Threads vs Twitter & Millionaire Sam Ovens Doesn't Believe In A.I. Hype

Episode 473: Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) (Threads @shaanvpuri) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) (Threads @thesamparr) talk about Threads... the latest competitor to Twitter. And an interview with entrepreneur Sam Ovens (@samovensnz) - who made millions off of courses - his latest project and why he's not into A. I. Want to see more MFM? Subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here. ----- Check Out Shaan's Stuff: * Try Shepherd * Shaan's Personal Assistant System * Power Writing Course * Daily Newsletter Check Out Sam's Stuff: * Hampton * Ideation Bootcamp * Copy That ----- Show Notes: (02:10) - Threads vs Twitter (04:15) - Zuck vs Elon (13:30) - Threads Bull case (14:40) - Threads Bear case (21:05) - Predictions (34:30) - L of the Week (40:40) - Intro Sam Ovens (45:05) - Why sell courses? (59:50) - Getting traffic on Skool (01:03:20) - How large will Skool become? (01:04:50) - Are you weird in other areas of your life? (01:17:20) - Why Sam's not into A. I. ------ Links: * Skool * Mixergy * SnapInspect * Consulting.com * Rebecca Zamolo * Jasper ai * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. ------ Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto * #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  Parker, I think it's Parker Thompson on Twitter, he replied to that. He goes, okay, so for those keeping score at home, Elon bought a product for 44 billion. And then Zuck built the same product for a thousand times less, is stealing all of his users like an absolute Chad. And is God willing about to choke him out in 90 seconds on a steel cage soon. Huh. So that's what a cuck means now.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like my days off on the road. Let's travel.

• 0:31Shaan Puri?

  All right. What's up? Today's episode, we're talking about threads versus Twitter, the big debate. And we're going to talk about where we, where we land, our predictions for what we think is going to happen, how it's going to play out. We told some funny stories and then in the second half, we have a, an interview with a guy named Sam Ovitt. So Sam met, Sam met this guy, Sam, he used to run a business called consulting.com that at its peak hit 30 million in revenue. He was all over our Facebook feeds as kind of like one of these internet marketer guys. And so we were curious, like, who is this guy? And what's he all about? Definitely an interesting interview. I would say he had some interesting stuff to say. Also, his energy was totally different than most of the guests and also different than what you would expect out of an internet marketer. So I'm curious to see what people think of it.

• 1:17Shaan Puri?

  I would say it's, you know, sort of like a, a different style of energy than we've done before. Sam, what do you think?

• 1:22Sam Parr?

  So for those watching on YouTube, I'm sweating right now. The reason I'm sweating is around minute 35. I can't stop laughing. I'm still laughing about it. You're going to enjoy it.

• 1:33Shaan Puri?

  Aco Bell story. Let's just leave it at that.

• 1:35Sam Parr?

  Oh my God, it's ridiculous. Uh, I don't know like how this story came about in a business pod. I'm happy it did. I'm sweating right now. If you are on Spotify or Apple and you're listening to this, go to our YouTube page, uh, search my first million. Go to this episode, let us know in the comments what you think. People liked when we did that last time, Sean, we got a lot of comments, a lot of good feedback. It's, it's, uh, we actually, it's been fun to read all the comments, but let us know what you think. We'll talk to you soon.

• 2:02Shaan Puri?

  All right. What's up? Sam, we gotta talk about threads, threads versus Twitter. It threads came out a few days ago. We've had a few days to play with it, to sit on it, to think about it. And I think everybody's given their opinion on it and why not ours? I want to hear what you what you have to say about this. I have kind of like a way. I think we could talk about this. The what I'm calling the bull and bear case. So the bull case, the bear case, and then where we land. But I first just want to hear like, I don't know. When did you get on it? And what was your kind of initial reaction? How on your radar was this thing to begin with?

• 2:38Sam Parr?

  I had only heard about it three or four days before it launched. And I heard about it because of a leak. I think there was a leak, right? Somehow it leaked out that it was coming out. So I downloaded the app like the you can download it before it launched. And then I got the notification right at midnight or whenever it said it launched and I signed up. I think it's pretty cool. Are you jealous that I already have more followers than you do on that? Because I was already going hard on Instagram?

• 3:01Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah. Going hard on Instagram paid off there. You got like a like a double bonus for for growing your Instagram. So so props to you on that.

• 3:09Sam Parr?

  I think it's great. You know why I think it's great? I really only think it's great for one reason, which is Twitter to me is pretty great. But dude, my feed is just like fight videos and people getting shot and dying like it's real. It's kind of become a little bit sad.

• 3:22Shaan Puri?

  That's on you.

• 3:23Sam Parr?

  I also.

• 3:24Shaan Puri?

  I don't know if that's anyone else's fault. You know, when you click the follow button and the like button and the save button, the algorithm will just give you more.

• 3:32Sam Parr?

  Look, here's the deal. If you see like a fight video, you watch it. Like, you're not not gonna watch that. It's like when you have a hot girl that like scrolls through like you you scroll slower through that.

• 3:42Shaan Puri?

  What is this? How did this get here? All right.

• 3:48Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so just all these weird handles. I also think that I've I've become such a stan for Zuck and this whole thing. He's just proven to be like the man. He's he's he's come off very likable. And so I find myself picking sides based off of the owner of the company.

• 4:05Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, it's become it's it's become sports. It's become tribal. Whose team are you on? And I don't know how the hell I ended up team Zuck, but I'm like, I'm on team Zuck. It's very obvious to me. It's very clear. I think this guy's done an incredible rebrand of his personality because he went from like, easy to hate for a bunch of reasons. One, becomes rich and powerful. People don't like that. Two, he looked like a robot, talked like a robot, seemed to have no personality. So, you know, that was, you know, again, like for the people who didn't get turned off by the power and billionaire thing, they got turned off by like, okay, this guy's a lizard or he's a robot. Like, what's going on with this guy? And then somehow, you know, he hired the top, top PR agencies in the world.

• 4:49Shaan Puri?

  He hired the fixer, the wolf came in and tried to fix him. All he needed to do was start working out. The guy takes 10 jiu jitsu classes and learns how to do a pull up. And all of a sudden idiots like us are like, you know what? I fuck with this guy.

• 5:03Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he's relatable somehow.

• 5:04Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it totally worked on me. And then to the point where you start thinking about it, this happened also with LeBron James. LeBron James at one point was, he was super hyped, then he became the guy. Then people started to turn on him. Then he did this thing where he left his team, went to Miami and everyone's like, oh, I hate this guy. And then somebody's pointing out like, so you're telling me this kid who had all the pressure in the world, when he was 17, 18 years old, delivered on the hype, lived up to it, never got in trouble with the law. You've never heard about this guy, you know, married his high school sweetheart, is a good dad to his kids. You know, is, is one of the best players of all time and just like keeps himself in phenomenal fitness and shape and tries as hard as he can every single year. What do you have a problem with? And in the same way, I feel like the same, that's happened for Zuck where it's like,

• 5:49Shaan Puri?

  so this guy who built this company that billions of people use, stuck with the company. He's, he works hard every single day, you know, married, you know, his college sweetheart. Never been in trouble with anything, doesn't tweet out offensive stuff, doesn't say anything just to get a reaction. Seems like a perfectly reasonable guy, works out hard, is a good dad. Like, what do you hate about this guy again? What's going on?

• 6:11Sam Parr?

  Do you know how old Zuck is?

• 6:12Shaan Puri?

  I don't know. He's like our age. He's like, he's a little older than us, right? He's like 37, 38, 39.

• 6:16Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he's, he's, he just turned 39, you know, and LeBron also 38. These guys are the same, man. They're the same. They've been, dude.

• 6:25Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 6:26Sam Parr?

  Yeah, LeBron got drafted. What? He was a high schooler, right?

• 6:28Shaan Puri?

  18 years old.

• 6:29Sam Parr?

  At high school. Zuck has been the man since he was 21 or 22. There's been nothing. I mean, there's been like, if you look at the grand scheme, it's, there's been no like hu- human.

• 6:39Shaan Puri?

  Errors. No, no, no, no self.

• 6:40Sam Parr?

  Yeah, there's been like business errors or been cringe, but there's been nothing that they've done where you're like, oh, that guy's a piece of shit.

• 6:46Shaan Puri?

  If your biggest crime is cringe, you're doing all right. You know what I mean?

• 6:50Sam Parr?

  Yes. When you're the man for that long, that is impossible. That is so challenging to do that. Uh, you know what I mean?

• 6:56Shaan Puri?

  So we're, we're clearly Zuck fanboys. Let's talk about threads though.

• 6:59Sam Parr?

  Oh, and by the way, did you see what Elon posted? I don't know. Did he see it on Twitter? He goes, Zuck is a cuck. You know what a cuck is?

• 7:06Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:07Sam Parr?

  I, I had to look it up, actually. A cuck is a, a cuck is a guy who wants his wife to sleep with other men and he like enjoys it. Uh, and then he also goes, I challenge Zuck to a dick measuring contest, literally a dick measuring contest. Like he says stuff like that. And I'm, dude, he says stuff like that. I'm like, oh my God.

• 7:26Shaan Puri?

  He's an absolute tryhard to me. Uh, don't, don't like it. It says, uh, by the way, there's a funny tweet from Parker, I think it's Parker Thompson on Twitter. He, he, he replied to that. He goes, okay, so for those keeping score at home, Elon, Elon brought a, bought a product for 44 billion. And then Zuck built the same product for a thousand times less, is stealing all of his users like an absolute Chad. It is God willing about to choke him out in 90 seconds on a steel cage soon. Huh. So that's what a cuck means now.

