#130 - How Solopreneurs are Making $1m+, Why Lists Suck, and The 5 Minute City

Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) host today's podcast. They discuss: - Shaan and his fund were featured in Business Insider - The guys talk about the business of "list making" - Shaan explains his reasoning for shutting down his All Access Pass newsletter - There is a movement towards "5-minute" cities and communities. Culdasac is a startup doing this - What is "solopreneurship"? And why is Shaan so bullish on it - Tiago Forte is building tiny homes - The guys discuss startups doing handwritten notes such as Addressable Thank you to our sponsor this episode, EPOS! EPOS are fantastic headsets that make it easy to work flexibly across situations and locations, with portable headsets including hassle-free device compatibility. If you are an IT manager running a big department or a head of a growing company looking to give your employees the best headset solution to work from home, check out eposaudio.com/millions for a free trial! Companies mentioned: - Shaan featured in BI https://www.businessinsider.com/this-vc-has-over-100-lps-on-the-waitlist-for-his-hot-new-rolling-fund-2020-11 - Sam's "city guides" https://chicago.curbed.com/2014/4/23/10110584/this-week-in-chicago-neighborhood-stereotyping - Culdasac https://culdesac.com/ - Tiago Fortes' tiny homes https://twitter.com/fortelabs/status/1325969162083004418 and https://www.forteshelter.com/about - Addressable https://www.addressablemail.com/ Have you joined our private FB group yet? It's a page where people share each others million dollar ideas or what they're already working on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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

• 0:21Sam Parr?

  We live, we live, we live.

• 0:24Shaan Puri?

  All right, I'm looking at Sam, he's got like crazy background, a purple background right now because he created a podcast studio in his closet, I think, which is kind of amazing.

• 0:34Sam Parr?

  It's a, we're at our office, I took over a closet and I put like the, what are these things called? These panels, why we put these panels on here?

• 0:46Shaan Puri?

  The soundproofing panels.

• 0:47Sam Parr?

  So like I built the studio for, I think, less than $200 and I think it probably looks pretty good and sounds good.

• 0:53Shaan Puri?

  It looks better than Joe Rogan's ugly red capsule that he sits in. Imagine being so rich and famous and then building your custom studio and then it looks like that.

• 1:06Sam Parr?

  That's all right. He did it, I think he said, he said he was gonna move and in two weeks he moved and had the studio. Maybe he'll fix it.

• 1:12Shaan Puri?

  Right. All right, what are we talking about?

• 1:16Sam Parr?

  Let's talk, okay, you tell me, okay, so Sean, first of all, you were in Business Insider today.

• 1:22Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, congratulations to me, I bought the, I bought the $1 pro trial so I could read the article because I was like, I was like, yo, to the writer, I was like, can you just send me the PDF of this? He's like, no, you have to buy the trial.

• 1:33Sam Parr?

  I have a, I have a subscription, I would have given it to you.

• 1:39Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it turned out okay.

• 1:41Sam Parr?

  Yeah, how'd that come about?

• 1:43Shaan Puri?

  Some, so a guy reached out and he was asking about, I don't remember what he was asking about originally, he was asking about something else. And so he's a journalist and he was asking about something, my opinion on something. And then I was like, by the way. Um, what happened? He goes, oh, he was asking me because I had talked about parlor. I had tweeted about parlor and he was like, yo, do you know who's behind this? And, um, and I was like, I was like, no. Uh, and he was like, okay, whatever. And then he was like, hey, congrats. You made the top hundred list of emerging VCs, which who the hell knows what this list is.

• 2:20Sam Parr?

  Really?

• 2:21Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. And so he's like, you, you made this list. And I was like, thank you. And he's like, can you send me a picture? I was like, yeah, sure. And then I was like, uh, and then I like shot my shot. I was like, by the way, like,

• 2:34Shaan Puri?

  you should do a feature on rolling funds. These things are interesting. Uh, like, look at this. I just like, I tweeted out on September 1st, dear internet, I'm going to raise a million dollar rolling fund, uh, only from Twitter buddies and internet strangers, not taking any money from real life friends. I'm trying to go from zero to one million in 21 days. And I said, um, and look at this, like within five days, we crossed a million. And within 21 days, we crossed two and a half million and then we shut it down. We, we stopped taking money in. And I was like, there's a good story there. You should tell it. And then he wrote the story. Uh, so that was good.

• 3:03Sam Parr?

  That's great. Um, I want to talk about two things, but the first thing is what was the outcome of that article?

• 3:09Shaan Puri?

  Anything? Nothing, as far as I could, as far as I could tell, um, although there was no real clear to, uh, call to action or something like that. But yeah, I think I got one person reaching out being like, hey, I'd like to invest. Uh, so that's one, um, which, you know, I think this podcast will be five if I mentioned it on the podcast versus one and this, this is insider.

• 3:29Sam Parr?

  I shared it. Um, and the second thing, um, which is not to be disrespectful.

• 3:33Shaan Puri?

  Behind a paywall, right?

• 3:34Sam Parr?

  I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm a, I'm a subscriber. This is not a disrespect to you, but those lists, can we talk about how bullshit all those lists are?

• 3:42Shaan Puri?

  Such bullshit. Uh, like there's that, what's that quote where it's like, I don't want to be a part of any club that will accept me as a member. That's how I feel about these lists.

• 3:52Sam Parr?

  Like, here's what I think is just nonsense. So I remember when I was a little bit younger, I was like, I want to be on Forbes 30 under 30. And then I got, I was like, I went through the process and I was not, I think someone nominates you. I got nominated. It might've been my coworker who I, I really don't even remember, but I went through the process. I was like, oh, this is bullshit. This is, this is fake. This is awful. This is not, this is not prestigious prestigious at all. And um.

• 4:18Shaan Puri?

  And it's kind of laughed at in the, in our community at least. It's like a negative mark of honor. It's like, oh, you played that game to try to get that? Like fake prize? Oh, that tells me all I need to know about you.

• 4:29Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So let's walk people through this. So the Forbes, first of all, I don't want to sound too harsh and because Forbes is still good in many real, in many ways. But in general, Forbes.com is kind of bullshit. It's like a pretty laughable publication. The magazine, I think, is still kind of cool, but the, the good contributing system on Forbes is just utter bullshit. And in order to get into that Forbes 30 under 30, like your PR firm will like submit you. And then if you like buddy up to the people who's making the picks, you get in, it's bullshit. It's horrible.

• 5:06Shaan Puri?

  I, I, I wrote a recommendation letter this year for somebody. They, so this is some, somebody who is, they're my friend. I think they're cool, but they're not like 30 under 30, right? That should be like something really remarkable and prestigious and like, why not? Why not just make the list of badass people? Why, why does it have to be this weird, like not pay to play, but like, if you play the game, you get to, you get, you get to be in. So as I referred this person, first of all, who am I to even be able to write these recommendation letters? And then who is he to actually get it? And he became 30 to 30, like mission accomplished by just trying. He asked two people to write recommendation letters and they did it. And then he got in.

• 5:44Sam Parr?

