Finding +$1M Businesses From Weird Trends

Episode 523: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) reveal +$1M dollar business ideas based on weird trends they’re seeing plus the easiest ways to level up your life. No more small boy spreadsheets, build your business on the free HubSpot CRM: https://mfmpod.link/hrd — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (1:30) The meteoric rise of Bret Taylor (8:00) Lessons from dinner with billionaires (16:00) Josh Kushner's subtle flex (19:00) The TJ Parker way: Do dope sh*t (28:00) The Dr. Dre Question (35:00) New One Chart Business! (51:00) Sexier fiber supplements (1:05:00) Visual kill shots — Links: • Warehouse - https://warehousepc.com/ • TJ Parker’s Twitter - https://tinyurl.com/mwcbpkf6 • Primer - https://primer.com/ • Create Wellness - https://trycreate.co/ — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com/ Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Try Shepherd Out - https://www.supportshepherd.com/ • Shaan's Personal Assistant System - http://shaanpuri.com/remoteassistant • Power Writing Course - https://maven.com/generalist/writing • Small Boy Newsletter - https://smallboy.co/ • Daily Newsletter - https://www.shaanpuri.com/ 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. — Other 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?

  Okay, so we've talked about one chart businesses before. And this is the idea that you could be the midwit in the midwit meme, where you gotta explain and analyze and give you 10 reasons why this might be a good idea. The pros and the cons and you're over analyzing it. Or you could just be the badass, the badass, the Jedi. He just puts the one chart up and says, this is why I'm doing what I'm doing.

• 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 no days off.

• 0:31Sam Parr?

  All right, we're back. It's just Sam and Sean back. The band's back together for the first time in a long time. You have a bunch of topics, but I want to kick us off. Can I kick us off?

• 0:42Shaan Puri?

  Okay, go.

• 0:43Sam Parr?

  Have you ever read the book 48 Laws of Power?

• 0:45Shaan Puri?

  I've never actually read it, but I've read some of the laws.

• 0:49Sam Parr?

  It's a wonderful book. It's cool. And there's one law where it's law number 25 and it says, you know, something like be able to reinvent yourself. And the author says, recreate yourself with a powerful new image that stands out and draws attention, rather than letting others define you. Then change your appearance and emotions to suit the occasion, or stage riveting dramas as backdrops for your actions. And I love this book. And that's, that's, that's law number 25, where he talks about changing your image. There's a person who I've recently discovered that has done this excellently. And I think that you and I can learn a lot about him. And so there's a rumor about this guy. They say that if you arrange seats like a boardroom, he magically appears. So this guy, listen to his, uh, listen to his background.

• 1:34Sam Parr?

  So he graduated from Stanford, then he went on to join Google at the age of 22, where he was the lead product manager and he helped create Google Maps. After that, he started this social networking site called FriendFeed, which he sold to Facebook and Facebook incorporated it. And one of the big things that Facebook took from it was they actually created the like button because of it. He sold that for about $50 million. A few years later, he becomes the CTO of Facebook. After, after that, he founds a company that I can best describe as a note taking company, but for enterprises, he sells that to Salesforce for $750 million. After a couple of years, he becomes co-CEO of Salesforce.

• 2:14Sam Parr?

  Which I think, what are they worth? A hundred billion dollars more? I don't even know hundreds of, you know, one of the biggest companies in the world. Then he becomes chairman of the board at Twitter. He's chairman of another really large publicly traded company that many people haven't heard of. They make security cameras. He's also on the board at Shopify. And last night, he was named chairman of the board of OpenAI. This guy's amazing. He's only 43 years old. You know who I'm talking about?

• 2:41Shaan Puri?

  One and only Bret Taylor.

• 2:43Sam Parr?

  That's right. Do you have you ever like spoke or hung out with this guy?

• 2:47Shaan Puri?

  I had a dinner once. He was there and but we were on opposite ends of the table. So he was at the far end of the head of the table that way. I was at the far end of the head of the table the other way. It was like a slope of like success, like most successful person on that side of the table and least successful person over here. I was like the bottom of the puddle at the bottom of the slide there. So it was a, he's a good dude though. He had a good energy, good jokes. They seemed like a good time. But he also seemed like the guy that could flip a switch and be incredibly serious if he wanted to.

• 3:20Sam Parr?

  So this guy's so fascinating and I'll explain why, but that's funny that you're at a dinner with him because he credits that as being one of his reasons why he is where he is. And so, starting at Stanford and then at Facebook, he started attending these dinners and he said that like Marissa Mayer, when she was early in her career, would go to these dinners. He said that Sheryl Sandberg was there. He, he like Marc Benioff, or not Marc Benioff, the guy who started Zynga was there. He said that like all these amazing people would go there. And that's actually how he got to know Marc Benioff from Salesforce was at these dinners. And I was doing research on this guy and there's very on Brett, and there's very little stuff about him. There's not too much stuff about him for given how impactful he is. And I found this old video about 15 or 10 years ago with him and Mark Zuckerberg. They're

• 4:05Sam Parr?

  sitting at a table and there it's almost like the like a post UFC fight press conference where they're just like sitting there and there's like reporters. It's like really a press conference announcing the acquisition of Facebook or a friend fee to Facebook. And he's wearing like a scruffy t-shirt, like he doesn't look good. His hair is messy, whatever. He looks exactly like you would think an early Facebook engineer looks. So I watched this video and then I see another video on YouTube where it's with him and the Figma founder at a conference and he's wearing something like what I'm wearing, which is like, he looks like a corporate guy, but he's still got charisma. And the founder of Figma, Dylan, he asks him like, what's been your biggest learning of your career?

• 4:44Sam Parr?

  And Brett goes, well, you know, I remember being at Facebook and I was like, it just wasn't working out for some reason. And Sheryl Sandberg said something to me that like changed my perspective. And the next day I said to myself, instead of getting the company to change to me, I'm going to change to do whatever the company or job that I'm at needs to have. Whether that means how I dress, how I act, and what you, what you notice is a shift in his demeanor. All the way from how he dresses. So he starts wearing different clothing. Sometimes when he's supposed to be this like tech nerd and someone wants to come up to him with engineering advice, you see him dressed like an engineer.

