one pager of, Hey, here are the couple of people that I think you should have on the podcast. And why? Not guests, just topics because on. Oh, just topics. Yeah. Yeah. These were just, cause you know, sometimes they will have guests and then other times they're talking about, just random little projects or ideas or throwbacks.

5:35And so that's what I was speaking on. And obviously I did not get that, but still now it's cool because we'll Slack every day and I will still send him interesting projects. And one of them was this guy building a website around purified water and he's just grading a bunch of different water brands. And he He tweeted it out. Yeah, he tweeted out within 30 seconds of me sitting at two of them. And it just got so much engagement on his Twitter. And then the guy who built it was like, Oh my god, I just got mentioned on Sam's podcast and on his Twitter. So it was cool. So I like to still send him some stuff.

6:18I mean, the cool thing about that is, is such an asymmetric bet. Like you have no downside. He's asking, Hey, apply to be this person who gives me podcast ideas. And you're like, no downside to me. Sure. I can do that. And, and from that, there's like only upside and you built this relationship. So that was a few years ago. Did you guys stay in touch or was it like, no. So this is why I thought I was getting catfished. This was like two, three years ago, two and a half years ago, maybe. So out of sight, out of mind. I remember March Madness was going on. And if you know me, I really love women's basketball.

6:55So I remember being in Dallas at the time March Madness was going on when that had ended. Fast forward two years later, I'm traveling for my run club business that I was building on the side. I was in San Francisco visiting a run club that I really wanted to work with. And on a random day, I was just working at a coffee shop. And that's when I get the text from Sam. I don't have this number because again, we had only communicated over email, barely. Again, it was just send us email through Google Forms and that's it. So when I get this text that says, Hey, it's Sam, I have a project idea. You interested?

7:39it was so weird he said sam par he did say his full name and immediate like signs are going off i've been hijacked before i didn't even have his number so maybe i put my number on the form but i don't remember it was so long ago so i'm very confused i just let it sit for a few hours and then i look at it again and it did send as an i message so it's not a green text and I just sent a question mark back and he was like it's me he was like it's me Sam remember you applied to be my researcher and didn't get it I was like ow that hurt yeah I remember now so you pulled the most alpha move possible you didn't respond to him for a few hours and then you just hit him with a question mark on the message yeah in case it was like Tina from the Czech Republic Like I didn't get a weirdo text back that was like, Hey, send me$1 ,000 in PayPal gift cards or something like that.

8:44So this is why I was terrible at dating. It was like, if the girl that I liked, like showed any interest to me, I'd be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where do you want to go this week? You know what I mean? I was just like, I'm like a dog when it comes to that. My tail's wagging. I'm like, yeah, what are we doing? Where are we going? And you're like, Oh, interesting. I'll let it sit for a couple hours. Oh, you know what? I'll respond to him. Question mark. And then he's like, Oh, you don't remember me, Sam? to just like instant insecurity. Like, well, no, I'm famous. You don't remember me? You interviewed for my research assistant position.

9:11You're like, just immediately changed the power dynamic. So good. It was, so it gets a little better once he said that. Do you remember this? All I said was, yeah, I remember. And he said, I sent you an email a few weeks ago. Did you get it? I'm like, okay, this is how I could probably verify that it's him. So I go to my Gmail and I check my spam and I can see Sam's email there. That was basically an exact duplicate of the text message that he had sent me. I'm like, oh my gosh, I think this might be him. So again, my account, I've had my LinkedIn account packed before. It was horrible. I actually had a handful of friends send over thousands of dollars to like some sketchy guy asking for money because they thought it was me.

10:04I guess I'm a trusting person. But ever since then, I just have a wall up when someone that I don't know is getting in touch with me. So I sent him a DM on Instagram. And I was like, hey, did you text me? And then I texted him. I said, I just sent you a DM on Instagram. Did you get it? he said no I didn't get it but he sent me a screenshot of all of his Instagram DMs and I can see his wife's name I can see like Alex Lieberman the morning brew guy I think his name so some recognizable names I'm like a hacker would do that I'm still not convinced and then right after he sent that screenshot he said I'm hopping into a podcast episode can I call you afterwards.

