The creative genius behind Squatty Potty & Poo-Pourri reveals his marketing playbook
Episode of My First Million · October 7, 2026 · 1 h 6 min
Shaan Puri talks with Angel Studios founder Jeff Harmon about finding marketing glitches, the Poo-Pourri and Squatty Potty ads, Angel's guild model, and AI.
Summary
Shaan Puri interviewed Jeff Harmon, the marketer behind viral campaigns for Orabrush, Poo-Pourri, Squatty Potty and Purple and the founder of Angel Studios. Harmon recounted how a dentist's unsold tongue cleaners became a roughly $10 million business after he targeted the small share of customers willing to buy online and exploited YouTube's then-new, sub-penny ad platform. He framed this as finding a "glitch," advising founders to solve their own problems and to chase attention channels incumbents ignore, citing AI agent-driven shopping as a current example.
Harmon described how his team used a 19-minute skippable YouTube ad to crowdfund The Chosen, raising $11 million from 17,000 investors on about $800,000 in ad spend, and how Harmon Brothers wrote ads at multi-day retreats with comedians and all stakeholders present. He explained a social media tactic of "warming up" a celebrity's face in algorithms, used for Kevin James's in-character art-teacher campaign and a Super Bowl stunt.
The conversation turned to Angel Studios' values-based content and its Angel Guild, whose roughly three million paying members vote on films and receive movie tickets, and to film economics, including Sound of Freedom's $14 million budget and $250 million gross. Harmon called Hollywood a brutal business with a cost problem rather than a revenue problem, praised Crunchyroll's niche focus, and described employing a personal vibe coder. He argued AI would increase hiring rather than cause mass unemployment, and closed with advice to prioritize marriage and children and to avoid draining legal fights.
Chapters
- 0:20
Dr. Bob and the Orabrush campaign
Harmon recounts turning a dentist's unsold tongue cleaners into a viral YouTube business by targeting the 8% of online buyers.
- 8:05
Finding the glitch
Harmon explains how early YouTube ads were a glitch and offers principles for finding new ones, including solving one's own problems and agentic shopping.
- 16:05
VidAngel and the 19-minute ad
Discussion of VidAngel's filtering origins and the long-form YouTube ad that crowdfunded The Chosen.
- 26:14
Poo-Pourri, Squatty Potty and creative retreats
Harmon describes how his agency built ads using comedians, structured formulas and cabin retreats with all stakeholders.
- 32:01
Runner, Kevin James and warming up the algorithm
Harmon explains modern campaigns, face recognition in social algorithms, clipping strategies and a Super Bowl stunt.
- 42:43
Angel's values-based content and the Guild
Harmon describes Angel's anti-nihilist content strategy and how Guild members vote on films and receive tickets.
- 46:29
Economics of the movie business
The pair discuss box office splits, Angel's profit-sharing model, breakage, and wealthy independent filmmakers.
- 50:58
The brutality of Hollywood
Harmon calls Hollywood a knife fight with a cost problem and praises Crunchyroll and A24's community approaches.
- 55:53
Personal vibe coder and AI
Harmon describes vibe coding prototypes, agent harnesses, and argues AI will not cause mass unemployment.
- 1:01:42
Advice to younger self
Harmon advises prioritizing marriage and kids and letting go of costly disputes in favor of new opportunities.
Key points
What was said, by whom, with the exact words. Timestamps jump to the moment.
- Shaan Puri
Puri argues a common marketing mistake is focusing on product features rather than the benefit the customer seeks.
“one of the easy mistakes most people make is they think about their product and they just want to tell you all about their product”
- Jeff Harmon
Harmon argues every founder must find a glitch, and Orabrush's was being early to YouTube's new ad platform.
“and everybody who starts a business you have to find your glitch and our glitch was YouTube launched its ad platform a few weeks before that”
- Jeff Harmon
Harmon says businesses optimized for AI agent shopping via APIs can tap a rapidly growing, overlooked audience.
“if you're a business that has an agentic shopping system where the AI bot doesn't have to go and scrape everything, it just talks to your API”
- Jeff Harmon
Harmon claims Angel is out-innovating Hollywood on distribution because incumbents fear and fight new tools.
“we are outpacing the Hollywood world, because right now we're in the Hollywood space, by leaps and bounds in speed of innovation”
Linked moment · 23:06Skip to 23:06 using a listen link in the info box.
Jeff HarmonHarmon reports the 20-minute pilot-as-ad led thousands of people to crowdfund The Chosen.
“And 17,000 people invested $11 million into The Chosen”
- Jeff HarmonPrediction · due Mar 2027
Harmon said the crucifixion portion of The Chosen would be released around Easter of the following year.
“they're going to release the crucifixion at Easter time this next year”
- Jeff Harmon
Harmon says every joke in an ad must advance the product message or be cut.