• 7:54Sam Parr?

  I think it's great, man. Zuck is just looking great on this. All right. So by threads, you have on here that they grew to 70 million.

• 8:01Shaan Puri?

  It's actually 100.

• 8:02Sam Parr?

  It's 100. So they grew to 100 million users in a week?

• 8:06Shaan Puri?

  So we'll, we'll deliver the bull case first. So the bull case is this, uh, will, and the will threads win argument. So the bull case is we're five days in and they've reached 100 million users, making it the fastest growing product of all time. Okay. Instagram has about a billion and a half users. They seem to be converting over pretty quickly to this. We already got 100 million on the platform. If 20% of Instagram's users come on board, it's now bigger than Twitter. So 20% conversion from Instagram is what they're going to need. They've done, you know, I don't know, 5% or something like that. I don't know, public math, something like 5% so far in five days. The next reason that this is bullish is Instagram.

• 8:45Sam Parr?

  And Zuck shared that on threads. He said, we just hit 100 million. And he said, we've not even really promoted it yet.

• 8:51Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, we haven't even done our promotions yet, which is.

• 8:54Sam Parr?

  Yes.

• 8:55Shaan Puri?

  Nice.

• 8:55Sam Parr?

  It's also really cool that he's revealing some of the stuff.

• 8:58Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, he's really active on it right now. Part victory lap, part like community engagement, which is, which is cool. And he tweeted for the first time in like 15 years, right? On the day of launch, which was, which was also nice.

• 9:09Sam Parr?

  And it was like the meme of the three Spider-Mans pointing at each other. It was pretty, it was great.

• 9:14Shaan Puri?

  He's, you know, he's in on the joke. Whoever he hired, like his nephew or whoever like just is like, yo, give me their, give me your app. Give me your phone. I'm going to make you likable. Like, hey, instead of like fighting it, just post a meme. It's cool. Don't worry.

• 9:26Sam Parr?

  But he needs a verb, so there's no verb. What do you say? You threaded it? You, you posted it?

• 9:31Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 9:31Sam Parr?

  You know what I mean?

• 9:32Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, we're threading. I don't know what's going on. So the, the interesting part is I'll go on threads and I expect to see the same sorts of people on, as I do on Twitter. And there's some, but there's a whole new market of people who were basically never on Twitter. Just didn't like Twitter didn't work for them. So, you know, you get a whole new set of people that are going to use threads that weren't, they don't have to switch off of Twitter. They're just new people to a Twitter-like behavior. So it can basically beat Twitter without getting people to switch because it's expanding the market. Twitter is, I don't know if you know this, Twitter is basically the most abandoned product, I think, ever. So more than a billion people have signed up for Twitter or tried Twitter and then been like. Nah.

• 10:15Sam Parr?

  I don't get it.

• 10:15Shaan Puri?

  I'm good.

• 10:17Sam Parr?

  Just.

• 10:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. That's not for me. And the big question, the like, sort of like the hundred billion dollar or 200 billion dollar question is, is that because the idea of Twitter doesn't appeal to that many people? Or that Twitter's execution was not good enough to hook those people? And if it's the idea, then those same people who try threads will eventually bounce because they're like, they're just people who like to look at pictures and videos. They don't want to write text and read random ass text messages from different people. So if it's the idea, the Twitter's safe. All these people will try it and they'll bounce. But if it was the execution, if it was that Twitter didn't hook them properly,

• 10:56Shaan Puri?

  then they're screwed. Because if there's one thing that, that the Instagram and Facebook teams are going to do is they're going to execute. You could already see it in the small things that they're doing where they're like, yeah, we're just going to make like, kind of like the feed work better and blocking and muting and like all of it, like all of the stuff, we're just going to do the stuff good. The stuff that they've been doing for 20 years, which is like, hey, when somebody signs up, let's just make it really easy for them to find like their friends or interesting people for them. And like, let's just make this, this feed killer. Like this is like this algorithm killer where you just want to keep scrolling. Stuff that Twitter never really did. Like if you go look at Twitter's ad product, like have you ever run Twitter ads?

• 11:33Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So this is what I was going to say. This is another, uh, bull case, which is if you, if, if you've never run ads before and you go talk to anyone who has run any ads, Facebook is always in the top two or three parts of the conversation. So normally it's number one. It's usually the best platform. I've spent maybe 10 plus million dollars of my own, uh, like me actually running ads. Facebook is always number one. Twitter is never part of the conversation.

• 11:58Shaan Puri?

  I didn't even mention.

• 11:58Sam Parr?

  I don't know if, I don't even know if it's any, I don't know if it's like that anymore because I haven't run ads in a few years.

• 12:03Shaan Puri?

  I run ads on it now. So I'm running ads on it literally right now and it works, but the ad platform is so trash compared to Facebook and Google's ad platform, which is so surprising because that's how they make money. You would think they're highly incentivized to do it. So anyways, I guess my, my bigger point is not really about who's, who's ad platform's going to be better. It's just.

• 12:24Sam Parr?

  But that matters.

• 12:25Shaan Puri?

  It's going to be execution on all the details on, on getting people linked up with the right people, making the feed super interesting and, you know, and, and handling spam better and abuse better and all the things that Twitter has struggled with over. Over the years. So the bull case is that basically this 100 million users, if they convert some of Instagram people, they'll be bigger than Twitter. They don't even need people from Twitter to switch. They can just bring net new people to the market and they can just continue to promote this across Instagram and WhatsApp. So that's the bull case. Now I'm going to switch to the to the bear case. Oh, also, part of the bull case, Twitter shoots itself in the foot a lot. So Elon does a lot of dumb shit, pisses a lot of people off. He's basically pushing to like, basically put a paywall where like you have to pay $8 a month in order to like have your shit be seen in the in the feed. So that's basically introducing friction. He added the tweet limit

• 13:11Shaan Puri?

  not long ago, which introduces friction because oh, you know, more tweets for you. Cut off like the ability to post tweets and to have them embed in other places because he was like, oh, we're getting scraped too much. So he basically put a login wall in front of the content. Like, he's adding friction everywhere. So these are, these are foot faults. These are, you know, nobody, this is not threads killing you. This is you killing you. And so that's, that's part of the bull case. Now here's the bear case. Why this won't work. If I was to argue why this won't work, here's what I would say. I'd say, hey, name the last Facebook standalone product that just worked. Not one that they bought, but one that they made. And that's where there's really a kind of a graveyard of poke and a bunch of these other apps that they tried to create. They tried to create a TikTok competitor, didn't work. They tried to create a Snapchat competitor,

• 13:55Shaan Puri?

  didn't work. So there is a graveyard of these things. The only things that have worked have been things that they put into the Instagram app, like stories and reels, because people are hooked on Instagram. So the standalone app thing hasn't really worked. And this is a standalone app. The next problem, just because 100 million people try it, doesn't mean they're actually going to stick. There's going to be massive churn, just like there is when I have you gone back. Yeah, I opened it up right now, but like, I'm not like hooked on it completely myself yet. Are you?

• 14:23Sam Parr?

  I'm not hooked yet. No, I'm definitely not hooked. Yeah.

• 14:25Shaan Puri?

  I'm pretty hooked on Twitter, but I've also built up like. A big following plus a bunch of people that I follow. So my feed is more interesting on Twitter. It's a curative for 10 years.

• 14:35Sam Parr?

  I was gonna say, we might be the 1%, the 1% because we make a living in part because of Twitter. And so we could be like, there could be a part of it of like, oh shit, I don't want to use this other thing because I already have this one thing that's working. And this thing is just gonna like cannibalize it. So I can't tell if there's that bias there or what it is, but no, I'm not hooked yet. But I am opening it, uh, maybe once a day, maybe once every two days. I am a little bit like, shit, I don't want another thing to have to use. Uh, but I am happy that it's text based because that's where I excel. Cause you know, I'm a Missouri six, but uh, like,

• 15:08Shaan Puri?

  But I'm a Microsoft Word nine.

• 15:11Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I don't, I'm not like, I'm not, I don't, I got the, I got a good face for Twitter. Uh, so like, I prefer that, but I,

• 15:18Shaan Puri?

  We, we're the outliers because both of us have, I don't, together, we probably have almost, almost a million followers together on, on Twitter. And so going, now I go to threads, I have 3,000 followers or something. I'm starting from scratch again. And you know, I'm like that guy who I moved to San Francisco and I bought a house and I just redid my lawn. And then everybody started moving and they started raising the prices. And I'm like, I'm, I'm dug in. I'm like,

• 15:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I'm dug in.

• 15:48Shaan Puri?

  I already paid for the reno, uh, you know, like, I guess I'm just here when everyone else is, is choosing places that might be a better fit. So you see, you know, we, we might be the wrong person there. Here's the other reasons that Twitter might win.

• 16:01Shaan Puri?

  Twitter, after the churn, uh, you know, threads might have 20 million or 30 million, uh, active users compared to Twitter's 300 million, right? So I think there's gonna be so much churn that this hundred million number is a bit of fool's gold. The next thing, Twitter has key content. So it has news, it has sports. So it's got the journalist. It's got the athletes, it's got the, the people that cover the NBA and the NFL. Like it's got famous people. It's basically got like this key, like rapid breaking news and influential content. Threads is gonna have new content, but like the type of person who's big on IG may not be the right type of person for what works in this text medium. We don't TBD, there's a TBD on that. The next thing, threads is just a straight up clone.

