Ripley's Believe It or Not

Follow the ownership trail to find fascinating operators

Sam's research method for discovering business stories: when something interests him (e.g. Guinness World Records), he scrolls to the far right of the Wikipedia infobox to find the parent company and owner, then opens tabs tracing the full chain of who bought and sold it.

“So like Ripley's Believe It or Not has always interested me, so did Guinness Book of World Records. You and I one time talked about the business behind like certifying and like giving like a seal of approval. I got interested in that and I thought, what, what out there is kind of like that?”

Steal thisStart from any brand you find interesting, trace its parent company and ownership history, and you'll surface the operators and playbooks behind it.

Guinness World Records sells $100k 'we'll coach you to the record' packages

Sam explains how Jim Pattison changed the Guinness World Records business model: companies like Toyota pay roughly $100k and Guinness sends experts to coach them on exactly how to break a record, then returns to certify it.

“So like you can pay like $100 grand and then they like send coaches to like show you exactly how to break the record. And it's like, so like for example, Toyota wanted to set some world record on X, Y, and Z. And so they sent like these scientists to Toyota and they go, all right, so in order to break it, you gotta do this, this, and this.”