• 5:23Sam Parr?

  Then he becomes Salesforce CEO. You see him start dressing different. He's wearing the classic plaid shirt suit with brown shoes, the classic sales look. And it's really fascinating to see this guy's demeanor change. And later on in some of these videos within these interviews, the guy is just like screams poise, you know, like when you think of the Salesforce CEO, you think of like one of these guys could be chair of an important board like Twitter. He just like screamed, like he definitely has charisma. He's got poise. He's not vulgar at all. He's, he doesn't seem crazy emotional, but he smiles at the right times. And he dresses like the part. And I thought it's really fascinating to see this guy's evolution and for him to say that at a conference.

• 6:02Sam Parr?

  And I thought it was exactly what Robert Greene talked about where he talks about reinventing yourself. And a lot of times guys like you and me or people listening, they think clothes don't matter. They think, you know, I'm just going to curse and people are going to think that I'm real and all this stuff. I've grown to think that's complete nonsense that like, you know, we act like we shouldn't play this bureaucratic political game. But I think the more we deny it, the more we actually need to embrace that. And Brett Taylor is a really fascinating person, because that's one of the examples that I've noticed.

• 6:36Shaan Puri?

  Your takeaway from this whole thing, you tell this beautiful story. You have these amazing points, but the big one that stood out to you was you gotta dress better? That was the whole thing?

• 6:46Sam Parr?

  No, my point is, is that appearance and demeanors matter and dress is one attribute of that. My point is, is that when I look at him, like, first of all, the guy's a genius. So when there's these stories about him when he launched Google Maps, they're like, the code sucked and over the weekend he rewrote it and it was awesome.

• 7:04Shaan Puri?

  And by the way, the guy who tells that story is Paul Buchheit, the guy who created Gmail, built Gmail inside of Google and was one of the co-founders of Y Combinator. And so for Paul Buchheit to go and say, he said in that thing, he goes, Brett Taylor's not just a great engineer, he's not a 10x engineer, he might be 100 or 1,000x engineer. He's that good? To get a compliment like that, I mean, it's like Picasso saying, you know, this guy's handy with the brush, right? It's like, okay, that means something depending on who it comes from, somebody who actually worked side by side with him. I think they co-founded Friendfeed together also.

• 7:38Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so he's a genius. So like, he has like that part. So there's no doubt about that. He's got, that's 90% of this or 80% of this. I mean, he's brilliant. But, um, and he, and he does a really good job of making big shots like him. And so there's like an example where Mark Benioff was like, yeah, I used to attend these dinners with him and he did a great job of asking good questions. And then he would like follow advice and I could see that it was working and he just did a really good job of learning.

• 8:04Shaan Puri?

  So those dinners are, those dinners are hosted by Michael Birch. So Michael Birch is, uh, hosts this like CEO dinner. Benioff's in it, Bret Taylor's in it, that's how I got to go to it. Um, I think we did an episode on this a long time ago, like called, uh, I Went to a Billionaire's Dinner or something like that. And it was, I got to go as a guest, like each time they host, there's like the mainstays, which is like Reid Hoffman and whoever. And then there's, um, Marissa Myers in there. And then it's the, the host can invite two or three guests, like new, new people, fresh blood into the, into the mix. And so I was a, one of the fresh bloods, I guess, that time.

• 8:38Sam Parr?

  Was it awesome?

• 8:40Shaan Puri?

  Uh, yeah, it was awesome. I mean, it was, it was amazing. Uh, you know, this is amazing to be at that table, I guess.

• 8:48Shaan Puri?

  The interesting thing was like, I think I've said this before, which is, if you wanna stop making money the priority, hang out with people with a lot of money. Because the conversation was not about business and money making and, you know, the markets or investing or hot deals, because these guys are like, post economic, they're past that. So it's not that they don't do those things. It's that that's like, it's like if somebody brought their to do list to dinner, it's like, oh, come on, man. Like, we're here to have a good time. What are you doing here? And so all the conversation at dinner was about things that were, you know, non financial. It's like you got your status by having non financially related things to say. If that makes sense.

• 9:28Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Money was lower, low in their hierarchy of needs.

• 9:32Shaan Puri?

  You were low on, you were only addressing like the low thing that's super satisfied by them. But if you had a really unique experience, or you're like, oh dude, I take this drug, it's this, I, you know, you lick the back of a horned toad and you trip out for four hours. Everyone's like, tell me more. And it's like, wow, you guys really wanna talk about tripping balls? It's like, yeah, that's what they wanna talk about. Or it'll be, uh, there was a neuroscientist there who was talking about, you know, all of his lab where he studies the brain and the effects of both these drugs, but also like a whole bunch of other interesting like psych studies essentially. And everybody's fascinated by the brain doc. It's like, you know, if Huberman was at the dinner, it's like everybody wanted to hear Huberman. Not, they didn't wanna hear about, you know, this great private equity deal that you did, you know, and how you're getting, you know,

• 10:15Shaan Puri?

  a 45% cash on cash return. That just doesn't matter at that table. And so it was, uh, to me, actually, that was the biggest takeaway was like, at these things, like, you know, humor matters, stories matter, different things matter. But like, it's pretty interesting to hang out with people who have achieved all the things you want, because they no longer care about all these things. And it's a good reminder that, uh, you know, don't get too totally wrapped up in just the, the kind of the business only. Like, I am a business nerd. I do like that stuff. But, you know, the people who have sort of, have played this game at the highest level, they, uh, you know, their, their game is now about this variety of experiences and totally un financial, non financially related things that they talk about.

• 10:58Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 10:58Shaan Puri?

  By the way, sorry, one last point on that. If you, if we hang out in a group of like our peers, how many times is the conversation about? Who knows like, uh, you know, content and followers or investment or deals that they're doing or like new businesses that they're bootstrapping or creating. And it's like, it's just the contrast between our group is kind of like early 30s age. And then these guys were all probably like, you know, closer to 50. And so, you know, that in that 20 years, I think, you know, what changes is if you're talking about like, you know, how this piece of content went viral and popped off and you got all these followers, like you're literally

• 11:40Shaan Puri?

  a loser. If you're talking about that at that table. And so it's like at each table, what's the discussion like? And

• 11:47Sam Parr?