  It's such bullshit and I don't like want to hate on it because a lot of my very close friends who I love are on it and it makes them feel good. So that's cool. That's wonderful. But let's just acknowledge that it's like stupid.

• 5:55Shaan Puri?

  Right, right.

• 5:56Sam Parr?

  They're not stupid, but it's stupid. There's a very few lists that I think are worthy. One of them is Inc. Inc's 500 or what's it called? Inc. 5000?

• 6:05Shaan Puri?

  5000, I think, yeah.

• 6:06Sam Parr?

  That's a legit list. So that's a list that does revenue growth for like fastest growing companies by revenue over the past three years. I believe you need to show your financial statements in order to get that. So I think that's like a legit list. Not everyone applies, obviously. They phrase it like these are the fastest growing companies in America and that's just not true. It's these are the fastest growing companies who submitted their information to us. But I think, I think that's a great list. I don't know any other lists that are interesting, but if it's on HuffPo or Forbes is probably bullshit.

• 6:38Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So first of all, like I wish I could just buy Forbes because I think the name still has value, even though they've just been pissing on it for seven years about like just having no quality filter. So I wish I could just buy Forbes and like turn it into what it should be, which is like the brand that if you're in Forbes, that means you're something. And, and they should, you know, figure out a business model that works there rather than what they did. Secondly, the only lists that matter, in my opinion, are lists that are merit based. So like the App Store charts, like I'm interested in that list, right? Like who's in the top grossing? I would like, I would like to see that list versus any of these kind of like vanity lists. But the opposite is also true, which

• 7:18Shaan Puri?

  is for all these systems, I try not to judge it. I just try to understand it and then abuse it. So I myself have dabbled with making lists like this where to be the list maker is a great position to be in because you just declare, you know, and I have a friend who did the hottest guys in tech. So created a viral list of hottest guys in tech. I can't say the name, it's anonymous builder, tell you offline. And so they made this list. I think it was like 12 people long. The website's still probably up. It was like hottestguysin tech.com or something weird like that. And

• 7:58Shaan Puri?

  Put a bunch of people on it that they knew would retweet. So the the criteria was not who is the hottest. It was who's most likely to share this about themselves, either bragging or as a joke, because I want this to spread. And then, yeah, people will say this is, you know, objectifying and and stupid. Hot guys of tech.com. That's it.

• 8:17Sam Parr?

  Well, judging off who's number one, I I would bet Greg. Greg didn't make this.

• 8:24Shaan Puri?

  He's not the builder, but it's somebody who knows Greg. Yeah. So he put Greg there because he knew that Greg had that like mix of like, had a little following, would share it, wouldn't take it too seriously. Like, you know, like, not gonna like, push back on him or whatever. So anyways, I thought this was really funny. So I've been a fan of this. Jason Calacanis did this back to make his name when he was in New York with Silicon Alley Insider, I think is the name of his like, original thing. He wanted to become kind of like a power player in the New York tech and business scene. And so he created the Silicon Alley. What was it Silicon Alley?

• 9:05Shaan Puri?

  I don't even remember what it was called, but it was like the top 100 or something like that. And yeah, Silicon Alley, Silicon Alley 100, I think it was called. I don't remember exactly, but he basically was like, oh, this was my excuse to meet every single power player. They did an interview with me. They sent me their headshots. I wanted to be on the list. I could kind of decide who's in front of who. And because I was the kingmaker of deciding who's on the list, all of a sudden, I became a power player in that scene. And I just think this is like massively underrated. If I was at any college, I was a bored college kid, I would 100% do two lists. One is the hottest hottest guy list. And the like, the other one would be kind of like the power rankings. So just the who's gonna be the most successful person out of this college.

• 9:48Sam Parr?

  So two things. First, this, let's talk about that as a business. But before that, so when I launched, so my company before this, we had a roommate matching app. And in order to make it popular, we weren't going to spend any money in marketing. But I knew how to make things go viral. And one of the, there's a few tenants or a few rules for making things go viral. A couple of them are to be very specific and name names that only certain people know, but they're passionate about. And when we had our app, we were, we launched in Chicago, Boston, New York, LA, and San Francisco, and one other city. And we made infographics that, it was like the stereotypical roommates of different neighborhoods. And we said like,

• 10:29Sam Parr?

  and we very specifically did it this way because we were like, alright, so for those who don't live in San Francisco, the, there's this neighborhood called the Marina, and their stereotype is frat bros. So we put like, eats at this restaurant every morning, wears this type of clothing, which is like a local Marina shop, eats cupcakes here. We did all that type of shit, and it got shared like crazy. So the, the, the strategy was name as many names as possible, and we piled it with names, and then we emailed all the people who we mentioned, and it got seen by millions of people in the first month, and we got tens of thousands of free users from it. It worked so well.

• 11:08Shaan Puri?

  I love that. That is, that is a perfect example of this, this marketing idea and tactic that I've always like, again, observed, hey, this is pretty effective. It's also kind of bullshit. Wait, could I create some bullshit like this and have those effects? And I've always wanted to have some excuse to do it, and I never really did have the excuse to do it, and that is an amazing, perfect example. I love that.

• 11:29Sam Parr?

  I'll, I'll find it. And the way that we did this was, and like, look at this, like, I just found an article, like, so we did it about different neighborhoods, and check this out. So, I just sent you one that we did.

• 11:43Shaan Puri?

  I think I might have seen this, by the way, before I moved to San Francisco. I think I saw this because I wanted to know which neighborhood to live in, and there was this one, and there was another like, guide to San Francisco neighborhoods that were like, designed like this. Like, you have a, for people who can't see it, he just sent me an article on curbed.com for Chicago, and it's like, all the different neighborhoods, and there's like a little illustration, and it's like, here's what the rent is, here's kind of like, where you're gonna find this person, you know, like, Bronzeville, you'll probably find this person protesting a new billboard on 31st Street. So it's like, these things that are gonna get a reaction out of people. Smart.

• 12:17Sam Parr?

  And what's funny is that I had never even been to Boston when I wrote this, or I didn't know any of this. We found all of it on Yelp. We just went on Yelp and we looked at which had the most reviews and that's what we used. And the second thing that's really interesting about these lists is that I like, do you realize that when we say like the Fortune 500, it's named after Fortune magazine? Like, I use that, but I use that word so often that I like, don't even, I, it's like when you say like Michelin star restaurants, you forget that that's like Michelin tires. Or New York Times bestseller, like you often like, it's bigger, the New York Times bestseller is bigger than New York Times. And there's like

• 13:01Sam Parr?

  many lists like that. Like, I would have to think of a few, but I think these lists can actually be big businesses. Same with J D Power Award, which is a billion dollar company. Same with, there's just so many. So these lists are like shockingly big businesses. I think sometimes they're scams, but not all the time. But this list making business, we have to categorize what this is and like, come up with cool ideas around it.

• 13:24Shaan Puri?