• 16:46Shaan Puri?

  There are no product improvements. And in fact, there's some big drawbacks, like they don't have DMs. They don't have like, you know, uh,

• 16:52Sam Parr?

  Dude, I get DMs. I've been getting DMs. I think, I don't know what they're called.

• 16:55Shaan Puri?

  There's no inbox.

• 16:57Sam Parr?

  People have been messaging me. Let me pull it up.

• 16:59Shaan Puri?

  But I think they're at mentioning you. There's, there's definitely no.

• 17:02Sam Parr?

  Oh, maybe that's what it is. I don't even know how to use it yet. Then yeah, it's, it's a, it's a mention, but it looks like a DM, like the, the, the thing looks like a DM. All right. Yeah, you're right.

• 17:10Shaan Puri?

  So it's just, they cloned the app, but they left some things out. Now that might, that might make it better. But for the most part, I would say the product strategy, like if you printed out the roadmap, it's like, here's some features and you turn the page and it just says not Elon Musk, not Twitter, right? Like it's just basically here's not Twitter. And like, there's a bunch of people who don't like Elon, don't like Twitter and they'll just try this out. So I don't know if that's a great long-term product strategy.

• 17:32Sam Parr?

  By the way, speaking of mediums and leaving things out, do you use Twitter on your phone or desktop?

• 17:37Shaan Puri?

  Both. Yeah.

• 17:39Sam Parr?

  I mostly use it on desktop and I use the thread app and I was like, hey, when's, when I need a desktop thing. And that's why I prefer typing on it. And people were like, call me boomer and shit. And apparently.

• 17:49Shaan Puri?

  That is, that's some boomer shit.

• 17:50Sam Parr?

  Dude, that's some boomer shit, I guess, but I hate using it on my phone. I want to use it on my computer so I could scroll through and click shit.

• 17:57Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's like if a guy knocks on the bathroom stalls, like, hey, I gotta take a piss sitting down. And you're like, what? It's not illegal to do what you're saying, but certainly not acceptable.

• 18:07Sam Parr?

  And that's, yeah, you're more of a, what are you more of a pee with your shorts down at your ankle type of guy while standing up?

• 18:14Shaan Puri?

  So, so your, your desktop thing, it's okay to use desktop, but let's not, let's not get out of control.

• 18:19Sam Parr?

  I think most, not most, I think a ton of people do that, man. I'm telling you, the older guys, I guess I'm old now, but I needed, I needed.

• 18:27Shaan Puri?

  That's who we should appeal to as a social media platform, the older guys.

• 18:34Sam Parr?

  Yeah, we'll call it khaki.

• 18:36Shaan Puri?

  All right. So here's, here's a couple of other things, which is the best creators on Twitter. So the people who have basically in a 10, 15 year period, proven that they're really good at creating text-based content now have a big following and don't really want to start over from scratch on, on Instagram, AKA me.

• 18:52Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 18:52Shaan Puri?

  So, so I think those are some of the, some of the downsides of this, but I do think, you know, once you take into account the bull and the bear case, it's prediction time. How do you think that this plays out?

• 19:03Sam Parr?

  Let's do the interesting nuggets really quick. If it doesn't work out, Nikita, our friend Nikita, who is worked at Meta and did all the social stuff, what did he say?

• 19:12Shaan Puri?

  He was basically like, you know, this thing's gonna be at 100 million users soon. And if it fails after that, that will sort of officially make it the biggest fail in social app history at that point, which I don't think that really means anything, to be honest.

• 19:25Sam Parr?

  I think the truth is, I think it's gonna end up closer to the bull than it is the bear. I think it will, it will more work than it does fail. I don't think Elon would ever sell Twitter out of like pride reasons, but I think it will, if it weren't run by a billionaire, I think it would effectively put it out of business for the ad, ad purposes. I think it's gonna work. I don't know if it will overtake, but I think it's gonna work so good that it's gonna cannibalize Twitter and it's, they're gonna be at least equal.

• 19:54Shaan Puri?

  The CEO of CloudFlare tweeted out a chart, I don't know if you saw this, of Twitter traffic, because CloudFlare has like, I don't know, they run like

• 20:02Sam Parr?

  That's fucked up, right?

• 20:03Shaan Puri?

  In some way. It's, yeah, I don't know, I don't know. Maybe they haven't paid their bill, or maybe this is all

• 20:08Sam Parr?

  That's like a doctor, that's like a doctor like revealing like your illnesses, isn't it? It's like, it's like these two guys are making fun of each other. It's like, actually, this guy, his cholesterol is way worse than yours.

• 20:20Sam Parr?

  Right?

• 20:20Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 20:21Sam Parr?

  Like, if you wanna beat him up, but kick him in the left knee.

• 20:27Shaan Puri?

  He, he did that, basically. He tweeted out the showing that this, that Twitter's down like 5% in overall traffic so far this week from, from threads. So it's like, you know, he said like, it's plummeting or something like that, like dropping off a cliff, which is like, pretty dramatic for, I don't know, 5% I wouldn't call plummeting, but

• 20:44Sam Parr?

  That's weird that he shared that. That's super weird.

• 20:46Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 20:47Sam Parr?

  It's gonna be closer to the bull. And whatever I've learned, Nikita actually would always joke about this. He would say, never, ever, ever bet against Zuck. And I've heard so many people say that. Would I bet against Elon? For sure. Not often, not often. I think that he follows through a lot. He's just been closer to death so many times, and I don't think Zuck entirely has. I just think that Zuckerberg, when it comes to this field, the consumer social, I just think that he's, I would not bet against that person.

• 21:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. I think that's the, that's the rub here. I think that it's not Zuck versus Elon mono, Imano, like, you know, like, in the same way that in the cage, Zuck will probably win because he trains, he's been training jiu jitsu for like, you know, a couple of years, so that's, it gives him a little head start. In the same way that Zuck probably could not build a rocket company or a car company. You're playing.

• 21:38Sam Parr?

  I mean, he couldn't even build Oculus. Like, he couldn't even like do that type of hardware.

• 21:42Shaan Puri?

  Still pretty well, to be honest.

• 21:43Sam Parr?

  It's doing okay, but I think that they're gonna miss. They're not gonna be like the one.

• 21:47Shaan Puri?

  Perhaps. We'll see. But I guess like it's his domain. The so the social app thing is their domain. They have Instagram. I think I'm with you. I land where I do think threads will be bigger than Twitter. I don't think it kills Twitter. I just think it sort of stunts whatever slow growth that Twitter has. It just stunts it even further. And Twitter remains this kind of niche. This basically this thing that has really strong appeal to a niche. And I think that threads becomes the more mainstream version of it. Like, I think it becomes the more palatable, just cool, interesting thing.

• 22:27Shaan Puri?

  In the same, in the same way that like, this happens a lot with music or with TV shows or with with stuff like that where something has its time and then the new thing comes out. And it's just has like a little more mainstream appeal. And it just becomes the default. And the other thing doesn't die, doesn't go away necessarily. But I do think that if you fast forward two years or 18 to 24 months. I think it's pretty, I think my bet would be threads is bigger than Twitter. And Twitter basically has now like a ceiling on its head that it's bumping into. It can never really grow from there. It might get better at monetizing those people or preventing them from switching.

• 23:08Shaan Puri?

  But the dominant place for that will be will be threads, which is insane to me. It seemed impossible like to dethrone a social network like 12 months ago.

• 23:19Sam Parr?

  There's this cultural shift with young people where there's so much more kind and nicer than our generation when we were that age. And

• 23:30Sam Parr?

  You see that on TikTok. So if you go to TikTok and you look at the comments, people are so much more positive. Uh, there's still some.

• 23:35Shaan Puri?

  They're not more positive. That's TikTok is amazing at sorting comments and hiding comments.

• 23:41Sam Parr?

  Whatever, whatever that is. Okay. Maybe, maybe.

• 23:43Shaan Puri?

  Because all you see is kindness and jokes. And then you're like, oh, that's how I'm supposed to behave here. And Twitter never figured that out.

• 23:51Sam Parr?

  It builds a culture. Whereas on Twitter, I post something and I get made fun of so much sometimes. And I always click on the accounts and it's clearly like a bot or I don't know what it is. But there's this huge underground culture. I have no idea how this is happening. Of people who all they do is make fun of, make fun of people. And I always, it, it shows it to me. Do you get that? When people are, are making fun of you all the, yeah.

• 24:13Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Cause it just shows you everything. Twitter says.

• 24:15Sam Parr?

  It shows you everything.

• 24:16Shaan Puri?

  You said something, here's what they said back. And guess what? There's always going to be people that either disagree, argue, or just say mean shit to you. That's like, you know, just, that's actually the way the world works. The best companies have figured out how, how to algorithmically like suppress that behavior.

• 24:33Sam Parr?

  Yes. And one of the day I opened up threads, it was like Gary V saying like, I hope you all have such a wonderful day. And it was like, they like seeded it with like these positive people. And it like created this weird culture where it seems significantly more positive so far.

• 24:47Shaan Puri?

  Open up threads like, good morning, y'all.

• 24:50Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 24:51Shaan Puri?

  10,000 likes.

• 24:53Sam Parr?

