As an entrepreneur, I’m obsessed with business models. Not the product. Not the marketing. The model — the invisible architecture that determines whether you’re swimming upstream or riding a wave.
Take Amazon. In the early days, Jeff Bezos figured out something elegant: charge customers immediately, ship the books, then pay wholesalers 30 days later. That’s 30 days of float, earning interest on money that wasn’t his yet. And unlike brick-and-mortar bookstores, no inventory sitting on shelves. The model was the moat.
I thought about this when my friend Lauren texted me: “I’m coming in Friday during lunch to pick up a sad boy ice cream. hahaha. Not sure if you heard of them.”
She was driving from Golden to Denver. For ice cream.
WTF is going on?
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Meet Sad Boy Creamery.
Here’s how it works: Every Monday at 10 a.m., new flavors drop. 300 pints. That’s it. You order through Hotplate, a platform built for limited-availability food drops, and select a pickup window for Thursday, Friday, or Saturday.
The flavors? Nostalgic, playful, rotating. Childhood cereals. Retro candy. This week: R.I.P. Pistachio Oreos. (R.I.P. because they’re retiring it. Also brilliant.)
The catch? It sells out in minutes. Then miss your pickup window? Forfeited. No refunds.
After Lauren told me about Sad Boy, I added myself to their text list. Week one? Shut out. No ice cream.
Week two? I set an alarm on my phone. Seriously. To compete for ice cream.
I got in. R.I.P. Pistachio Oreos was mine.
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The Pickup Experience.
Today I excused myself early from a meeting to drive to Sad Boy HQ in Capitol Hill.
This is not a glitzy retail space. It’s an industrial building. Second floor. You walk up a narrow staircase with tattered carpet and find yourself in what feels like a storage locker with a pickup window.
People ahead of me carried coolers. I gave my name. Got my pint. Done.
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The Model (This Is Where It Gets Good).
Sad Boy has upended the ice cream parlor business model:
→ No fancy retail space. They’re in an industrial building paying industrial rent.
→ No expensive display cases (and electricity bills to match).
→ Minimal staffing. The guy at the window probably works 6 hours a week.
→ All orders prepaid. Sound familiar? (Hello, Amazon.)
→ Cult pricing. Nearly $20 a pint. No delivery. You come to them.
→ Forfeited pickups. Miss your window? That’s on you.
And the biggest one?
The whole thing is a game.
The flavors are playful. You compete to get into the lineup. And when you win? You text your friends with photos.
Lauren messaged me yesterday with her pint already devoured: “We won the lottery this week — and we ended up with 2 pints of this!”
Won the lottery. For ice cream.
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The Effort Paradox.
Here’s something else about this model: when people make an effort for something, they appreciate it more.
My uncle understood this on Turtle Island, an exclusive private island resort in Fiji where industry moguls and celebrities eat side by side. On Thursday evenings, he hosted dinner on the mountaintop. Most hoteliers would coddle their guests, running them up and down that mountain with golf carts, or perhaps giving each guest a motorized cart of their own.
But my uncle? Everyone walked. No excuses.
Of course there was disbelief and grumbling. But then the tramping up the hill ensued. And you know what? By the end of the stay, it was that journey — the one requiring a tad more effort — that delivered the rewards made memorable by the journey itself.
Sad Boy gets this intuitively. You don’t just buy the ice cream. You earn it.
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The Quantum Surfing Connection.
When asked about starting Sad Boy, founder Michael Kimball said something that stopped me: “When I had the idea for Sad Boy, it just felt right.”
Just felt right.
That’s the felt sense of alignment. No forcing. Only flowing.
And if you’ve been following along with Quantum Surfing principles, you know: playfulness is the accelerator.
Sad Boy didn’t just build a better ice cream. They built a feeling. Anticipation. Scarcity. Delight. Community. The dopamine hit of winning something.
They turned a commodity into a cult. A transaction into a game.
And games? Games change your frequency. They put you in flow. They make you want to play again.
I’m in love with this model.
(And the ice cream? Pretty yummm too.) 🍦
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💡 What’s a business model you’ve seen that made you think differently? I’d love to hear.