  I call it king making. When you decide who's who, right? Like, so Bray found Silicon Alley Reporter 100 was a list of the 100 most influential people in New York technology. Put like, you're, you're just deciding who's the king? And because you're deciding who's the king, you're the actual king. Your, your name is on the list. Everybody starts catering to you. You start getting access. People start submitting applications. And literally the fucking thing didn't exist before you just arbitrarily decided to name it. And everybody, you know, even if they mock it initially, they will buy in. Nobody wants to be at the bottom of the list. Nobody wants to be left off the list.

• 14:01Sam Parr?

  And the thing is, is that a lot of people are like, well, who am I to start this list? It doesn't matter. As long as you, as long as you make it, the people who are involved will likely share it. Like, I share all that shit if I'm involved in it.

• 14:16Shaan Puri?

  It takes some finesse. Yeah. Like, if I told you right now, we just shat on Forbes 30 under 30. If they said, Sam, push this button right in front of you. If you just put the, push the X key on your laptop right now, and you're on the list. And if you don't want to be on the list, just don't push that X key. Would you push it? I would push it. I'd be like, I'm on. Yeah.

• 14:33Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And like, I realize that sounds hypocritical, but yeah, whatever. Fuck them.

• 14:38Shaan Puri?

  But it's not, actually, if you think about it.

• 14:41Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I'm saying it's a bullshit game, but I'll play it every once in a while. So this, what I wanted to talk about was you, you had this thing called all access pass. And you shut it down. Can you tell me why and what it, what it was and why you shut it down?

• 14:57Shaan Puri?

  Right. Okay. What it was. So the podcast that we do here, we just do a bunch of ideas. So let's say, let's take the idea we just did. Hey, there's this business model type that you, or maybe it's a marketing tactic called king making that you guys talked about. That's really cool. Cool idea. And what we do is the conversation has now ended and then we're going to move on with our life. We're going to talk about the next topic and the next topic, the next topic. And we're never going to go past that surface level, right? Like the podcast is designed to be about ideas and it's about, it's designed to be more like rapid fire. We're not like promising some thorough investigation of ideas. So the number one question I would get, and I'm sure you get it too, in your inbox all the time. It's like, dude, I love that idea. I want to do it. Like, will you advise me? Or like, how would I, how should I do it? Or I have this other idea.

• 15:41Shaan Puri?

  How would you do it? And it's like, dude, I don't know. Like, he's so context dependent. I don't know. I'd have to take time to figure, figure shit out. I don't just like know the answer. Like, the answer is in spending a bunch of months trying to figure it out. And so, um, so I was like, okay, well, and people were asking me, like, do you want to do a course? Like a course where you teach people about like how to do a startup? I was like, well, there's no like, just catch all, like how to do it. Uh, that's too generic. I said, but maybe I could do something different. I said, I spent a lot of time in my life doing like zero to one of businesses. Uh, I ran a fricking idea lab for six years and an idea lab, you're just cooking up an idea and you're trying to make it, make it happen every single time, zero to one, zero to one. And so I thought, I'm pretty, like, I am, I have gotten good at this over time. What if what I did was, I have a few projects in

• 16:25Shaan Puri?

  mind of things that I think could be cool to do. Um, what if I just built them in public? So what if I just published, uh, not just like how it went, but like the day to day, what did I do today? What did I do tomorrow? What did I do the third day? What did I do the fourth day? And so people can follow along and like, it's not going to really like apply to their project, like one to one, because they're not going to be doing the same thing as me. And then I can have the same exact skill set as me. But I thought, you know, the way, one of the ways I got good at shit was just by shadowing other people who are really good at shit. And then you see how they execute and you're like, oh, fuck. That's the level of aggression, action taking. Uh, that's the framework they use to think about things. Like, I should be like that. So anyways, all access pass was this experiment where I said, all right. If you pay me 200 bucks a month, you get on my paid newsletter and the paid newsletter is going

• 17:10Shaan Puri?

  to go out five or six times a week. I'm basically just going to say, day one of this project, what did I do? Day two, what did I do? Day three, what did I do? And I said, I'm going to do this for a season. My season is going to be four months long. And so I've now done it for three months and I just yesterday emailed the whole list of people and saying, hey, I'm going to shut it off after three, like, and here's why. So that's a high level like overview. We can take it in whatever direction you want.

• 17:34Sam Parr?

  Can you say how many people signed up already on one, two?

• 17:37Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, sure. Like now that's over. Who cares? So basically, I was like, this will be good if I can get 20K a month of revenue coming from this. I thought that would be like

• 17:49Sam Parr?

  20K as in 200 time or sorry, 100 times 200.

• 17:55Shaan Puri?

  Yes, exactly. What ended up happening was I had about 300 something subscribers. There was two prices. Initially it was 150, then it became 200. So I was making 50K a month off this for the last three months. And so some people were like, are you nuts, dude? Your paid newsletter is making $50,000 a month. You're going to turn it off like, you know, what kind of asshole are you? And you know, I feel that, but I had my reasons to be like, look, this is a lot of time and energy it's taking and that time energy I will kind of want to put in other places.

• 18:24Sam Parr?

  Did you, do you think, so when I hear $200 a month, I'm like, that's pretty expensive. Do you, was that priced correctly?

• 18:34Shaan Puri?

  I think so. So I think it's the most that you can charge for something like this. I think once you go into like a thousand dollars or whatever, you're really like only a certain type of person who has a certain business that's already really successful can pay for that, can justify paying for it, or you'd have to get their work to pay for it. So for this case, I think this was like, it was high, right? Most paid newsletters, if you go to Substack or whatever, like I bet you I was like, I don't know, in the top 0.01% of Substack earners.

• 19:02Sam Parr?

  You would have been the most expensive one.

• 19:05Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I'm just saying like overall revenue per month. I'm sure there's some that are like publications I make a little bit more, but like as an individual and from day one, like I think that was pretty high. It was a lot more than I thought I was gonna make.

• 19:17Shaan Puri?

  And I didn't do it on Substack because I didn't want to pay them the five or 10%, whatever they take. That'd be like 10 grand a month, you know? So that was a lot. So anyways, I lost my train of thought. Oh, the price. So I priced it at just like what I thought it was like, what I thought the market would bear. I think it was the right price because I think it was a lot for, most people don't have a subscription. That's 200 bucks a month, period, in their like their monthly bill. But at the same time, like for anybody who's doing a business, which was kind of the, the group of people that were, that were tuning in or people who wanted to do a business.

• 19:51Shaan Puri?

  I made damn sure that they got the value. And I'm not just saying that, like, I obviously I'm not selling anything now, like I shut it down. But like, I felt like this extreme obligation because I was like, fuck, for these people, for most people, 200 bucks a month, for me, like that's, that's a expensive subscription, like for an email. This email better have like golden nuggets. That's gonna like, show me something, teach me something, help me with my thing. Way more than $200 of value. And if you have a business, it's not hard to get an insight. That's gonna give you more than $200 of value back.

• 20:19Sam Parr?

  What was your churn?

• 20:21Shaan Puri?

  So the retention was 93 point something percent over the months. So

• 20:26Sam Parr?

  Over one month or the three month?

• 20:29Shaan Puri?

  Over the three. Yeah.

• 20:30Sam Parr?

  That's great.