  I have like pomp saying like, I hope you have a wonderful day and get after it. Uh, like it, it's just so much. And I have Sahil already popping up on my shit. It's like all positivity, whereas Twitter, it's way more negative. And honestly, it does wear me out.

• 25:07Shaan Puri?

  And by the way, Zuck has sort of said this in his, in his threads where he's like, uh, yeah, that's part of our key strategy. He's like, he's like, I always thought there should be a, a, a sort of like this town square conversation, public conversation type product that gets to a billion users. Twitter, for some reason, never figured it out. We're going to do our best. And then people were like, you know, uh, oh, I noticed this place is like, you know, more kind or sort of like, you know, most more positive energy right now. And he goes, yeah, I think that's really important. That's what we're going to, you know, that's something we're going to really focus on and try to get right. I don't think that Twitter ever got that right. Some of these features, like setting the culture in that way are invisible. They're not like. Now you could do live video. Now you could do Twitter spaces. It's not a feature that you see.

• 25:51Shaan Puri?

  It's almost what you don't see. That's the feature. I think that Facebook and Instagram have a lot of experience fighting abuse, spam, hateful content. And it's not gonna be nowhere. It's not just gonna be gone like the whatever. That's fine. I get that. But I think they're gonna do a better job of it. In the same way that like, you remember, it used to be a common thing people say, which is like, if you ever want to see sort of hell on earth, go to the YouTube comments. Like YouTube comments were considered like, an actual cesspool. And now if you go to a popular YouTube video, the comments are often like, they add to the joke. They're funny and they're positive. And I don't know what they did over time, but over time they fixed that problem, which was that the YouTube comments were like, you know, where, you know, hope goes to die. And now,

• 26:35Shaan Puri?

  it's good. It's part of the experience. And sure, there's some spam or there's still obviously like the one off thing, but it's nowhere near where it was like in the early days.

• 26:44Sam Parr?

  I went out to dinner last night. I'm in Williamsburg. I went out to dinner last night and I, you know, Williamsburg, everything's tight in New York. And I sat next to this guy who worked at Meta on the Threads team. And I'm not going to reveal a lot because I don't want to rat this guy out, but me and Sarah were at the dinner and like I texted her. I was like, just, let's just not talk. And we just listened to this guy. We just listened to this guy talk for two hours about launch week. And like what it was like, and he was like, it was the most exciting time of my career. This guy was so bought in to like the Threads movement. He even was talking about how much money he was making. It was crazy, man. I was just.

• 27:22Shaan Puri?

  Dish, what'd you hear? You don't have to say the person, but tell us everything.

• 27:26Sam Parr?

  It was, it was seven figures a year. It was seven figures. This guy and I like, I feel like I know all about this guy. I kind of know where he's from. I, or at least I know where he moved from. I heard the very, the very typical, this is so funny. You hear people say this all the time when they first moved to New York or when they're like tech guys, they'd say, San Francisco was all about, what have you built lately? New York, it's all about how much money do you make? You know, you're reminded every time about how important money is. San Francisco is all about what you build. Like that's like such.

• 27:52Shaan Puri?

  Are you saying it in a positive way?

• 27:54Sam Parr?

  It's all, there is the guy who was, was asking about.

• 27:57Shaan Puri?

  He's like, it's refreshing. It's refreshing that my pay stub delivers.

• 28:02Sam Parr?

  But he was just talking about like he was like the launch and he was just saying like how the morale of the company is really high and how everyone was pumped, which is, which is something Facebook needed because it was pretty shitty for a long time with all the negative PR. Then he was just talking all about like the launch and like what they were doing. It was so fascinating where to sit there. I'm shocked that he didn't like catch the hit that I was just like listening into this whole conversation. I just heard everything.

• 28:24Shaan Puri?

  Hey, if there's one thing that Facebook engineers don't have a lot of awareness.

• 28:31Sam Parr?

  Dude.

• 28:32Shaan Puri?

  I don't think you noticed that you weren't talking to your wife.

• 28:35Sam Parr?

  You ever go out to dinner and like if you're with like a business associate or like a successful friend and you talk about money, you're talking about like, you know, like I want to buy this house. It costs this much money or like this is what I'm earning. What do you think I should do with it? Whatever. We talk about these sensitive topics. Whenever the waitress or waiter comes over, I always quit talking about that because I'm like, that's embarrassing. It's tacky. They didn't get that hit. And so I remember them talking about, I remember them. They said the seven figure thing. It's like, yeah, it's not that big of a deal. You can just go get like a director of startup and get a, you know, a million dollar package and that's okay. But like, are you really doing anything meaningful? Right as the woman was like waiting to see if they wanted dessert.

• 29:11Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 29:12Sam Parr?

  And I remember seeing that. I was like, oh, I hate that. That is so fucking embarrassing and obnoxious. You gotta shut up at that point. That's when you, you know, you're like, you gotta lower your voice. You gotta whisper a million. You know what I mean? Like that's what you're supposed to do in that scenario. But these guys did not catch that hit. I hate that.

• 29:29Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah. It's a little PC that dies inside every time.

• 29:34Sam Parr?

  You know who sucks at that is whenever I'm with our friends, Suli. Suli is horrible at that. He'll talk about shit. Yes. He'll talk about like, you know, about like what he's investing in so loudly. And I'm like, dude, shut the fuck up. This is embarrassing. Everyone's looking over you. Don't, don't use that word million, please. Not anymore in this conversation.

• 29:53Shaan Puri?

  I haven't seen that. But I've, I have another friend that does it like crazy. And then I'll be like, I'm like kicking him under the table and he'll just be like, what? Why are you kicking me?

• 30:04Shaan Puri?

  We have a friend that we took to this place in San Francisco that I guess has like the best hot chocolate. He likes hot chocolates. And we're like, dude, you're a little baby for liking hot chocolate, first of all. But if you are a baby that likes hot chocolate, you gotta go to this place. Has the best hot chocolate. So we go, sits at the bar, bartender comes up or whatever, like the table, whatever. And it's like, hey, uh, this guy loves hot chocolate. And we told him this is the best spot. So he had to, he had to try it. And he's like,

• 30:29Sam Parr?

  And the waiter was like, what are you for?

• 30:31Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he's like, oh, cool. Yeah, yeah, let me bring you one. And so he brings one out. Guy takes a sip, immediately gives like an audible, like, ah, what? And then he doesn't like it. And so we're like, oh, you know, whatever. Okay, guess it's not, I don't know. Guess not your, your way, uh, your, your type. And so he just puts, he just, he puts it down, right? So it's sitting in front of him. Uh, waiter walks by, and he just shut, like pushes it forward towards the bartender guy, almost like he's pushing his chips all in at like a poker table. And the guy's like, oh, are you, are you done? And he's like, you didn't like it? He goes, no, it's not very good.

• 31:12Sam Parr?

  Oh, my God. That's so embarrassing.

• 31:14Shaan Puri?

  What are you trying to accomplish here? Why are you doing this? So I literally just fall off my stool and crawl away and die. And, uh, you know, had to deal with this interaction. But it was terrible.

• 31:24Sam Parr?

  I had a friend, we went out and got dinner and afterwards they gave us coffee and we wanted decaf. And the next day we texted back and forth, we're like, hey, did you stay up all night last night? And he was like, yeah, I was like, I think they gave us regular coffee. And he's like, I gotta call them. I gotta call them and let them know. And he was like, insistent, like, he's like, I gotta call them. So we like, called them. I'm like, dude, what, what's, what are you doing? We're, we're on vacation. Like, we're visiting, like, what? That's such a weird, it was such a Larry David move to like, call someone to tell them, you made a mistake last night. You gave us a normal coffee instead of decaf. And I, those types of people are very challenging for me to be around.

• 31:58Shaan Puri?

  Larry David does it, it's like, uh, likable and adorable. And, uh, when anybody else in real life does it, it's just hateable. My, my mother in law has a version of that where anytime we're complaining about something, her go to is not even like, tell them and call them. She's like, call the news. Call Channel 5. They, they will investigate this.

• 32:16Shaan Puri?

  It's really not.

• 32:17Sam Parr?

  Dude, I can't stand that.

• 32:18Shaan Puri?

  It's really not what's gonna happen here.

• 32:20Sam Parr?

  I've ordered a steak before and they've brought me pesto chicken pizza and I won't say a word. I'm like, yeah, whatever. It's food. I could eat that.

• 32:27Shaan Puri?

  I gotta tell you this story. I can't decide. I wanted to do a segment called L of the week. Cause I think we sometimes brag a lot on here. We say, you know, how we're so great and all these. I think it'd be nice to share a big L that we took. But I gotta be honest, this might actually be a dub. This might not even be an L because the experience was so incredible.

• 32:44Sam Parr?

  What was it?

• 32:45Shaan Puri?

  Alright, so I go, I'm feeling, I'm doing something, I'm working, whatever. And I'm feeling hungry while I was driving back from an errand and I'm like, I'm hungry. I'm just gonna pick up some food real quick. So I go to Subway and I'll get a sandwich. And I go to Subway, I walk in, there's like five people in line. There's only one guy working. And it's a black guy and there's a white guy checking out. And I'm like thinking about what sandwich I'm gonna get and I kind of decide. I noticed that that guy's still checking out and I look over and I'm like, what's taking this guy forever? And these guys are talking about like, it's like, so where'd you grow up? It's like South Africa. He's like, yeah, and they're talking about Africa and talking about race, talking about race relations.

• 33:24Shaan Puri?