  Well, and the minimum net worth at that table was probably $500 million.

• 11:51Shaan Puri?

  Well, I was there. So no, the minimum was lower than that. But the median was probably that. Yes.

• 11:56Sam Parr?

  Well, I, when you were there, so here's one of the reasons why I'm fascinated with this person is because with Brett is because smart people refer to him. And when I think that, when I, when I think of, I'm not in the league where I even totally understand chairman of the board and how it interacts with the CEO of a large company. But I imagine that it's like part therapists where you don't really need the answer, but you're good at asking the right questions. And in order to be a good therapist, you have to have this image, well, and a reputation and track record of like, this guy somehow gets to the, helps me get to the right answer, or somehow like, he's got that sensei vibe. And I don't know if he's particularly smarter than anyone else at that table. I imagine

• 12:40Sam Parr?

  they're all just the best of the best. Was there something about his energy that stood out? Or were they, was everyone quite good at that?

• 12:46Shaan Puri?

  He was very poised. He had a booming laugh. And at about two hours into the dinner, he was like, that's all for me, boys. Jacket on, left. And like, at the dinner, like dragged on for like, you know, another hour and people trickled out from there. But he was sort of like, I've had a great dinner. I also have things to do. And

• 13:08Shaan Puri?

  I own my time and my schedule. I'm out of here. And I thought that was like a very obvious, like, it was like a very obvious moment where he was like, "Cool, I, you know, 80% of the meat is off the bone now." Fantastic. Um, you know, I got kids, I got, I got a board to go, go beyond or whatever. And he bounced. Uh, it was just kind of, that part was kind of funny. But again, I was on the other side of the table. I didn't talk to him directly too much. Uh, I will say a couple of things. So I think your, uh, reinvent yourself is actually the right takeaway. I think this guy's had a prolific career as a PM at Google, then a startup founder, then CTO of Facebook, then startup founder again, but now B2B enterprise, and then sold that to Salesforce. And, you know, they, they kind of, Mark Benioff was basically grooming him to like to, you know, take it over.

• 13:53Shaan Puri?

  Even the Twitter thing, he's not just a board member, like, he was the board member that basically forced Elon to stick to his offer. He stood up to Elon and, and basically forced Elon to buy and got an amazing deal for the Twitter shareholders. Whereas, you know, Elon was applying a lot of pressure at that time to, and Brett stood up to him in a way. Um, and he's just a trusted neutral third party. Uh, like in crypto, this happened where there was this one guy who was this like meme poster, but the whole community just trusted this guy because he had been in it for a long time. He had, because he had been in it for a long time, he'd already gotten rich in crypto. So it didn't seem like he was trying to get rich off anybody or make a buck off anybody. Uh, he had a podcast and people heard him talk, is this guy Kobe? And, uh, he had a podcast and people heard him talk all the time. And so whenever somebody needed to make a deal in crypto, it was like a bet, like a $10 million bet,

• 14:38Shaan Puri?

  they would just wire the $10 million to Kobe as a trusted neutral third party. And I just thought that was kind of amazing. Like this guy, there's no contract, there's no nothing. It's just a social, social reputation. And I think that's the Bret Taylor thing. Like they brought him into this open AI thing because he has a social reputation. People find him when they need somebody who's going to be a, uh, you know, a voice of reason, a stable third party, a trusted neutral voice. And, um, that's, that's just an interesting job to be done. So, so yeah, I think this guy's very fascinating.

• 15:07Sam Parr?

  My point is, is to do the right thing is actually not terribly challenging. Like to be this Kobe guy where you're trusted. It's like, well, you just got to follow through no matter what. To carefully craft a reputation, I think, takes a lot of discipline. And I find that to be challenging. And I'm really fascinated by these guys who are able to do that. You have to have a lot of discipline. You can't, like, everything matters, whether it's your dress, your website.

• 15:31Shaan Puri?

  You just are into dressing well right now and you're looking for examples. You're like, see, that justifies my enthusiasm around this right now.

• 15:40Sam Parr?

  Let me give you another example. So Josh Kushner.

• 15:42Shaan Puri?

  Wait, wait, wait, hold on, hold on. True or false? You had decided you wanted to level up your style before you had this epiphany about Bret Taylor, correct? Like recently, like the last few months.

• 15:53Sam Parr?

  Somewhat. I want to figure out how to become, I want to level up my life and dress is one ways, one way to do that. What did Deion Sanders say? He said, uh, dress good, look good, feel good, play good, that type of vibe.

• 16:07Shaan Puri?

  Okay, fair enough, fair enough.

• 16:08Sam Parr?

  Another example is Josh Kushner. So a lot of people know the Kushner because Jared Kushner was, I don't even know what his role was on the Trump administration. But Josh Kushner is another guy who's really fascinating. He does, uh, he has a similar vibe where he was 24 or 25. He started, uh, Thrive Capital. He raised, I mean, he came from wealth, so it's not like coming from nothing. But he raised money from, I think Benchmark or General Catalyst, I think, in order to create this venture fund. Invested in Instagram. A few years later, he starts Oscar, which went on to become a multi-billion dollar health tech, I think, health insurance business. He started, um, what was the other one? It's not Compass. It's another, it's a real estate investment platform that is a fairly large company.

• 16:50Sam Parr?

  And then throughout this OpenAI drama, as well as other stuff, he's been in the mix. And he's done a really good job of building up this reputation. If you go to thrive, I think it's thrivecapital.com, their website, it says nothing. It literally just says thrive capital. Like you can't, like he, the guy, like, but here's the thing is he does zero flexing, which in itself is the flex. And in itself is like the reputation building. Do you know what I mean? And I, and I, and I find it fascinating to figure out how are people shaping their image? And are they being, how deliberate are they being? Both of these guys' examples, I think they're very deliberate, even if they, even if they try to give the image of. They're not trying that in itself is trying. You know what I mean?