• 20:31Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So that was great. And most of it was just in the first month, like, you know, people who were like, oh, you know, I can't pay for the next month, or I didn't like this, or it's not what I expected. So the retention was amazing. 93% retention. Let's see, what are the other stats that matter? Yeah, that was kind of it. And then I had a free version also. So I was like, yo, if you can't pay. There's a free version. Basically every Sunday, I'll send you one of the five posts of the week. I'll unlock it for you. And you can tune into that. And then so that grew my free list basically like double, like 2X to kind of like my free list through people sharing that stuff. And ultimately, the reason I shut it down was because My life goal is, I've talked about this kind of cheesy, but like, whatever.

• 21:14Shaan Puri?

  My life goal is, I want to be like a teacher, like I want to be a teacher at scale. Like I want, I set myself a goal for the decade, which was in 10 years, can I get to teaching 70 million people, which is like 1% of the world's population. And can that, can, you know, for 70 million people, could they think of me as like a teacher who really helped them, one of their favorite teachers? That would be like my decade goal. And so I thought, well, I'm doing a lot of teaching right now, but I'm teaching like 350 people. You know, that's not gonna, I'm making a lot of money, but my reach is so small. And I was like, fuck it, I need to switch. I need to put all my effort into the free audience, because that's going to be the mass audience, because that's my actual goal. My goal is not to add an extra, you know, zero to my bank account.

• 21:57Sam Parr?

  Do you, um, I, the business that you're, the business that you were documenting, I know you don't like talking about it, so we don't, not gonna talk about it, but was it, is it doing well, like well enough that you're like, I gotta focus on this?

• 22:10Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that was part of it. Like, you know, the business itself is an asset that's like, you know, that the time spent there versus writing the email is, you know, better spent. So I basically did, I promised three things. I said, I'm gonna launch a fund, which I wanted to do anyways. I said, I'll show you how I raise this money. How do I launch this fund? And what are my tactics to do that? And what goes into this? And so I did that one, that was successful. That was the first month. And then the second month was e-commerce. So I show people, how do you get e-commerce ideas? Where do I look for ideas? How do you validate demand for that product? How do you know you're not, you know, working on a dud? How do you get it sourced? You know, how do you work with a factory? How do you negotiate all this stuff? And then how do you actually grow an e-commerce store? And so that's kind of what I, you know, was showing.

• 22:54Shaan Puri?

  And I was using my wife's likes, e-commerce store for that. So I didn't have to, I did the sourcing separately. And then for the growing a store, because sourcing takes time, right? There's like a lead time of like two months to get a product. So I didn't want to let, leave people waiting. So that's kind of how I did that one. And the last one was going to be an online course. And I ended up doing like a workshop and some things like that, but I was like, This is just A, too much work and B, I invested in our mutual friend Guggan Beyani's new education startup, new course platform. And as part of that, that deal was obviously very hard to get into because he's a baller entrepreneur. He built Udemy, he built Sprig. Like, a lot of people wanted to invest. And part of my pitch to let me into the round

• 23:37Shaan Puri?

  was, yo, if you let me invest, I'll launch my course on your platform when it's ready. And so it's not ready yet. So basically, I hadn't done that project.

• 23:46Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I saw that. He asked me to, or he invited me to have a discussion about it. I didn't end up doing it because I was too busy and I just missed the call. I didn't schedule a call. I was like, I can't really focus on this right now. Maybe I'll regret it, but uh.

• 24:01Shaan Puri?

  And you helped him figure it out because he did a course with the trends community as one of his, like, like in his investor deck, he's like, here's what I've been doing because like, we don't have users, we don't have revenue, but how do we, how can I say I have traction? It was like, well, I've actually been prototyping and testing this. I did one, I did a course with the trends community. I did a course with this other thing. I, I became a student in these five courses and that's how I've learned about, and that's informed my new business.

• 24:25Sam Parr?

  Yes. And he introduced me to his co-founder and I was like, hey, I just, I have way too much on my plate at the moment. I don't want to get, I can't, I can't get involved in anything else. I'm sorry. And I have a feeling that's going to cost me some money, but that's okay. I couldn't get to it.

• 24:40Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's a phrase I need to learn.

• 24:43Sam Parr?

  What's that? Like, I just.

• 24:44Shaan Puri?

  I have too much on my plate. I can't do this right now. Sorry.

• 24:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I couldn't, I just, I didn't have time and I actually, I acknowledge, I would, he's, he's gonna be at least mildly successful. I just, I didn't have the bandwidth. What did people say when you canceled? Were they upset?

• 25:04Shaan Puri?

  You know, by the time you get to like, month three of a thing, and you know, I put out 50 pieces of content that were like, not just like pieces of content, like, I tried to make them all fucking good. And I put out 50 pieces of content in like, I don't know, 70 days or something crazy like that. So by that point, I think people, A, understood, like, yeah, this, this does seem like, you know, this is keeping you up at night, right? I'm sending these emails at like 1 a.m. because after work, after the baby gets to bed, after I walk the dog, after, you know, we do the podcast, after all my obligations are done, then I would bang this thing out. So I think they understood, like, yeah, this is probably, you know, a lot of work. And then the second thing was, I think you you you earn some loyalty and trust. I'm sure some people were like pissed,

• 25:48Shaan Puri?

  but people are polite to your face. Usually there's there was one or two people that were like, kind of dicks about it. They were like, dude, you said, and I was like, yeah, I know. I said, I'm sorry, like,

• 25:57Sam Parr?

  but and you're getting your money back, right? Or like, you're cancelling it. It's not like they're paying for something you're not getting. But they were like, oh, I really wanted to learn the course thing, and you never got to it. I'm like, yeah, no, sorry. Shit happens. That's pretty funny. And did all the people come from this podcast?

• 26:14Shaan Puri?

  Majority, I think, like,

• 26:16Sam Parr?

  That's crazy.

• 26:17Shaan Puri?

  to promote the thing, I basically put out some free written stuff. And then I did a six minute little podcast teaser about it that I posted on the feed. And so those are the two and I posted the Facebook group as well. So those are the three things I did to promote it. I didn't do anything beyond that to to promote it.

• 26:33Sam Parr?

  It's pretty crazy how

• 26:35Shaan Puri?

  and I should definitely say, by the way, I didn't do this myself. So I recruited somebody from the community, this guy Ben, to be like, kind of like, the main operator of this thing, because I didn't have the time. And I was very upfront about that to everybody. It was like, you know, this email was like, written by Ben. Ben did this thing. It's not me doing everything. And so Ben Levy was like, the reason I was able to do this, if I didn't have Ben, it would have been impossible. And it would have sucked. And I would have quit way earlier because I'm a quitter in that sense.

• 27:01Sam Parr?

  I definitely am like amazed that like, so this podcast, let's just be round up a little bit. We're in like, the 400,000 ish listeners per month listens per month. I don't know if I actually don't know if that means unique or what. But it's still like modest. It's not like the biggest thing. It's not small, but it's not the biggest thing. I'm still shocked me that that's how much revenue can be generated from a relatively small audience. It shocks me.