  And they're just talking and like zero, like I'm happy that there's whatever, no racism on earth. But I'd really like a sandwich right now. And so would the four people in front of me.

• 33:35Sam Parr?

  Meatball marinara.

• 33:36Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Red. That's the color of my meatball that I'd like right now. And so they're just talking and then they fucking, they hug and I'm like, what's going on right now? And when they hug, I lose it. I leave. I walk out and I'm like, I'm hungrier than ever because I've just killed nine minutes here.

• 33:55Shaan Puri?

  Exclusively about a sandwich and I got teased. There's no sandwich coming. Right next to the Subway is a Taco Bell and I make a business decision. I say, it is, I guess it is what it is. I'm going to Taco Bell today. I haven't been to Taco Bell in like 13 years. Going to Taco Bell. So I walk into Taco Bell and I'm in line. I'm, and you could always, I have this theory about places, which is. You could see your future when you go into a place because it's, you're gonna end up, if you go to a place regularly enough, you're gonna start looking like the people that that are in that place. So sometimes I'll go to like a fitness class and I'll look around and be like, alright. If these people who are like the clear regulars here don't look the way I want to look. I'm just gonna leave now because this is, this is not a good path, right? It's a good life.

• 34:35Sam Parr?

  Yeah. What'd you, what'd you see in Taco Bell? Like a bunch of like Tweety Bird shirts?

• 34:39Shaan Puri?

  So I go to first, everybody at Taco Bell was under 17. So I was like, oh, I get it. Their body can like still tolerate this. I'm the only guy in his 30s at this place. So I'm, and there's one guy sitting there and he's probably like 28 and he's sitting down and it's just him. And he's got a feast in front of him like this guy. He was like, hey, omakase chef's choice. Bring it all out. So he's omakase that Taco Bell and he's sitting there. He's eating up a storm and there's only me, these three teen girls who are in front of me ordering. And then this guy, it is kind of quiet in Taco Bell. And I'm standing in line and this guy pulls a move that I, I, I'm still stunned just thinking about this.

• 35:21Shaan Puri?

  He's sitting there in Taco Bell, eating his feast and he just rips the loudest fart.

• 35:32Shaan Puri?

  And we all look over. I'm like, wow, so embarrassing. This guy just farted loud in public. Wow. And it was almost like he's sitting on one of those benches. It like echoed. It was like this crazy auditory experience. And I look at the guy and he just stares back at all of us. And he's just raised his eyebrows like, what? We're all here. You're also here at 3pm on a Tuesday and that is what it is. And I was like, holy shit. This guy did not back down. He did not cower in shame. He alpha'd us and was just, he literally was like, what?

• 36:10Shaan Puri?

  And I was like, nothing, I guess. Just carry on. You're right. We're all equals here at the bottom of society.

• 36:19Sam Parr?

  You just got Dutch oven by Taco Bell guy.

• 36:23Shaan Puri?

  So it was like a L I took and a big dove for this guy. And I just, it was an experience I had to share with you.

• 36:30Sam Parr?

  When did that happen?

• 36:32Shaan Puri?

  This is like five days ago. I've been sitting on the story. There's no one else I could really tell like, uh, I started to tell the story to my wife and she was like, you went to Taco Bell? And I was like, you're missing the point of the whole story. And I didn't even get to the good part. And I just thought, okay.

• 36:46Sam Parr?

  He should have farted back at him.

• 36:48Shaan Puri?

  I wish I had one in the chamber. I didn't. I mean, he really just like laid it down right there in front of us and.

• 36:54Sam Parr?

  What did the girl say?

• 36:55Shaan Puri?

  I mean, the eye contact, nobody said anything. We all looked to laugh at him. And then we just got stunned by his bravado. Holy shit. This is the biggest power move I've ever experienced.

• 37:14Sam Parr?

  That's the best. How was the food at least?

• 37:17Shaan Puri?

  Horrible. Honestly, the food at Taco Bell is phenomenal. Uh, like the taste of Taco Bell is great. It is a great taste. They got like, the menu, I mean, first of all, the innovation. You've been to a Taco Bell, like, you know, Taco Bell used to be tacos. It's not like, it's like,

• 37:34Sam Parr?

  Dude, it's just the same shit wrapped differently.

• 37:36Shaan Puri?

  That's become a taco. Now it's a taco inside of a burrito. And it's like, how's the taco inside the burrito? And you're like, it's, we call it a cheesy gordita crunch. And then they had like, this thing called the volcano right now. And I was like, I guess just give me the volcano. Cause I didn't even know what to do there. I was like, I don't really understand what's happening. I'm still, still reeling from what just happened a few minutes ago. And I, I got the volcano thing. It was great. It was fantastic.

• 37:58Sam Parr?

  You should have brought that African guy over to get, let him sniff up America. Let him see what, this is what we're about, bro. Come on. Peace, love and happiness.

• 38:07Shaan Puri?

  That hug shit? That's not real. That's not, that's not the usual experience. This, this is the real.

• 38:12Sam Parr?

  This is why we're, we're World War back, back to back champions. Cause guys like that, salt of the earth. They don't make them like the, like that anymore.

• 38:20Shaan Puri?

  Can you imagine a European doing that? Impossible.

• 38:27Sam Parr?

  No.

• 38:28Shaan Puri?

  Kind person from Singapore? Never. You get arrested for that in Singapore. That's crazy.

• 38:35Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that's like, that's like five to 20 in Singapore. There's not a chance.

• 38:41Sam Parr?

  So Sean, I've got a funny story. So we have Sam Ovens today. I'll do a little bit of an intro. But about three or four years ago, I used to see Sam's ads everywhere. And it was basically him in a bright blue blazer in his fancy apartment overlooking Manhattan. And there was a little bit of hate in me and there was a little bit of, uh,

• 39:03Shaan Puri?

  You had slicked back hair too. I remember.

• 39:05Sam Parr?

  He had slicked back hair. Yeah. And for some reason he pissed me off and I wrote like, on one of the ads, like, you're full of shit or something like that.

• 39:14Shaan Puri?

  You did a hater comment?

• 39:16Sam Parr?

  I did a hater comment and it sat in me for years and I talked to my friends who eventually bought some of his products and they're like, oh no, it's awesome. We loved it. And I started learning more and I was like, I think I was wrong. And so I sent Sam this message, I think 18 or 24 months ago. And I was like, I'm sorry, that was, for some reason, that one comment, it bothered me. And eventually I saw Sam four weeks ago at a party at Sophia's party and I talked to him and my wife and I talked to him for like an hour and I was like, you're, you're one of the more fascinating people that I've ever spoke to. And I was like, did you get that email where I apologized? I said, I got it. So that's kind of like how we got here. But Sam, how do you describe yourself? You had consulting.com, which was like a big information business,

• 39:58Sam Parr?

  but you have a new thing. You want to, you want to tell us how you describe yourself?

• 40:02Speaker 03

  Sure. I'm an entrepreneur and I have a software company called School. I'm CEO of that. It's like a community platform for creators.

• 40:16Sam Parr?

  You're, you're kind of underselling yourself there, eh?

• 40:20Speaker 03

  What do you want me to say?

• 40:21Sam Parr?

  The reason why I like taking it out with you is Sean, he reminds me of Jack Smith so much. Like it's the same type of like,

• 40:28Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Funny thing is like, Jack, you're right. There's like, definitely like a, an echo of Jack there. But Jack's, I almost feel like Jack picked business models that suited his, like, personality and his, like, way of thinking. Whereas Sam, the funny thing is that when I discovered you, like Sam, I saw this sort of like outgoing persona. It's like guy who's recording a selfie video of himself in his fancy apartment, telling me something. It's sort of like, oh, this guy thinks he's some hot shot business guy, whatever. And now you talk now and I'm like, this guy owns a surf shop or something? Why is this guy like in the,

• 41:10Shaan Puri?

  like, the most zen, zen mode, almost introverted to an extent? Isn't that strange? Was that strange for you to have like a very public persona, even though you clearly are actually more of a, of a, of a laid back, maybe more introverted guy?

• 41:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that's why it Rubbed people the wrong way, like Sam, because you know, that's kind of the thing that I didn't like about that business. Like if you're selling training or coaching or whatever is you have to be very out there. You have to make content of yourself. You have to continuously promote yourself, right? And I was always very uncomfortable doing that. And I guess I, I used like the New York apartment and the blue suit as like a

• 41:59Shaan Puri?

  Character.

• 42:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, like a character or like a crutch to help me. You know what I mean?

• 42:05Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, and it worked. You built consulting.com, which was like a, the way I'll describe it is like sort of like training, masterminds, courses type of thing where you would teach people how to start their own consulting business. And people would pay you a few thousand dollars and you, you put out a bunch of free content and then that would get people sort of in the funnel. And then eventually they would pay you a couple of thousand dollars to learn how to start their own consulting business. And from what I understand, like you scaled it up to about thirty million a year at one point, I was sort of the peak on, on the revenue side. Before being like, this is too much and too crazy and we have too many people, too little profits. We're pushing like, you know, the boundary too much. You sort of scaled it back down to a more manageable level where

• 42:48Shaan Puri?

  the revenue went down, but the profits went, you know, up or the same and you had less headache. So it definitely worked. Did you, where'd you get the idea for that? Were you just like in a basement, watching Tai Lopez videos, being like, okay, I understand I could do this now or like where, why did you decide to even do that?

• 43:03Speaker 03

  You mean like sell courses?

• 43:05Shaan Puri?