“if your joke doesn't add to the message, which is way harder to do, and if it just comes out of left field, you just have to kill it”
- Jeff Harmon
Harmon argues comedians are essential to creative marketing because it is easier to teach them marketing than to make marketers funny.
“it's way easier to train a comedian to be a marketer than it is to train a marketer to be funny”
- Jeff Harmon
Harmon contends social platforms classify videos mainly by the faces and images in them rather than by text descriptions.
“what really is mattering what your video is about on social media these days is what images are in the video”
- Jeff Harmon
Harmon describes Angel's content as values-based, with faith content as a subset, in contrast to nihilistic Hollywood fare.
“Ours is values-based. Values-based is what Disney used to be. And a subset of that is the faith audience”
- Jeff Harmon
Harmon claims Angel achieves the widest theatrical releases and highest box office of any independent studio.
“Angel hits the most theaters, the most locations for theaters, and the highest box offices of any independent studio”
- Jeff Harmon
Harmon says Angel takes no distribution cut and instead splits profits with filmmakers.
“We only take profits. So we split with the filmmaker the profits”
- Jeff Harmon
Harmon explains that the Guild's ticket benefit relies on breakage, similar to MoviePass.
“we rely on some breakage, meaning the average person goes to three to four movies a year”
- Jeff Harmon
Harmon says most of the roughly 1,000 independent films each year are financed by wealthy people wanting to make movies.
“I've never met a billionaire that doesn't want to make movies”
- Jeff Harmon
Harmon argues Hollywood's troubles stem from costs rather than insufficient revenue.
“the Hollywood industry has a cost problem, not a revenue problem”
- Shaan Puri
Puri argues executives of medium to large companies should employ a personal vibe coder because their bandwidth is the AI bottleneck.
“kind of think that every executive of a kind of medium to large company should actually do this, right?”
- Jeff Harmon
Harmon believes companies citing AI for layoffs are making excuses, since productivity gains should drive more hiring.
“I think they're just looking for excuses to fire people because economics work like this”
- Jeff Harmon
Harmon rejects the idea that AI will cause mass unemployment on economic grounds.
“I don't believe for a second that we're gonna have a massive unemployment because of AI”
- Jeff Harmon
Harmon advises young professionals to marry and have children earlier and more than they think they should.
“nothing will compare with getting married and having kids and having kids sooner than you think you should”
- Jeff Harmon
Harmon recounts a mentor's advice that disputes under $5 million are not worth fighting, which led him to drop a claim.
“unless it's worth over $5 million, it's not even worth fighting a battle over”
People
In the conversation
- Shaan PuriEntrepreneur and investor, co-host of My First Million, former Twitch executive
- Jeff HarmonCo-founder of the Harmon Brothers ad agency and founder of Angel Studios
Discussed
- Dallas JenkinsDirector and creator of The Chosen
- Kevin JamesActor whose film was promoted with guerrilla marketing
- Rick RubinAmerican record producer and author, a friend of Huberman's
- Owen WilsonAmerican actor, star of Stick
- iJustineEarly YouTube vlogger whose jump-cut style inspired the Orabrush ad
- Suzy BatizFounder of Poo-Pourri
Topics
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From the publisher
$1M Attention Guide: 15+ ways to get eyeballs on what you're building https://clickhubspot.com/okbv Episode 869: Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talks to Angel Studios founder Jeff Harmon ( https://x.com/JeffreyHarmon ) about finding and exploiting glitches. — Show Notes: (0:00) I helped a dentist create one of the greatest marketing campaigns (8:35) How to find the glitch in the system (11:10) Go for your own problems (13:25) Where is the attention going? (16:10) ANGEL (19:15) 19-minute ad experiment (25:30) The genius moment behind Squatty Potty, Poo-Pourri (26:55) Poo-Pourri ad (27:25) How to craft a $100M ad (28:55) Use comedians (35:55) Warm up the algorithm (39:35) Super Bowl stunts (41:10) PG-13 content for the masses (44:45) Base hits vs. home runs (45:10) The economics of the movie business (47:05) “I’ve never met a billionaire who doesn’t want to make movies” (49:55) The brutality of Hollywood (54:10) Having a personal vibe coder (1:00:05) Advice to my younger self — Links: • Angel Studios — angel.com • Poo-Pourri — poopourri.com • Squatty Potty — squattypotty.com • Purple — purple.com • A24 — a24films.com — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton (joinhampton.com): My community for founders. Average member does $25m/year. Many of the guests are members. Get after it...apply: http://joinhampton.com/mfm — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents. • Mercury - Shaan uses Mercury across all of his companies. you can too: http://mercury.com/ Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., Members FDIC • I run all my newsletters on Beehiiv and you should too + we're giving away $10k to our favorite newsletter, check it out: beehiiv.com/mfm-ch…
Summary, chapters and key points were generated from the episode transcript on November 15, 2026. Quotes are checked word for word against the transcript.