• 27:30Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it really is. It really is quite shocking. But I think it's like, you know, this is the theory, right? Like, the reason I did the podcast, the reason I did the paid newsletter, the reason I do all that stuff is because like, I'm a big fan of this model of Solopreneurship and being a creator, making stuff and then having fans who like the stuff you make, pay for it. I just think that that is a really good business model. I think it keeps you honest. I think it keeps you making good stuff over time. And I think it's really defensible. And so, so I'm a fan of this. And like, you know, the company I work at Twitch is literally the mission of the company is to like empower creators. Twitch is just full of like a million, you know, creators with their own channel and they run their own business

• 28:14Shaan Puri?

  and they share the revenue. And, and so I'm just a big fan of this like creator, like they creator economy, basically. This is my experiment to dabble and be a creator and not just like building tools for creators.

• 28:26Sam Parr?

  Great. I'm all in. I think it was cool.

• 28:29Shaan Puri?

  I got a couple of ideas I wanted to throw your way. Let me start with this first one. This is an idea that already exists. It's called cul-de-sac. Have you seen this startup called cul-de-sac?

• 28:38Sam Parr?

  No, I'm pulling up our list and I'm gonna, I'm gonna go to it.

• 28:41Shaan Puri?

  URL is like.

• 28:44Sam Parr?

  Spelled it a little funny. A five minute city cul-de-sac.

• 28:48Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. So their tagline is it's a five minute city. So it's basically a startup where they're, they're in Tempe, Arizona.

• 28:55Sam Parr?

  And they're building a little. Yes. I know this.

• 28:58Shaan Puri?

  Neighborhood.

• 28:59Sam Parr?

  I know this well.

• 29:00Shaan Puri?

  So tell me what you know. Well.

• 29:03Sam Parr?

  It's, they have big name people. Who is it?

• 29:06Shaan Puri?

  So I think the, it's a lot of, I think they're ex open door people. And so Keith Raboy, I think was one of their investors, but I'm not sure. I don't, I don't have a ton of information of who's, you know, ultimately behind it. I think they went through YC or they're going through YC right now. Or no, they went through YC 2018. So they, they went a while back. It's not a lot of information about it, but basically they're building a five minute city, which means that, you know, where you work, where you exercise, where you eat, where you hang out, your outdoor space is all five minutes away. So it's a walkable, it's like a total walking, walking lifestyle. And you're in this little neighborhood that has every single thing you need from, you need to get fresh produce, you want to get, you know, coffee, you want to eat at a restaurant, you want to work out, it's all

• 29:49Shaan Puri?

  there. And I, lifestyle wise, I would love to live in a five minute city. I think that's like kind of a dream. What do you think of this concept as a liver and as a business?

• 29:58Sam Parr?

  Okay, so. I first want to acknowledge how douchey this is like this is like if it if it becomes like the startup thing and it's a bunch of like startup people and people are very like homogenous group like we have to acknowledge that that's just a circle jerk and it's kind of lame. At the same time, it's cool and I would want to participate in it. Do you know what I mean? Like

• 30:22Shaan Puri?

  That's the theme of this episode. Bullshit things that I'd love to be a part of.

• 30:27Sam Parr?

  Like, I would probably have fun. But it's basically like a TED Talk that you if it turns into a TED Talk that you live at, then it could get a little exhausting. Do you know what I mean?

• 30:38Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's great. That's a great way of putting it.

• 30:40Sam Parr?

  Like, that's that's what it looks like. I see like three different golden retrievers in the picture, an airstream, an airstream shit trailer, and tons of white people wearing Lululemon. Like, that's what like the picture is. So I think like, I would be a little nervous about participating in that. Yeah, at the same time, I'd probably be into it.

• 31:00Shaan Puri?

  Right, exactly. It's like if Lululemon and Whole Foods and Barry's Bootcamp like decided to share a space, basically. And so I think that there's definitely like a douche factor that's that's possible and will naturally be attracted to something like this. But okay, here's here's my take. I think commuting definitely fucking sucks. And I think that like, the lifestyle where, you know, I'm in a suburban neighborhood now, you drive 15 minutes to some shopping center. So I, you know, I take my SUV to a shopping center in a park, I get out, I go into some big store, and then I like have no relationship with them, and I buy my thing, and I drive back. I think that's kind of lame. And so, I love the idea of the five minute city. I think the douche factor is really real where you

• 31:43Shaan Puri?

  the key would be to not just get the same type of person 500 times to live there, and make it just like this totally homogenous city. And then the other thing is like, as a business, I wonder how this will work. Because I think this is like, basically, you know, real estate development play branded as a tech startup and raising money as a tech startup, which I think makes no sense.

• 32:03Sam Parr?

  Yes, I also want to acknowledge that, which I think this could be a great business. But this isn't like new, like there's it's it's just a planned community, which they have they've. We've had this since 1910, like this is like it's it it it works wonderfully. Or it can work wonderfully planned communities can be pretty great. And they're great because they're often planned quite well. And so I'm on board with that. I do I do want to acknowledge you that it is an old idea that's just done with cute branding, which I'm on board with. So I think this is gonna be pretty cool. I don't know, man, can you convince a bunch of people to move to Tempe, though?

• 32:46Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I don't think so. I'm surprised surprised they chose that as their location.

• 32:52Sam Parr?

  Austin, because that's where everyone's going. Austin, Austin, or somewhere where like, yeah, like Chicago or like where there's a lot of people willing to be already.

• 33:01Shaan Puri?

  So there's one, there's one variant of this that I think is is different. And I don't know if you'll be able to find the name of this. I can't remember the name off the top of my head, but somebody told me about a version of this planned community that I think is also cool, which is actually catering towards immigrants that live in America. So people like my parents, so my parents are Indian. They mostly in their social circle have like Indian friends because like the holidays and the food and like the whatever. That's who they get along with, language is easy.

• 33:28Shaan Puri?

  And so somebody and and being an immigrant in America is like hard in a whole bunch of ways. You're sort of at a disadvantage and not welcome to not accept it in a lot of different scenarios. But I found some real estate developer who was basically was building these little neighborhoods that were just for like, you know, like brown parents. And it wasn't like, it's obviously it's not reserved for that, like anybody can buy there. But like word spread and a bunch of Indian families, parents whose kids all went to college and moved away. And these empty nesters all moved into this one neighborhood. And the center of the neighborhood, they had like these kind of shared amenities, which was like, you know, like, maybe like a religious place and maybe like a food, like, like kind of a dining hall where they could like have a chef that's always making food there. And I thought this was a great concept.

• 34:11Shaan Puri?

  I would love to put my parents in a place like that where their social scene is like made for them, so they're not just like alone in their house, you know, till they get old.

• 34:19Sam Parr?

  Well, it's called a nursing home, but yeah, I'm joking. So like my Neville, my best bud Neville, he's Zoroastrian, which is like a, he calls himself, he was like, we're kind of like Jews in India, which I don't exactly know what that means, but basically it's a subset of Indian. I don't really know exactly what it is. I think it's a religion or I don't know how they define themselves. Anyway.

• 34:42Shaan Puri?

  You're brave for even trying. Okay, go ahead.