  Sell courses in the way that you sold them, which was just like a really heavy paid ad strategy with you as this character or this persona, the face of it. Very internet marketing. Yeah.

• 43:16Speaker 03

  I wanted to start my own business. I used to have a job. This is going back like 12 years. And I used to watch this, this interview site called Mixergy. Do you guys remember that?

• 43:26Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we love Andrew.

• 43:28Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I watched an interview one day and this guy was saying that he was gonna show, he had a software company. His name was Dane Maxwell. And then he said he was gonna teach some other people how to start a software company. And that was my first experience of being in a course. He launched a course that was called back then the Software Roundtable. And I learned how to start a software company. In that and started a software company. It was called Snap Inspect. And so I first experienced being in a course like from the student's side. And through that experience, I I had a successful software company.

• 44:11Speaker 03

  And then I was like the star student of that of that software roundtable foundation thing. So then I did, and he made me do an interview on Mixer G. This is back when I was very young. And then a bunch of people started emailing me and saying, could I, they wanted to pay me. So I could help them with their software company. And I would just sell like six one hour Skype calls for $1,000. And then very quickly I ran out of time to sell. I sold so many of these packages. And I just noticed that I was repeating myself on these calls like a lot. And I was like, oh, this, this could be a course. Everyone's like struggling with the same problems.

• 44:54Speaker 03

  And I've run out of time, right? So the next guy I took through this six one hour calls. I recorded the calls and then I put them in a Dropbox folder. And then the people that wanted to buy my coaching from that point on, I said, I don't have any time left, but I've got like a course that you can buy for the same price. And I would just sell it for $1,000 and give them a login to the Dropbox.

• 45:24Speaker 03

  And they would watch the recordings in there and they liked it. And they didn't ask for their money back and like. And that's where it started. And then when I sold more and more of those, I was like, whoa, this is, I should put some more effort into this. So I did. And then I wondered, how can I sell more of this instead of just waiting for people to come to me from my Mixer G interview and ask me over email?

• 45:51Speaker 03

  So that's when I started learning about like internet marketing. And then I remember the people back then were like Frank Kern and who else? There was like Ramit Sethi, there was this guy called Clay Collins. Do you remember this era?

• 46:07Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 46:07Speaker 03

  Of like, yeah. And so I just, I learned how to market from that world, like that kind of underground internet marketing world. And then my course business started to do so good. It quickly overtook the, the profit of my software company. And I just wasn't very passionate about property management, which was the niche that my software product was for.

• 46:29Shaan Puri?

  Was that called Snap Inspect?

• 46:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, it still exists. It's snapinspect.com. And I just wasn't passionate about the niche. So I sold my shares of Snap Inspect to my co-founder and then just went all in on the course business. And that's what eventually became consulting.com. And in the end, I was making courses, showing people how to make courses. I just fell in love with the craft of finding a group of people that you care about and solving their problems and then sharing the solutions with them and turning that into a business.

• 47:09Shaan Puri?

  How did you get the domain consulting.com? Cause that's a great domain.

• 47:12Speaker 03

  I went to the URL and it was, there was nothing on it. And then I used like MX Toolbox to find out like who owned it. And then I just sent him an email and I said, do you want to sell it? And he said, yes.

• 47:28Shaan Puri?

  How much did you pay for that one?

• 47:29Speaker 03

  That one was three hundred thousand.

• 47:32Sam Parr?

  Just in the, the 10 minutes that you've just given that spiel and tell them the background and then the hour that I've hung out with you. You have this trait that I love, that certain people have where in your brain, I could see, you're the type of person that you see a challenge and you don't think of it like a lot of people think of it as an emotional thing, but it's a very logical and you're like, This is a puzzle. I'm gonna figure out this math equation and that gives you joy. At least it seems like it. With the marketing thing, it seems like the same thing where you're like, if I wear this jacket, that will pop off in a thumbnail and that's important for a higher click through rate. And it's like you just read tons of books and you put together like an algorithm on what to do. And it's, and that's why it, it didn't seem entirely authentic that that was who you were,

• 48:16Sam Parr?

  but it seemed like you were just playing a game that you wanted to win. Is that how you went about it? And who did you, what interesting people did you learn the, the, the algorithm from that aren't entirely popular or that are like some strange resources?

• 48:30Speaker 03

  I guess I just looked at the people who are doing quite well, like Brendan Bishard and Marie Folio. This is back then. And I knew, I noticed that they had like a, if you thought of their name, you could quickly assign like a couple of attributes to them. They had like a brand essentially. And I was like this kid from New Zealand, teaching people how to start a business. And so I was like, whatever it is, it needs to, if, when people see my video, they instantly need to think of money, basically. And my main market is America and New York is like so iconic.

• 49:12Speaker 03

  It's like the money place, right? So that was why I went to New York and why I found an apartment with a view like that.

• 49:20Sam Parr?

  I heard a rumor that that apartment is almost like exactly the same apartment as something from, it was at a Wolf of Wall Street or one of those like iconic money movies where they like hang a guy over the, the balcony. I heard that, that you wanted that apartment for that reason. Is that true?

• 49:34Speaker 03

  That isn't true. I wanted the apartment because it had a really cool view. But then we were watching that movie and we had to pause it and be like, wait a second, is that this building? And we realized it's not the same building, but it must be one of the five in that area that are all very close to each other.

• 49:53Sam Parr?

  Got it.

• 49:56Shaan Puri?

  And so you you start doing this now, I'm curious, a lot of the names you mentioned, I never hear about those people anymore. You know, I've, I remember Frank Kearns, I remember even Pagan, and some of these guys that, you know, you could kind of go study their, their content, their funnels, but they're not around anymore. Or if they are like, I don't know where they are, they're not, they don't seem to be like crushing it anymore like they used to. Am I wrong? Are they just out there crushing and I just don't see them for some reason? Or why do you think that they, very few kind of sustained, or did they just get so rich they quit? Or are they like locked into one mode and they didn't evolve with the times? What do you think happened?

• 50:34Speaker 03

  I think things have changed a lot and a lot of people didn't adapt. But also, I think some people just got, they're just not going as hard, or they might have got burned out and they're just relaxing a little bit. Probably a combination of all of those things.

• 50:49Sam Parr?

  How, how big were some of those old school marketers, they're old school to me? How big were some of their businesses?

• 50:55Speaker 03

  You never know, like, you never really know.

• 50:57Sam Parr?

  That's why it's always so interesting. I, I, I have no idea.

• 51:00Speaker 03

  Well, they, they seemed to, they weren't real businesses in a way, because they would make a, a ton of money on a launch, right? But then that product would kind of go away and then they might do another launch in six months. And it was all based on this launch model and these launches would pull big numbers, like millions of dollars. But, and I'm sure there was a lot of profit in that too. But they weren't like these products that were evergreen that could be sold continuously and they didn't have a team and they weren't like contributing to this body of work. They weren't building on top of what they built yesterday, essentially.

• 51:39Sam Parr?

  You had this interesting video where, yeah, I, we were talking about Jack. Jack's one of my best buddies and he was on the last episode and you guys are very similar. But on this video, you opened it up and you just looked at the camera and you go, I'm back. And apparently like the story of the video was consulting.com. Consulting got, got to like 30 million in revenue and you'd hired dozens of people, fancy offices, you hated it. You basically scale it down to, I think you called it a band. I think it was like five or six people. You were like, we're going to do 10 million in revenue, five million in profit. Everyone gets a share of the profit. What was like the peak of the consulting business? And then where was it when you sold it?

• 52:18Speaker 03

  Sure. So the peak was, it must have been around like two thousand and seventeen or two thousand and eighteen. And it was doing thirty six million a year in revenue. But profit wise, it was probably only like five million on that. Most of it was, was expenses. And we had about fifty people and we were spending like two million a month on ads. And it was just, everything was breaking. I hired everyone way too fast. And it was heavily dependent on ads, um, which I didn't like. I was reading this book on my honeymoon in, um, Tulum in Mexico.

• 53:03Speaker 03

  And it's, it's called Lean Thinking. And apparently it's like Jeff Bezos's favorite book, just while I was reading it. And in there they talk about how you should optimize a business based on customer, based on value, the way a customer experiences it, right? And you should analyze like the headcount, how many people are like working on, how many people are actually contributing to value the customer would experience in your headcount? And then your, your money flows. So like, how are you allocating the capital? Where is all the money being spent and does the customer experience value from that? And then your time and attention and energy, right? So you're just analyzing all of these flows.

• 53:48Speaker 03

  And I realized that all of our time, money, attention and headcount was on ads.

• 53:56Speaker 03

  And that customers did not think ads were valuable. In fact, they thought what you did, it actually pissed them off, right? So I was like, oh man, I've really screwed this one up. And I was like, everything should be focused on the customer. And so I went back. After that vacation and realized that I basically had to start again. And so I just started restructuring that company. I realized that organic content was really good because customers find that valuable, right? Like a good YouTube channel, good email newsletter. So I was like, we should do that. And then if we do that, we don't need to do ads.

• 54:41Speaker 03

  And then I was like, everyone on the team should be contributing value to like the customer. They should be doing support or they should be account management for mastermind clients. They should be customer facing in some way. And all of my time and attention and energy should be thinking about the customers' problems instead of advertising problems, right? And so I just, with that kind of mental model, I just started restructuring the whole company.

• 55:10Sam Parr?