• 17:30Shaan Puri?

  Let me give you a different example. So a different guy, very successful, who has reinvented himself. And in my opinion, this is like doing money the right way. This is like what I want all my rich people to go do, not all. If you're, if you're just wired like a psychopath, you gotta go creep, keep creating your Elon Musk, you gotta go keep creating the next big thing. All right, fair enough. But here's, here's something I do like. So traditional money path is in our world. You start a company, you grind it out for seven, eight years, 10 years, you sell it, you're rich. You take a year off, you travel, you get interested in health, you go on a health kick for a little bit.

• 18:11Shaan Puri?

  You, um, you spend time with your kids and then it was like, okay, this is cool, but I kind of like this in small doses. All right. Uh, I guess I'll now start investing. I'm a VC, I think I start the, the vest materializes on top of your chest magically. And, uh, you're, you're like, should I be on the board of this company? Am I Bret Taylor? You, uh, you're on boards, you're writing important checks into important groundbreaking companies. And that's your life. And then you just do that life for a while. And then you.

• 18:41Sam Parr?

  You say things like my founders or one of our founders is doing this.

• 18:44Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. You start using the royal we as if you're involved with those companies, you know, you're, uh, you're five year old. Uh, you're paying $82,000 a year to send her to kindergarten in, uh, San Francisco and you, you made a donation and they, there's a bench in the library with your name on it, although they kind of promised that the whole library would be named after you, but it's just a bench. And you're a little bit pissed off about that, but you don't want to say anything. Let's not cause a scene. And so, you know, this is your life. And here's an alternative. Okay. You are TJ Parker. You know who TJ Parker is?

• 19:14Sam Parr?

  No, who's this?

• 19:15Shaan Puri?

  TJ Parker was the founder of PillPack. And TJ Parker looked like he might be going down this path. He starts PillPack, you know, to get a fucking democratized them pills or something. I don't know what the tagline was, but he starts PillPack and it's some sort of like, you know, I don't know pharmaceutical, online pharmacy type thing. Sells it to Amazon for a billion dollars. Okay. Stage one, complete. Becomes a VC immediately. Stage two, complete, but then starts doing dope shit. So if you go to TJ Parker's website, you can see some of the dope shit he's doing. What first caught my attention, I put this link in here.

• 19:50Sam Parr?

  And he looks, and he looks cool.

• 19:52Shaan Puri?

  Looks cool. First of all, looks more like Wim Hof than he does Jamie Dimon. So you already know this guy's going in the health kick, you know, the right direction. He's out in nature. He's barefoot. Sometimes like he's doing that kind of thing. So check out this thing called the warehouse. Do you see this link that I put in there? And we'll show this on YouTube. And if you're not on YouTube, pause the podcast and just question your life and then go to YouTube, type my first million and start watching us. All right. Uh, cause first of all, everybody thinks I'm Sam and everything Sam is me. They think the guy talking right now, this guy, I'm the brown guy, not the white guy. I sound like the white guy, but I'm the brown guy. Sam sounds like the nerdy brown guy, but he's the white guy.

• 20:34Shaan Puri?

  So that's the, the difference. Go watch us. Anyways.

• 20:36Sam Parr?

  So the warehouse is a, the warehouse is a community driven storage club with world-class facilities and programming.

• 20:44Shaan Puri?

  If you're one of these people who's into dope cars, which I'm not, but, but, uh, you know, you, you kind of are. You're into these like cool, you know, old fashioned cars and stuff like that.

• 20:51Sam Parr?

  Toys.

• 20:52Shaan Puri?

  You need a place to store it. And a lot of people do the Jay Leno thing and they get like an elevator in their garage and they try to stack four cars in their garage, eight cars in their garages. It gets tough. So instead they built a beautiful warehouse to park and store your beautiful cars. And you could share it with other people, but they're like, cool. Guess what? You guys will all probably get along too. This is not just storage. So first they were like, we're not just going to store cars. You might have some wine. Guess what? 2,500 wine cellar, temperature controlled, humidity controlled, beautiful wine cellar here too. So store your wine, store your cars and come hang out, come hang out. We got a cigar bar. We got art displays. We'll watch the games together and it's a car social club. So it's basically Soho House.

• 21:38Shaan Puri?

  For dudes with a little grease on their hands. And I love this idea. This is a brilliant idea. And the photos make it look so badass. I don't even like cars. And I saw these pictures and I was just like, I guess like, hey, uh, Dre, clear my calendar. I gotta go learn how an axle works. Like I, I wanna be a part of this just on seeing the photos. And so I think this is a brilliant idea. I think this could franchise and be across the country. I think you could have, you know, locations all, all across the country for this. I think guys need community friendships, male bonding and, but they don't wanna, you know, it's like, guys will start a podcast instead of do therapy. Guys will join us, get a car hobby and drop, you know, $300,000 on cars and join a car club

• 22:22Shaan Puri?

  rather than, you know, go to, go to, go to a men's group. And they will function as such. And so I think this is a brilliant idea that has national, no way, international consequences if they wanna roll it out. Where is this? It looks like, so they don't say the location exactly. It's in Utah, cause that's where this guy is. Also a classic move, picking Utah. Then here's some of the other projects that are, he's working on. If you go to just teacherparker.com backslash current hyphen projects. All right, so here's what he's got going. He's producing a documentary. Dope, love that. Um, he's. On cars. Uh, yeah, he's got a company that just makes like really dope quality bags and gear for people who are like, go to the outdoors. And he's like, look, this, we're gonna hold the quality bar.

• 23:07Shaan Puri?

  So he's got this company called Lazy Sun. He's got a 12 acre farm that he owns. He's like, yeah, farming. And I do that shit too, a gentleman farmer. And then, I mean, this guy's doing even better. He does this, he has a business that goes to children's hospitals and transforms them into like dope art galleries for the day so that the kids have something awesome to, to see. And he's like, you know, well, we can, he can heal kids through, through art, you know, like capture their imagination, distract them from, you know, the, the sort of the mundane. Like, you know, if you've ever been in a hospital environment, it's like one of the worst. Environments like

• 23:39Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 23:39Shaan Puri?