• 34:44Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I think it's, I don't know if it's culture or race, religion, whatever it is, he identifies as Zoroastrian. And he said that when him and his parents moved here, they surrounded themselves on the same block with some Zoroastrians as well as other Indians. And so he was like, it was the best thing ever. We were raised around other immigrant parents, but we were trying to fit in and be American, but we still had Indian roots. So it was really nice to have that. And so what we're doing now here in Austin, where I'm living now, is I bought a house and Neville is gonna move down the block. He's looking at a house on the block. And then Ramon is moving here in January, my other best buddy. And so we're all trying to move on the same block because we're trying to recreate this.

• 35:22Shaan Puri?

  Yes, that's the dream.

• 35:24Sam Parr?

  Totally, I'm totally into it.

• 35:26Shaan Puri?

  That is the dream. I love that. So anyways, I think this is a cool idea. And more than this cul-de-sac idea is actually, I like your idea better, which is, I think, life would be great if you basically had a, you know, your family lives in your house and then your friends live on your block. I think that's like, you know, the most, the most quality of life improvement you could possibly have.

• 35:47Sam Parr?

  And isn't, I mean, I don't know too much about Indian culture, but I do have a bunch of Indian friends. It's quite normal to have your, for the families, like mom and dad, to live with you until you're old, right? I mean, like, it's normal to have like a shared house?

• 36:04Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, traditionally, the parents would live with, I think, the oldest son, maybe.

• 36:10Shaan Puri?

  But depends kind of how old school you are. So like for my family, my family's pretty like modern. My mom, like, you know, torrents movies off of BitTorrent shit, like, you know, like, we're not like in that, like, kind of old school mindset. And so, so that's not really kind of how we think about it. Although I think it'd be great. I would love for my mom to live with me. It'd be dope, but, but she doesn't, you know, she doesn't want to.

• 36:31Sam Parr?

  You know who another guy who's trying to do something like this that I'm actually I'm realizing it's not the same entirely and he's I think he wanted to come on here and he's like a kind of a shady well I'm not gonna judge him but a lot of people would call him kinda shady is that Grant Cardone guy so this guy he sells like courses like Ty Lopez for like $2,000 on how to sell or something and he uses that money to buy property and at this point he's got this whole line of properties called like 10x 10x properties or something and the reason why I thought of him is Abra you just shared the founders LinkedIn of this what's it called this cul-de-sac and people also viewed people who work at Grant Cardone's 10x properties

• 37:16Sam Parr?

  so I wonder if they're trying to poach a bunch of people from there

• 37:20Shaan Puri?

  that's funny

• 37:20Sam Parr?

  but it's a he's trying to do something similar to that as well it's an interesting play

• 37:24Shaan Puri?

  so here's another kind of fun idea curious what do you think about this the do you know who this guy Tiago Forte is?

• 37:31Sam Parr?

  yes

• 37:32Shaan Puri?

  he's like you know also a creator kind of solopreneur guy online teaches courses about things called building a second brain I don't know it's kind of a weird weird idea but people are into it for whatever reason it's like a note taking app a note taking course I guess how to be organized or something like that and this dude's like crushing it he's making like a million and a half dollars a year easily on his courses and he I think it was him he tweeted out like yo I you know we've been talking about like these tiny homes or prefab manufactured homes he tweeted out hey I bought these I think in Austin actually a few of these cabins and you know it's underway and next year we're gonna have a retreat for you know

• 38:16Shaan Puri?

  makers and kind of creators to be able to just come and stay and this will just be a year round place you can come and stay and be in a little you're in your cabin and you're the cabins next to you are other creators and makers and we'll just be able to rent these out and I'm making my own little kind of creator village I think I got the concept at least half right Abra just showed me the tweet so he says here it is Forte Shelter to be delivered but next year to Creator cabins by Jonathan Hills okay so maybe it's not him

• 38:45Shaan Puri?

  A set of creative workspaces for remote workers, online creators and entrepreneurs, which also fund conservation efforts and it's creator cabins.com is the the concept of it. Where you can go as a creator go live in these fucking cabins. What do you think?

• 38:58Sam Parr?

  I'm looking at it now. This is gonna be huge. I don't know if it'd be huge. It's gonna be pretty good. There's another business that we mentioned a few weeks ago. It's called getaway.

• 39:09Sam Parr?

  Yeah, this is gonna crush this. I'm on forte shelter.com.

• 39:16Shaan Puri?

  Right. Okay, maybe that's I think creator cabins.com. Maybe it's the same thing. I don't know.

• 39:21Sam Parr?

  Oh, no, no forte shelter. It's the guy. This is him. His picture is here. I guess he makes these little tiny home things. They're just trailers or something like that. Anyway, I'm totally in on that. I think this is gonna be cool.

• 39:34Shaan Puri?

  So what I think is cool about this, what I'm studying about this, I don't really personally it's just lifestyle laws. I'm not gonna go to this cabin now, but maybe when I was younger, that would have been awesome.

• 39:44Shaan Puri?

  You know, the what I like is that the solopreneurs are dabbling with different models. So like, for example, I looked at all the different solopreneur models that are out there. I looked at Tim Ferriss. I looked at Pomp. I looked at Tiago Forte. I looked at a whole bunch of different guys that are out there. Seth Godin. And what was striking to me was that the old wave of like most famous ones like Tim Ferriss, Gary V, Seth Godin, I felt like were hugely under monetized. Like the models that they picked to like capitalize on their their rabid following.

• 40:17Sam Parr?

  Well, Tim Ferriss is is great. He probably made $200 million.

• 40:21Shaan Puri?

  Well, he made $200 million off of an Uber investment, not off of his fan base. Right? Like, so you could you could say that, like, okay, he got access to the Uber investment because he's Tim Ferriss. That's a part of it for sure. But he didn't a raise a fund. So he was investing his own money when he could have been using fan money basically to invest.

• 40:40Shaan Puri?

  Didn't do a course would have. I bet his course would have been pulling in $5 million a year easily. Around the four hour work week, right? He chose books and ads from a podcast as his two models. And he's so popular that he still made a killing doing those two. But that killing is like, there's People with an audience, a fraction of his size that are making as much money, if not more than he's making off his podcasts and books. Tiago Forte being a great example. I bet you Tiago Forte is making almost as much as Tim Ferriss does off his podcast ads or his books. Off of his course and Pomp is another great example. I think Pomp is doing a great job of his monetization model of using, you know, Pomp raised a rolling fund.

• 41:18Shaan Puri?

  Pomp has a paid newsletter. Pomp, right? So he has like all these different like stacks of different ways that he's converting audience trust into value for, for him. And Seth Godin is another one hugely popular. He used books. And then he created the alt NBA, which is like

• 41:35Sam Parr?

  How big is that, you think?

• 41:37Shaan Puri?