  And then, so like you, you've talked about consulting a bunch on other pods. And but the story is that you eventually, and we can go back to it, you eventually sold it. But your new company, Skool, it's, whenever I was texting to you, it always autocorrects to stool. S K O O L. You were telling me, you didn't exactly say it this way, but I read it this way. You were telling me that you, you're like, we're not taking any funding, or at least you're not anytime soon. Because you self-funded it with 10 million. And you're like, I'm hiring the best people. So you like went from like this like internet marketing type of culture to startup. It, it, first of all, is that true? And second, was that number right? 10 million that you're going in on this?

• 55:54Speaker 03

  It's true.

• 55:55Sam Parr?

  And why the shift from like this startup where you like have hired all the, like you're, you're running things very Silicon Valley-esque versus what I imagine in my head, a lot of.

• 56:08Sam Parr?

  Internet marketers are not like.

• 56:10Speaker 03

  Well, I started in software, remember? The first company I ever did was Snap Inspect. So I've always had a love for software. The problem back then, though, was I didn't love my market like property managers. And we were constantly have limited by our money. You know, software engineers are expensive. Subscription revenue has a cash flow trough in it. And so we were limited by money and I didn't love my market, but I did love software. And I also hated like having to market. I swore I was never going to touch software again unless it had network effects. Cause I wanted it to grow itself, basically like a platform instead of a software tool.

• 56:51Speaker 03

  So then I fell in love with courses and that the beauty of that was like, I was able to save a lot of money. And then I came back to software because I now was building software for the market that I loved, which was like online creators. And I had money this time, so I wouldn't be limited by that. I could get the best engineers and not cut corners on anything and take a more long-term view. And this was a platform opportunity instead of like a software tool. So we didn't have to have a marketing or sales team and we had no like CAC.

• 57:27Shaan Puri?

  And how is this growing? Cause I see the traffic is like, I don't know, eight million visits a month or something insane like that. It looks like you had an affiliate program here. If you're not running marketing, where's the growth coming from? Cause I get that there's network effects.

• 57:42Sam Parr?

  That's way more than like circle doc. So is it called circle? It's way more than a lot of like high VC competitors, the traffic, I believe.

• 57:48Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So I don't know if the number is right, but like.

• 57:49Speaker 03

  It's more than double circle. Yeah.

• 57:51Shaan Puri?

  How are you getting so much traffic?

• 57:54Speaker 03

  It's a community platform. So once you start a community and you add some content to it, the first thing you do is you invite members, right? And then what happens is roughly 1% of members create their own community.

• 58:08Speaker 03

  So they're like, oh, this platform's cool. I want to make one of these. And then they create their own, and then they invite their members and then that there's a, there's a loop there or a network effect.

• 58:18Shaan Puri?

  When you were doing your content stuff, your ads, I had read stuff like you did some interesting things like you. We talked about like the apartment in the suit and I don't know, you had like a motorcycle in the middle of the room and stuff like that. What were some interesting experiments that you ran that that either worked or didn't work? That sort of taught you something about, you know, human psychology or the way that people's, what gets people's attention, what gets people interested, what gets them hooked? What are some learnings from all of those different kind of content experiments you did when you were doing, when you're making, you know, when you're, your content, your face was the, was the driver?

• 58:53Speaker 03

  A lot of people just want to make money. Like that one was annoying. So like if you just put a jet in something or a fancy car or a New York apartment, like it works so well that it's, it's annoying because you're like, oh, do I have to do that shit? Aren't people just, won't they just listen to the value of the idea? But that's what I learned back then when I was doing those experiments. I think now people are looking for like longer form, real stuff that, like a podcast, podcasts are really taking off, right? So I think the people that are doing a good job now is like what you guys are doing. I think having a podcast and an email newsletter, that's what I would do if I was starting again right now.

• 59:38Speaker 03

  That those two work really well together.

• 59:41Sam Parr?

  We have this friend Rebecca Zamolo who has tens of millions or maybe 15 or something million YouTube subscribers. And she only launched it in like 2017, not that long ago. And I was like, Rebecca, why did you get so big? And she goes, I took it like a job. So like I got laid off or I quit, I forget what happened with her other job. And she goes, this is now my thing. So it was like a 40 hour work week. It's like, this is all I'm doing. And I was like, doesn't everyone do that? She said, no, shockingly, no. Most of, of a lot of popular YouTubers, it starts as a side hobby. And even when they're like fairly big, it's still not full time. But she's like, I just treat this some bitch like a company, like I just ran it like a company and it worked out. So I think that like that focus thing.

• 1:00:21Shaan Puri?

  No, no, no chance you said some bitch.

• 1:00:24Sam Parr?

  No, no chance you said some bitch. I, I added it. That's a Sam Parr special. Maybe, maybe I subbed that out. Maybe it was like, you know, I took this wonderful thing very seriously.

• 1:00:36Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:36Sam Parr?

  You've been, you've been pretty good with focus. I mean, that's why even self consulting.com if it's like doing well, you're not working on it. I mean, you're, you're about, you seem like you're, you're very, very, very focused on shit. I mean, just to go 10 million on that, on school, is that a, was that a significant chunk for you to do that?

• 1:00:53Shaan Puri?

  And was that like a verbal commitment, like I'm willing to do up to X? Or did you literally wire into a bank account and say, that's now in the company? That's been used for this company. It's, we're, we're burning that.

• 1:01:03Speaker 03

  That, yeah, that like I bought a house because you know, I've got a wife and family. So I bought a house and I left some money in the personal account for like family. And then I was like, everything else I'm just, I'm betting on this company.

• 1:01:18Sam Parr?

  So no, no other portfolio?

• 1:01:21Speaker 03

  Nothing.

• 1:01:21Shaan Puri?

  How big do you think school's gonna be?

• 1:01:23Speaker 03

  That's hard to answer. There's what I would like it to be.

• 1:01:27Sam Parr?

  Which is what?

• 1:01:28Speaker 03

  I've always wanted to build something that a billion people use.

• 1:01:34Sam Parr?

  How are you sleeping at night, knowing that your whole, or a lot of your nut is in there? That's a very stressful thing.

• 1:01:40Speaker 03

  Quite well at the moment because things are going really well. You know, the growth is compounding pretty fast and top tier VCs email us every week. I've had to just stop talking to them and a lot of people want to give us money, but we're not taking it. And so I think the fact that a lot of people want to give me money is allowed me to calm down quite a lot. That I'm not, that we're not going to run out of money. Also just the growth.

• 1:02:08Shaan Puri?

  Is it profitable?

• 1:02:10Speaker 03

  No, it's not, but deliberately so.

• 1:02:13Shaan Puri?

  Okay, fair enough. And where'd you base the company? Is it remote or people in, in America, New Zealand? Where, where are your people?

• 1:02:21Speaker 03

  Everyone's in LA and San Fran.

• 1:02:24Shaan Puri?

  And do you, um, like, well, we, when Sam says he, you remind him of Jack Smith. One of the cool things about Jack Smith is that while he's clever and interesting on the business side, he's also clever and weird and does crazy experiments also in his personal life. Whether it's like sort of biohacking or lifestyle choice or not naming his child until she was one years old, like whatever. Parent, parenting, everything. He, he takes sort of like a novel approach to each thing. I'm curious. Are you weird in other areas of your life? Do you do anything that's sort of non-standard that to you makes sense, but maybe to other people sounds a little strange?

• 1:03:00Speaker 03

  I'm sure.

• 1:03:01Shaan Puri?

  Would you like to say any examples, since this is a podcast?

• 1:03:07Speaker 03

  I mean, I slept on a futon for like three years and I loved it. And then when my wife got pregnant, she, she made me give it up. But I really miss that futon. You know, Japanese futon?

• 1:03:19Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:21Speaker 03

  I love that thing. I just like to keep things very simple and minimal. Like, I only have one pair of shoes and I only have like the same type of socks and the same kind of like underwear and the same T-shirts and then like three wool jumpers. And that's all I have. And then I have the same soap, like this tea tree soap. And I just have like 20 blocks of it. And I, I even take one with me when I travel because I only like that soap. I like, don't wear sunglasses because I think they're unnecessary. And I just like to reduce things, just to, I like to find something that I think is good. And then only use that.

• 1:04:05Speaker 03

  And then just get a few different pairs of that. And just keep things as simple and as minimal as humanly possible.

• 1:04:13Sam Parr?

  Is your wife normal?

• 1:04:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, she is.

• 1:04:21Sam Parr?

  We were, the reason why, one of the things you said, we were sitting around, Sean, it was me, Sam and my wife Sarah. We were sitting around at this restaurant and Sam, you have, you've got some strange energy in a very cool way. You've got very strange and cool energy that I like. I love people like you. And we were just sitting around and the conversation kind of died. And we were just, we sat in silence for like three seconds, I think. And then you just said, "I delivered my baby." And we were like, we were like, "What? With what?" And you just said, "My hands."

• 1:05:02Sam Parr?

  We're like, hold on, say this again. And you're talking about how your wife, she, you're gonna do like a home delivery or something and the midwife didn't make it in time and you just did the damn thing. You, and you just did it. And I remember thinking like, the reason I love this guy is I don't think he understands like how strength, like your mannerisms, your voice, they're, this is, they're so unique and strange in such an interesting way, um, which I frankly love. I love people like you because you're so unique and you're not vanilla. Do you realize that you're like that?

• 1:05:43Speaker 03

  Honestly, not really. Because I don't, I don't try to fit in and I don't try to like, I don't even look at what other people are doing. Like I don't have social media at all. And I never look at really what's going on or what's in the news or anything. And I just do what I want.