10:47And I'm immediately like, Oh, this is totally fake. And I just remember sending screenshots to my college group texts at the time. And there's nine of us in there. I'm like, you guys, I think I'm getting catfished. And because I also have a close friend who has an anonymous texting app, and she does stuff like this. So I sent it to them one to see if any of my friends were doing this to me to be funny. But no, they were all I think this could be real, but be careful. Like clockwork, an hour later, when Sam finishes recording my first million, I get a FaceTime. I love how you still do the air quotes.

11:28Even to this day, you're still not convinced. You're like, I'm not sure it was actually. The first four months, I was not convinced. I answer the FaceTime with my camera pointing to the sky, and I see his face. I legitimately, like my heart drops similar to how I joined this podcast episode. My heart drops. He's on the phone and I just go, oh my gosh, it's really you. And then he pans to his wife and his newborn baby in the background that was born like two weeks ago. And I word for word go, are you being held hostage? And she was like, no, it's me. And she said something like that. and that is when I knew I was talking to Sam.

12:16Yeah. And he gave the half-baked concept for Sam's List. That's pretty funny. He pans over and you're like, Sarah, blink twice if you're being held against your will. Please. So here's my question. I get the general premise of Sam's List and especially for somebody like Sam where he has a large audience being able to refer people to trusted fractional CFOs, CPAs, wealth managers, et cetera. It makes sense to me. He was persistent in following up with you. Why do you think that is? He's crazy for one. I mean, he may be crazy, true, but he gets hundreds of DMs. I'm sure they got tons of applicants.

12:57What do you think it was about you that stood out? I mean, has he told you why he was kind of so dead set on Kimmy Green being the one to carry this idea out? I think it was two main reasons. One, my little one pagers sending him different podcast topic ideas stuck out to him because they were sort of unique and at an interesting angle. And then so he remembered that for one. And then two, when we got on that first initial FaceTime, And Sam's very good at setting the stage for what's about to come. And I've seen him. I've been fortunate enough to see how he operates, which has been so freaking cool.

13:40But on our call, he made it very clear that this is either going to be such an incredible opportunity for me or the funniest story for me. And we never speak again. So I knew it could either go this way or this way. And I really wanted it to go this way. And I was willing to do anything that it took to make sure that Sam's List was a success. So we both went into this day zero knowing that this could crash and burn. and I knew that he could easily replace me because during this little trial period of building Sam's List, this could be TMI, but I got access to his Twitter and LinkedIn accounts.

14:29And Nick, this is where, and his email, this is where I saw just how many inbounds this guy gets on a daily basis. And then of course, I'm like, holy crap, my one-pagers are sticking out. Like he's getting flooded with people either, you know, can you mentor me or, Hey, can you review this business that I have? Can I just steal five minutes of your time? He gets everything and it's in the Twitter, DMs, LinkedIn, his inbox and probably his cell phone as well. So it was wild to see and some of it he'll engage with. But I knew getting access to that. I was like, Oh, I am so replaceable. Oh, I'm replaceable.

15:14Yeah. Like Beyonce just started playing in your head. You're like, to the left, to the left, everything I own in a box to the left. Literally. So I didn't want that to happen. I was like, no, this is me. It's me. No, I'm doing this. I'm doing this. I have a quick Sam Parr story and then we'll move on from it. But he was looking for a host for Money Wise and I applied for it. And I was like, I want to do Money Wise. I'd be great at this. I, I love the concept. I always ask people these types of questions, yada, yada, yada. So I apply, I make it through the first round, but like you said, just an email, right?

15:52And like really sure here's the email. Um, and then I make it to the, to the final round and I have to get somebody who has significant net worth. And then not only do I have to get them, but I have to get them to open up about it. And, um, I recorded this podcast and I was like, Oh, this should be fine. Cause he had told me if, you know, if this goes well, you're going to then edit it and post and you'll make it a real episode. So as I was recording the podcast, I was like, ah, this is not a good conversation. It's not going well, this conversation that I'm having, but it's fine. I'll be able to like chop it up and post and whatever.

16:24We could. And, uh, he watched it and was like, yeah, I don't think this is going to work for me. And I was like, I was just devastated. Cause I'm like, I promise I could be good at this. And then I did like, not like you. Cause I'm not, I I'm not my wife's like you too where it's like okay cool I just won't respond I'll play I wrote like the you know the breakup with the girlfriend who's clingy and I'm like no I can be whatever you need I'll be so much better I wrote like this whole long old thing and like in the moment I even knew I'm like I should not be writing all of this but I just couldn't help it and then I never heard back from him it was a good experience for me I can't believe you applied I remember when he was looking for um a money wise host and I think even when he started it he was like hey I just want to do this for a few episodes and I want someone to take it over.