  That's pretty big. So that does, that does definitely a few million dollars a year. So he was kind of the first one, but it took him like, he was famous for like a decade plus before he even like dabbled in something like that. And Gary V like started an agency. Okay. That you could say that that worked, but I think that's like a really hard path. And so I'm looking at some of these new models and the different ways that guys are doing this, and this is one of them, right? Create, create, uh, turn your fame into real estate value. So if you're Tim Ferriss, if Tim Ferriss had made, you know, the Tim Ferriss, you know, sort of Zen retreat area, which is basically a year round place where you can come. If you're a maker, you're trying to pursue a thoughtful lifestyle. You're a lifestyle hacker. You love being in nature, all the things that are, that the lifestyle Tim Ferriss preaches.

• 42:17Shaan Puri?

  He could have just made essentially a resort or a creator cabin like this and just Airbnb the shit out of it.

• 42:23Sam Parr?

  I think you're a little wrong. These aren't solopreneur. This is just like the Oprah, Martha Stewart type of thing. Like Seth Godin has a huge team. I think Banner Media has like 800 or 900 people. I think what you're talking about is just monetizing influence, which like that Kylie Jenner, what the fuck is her name?

• 42:45Sam Parr?

  What the fuck is that?

• 42:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, Kylie Jenner, what'd she do? Tell us, tell us more, you expert.

• 42:52Sam Parr?

  The makeup, the makeup girl, the Jenner, or whatever she is, the famous, the famous one on Instagram that my wife watches on TV. I mean, she crushed it. She probably became a, close to a billionaire off that. So I do think some people are doing it really well.

• 43:09Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, okay, so you could say this is influence. I agree with you. You know, the other word I'm using right now is like, is a personal media company. I see it's just a, it's a person's brand. They are the media company. They're not a part of New York Times, or Fox, or CNBC, or whatever. They're, they're an independent media brand themselves. And that's what, you know, the Kardashians are now, and that's what Seth Godin and Tim Ferriss and all these guys are.

• 43:32Sam Parr?

  Another person who did it well is that Bulletproof Coffee dude.

• 43:36Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 43:37Sam Parr?

  Dave.

• 43:38Shaan Puri?

  So there's products, like, for example, I have this new one that I just came, I came out with this Chrome extension, and I'm gonna give it to like, the first, I don't know, like, 100 people, just to test it out. Cause I have this, I have a to-do list, I have a method of productivity, right? I have this one thing I call, I have this method I call the one big thing, the OBT. And I say, fuck a to-do list, you need to have a single focus of, if I did this one thing today, the day is worth it. The day is, is a win, it's in the win column, and everything else is, is just noise. And I have this one focus, and so my Chrome extension is the one big thing Chrome extension. It basically says, "Good morning, Sean, your one big thing today is..." And I type it in, and every time I open a tab, I see this fucking thing. And I love it, it's great. I had it made for me because I liked it.

• 44:20Shaan Puri?

  And now I'm just gonna give access, and so I'm gonna be in the software game, I'm gonna be in the fun game, I'm gonna be in the physical products game, I'll be in all these games eventually. And so I'm studying these models, and I'm gonna crack the code.

• 44:32Sam Parr?

  Do you think that that will be more fun than starting a business where no one knows who you are?

• 44:38Sam Parr?

  Like, just starting like a-

• 44:39Shaan Puri?

  It'll be more fun for me, because I'm kind of an attention whore in that way. Like, I like being known for it. I know a lot of people who, this whole thing, doing a podcast, and having people, you know, listen to you, and having people DM you every morning, that, the same thing that gives me energy would be a pain in the ass to them. They're like, "No, dude, I just wanna like, look at a spreadsheet, and I just wanna like, make a decision, and I wanna invest the money, and then I wanna like, go play golf." And like, that's winning for them, and that's not winning for me. So, yeah, I think, I think it depends on the person.

• 45:10Sam Parr?

  That's interesting. I, uh, yeah, I don't know if I would want to do that or not. Maybe, maybe not.

• 45:17Sam Parr?

  Hmm. I think it's interesting though, and I think that you'll definitely be able to pull this off. That's for sure.

• 45:23Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think it takes time. Okay. I got a, I got a couple more ideas I wanted to throw at you. See what you think.

• 45:29Sam Parr?

  Do the handwritten letter one or a different one.

• 45:32Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's, that's the one I wanted to talk about. So discovered this company again, podcast success story, a listener to the podcast, this guy Steve Moran, who's a baller. He's like, I think he's head of mobile at Asana or something like that. So he is a listener to the podcast. He sent me this. He's an investor in my fund and he was like, yo, you should check out this company I invested in. It's doing really good. And it's called addressable. And so their, their thing is just addressable. Uh, I think it's addressable app.com or something like that. And what they do is they give businesses like, let's say the hustle, or really where they focus is real estate and nonprofits. They give companies like that, that have this big kind of client base, right? If I'm a real estate agent, I have a bunch of people who are like clients and potential clients.

• 46:15Shaan Puri?

  If I'm a nonprofit, I have a bunch of donors and potential donors. And I really want to have this like personal relationship. I want to be top of mind for them. When the time comes, you know, for real estate, it's when it's time to sell your house for nonprofits, it's like, so that, you know, we give you a personal thank you when you donate and, you know, during the holiday season, when you feel like giving, we're top of mind for you. And so they were like, look, the direct mail industry is huge, right? If you go to your mailbox, you'll see all the junk you get there. And so like, how do you not just have that be just a giant paper printing waste? And they're like, how do you get your stuff read? And how do you get it like acted on? So what these guys did is kind of amazing. He showed me their office. They have these robots and the robot, it's this giant robot treadmill. It's like a treadmill looking thing

• 46:56Shaan Puri?

  with a robot on top of the treadmill and in the robot's hand is a blue ballpoint pen. And basically this is robot that all day, every day is writing quote unquote handwritten letters. It looks exactly like a handwritten letter with a real pen onto a letter and it basically pulls your data from your database. So you could be like, you could, you could do this for trans subscribers, for example. You could be like, hey, you know, I want to thank all the trans subscribers, you know, once they hit their first month for, for being a part of it and just say, personal thank you from Sam. And so it'll be like, hey, Sean, you know, pulls from the database.

• 47:28Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 47:28Shaan Puri?

  Just want to thank you for being a trend subscriber for X number of months. Means a lot to us, blah, blah, blah, from Sam. And, and then they'll, the whole, and then when the robot is done writing the thing, the treadmill shoots it to this next robot. That robot puts it in an envelope, like fucking licks the envelope, closes it up, puts it in the bin. And then some like dude comes and takes the bin and mails it out.

• 47:48Sam Parr?

  That's interesting.

• 47:49Shaan Puri?

  It's amazing.

• 47:50Sam Parr?

  So when I was in New York, I saw ads on the street constantly for this thing called Bond. What was it called? Bond writing?

• 47:57Shaan Puri?

  Letter or something like that.

• 47:58Sam Parr?

  Bond letter, and they did the same thing. And I looked it up and I didn't think that it was booming, like.

• 48:03Shaan Puri?