• 1:06:03Shaan Puri?

  So what do you do with that free time? So let's say no social media, no news. For most people, that's like four to five hours a day or something like that. How do you reinvest that four to five hours a day? Where do you put it? What, what does give you energy or what do you do for entertainment? Or what do you do to, to unwind?

• 1:06:20Speaker 03

  I mean, all I really do is focus on school and that's mostly the product. So I'm just obsessive about the product, all the details of it. And then I go home, hang out with my wife and daughter. And then I need two hours of like watching something to unwind. Otherwise I can't sleep. And so I'll, I'll watch series, like TV series. And I like old stuff, like things before technology. Cause it's, it's nice and slow and it helps me go to sleep.

• 1:06:54Sam Parr?

  But when you say you're obsessive, what does that mean? Like, do people like working with you? Like, are you the type of guy who like if something very small, the footer is screwed up, you freak out over that?

• 1:07:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, I can see a pixel. So if something's off, like I'm like, something's off over there. And then I'll inspect it with Chrome inspector and it will be one pixel. So I can like, I've, I joke with the team that I can see a pixel. And yeah, I'll, I'll go into those details. Like I designed schools interface and Figma, like the whole thing. And To find a lot of like how their entire system works, which is it's quite complex.

• 1:07:35Sam Parr?

  I knew you were like that because when consulting.com first came out, most courses don't didn't look the way your yours looked. Yours had this like you had this really cool thing of a it was like a caveman becoming a person. Right? Is that what it was? And then it was like a picture of the globe and it it looked like a software page. It it looked very unique and I remember seeing the design of it and I thought that is incredibly unique and it stood out. It made you feel more sophisticated than most other people in the space. Do you remember that page? Am I describing it accurately? Yeah. What uh what were you thinking when you made that?

• 1:08:10Speaker 03

  That's what I like to do. I like to just spend a long time on the tiny details. You know, I've spent days trying to figure out the right pixel radius of a rounded corner for the for like a button.

• 1:08:24Shaan Puri?

  Is that a feature or a bug? Like if somebody I worked with was spending days on a uh how how much the border radius should be on a button? I would slap them. I'd be like, what are you doing? This is not this doesn't matter and this is not gonna be like high impact. So why are you doing this? So you know, is that a? Is it a good thing or is that a byproduct? Like maybe you do that in certain areas where it really works, then I gotta live with the fact that I do it in these other areas where it doesn't matter at all.

• 1:08:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I I won't block anyone by doing that, right? It's like when we're building the thing, like I'll be very fast and not the bottleneck of the team. But then in my spare time, I'm playing with things, thinking about the next time we update the design system. And I'm just tweaking little things in my that's what I do for fun. So it's not like what I'm doing is my work kind of thing.

• 1:09:19Shaan Puri?

  How do you? How do you organize your day? Do you have like a are you like focused on one thing? Do you have like a morning like, okay, this is my to do list? What what how do you how do you create your day?

• 1:09:29Speaker 03

  Most of what I do, I would say it's product, strategy and design. That's like where I spend all of my time, just in those zones. And we have got like three product teams at school. So three full stack product teams with backend, frontend, QA, product manager, designer, right? And they've got three roadmaps that are all going in parallel. And I need to think ahead of them. Like, I've got to dream up like the whole product strategy and roadmap and everything. And then I have to reverse engineer it into chunks, break it down, and then figure out which team should work on what thing and sequence it. And then I've got to design the whole thing, spec it, brief that team,

• 1:10:14Speaker 03

  and stay a few development cycles ahead. And so I'll either be designing something, trying to figure out a priority, talking to that engineering team, or checking, doing the final QA check before we push something into production.

• 1:10:31Sam Parr?

  I actually think that that's totally the right way, in my opinion, that a lot of companies should run. The reason they don't is because A, that's really, really hard. So like, you're the brainchild. You have to like, you probably know every single thing that's happening. That's incredibly challenging for just about everyone. Number two, it doesn't feel good to feel like a dictator. It's like, basically, you're, you guys are a band and you're like the main, you're, you know, you're the main, you're the main guy. You're Celine Dion and everyone else is the backup band. That's a weird reference, but it is what it is. You're Billy Joel. I don't, you're like, that's where I went. Yeah. That's, that's where we went. You're Celine Dion. I don't know, long hair.

• 1:11:10Sam Parr?

  You're like, the guy. Whereas, whereas, I don't know if I can recover from that. Whereas most startups, it's like, it's, it's a lot more decentralized and things like that. But with this type of product, it seems like you're like the, the, the main person and there's a circle around you with shit going on. Is that right? It sounds fucking exhausting.

• 1:11:28Shaan Puri?

  Funny example of this was, I remember Sam, when you were running The Hustle and I was running my company, we would meet up every couple of weeks as part of our like, kind of like founder mastermind thing where we would get together. You know, I was sort of drinking the Silicon Valley Kool-Aid, which was like autonomy and like, give people, empower your people and all these things. And I was like, you know, preaching to my team, like, hey, whoever's got the best idea, we're going with you, you know? Oh, Janitor, you got an idea? Let's do it. You know, like, let's make it happen. And Sam showed me, I meet up with Sam and Sam shows me like a 12-page doc that he wrote out. For some new woman that he hired and he just go and the document just says, uh, welcome. Here's the things that you're going to do.

• 1:12:12Shaan Puri?

  Your job is to do this. Here's how you will do this. Step one, do this, two, do this. And he wrote this like 20 page doc and was just like handed it to her and was like, this is, do not deviate from this. I don't want to hear, I don't want to hear your ideas of this. And I asked you, I was like, why'd you do this? You're like, cause people fuck up and I just, I need her. I think this is the right way to do it and I just need her to do it this way.

• 1:12:41Sam Parr?

  No, cause that I, whatever Sam has said, I totally agree with that. The problem is that it's fucking exhausting. You know what I mean? Like it's really hard to do that for a long period of time.

• 1:12:51Shaan Puri?

  It's not scalable.

• 1:12:51Sam Parr?

  Well, it's kind of scalable.

• 1:12:53Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, like the engineers, I'm not telling them what to do, like in terms of code, right? So, and then I'm not even coming up with all the ideas from my own mind. I spend a lot of my time looking at what our community wants. So like going through our school community where people ask for stuff and share bugs and feedback. Then I'll talk to power users. I always find who's spending the most time on the platform, get a top 100, just DM a few of them, get on zoom, talk, just talk to them for hours about it. And then I use the product myself and then I talk to the team too. And so ideas come from all of these places, but I'm like the filter and the, the sorter and the prioritizer, basically.

• 1:13:35Speaker 03

  And then when I go to engineering, I know what the feature should be, but they, they might push back on a lot of what I say, based on how easy that is to implement with code. They might be like, oh, do you really need to do it this way? Cause that's going to make the code messy. Or why don't you do it this way? That would be way more simple for the system. And I'll listen to that feedback and adjust the actual feature. Cause I'm trying to like, I'm trying to give the, the users what they want, but I'm also trying to keep the code clean. And, and I'm trying to build things fast too. So I'm like, how could we shrink the scope of this to make it so we could deliver something faster? And, and so it's not like I'm just dictating to everyone. There's a lot of collaboration.

• 1:14:20Sam Parr?

  You know, Sean, something I've, uh, do you know that company Jasper?

• 1:14:25Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:25Sam Parr?

  Have you talked to those guys? Is the founder's name is Dave or David?

• 1:14:29Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I see him on, I see him on the website of consulting.com.

• 1:14:32Sam Parr?

  Dude, that's what I was gonna say. For one, if you go to like Unsplash, I think it was called, or one of those like stock websites, stock image websites, for some reason, Dave is on the picture of so many stock pictures. I used to use a picture of him and then I met him. I'm like, dude, I use your face for a stock image. You're on this like royalty free website. And number two, he used to be part of consulting.com, didn't he? So Jasper's, for the listeners, like a, I guess a billion dollar now company that does AI stuff. Was he part of your crew?

• 1:15:02Speaker 03

  He was a, he bought my course like many years ago and he was one of our like most successful students. He used to sell coaching, like training and stuff, but then he, he wanted to get into software. So then he did this thing proof. Do you remember that? That little pop up?

• 1:15:18Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:19Speaker 03

  Yeah. And then that turned into Jasper.

• 1:15:23Sam Parr?

  And did I, why did someone, someone told me to ask you what you think about AI? Why did they say that?

• 1:15:27Speaker 03

  I think it's like massively overhyped and somewhat like just unnecessary. Like, I don't know about you guys, but ChatGPT hasn't replaced my Google usage. I still use Google every day and I've found no real task for it, honestly. It seemed, but the hype is extreme.

• 1:15:49Sam Parr?

  The hype cycle is there around like the growth and like, well, it's, it's not there yet, but I can see the future of this. So you're not bullish at all in the future of it?

• 1:15:56Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:15:58Shaan Puri?

  All right. I'll take the other side of that. Sam, anything else you want to ask before we, we wrap up?

• 1:16:05Sam Parr?

  No, I appreciate you coming. I find, I want to talk to you again another time. I find you fascinating. I think that you're an original thinker and I appreciate people like you.

• 1:16:14Speaker 03

  Thanks.

• 1:16:15Sam Parr?

  All right. Well, that's, that's the pod.

• 1:16:17Shaan Puri?

  That's it.