17:10And, you know, I think he's just about a year in and he just might've found someone. So I also knew someone that was applying to be the Money Wise podcast. I went to this MFN meetup and there was a guy who had also applied and he was, I don't even think he recorded an episode, but similar to you, he was trying to find someone with high net worth. And that one was weird. That little group, he was doing that. And then a month later, I got the opportunity for Sam's list. And then a month later, someone else in that group was using Sam's list. And then someone else was asking me if he could work for Sam's list.

17:49And I'm like, well, buddy, we're barely making any money, but thanks for reaching out. Sam says it's going well. It's not going well. Okay. So you and Sam have the FaceTime. turns out Sarah is not being held hostage, which is great. That's great news for Sarah. What was the conversation like? Was it like, hey, leave your job and come do this? Or was it, hey, this could be a side hustle? How did that look for you? At the time, obviously I was building that run club business. I also had a little newsletter on the side. So I was doing things so I could eventually leave my W2. And when Sam's list came about, in my head, I was just thinking, oh, maybe this can be that additional 50 % of supplementation that I needed to fully leave my W-2.

18:36But when we were talking about it in the early stages, it was more of a side gig that could potentially produce dividends and wouldn't require much. But then as time went on, I think it was when we first hit like 30 or 40 ,000 maybe in the first couple of months. I'll never forget. It was like a week before my birthday. I was at my friend's house and he was like, Hey, are you ready to go full time with this? And obviously I was, I transparently, I was pretty MIA from my full-time job because Sam's List had just taken up so much of my time and I knew it was getting to the point where I'd have to quit soon.

19:25Funny story for you. I was in the office and at the time I stopped kind of going into the office every day just because again, like Sam's List was taking up so much of my time. I was like, I can't just show up to work with my personal laptop and have Sam Parr and Joe Spizer's name popping up from Slack. So I'm in the office and there's only like six of us out of 100 people that would go into the office. What was your job? It was in fintech real estate. So I was an analyst at the time I was doing invest relations stuff. So one of our founders, he's a CEO, he walked over to where all of us were sitting.

20:05And I was sitting next to, ironically, one of our accountants. And she's like, hey, Brian, what's this Hampton charge for$8 ,000? And I'm sitting there like, Hampton charge? So for context, Hampton is Sam and Joe, Sam and Joe of our two co-founders. Hampton is their other company. And I'm freaking out. It's a community for entrepreneurs, business owners. Yeah, internally freaking out. If he's in Hampton, there's a good chance he knows what Sam's list is because Sam would have been talking about it and whatever. So I am freaking out. And he didn't say anything to me. so a couple days go by nothing happens i do some light calendar stalking and i see he had hampton on his uh calendar there was a hampton box that arrived on his desk a couple weeks later and i sent that box to i took a video of the box on his desk and sent it to sam and joe on slack again this is just so funny and makes my origin story to these guys so weird but sam goes you work for someone in hampton do you know what i do and he was like honestly no i was like well i work at this company that's just what i do and now my ceo is a part of your group and he was like that is so funny what are you doing like okay anyways that's what i knew it was just the first time he asked a personal question well he knew everything else but when it came to work he knew nothing again this man's crazy so i so that happened and that started freaking me out but then just like my overall bandwidth i could no longer dedicate enough time to this new team we were building at my company um yeah sam's list was just taking off and so we had had conversations in the early days of hey if this gets big like you're going to be the CEO.

22:09You're going to be the one that's fully running it. Because at the time we split tasks between the three of us, the three co-founders and a part-time developer. So the plan was always for me to do that. It just got expedited once things started moving along. And frankly, I loved my company and my coworkers so much. I didn't want to end on bad terms. Did you tell your boss? Did you tell the CEO what you're doing ever? Yeah. He didn't know what I was talking about. Now he definitely does. But at the time he was like, what's Sam's list? And I'm like, well, don't dig too far. And you might be mad at me.