  So they sold a few years ago, kind of like a modest sale, didn't, didn't go, go, go crazy. What they did wrong, in my opinion, as I, as I looked at this was, I think a lot of these companies that were doing this, they were trying to do it for consumer. So they were like, oh, that's why they have a fucking billboard out there for you. It was like, you should use us to send a letter on your behalf to your mom and your auntie and whatever for, for Christmas. And what these guys zoned in on, I think, was A, their tech actually is really good. So that like they can make it look like your handwriting if you want. So like the, the thing is not like laser printed on where it's like a handwriting font, but it's printed. No, it's like, this is an actual fucking pen that actually writes the thing. It really does look indistinguishable from a human doing it.

• 48:47Shaan Puri?

  The second thing is they went for businesses and the segment of businesses that really need this, that really have this problem in a big way. So they have like, you know, Salvation Army and a bunch of other groups that are like big, that, that spend millions of dollars a year on this stuff. Who are now realizing, oh shit, if we do this, we get better results. And that's the last thing is that they actually track the full result. So they know who they sent it to, and because they hooked into your database, they can tell you when that person takes an action, they could show you the full ROI on this campaign. So they turned it into like a Facebook ad, essentially.

• 49:16Sam Parr?

  How many people work there?

• 49:18Shaan Puri?

  Still a small company. It's pretty cool though, based in LA.

• 49:21Sam Parr?

  How much, is it public how much they've raised?

• 49:23Shaan Puri?

  If you want to invest, you should invest in this company. I think it's going to be a good company.

• 49:26Sam Parr?

  I'm interested. Is it?

• 49:28Shaan Puri?

  They had only raised, uh, up until now, they'd only raised like a million and a half dollars. So they were, they were doing well on a, on a small amount of money.

• 49:35Sam Parr?

  Wow. I'm super interested. Who's, who started it? What, what's their story?

• 49:40Shaan Puri?

  The guy's an engineer. He was engineer at OkCupid, which I was like, boom, love it.

• 49:45Sam Parr?

  Yeah, love that.

• 49:46Shaan Puri?

  You know, anytime, when you come from a company that's like pedigrees, like kind of like growth hacking, I'm like, yes. So OkCupid engineer, then Facebook PM. I was like, okay, great. Love it also. And then this whole thing made a lot of sense to me.

• 50:00Sam Parr?

  It sounds like your portfolio is going to be pretty badass. Is that, do you think so? I mean, like.

• 50:05Shaan Puri?

  I hope so. I'm also just easily excitable. So like, you know, there's always a counter argument to fucking everything, but, but yeah, I like it. And if I didn't, I wouldn't invest.

• 50:14Sam Parr?

  That's pretty badass. No, I'm into it. I don't, I think that's a company that for sure can make tens of millions in revenue and be very profitable. Can it be like, right? Who like, does someone, like, if you have to act like a douche VC, you have to say, like, all right, who's gonna, who's gonna, can it be huge? Who's gonna buy it? Or like, and to those, like, I don't know what the obvious, obvious answer is to that. I'm sure there's some direct mailing company that makes billions of years in sales who

• 50:40Shaan Puri?

  Exactly.

• 50:40Sam Parr?

  none of us know about.

• 50:42Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. That's, that's my debt as well. I don't even know their name. I just know that direct mail is like this, whatever, like 80 billion dollar industry that every year is dying because more of that budget's going to Facebook and whatnot. And also, I'm, I have a philosophy. I was gonna say thesis, but then I'd have to be a douchebag. So I gotta say, I have a idea, which is that when, when, when, when the whole world moves one way, it actually creates the opportunity back for the other thing. And so like, a great example of this is when Facebook got so popular and Facebook was like, everybody's on it. Every post you do is public, every, like your timeline and your photos is all permanent. So as the world became more and more public, permanent, and everybody's on

• 51:24Shaan Puri?

  it, it created the demand for something like Snapchat, where it's private, it's ephemeral, and not everybody, your mom's not on it. And so like, it's not that Snapchat was always a good idea. It's that Snapchat actually becomes a better idea, the more Facebook dominates. And so I actually think the same thing's happening in this case, for example, where the more everybody pours all their money and attention into digital ads, and that becomes more saturated and harder to win, like these other channels, like print media and like billboards, like I'm a big fan of these other channels now, because marketers are going to look for where, where can I get a different ROI? How can I differentiate my marketing mix? That's not the same playbook as everybody else. And if you could provide a better product, then, then great, you know, and that's what I think these guys are doing.

• 52:06Sam Parr?

  What's the URL of this company?

• 52:09Shaan Puri?

  I think it's addressable app.com.

• 52:13Shaan Puri?

  I mean, I shouldn't even have to give him money after that fucking testimonial. That should be the, the whole investment. Addressable mail.com. Sorry.

• 52:20Sam Parr?

  By the way, we talked about the fascination recently.

• 52:24Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 52:24Sam Parr?

  They, the founder reached out to me. I'm gonna meet up with him online or on Zoom, I think on Friday. It's the guy who started Lisa mattresses.

• 52:36Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 52:37Sam Parr?

  I didn't know that.

• 52:37Shaan Puri?

  One of the co-founders.

• 52:38Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I didn't know that. And anyway, I was gonna, I'll have to talk to that guy. But addressable mail, that was, because that's another hard name to spell. Addressable mail.com. I'm on the website. Yeah, this is gonna be pretty sick.

• 52:51Shaan Puri?

  Cool. All right. I had three more ideas, but we're out of time. So we'll save it for the next one.

• 52:54Sam Parr?

  All right.

• 52:55Shaan Puri?

  Sweet. Bray, what'd you think of that episode? Let's leave this in the episode, but give us the, give us the rating. And Bray, you, by the way, love shitting on me and Sam. So, so it's, he's the right person to ask, because he'll give the real deal.

• 53:06Speaker 02

  No, it was a fun episode. You guys know I'm ADD, so whenever you guys are rapid fire, those are my favorite.

• 53:11Sam Parr?

  This wasn't rapid fire?

• 53:13Speaker 02

  No, this was, this was. I did, I did, I did.

• 53:16Shaan Puri?

  And what do you think? What was the most interesting one of this to you?

• 53:20Speaker 02

  I like the solo entrepreneur talk, because I think that's a little different than the stuff that we normally talk about. And I also liked Sean, you opening up about the all access pass, giving a little perspective of why you're shutting that down. I think that's a little different. And we can take this out. Would you be willing to, all the paid newsletters to put it out to the members of our Facebook group?

• 53:40Sam Parr?

  No, you, he, you should sell those. Don't give that shit away for free.

• 53:44Shaan Puri?

  That's what Ben keeps saying. Ben's just like, dude, you should just sell these for a hundred bucks. Sell the whole archive, you know, just day one through, through whatever. And I was like, yeah, it sounds like a lot of work. We'll leave it there. I don't know. I was like, I don't want to do the work of going and finding customers to buy this. But like, yes, we should sell it for anybody who wants it.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  The Facebook group to look forward to that at some point?

• 54:02Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, if you want that, I don't know, just email me and I'll sell it to you for, I don't know, a hundred bucks. You get the whole thing.

• 54:08Sam Parr?

  Let's see if this little mention actually gets you anything. All right. Thank you, guys. We'll talk to you soon.

• 54:13Shaan Puri?

  Cool. All right. Later, guys.