  Does not pass the vibe check. And the fact that he's like, oh yeah, we're going to these pop up art exhibits inside children's museums to shift the vibe. I fuck with that. And so, um, these are, this is a guy who is successful, but then use the money and the time to craft a dope life around the hobbies that he loves. He went the Joe Rogan path versus the Elon Musk. I need to work 95 hours a week. And just bigger, better, more money, more fame, more power, more prestige, more everything. More, more suffering. And I just fuck with the T J Parker path more.

• 24:15Sam Parr?

  Well, by the way, I'm not saying necessarily that I think the Bret Taylor path is, I, I just, I, I guess what I'm saying is I appreciate paths. I appreciate people who are, who, who do the damn thing. You know, like I can get as much inspiration from an artist as I can a billionaire, you know, just people who just put their stake in the ground and say, this is what I am and I'm doing it.

• 24:34Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 24:36Sam Parr?

  Yeah. How much do you think this guy, so they raised a hundred million dollars. They sold for a billion. Was he the only founder?

• 24:41Shaan Puri?

  I think there was two guys.

• 24:43Sam Parr?

  Wow.

• 24:43Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 24:44Sam Parr?

  Sick guy, right? This is amazing.

• 24:45Shaan Puri?

  By the way, one, one of the root things that both of us really like to do, that I don't think we've really put a name on it, which is I am fascinated by, and if I could say, what is the number one thing I am looking for in life? It's like, what are you looking for? You're looking for a partner or a project or a, a, a way to make a buck or way to get famous? No, no, no. I am searching long and hard for people who I think are playing the right game, the right way. So I'm interested in different blueprints of like, what are people doing with their time and their talent? Oh, Brian Johnson said, I'm going to fucking donate my body to science while I'm alive. And he's trying to reverse age, which is like just a badass science experiment mixed with a badass like health kick and investment in himself.

• 25:29Shaan Puri?

  Mixed with just like, you know, picking a project that was, um, not another business. And I think that's cool, but it's not for me. And I think what you described, you know, the Bret Taylor, where you, you start multiple companies and you become a board member and you become this respected luminary of Silicon Valley. And you're the CEO of a publicly traded company. Cool game. Definitely not for me. And, uh, you know, you see some guys who are like, I'm gonna tweet every day and I'm gonna be super consistent and I'm gonna do this. Not for me, but and I just look around and I see I'm looking for people who are playing a beautiful game. And the sad thing is, is for me, it's very hard to point to somebody and I can't give you.

• 26:10Shaan Puri?

  I'm looking hard for this and I can't name more than like two or three people whose game I really respect. I think, oh, they're they're doing it. They have a great blueprint for what they're doing in life. And I think that's the most important thing because once you have that.

• 26:24Sam Parr?

  Blueprint for you, for you?

• 26:26Shaan Puri?

  For myself. Yeah, like, you know, oh, I really like how this person has architected their life. I like what they're working on. They seem to be really happy. They have a great mix of kind of like family and fun and challenge and whatever else. And they're, you know, doing good in the world in their own way. And, you know, like, I like, I want to see examples of people doing that really well. So I think when you bring up Bret Taylor, we bring up T J Parker. These are part of that that search that I have, that quest that I have, the thing I am most interested in right now. And I think that anybody, once you, once you get past the kind of like your needs are fulfilled stage. I'm like, you know, instead of striving for fuck you money, you should strive for like, what is the right game to be playing? What is a great way to use this, you know, this thing called life?

• 27:10Shaan Puri?

  And and get inspiration from a bunch of people, then sort of craft your own version of that. That's what I'm trying to do at least.

• 27:16Sam Parr?

  No, then that's that's exactly the point I was trying to make, which is whoever we talk about, I don't. I don't necessarily want to emulate that, but I emulate the people who are making the life that they that they have chosen to make. And I consider that to be success. One thing that I've learned from hanging out with some of these people I admire. Is even though it looks amazing on the outside, everyone still has similar issues, whether it's family issues or pressure on this or that. And so I always like getting to know these people like Rob Dyrdek. I've I've loved having him on and I've been able to talk to him once or twice afterwards. It's like everyone's shit still stinks once in a while, though, and that always has given me a ton of confidence and actually made me happier. You know what I'm saying?

• 27:56Shaan Puri?

  Right, right, right.

• 27:58Sam Parr?

  What do you want to do?

• 27:59Shaan Puri?

  All right, I'm gonna do a quick one. So this is called the Dr. Dre question. And this is a question that is useful when you are hiring. So. I was watching this old ass Tim Ferriss episode where he interviewed this guy that I'd never even heard of, Cal Fussman. You know this guy?

• 28:17Shaan Puri?

  Is he a journalist? Uh, he was kind of like a journalist or he's like a writer. Uh, but basically he's like a man who lived a very interesting life, like he boxed Julio Chavez. And like, he did like a bunch of interesting things during his life. And so anyways, old episode, Tim Ferriss, actually, it's a very good episode. And one of the things he talks about is, uh, so his, his things like, you know, the art of asking questions. And, uh, you know, one thing I like to do is study people's lives. Another thing is I like to call, I'm a collector of questions. Um, a great question is like very valuable to me. So I was interested in this episode and during it, they say, uh, there's a part where they go, okay. You know, you've talked about asking questions. Uh, what's, you know, who, who have you helped, you know, who's come to you for help with asking questions?

• 28:59Shaan Puri?

  He describes a, a set of founders and they said, um, they said, you know, we have this problem with our company. We are super passionate about our business, but what we're hiring, we don't know what to add. We're like kind of hiring the wrong people because we just can't seem to find people that are as passionate about our business as we are. And like, on one hand, we could say, maybe just nobody's going to be as passionate about our own business as we are. But we just want people at least close to it, right? Like people just have a lot of passion and we don't know how to filter for that. Cause if you ask somebody, are you passionate, they say, yes. So what do we do? And he goes, uh, he goes, oh, that's easy. Just ask them the Dr. Dre question.