22:45Did you always know you wanted to be an entrepreneur? Oh yeah, definitely. I was trying to build a summer camp for kids and technology when I was in college. Okay. So you always knew you wanted to do something entrepreneurial, but for you, you were like, was the plan in your head work, get some experience, maybe launch a side hustle or two, see which one takes off and then leave. Or was it work, get some experience and then buy a business? How are you thinking about the transition into entrepreneurship? You know what? If I would have never left corporate America, I think I would have been like any other entrepreneur who's like, I have this great business idea that's going to make millions and millions of dollars.

23:23But yet you're going into the office every single day from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. And you don't do anything about it. You just talk about it. So had I not left corporate America, I definitely think I would have been like way more on the conservative side. I do all the talking with little action to prove it. And so it wasn't until I left where I started trying new things to eventually have my own business. Do you think you needed that big of a catalyst to leave? Because that's a pretty big catalyst, right? Oh, my boss is a member of a community that my co-founder owns. And my co-founder is very public.

23:59like this is going to be found out also at the same time, like I'm pretty checked out at my job. Like it was, it was coming to a head. It was forcing a decision. Do you feel like you had to be forced into that decision or, or do you think you would have left and been an entrepreneur either way? Yeah. So before that kind of happened, so Sam reached out to me February of 2024. and then it was September, October of 2023 where I was building the Run Club Marketplace. I had also started working with this guy who had a newsletter, former Barstool guy that was doing his own thing now. And I was selling newsletter advertisements for him.

24:42So that was generating not a lot, but like the first paycheck I got from that and then the initial interest from with the run club stuff I vividly remember calling my parents and telling them because I've had this conversation with them before but I told them and I was like hey just so you all know there's a good chance that when 2024 is here I'm doing my own thing and I will not have a typical w-2 job trust me that I'm gonna make it work again all I needed with that first paycheck from one of these side things to have the delusion that I'm just going to absolutely go for it. Again, I was 110 % in this thing, but I wanted my parents.

25:27I don't come from money. I want that to be well. I don't come from money. It's just a very average middle-class family. And I just wanted to at least have their blessing or comfort of like, I'm very bullish on this, but in the all chance, I don't have enough to go to the print. Could you do it for me? And they're like, what are you doing? So that conversation had happened and like month one of Sam's list. All right. Now's the part of the show where I feel the most uncomfortable, but my therapist says I need to face my fears. So here we are. I've started a newsletter and I want you to subscribe.

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26:29I was out to lunch one day when I was at work and Sam FaceTimed me, which he was doing. He did like 10 times a day in the early stages and we would chit-chit. Is he a FaceTimer? Well, we would do Slack FaceTime. Yeah, no, whatever, but like he video calls? Yeah. I have a friend like that. He only video calls me. I'm just like, what are you doing, you psychopath? Like send me a text. Well, that's me. I FaceTime over text and if it's not FaceTime, it's a voice memo. Yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. All right. Like don't make me lose my fingers. You do? I do love voice memos. Yeah. I was going to send you one the other day.

27:10You should have. I love them because like texting takes so much time and like there's nuance to it. And like, well, I know what you said, but it's how you said it. You know what I mean? It's just like, it just leaves a lot of room for ambiguity and misinterpretation. So yeah, I like the voice memo now because I can get out my thoughts and kind of hear what I'm thinking. Yeah. I appreciate them more too, because I'm also the only friend in my friend group that's not in Texas. So when I am speaking to my close people, like I want to see your reaction to everything I'm telling. I want to see your surrounding environments.

27:44I want to hear it. But anyways, Sam calls me. We're on Slack's FaceTime. And again, that conversation came up of when do you think you could go full time on Sam's list? He either asked me that or when do you think you would ever quit your job? I was like, oh, I'm actually about to put in my two weeks next week because I have this run club business that is taking off. I hadn't made a dollar yet from the run club. I just had interest and I will never forget. Jim goes, do you come from a wealthy family or do you come from money? And I was like, no, not at all. He goes, good luck with that.

28:25I was like, honestly, that just lit a fire under me because I know this is going to work out, but, and I still do that companies on back burner, but it did make a thousand dollars in just a couple of months. So it was all coming to a head and you, you made the decision. I had a very similar experience. You know, I had a lot of experience in corporate America and I knew, yeah, I wanted to be an entrepreneur and I cosplayed for a while of like, you know, Oh yeah, I might buy this business. I might do that business. But I ended up getting fired from the company. It was like a long story. They were having some financial difficulties.