• 29:36Shaan Puri?

  And he goes, uh, he goes, here's the story. He goes, I was interviewing Dr. Dre, um, when he was like a journalist. And he's like, I said to him, what's, hey, Dre, um, uh, doc, what's the longest that you've gone? What's the longest that you've gone on a, on a project without sleeping? And he goes, oh man, when I'm really into something I care about, I'm in the zone. I don't even think about sleep. I forget to sleep. I'll just keep going until it's done or till I, you know, pass out. It could be 20, 72 hours. And he goes, um, so I thought, I took that idea, 72 hours. He goes, just ask that, ask a person this, what's the longest you've ever gone on a project you were passionate about without sleep? And their answer will tell you a lot. Either they'll struggle to even come up with a number because they don't never actually had

• 30:21Shaan Puri?

  an obsession, a project they're so passionate about that they kind of became a degenerate. They let other parts of their life go like sleeping and eating and talking to people and answering the phone and they just got completely lost in it. Either that will be unfamiliar to them or it'll be familiar to them and you'll be able to tell that right away. So that's a fork in the road. And he goes, and it'll tell you a lot about the person. If they say, you know what? I get eight hours of sleep every night because that's I function best when I'm like that and I'm fully charged and you'll know, okay.

• 30:50Shaan Puri?

  You might not be the right person for this. You might be right. That's what I want my CFO, but it might not be who I want as my, you know, head of product, right hand man during, you know, we're all we're figuring out this project from scratch. And so the Dr. Dre question I thought is a wonderful little thing I'm stealing, a question I've collected in terms of being able to find the people that have that same streak of obsession and degeneracy that is like, if you have that, it's a very high likelihood that we can work together or we get.

• 31:21Sam Parr?

  What's your answer? What's your answer?

• 31:24Shaan Puri?

  Forty eight hours would be, would be mine. I've never done 72, not even close, but 48 hours for sure, multiple times. And the funny thing is it's on really stupid stuff like I basically did that with that all in video the other day. Like I was up all night basically editing it and then I, because I was like, I just want to ship this. I want to finish this. And I also don't want to work on this for more than like, I gave myself a day to do this. So I'm just going to work nonstop for 24 hours on this. And I was like, that day I was a bad dad. I was a bad husband. I was bad at fitness. I was bad at sleep. I was bad at eating, but I was fucking amazing at that video. And like, that's happened to me many times in my life. It happened when I was like, when we were doing our first startup, I remember many times me and my buddy Trevor, we would stay up and Trevor would keep going. Trevor's answer would be more like 72 hours, but like we would stay up.

• 32:09Shaan Puri?

  We'd be like, we would see a cool commercial and be like, can we recreate that? It's like, I don't know, download Adobe. Let's find a cracked version of Adobe on Napster. And like, you know, download this shit. And then we'd be like, okay, Adobe fireworks is a way that you can animate something. And we would sit there and try to learn it, watching tutorials. And we would just try to get better at it. And then like, I would pass out and go to sleep after the storytelling part was done. And Trevor would stay up and he would learn, like, he taught himself Photoshop and After Effects and all these things, but he didn't teach himself in years. He taught himself on like, four projects that were just like these like 72 hour binges. And then he just knew how to do those tools after that. And like now his whole career is like that, but at the time it was unnecessary.

• 32:54Shaan Puri?

  At the time, we weren't getting paid for it. At the time, the things we made weren't even that good. They were still like, you know, kind of janky. But it doesn't matter.

• 33:03Sam Parr?

  Is 72 hours, three nights? Is that three nights?

• 33:06Shaan Puri?

  I think you, I would count 72 hours as you, you basically, you wake up, you work, you skip that first night of sleep. You work through the next day. You basically skip the next night, or you get a couple hours the next night and you wake up and you, and you finish the next day.

• 33:22Sam Parr?

  That's insane. I mean, I've, I've done overnight stuff a bunch of times.

• 33:27Shaan Puri?

  An all nighter, right?

• 33:28Sam Parr?

  Yeah, an all nighter and then all day that next day. But like, usually it's like, I've, I've been at the office and I'll sleep on the couch in the office for like, from like four to eight or something like that. So it's really hard to go, it's hard to do overnight and then keep going the next day. That's, that's challenging. Maybe it'll be like three hours. I've done overnight stuff a bunch of time, but it's hard to go more than that.

• 33:47Shaan Puri?

  Let's say you had like a New Year's Eve party and it was gonna get a little crazy and you have this friend and you're like, okay, I hope this is not too crazy for my friend. And if you just asked him, the, the version of the Dr. Dre question is, it's like, uh, hey, have you, uh, have you ever blacked out when you drink? And if they're like, no, or one time, it's like, you should probably hang back from this party. But if they're like, oh, like dude, embarrassing number of times, then I can't count the number of times we'll be talking about. Like, you know, it's, it happens. Like, you know, there was a phase in my life, it happened a lot and now it happens less. It's like, okay, you should come to this party. You'll have a good time, right? Like, there's a version of the Dr. Dre question for like partying. There's a version of the Dr. Dre question for, you know, like, for parenting. There's a version of the Dr. Dre question, like,

• 34:30Shaan Puri?

  uh, I know a version of the question for parenting is like, what's the grossest thing your kid's ever done? And if they're like, oh, where do I start? When they lick the urinal? When they, you know, at the airport decided to like roll around on the you know, there's like a constant stream of like fiascos that I've, oh, they pooped in my bare hand. You know, because I couldn't find the diaper in time. Like, yeah, these things. This is like, I'm a, I'm a seasoned parent. I've been through the wars of parenting. You know, like you could tell like kind of a first time parent versus second time parent based on the number of stories they have.

• 35:01Sam Parr?

  In college, when I was a degenerate, my friends and I used to say, what's the best way to, to get through a blackout and manage it effectively? Practice. We would practice all the time.

• 35:16Sam Parr?

  Who's the most experienced? All right. We want to do another one?

• 35:19Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, I got another one. Okay. So we've talked about one chart businesses before. And this is the idea that

• 35:26Shaan Puri?

  like you could be the midwit in the midwit meme where you gotta explain and analyze and give you 10 reasons why this might be a good idea. The pros and the cons and you're over analyzing it. Or you could just be the badass. The badass, the Jedi, he just puts the one chart up and says, this is why I'm doing what I'm doing. The first example we gave of this was,

• 35:48Shaan Puri?

  what's it called? When you don't get buried, you cremation, cremation. It was like a chart of percentage of funerals that are people being cremated, choosing to be cremated. And it went from 10% to over 50%. And the guy sent us the pitch deck was like, yeah, we made cremation easy, but like this one chart is the reason for our business existence. This is our business plan. We are going to ride this wave. You've talked about how Jeff Bezos did that about the internet. Why do you quit your job and finance to start an internet company? Because the internet was growing 23,000% a year or something like that. He's like, nothing grows that fast, except for bacteria in a pizza dish. So I'm going to go surf that wave.

• 36:27Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I mean, there's the internet, there's, there's mobile phones, you know, like there's those big ones, but cremation was a smaller one that wasn't as obvious. And what are you saying is the other one?

• 36:36Shaan Puri?

  So there's a new one chart I saw, I saw yesterday that is not as strong as those, but is legit. And it's the, it's the growth in homeschooling. And so we kind of knew when COVID happened that there was like a bunch of, you know, people created like little homeschools or whatever. You needed to teach your kids. The schools were closed. What are you going to do? But it's actually sustained. So if it's now the 2023 data is out and homeschooling has grown, I think like 40 or 50% a year, year over year for three straight years. Like, that's pretty aggressive and like public schooling is like growing at like, you know, whatever, no percent, 3%. Private schooling is like 7%. And then homeschooling is 40 to 50% every year compounded for three years.

• 37:19Shaan Puri?

  And like, I don't know if that's going to continue or not, but let's assume that that it is or that it might be. That being said, a whole bunch of businesses that were like not really that viable were like too niche are now perfectly niche. And so there's like, you know, this trend of, of like micro schools. So out school, I think is like growing like crazy. Yeah. Is a micro school considered homeschooling? So there's homeschooling, traditional homeschooling, like Jenny's at home. I'm just going to teach her myself. We're going to print out worksheets and she's going to do them and whatever. I'm, I'm the teacher. Then there's micro schools, which was like, for a variety of reasons, I don't want my kid to go to school. For some people, that was COVID. For some people, it's school shootings.

• 38:03Shaan Puri?

  For some people, it's, they don't like the quality of the instruction. For some people, it's the social, they're worried about like social peer pressure and like, you know, kids bullying and things like that. Whole bunch of reasons why people might want to like take, take the kid out of traditional schools. And so a micro school is you hire, six families get together. And they basically say, hey, for the cost of private school, we can actually just have like a literal private school. We can have our own pod here. Like a hired teacher? A hired gun teacher. That teacher makes double what they make in a public school. So like, oh, instead of making whatever $50,000 a year, you make $100,000 a year. So we'll get the, we'll get a great teacher. We'll pay them extremely well. They only have six kids to worry about. They can get super invested in them. The teacher student ratio is going to be really, really good. Instead of one teacher

• 38:48Shaan Puri?

  to 25 kids in a class, there's going to be one teacher to six. They're going to make, they're going to have friends and socialize. So it's not like homeschooling, like they still get the socializing aspect of it. And there's also like- Are they the same age? Children. They're like, kind of like in a, yeah, it's usually maybe like a little broader range. Like it might be like a year and a half window or something like that, two years window, maybe. And there'll also be kind of an indoor outdoor component. So like- Sometimes they have a dedicated facility. Sometimes it's like our backyard or they rotate through the parents' backyards or whatever. Sometimes it's a mix of indoor and then they go for like a long walk or a hike or playground or whatever, like the teacher takes them indoor and outdoors. They get a better mix than like sitting at a desk all day. And this makes all the sense of the world to me. Like I'm, I'm actually super interested in doing this.

• 39:33Shaan Puri?

  I think this is actually a pretty, pretty dope idea. And then there's a business called Primer that Ryan Delk started. You're familiar with Ryan Delk and Primer?

• 39:41Sam Parr?

  Yeah, Ryan, Ryan's cool. I like Ryan a lot, but I, his company that he started pre-COVID, this was that company, right? It was homeschool.

• 39:49Shaan Puri?

  I think they pivoted. They started with more of that traditional homeschool, like what do you do if you're, if you're actually at home? And then now it's pivoted in the last year to, I think it's pivoted to my, these micro schools. And it's basically like an operating system. It's like, hey, if you're a teacher, push this button. It's like Stripe Atlas, like you could spin up your micro school. It'll be compliant with your state's regulations. You'll be able to accept all the school's choice vouchers. So that's the other one chart in this is that the number of like, I don't know this space very well, so I might get this slightly wrong, but apparently there's like a school's choice angle where like, as a parent, you get like a $10,000 voucher and you get to go shop around and figure out what school is the most worthy of getting your tuition. So this, the government, instead of just paying the public school, pays the family.

• 40:33Shaan Puri?

  The family shops around with that voucher and picks the school that's doing the best or that sells themselves the best in order to send their kid there. And so the schools have to kind of earn all the federal funding or state funding that they're getting from, from the government. Makes a lot of sense. So now that thing is on the rise, like the number of states that do this voucher program has gone up and up and up like crazy. And there's now thousands of, you know, whatever, you know, these vouchers that are very high ticket vouchers. So if you build a successful school, you can attract these vouchers. You could basically get a bunch of revenue that the government has given the families to pay you. And so what Primer does is they're like, all right, spin up a school, be compliant, accept vouchers and have like your website, have all that shit done for you, your backend.

• 41:17Shaan Puri?

  Parents, here's a parent portal, students, here's a student portal. We are the operating system for micro schools. I think they have like three micro schools now. They're trying to get to like six and then they're going to get to like 18. And, uh, you know, each of these micro schools basically generates like, I don't know. 75K of profit for the owner right now, or could become 100K of profit for the micro school owner after you pay the teacher. So let's say you might, if you're the teacher and you do this, you might be able to make 75 to 100K on the teacher wage, plus another 75 to 100K for your little franchise school, your little Chipotle that you built here. And so I think this is kind of a cool trend. And I'm, I don't know if their company is going to be the winner, or like, what's the right wedge to attack here? Like, I would invest in this.

• 42:01Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's an S. Is this?

• 42:03Shaan Puri?

  The team is too legit. The price is going to be too high. They've already raised a bunch of money because they've been going at this for years. And he's very like, well connected in Silicon Valley. I don't even know the price, but I already know it's too high for me. But I think this idea is actually really great and highly investable because of where the puck is going.

• 42:19Sam Parr?

  Would you say, are you gonna, your kids are going to be close to school age? Are you gonna consider this?

• 42:24Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I definitely want to consider this. I want to either make my own pod, or find a school or a pod that's around here. Like, my daughter's about to go to school. And, or she goes to like a preschool right now, a couple, you know, two days a week for three hours, or just to like, get acclimated. And, you know, it's kind of underwhelming when you go, because you're like, oh, this is like, you're like, you know, you can pick up the toy, be like, this is from 1984. Like, is there new stuff anywhere here? Like, you know, she, that one teacher is supposed to manage all of them? Like, that's tough, right? You know, like, 10 to 1 teacher, student teacher ratio? That sounds really high. I guess I could go shop

• 43:07Shaan Puri?

  around and try to figure this out. But I don't know, I'm, I'm willing to be sold by a service like this. I'm ready. And I think a lot of people will be.

• 43:15Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I'm, I'm, so I went to private school almost my whole life. In St. Louis, you go to private school. And private school sounds a lot fancier than I'm describing. But my grade school was like, $800 a year. And then I think my high school, when I, it was like, 10 grand a year. Nowadays, I met, like, a lot of private high schools are like, $50,000, which was crazy. Mine was nothing like that. But what I, my favorite part about it was that the teachers could do things to me that public school teachers couldn't.

• 43:39Shaan Puri?

  Whoa.

• 43:41Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that sounds weird. But when I was, they would touch me in a great way. Meaning, when I was being an asshole, I remember one teacher, I was in the hallway and I was being rude. And he kind of pushed me against the locker and he's like, what the fuck is your problem? And he like grabbed me by the collar and I had a little bit of fear. And I remember thinking, alright, if I gotta act up, otherwise there's gonna be consequences. Whereas my mother was a public school teacher and she mostly worked with handicapped kids. And there'd be times where like the kids would like literally shit themselves. And she's like, I can't go to the bathroom with you. Yeah, I'm not allowed. And I remember like the difference in how much they could like care and like where that line was. And it made a big difference to me.

• 44:22Shaan Puri?

  So at the private school, that was allowed? Or this teacher just crossed the line and it happened? Cause it sounds like that probably wouldn't be allowed. Like grab a kid by the collar, shove them in the locker and be like, hey, get your shit together.

• 44:34Sam Parr?

  The way that I'm describing it's a little bit more serious than it actually was. But it was just like, I remember I was doing something stupid in the locker, in the hallway. And the teacher just got in my face and kind of just like, not like aggressively, just kind of pushed me. And it's like, what the hell is your problem?

• 44:46Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 44:46Sam Parr?

  Like that type of thing. And like, there was other times where like I got in trouble at home and like I had to like, I had to go to the teacher in private school and tell him what was up. And they're like, alright, we'll help you out. Like I just, I remember that the line was different as to what. And I also, by the way, in high school, I went to an all boys school, which I freaking love. All boys schools are awesome because there's, like, I remember being in ninth grade and like, the captain of the football team could also be in a play. And like, I remember like, when kids came out as being gay, like, at first you're like, oh, we're gonna tease them. Then it's like, no, we are not here to impress a girl. Like, we can all be homies and buddies. Like, there wasn't as much of a cool kid club. Anyway, I loved all boys schools.

• 45:24Sam Parr?

  But I remember in the private school, they could just do things that my public teacher mother couldn't do, even though I felt it was incredibly necessary. And just the rules are different. And I really appreciate that, that private school environment. So, we're debating at our home, even though we've got plenty of time of what we're gonna do with our kids. I'm a private school, or I would totally, absolutely do one of these micro schools. I think this is awesome. The only downside is like, are you gonna be a weirdo? You know what I mean? That is like my biggest fear, which is, are you gonna be the, are you gonna be the wrong type of weird?

• 45:55Shaan Puri?

  At least they're with other kids, right? Like, it might not be, you know, cause I remember, a lot of the source of social anxiety when I was a kid was the fact that... I mean, I just felt like I was like, you know, have you ever watched like Finding Nemo, where he's like, you know, he's looking around and all the other fish are swimming really fast and nowhere to go. And it's like, that's how I felt most of school. I just felt like everybody else knew where to go, knew what to say, knew what to do. And I was just sort of like, lost, I guess. Or, and I don't think I was actually that much more lost than anybody else. But I certainly felt that way. And there was like, because it's so big, it's easy to be lost. It's easy to be lost in the shuffle. It's easy to just be quiet. And, you know, the teachers are, he's just a quiet kid. That's it. You know, you sort of give

• 46:40Shaan Puri?

  up on them. You just sort of label them. That's who they are. I don't have time to go rescue every quiet kid and try to get them out of their shell. Whereas I think if you're in a school of like, six to eight kids, even if you're on the quieter side, I think the teacher and just the dynamics would allow you to come out of your own shell a little bit more. Because you could be more of a big fish in a small pond. And I think that's really good when you're almost like, trying to get your, your straight, your legs under you, and trying to get your, your social legs under you.

• 47:05Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I think for a lot of personalities, that could be beneficial. We, you and I have a friend whose kid went to an alternative style school where there was like, no homework, and like, no teachers, they were guides and all this thing. And like, he was like, man, he's just like, lacking structure. So he sends him to like, a Catholic school where it's like, you're there at eight, school ends at three, you have homework, and the kid needed the structure, he needed the discipline. And he started thriving in it. And so I get nervous, because a lot of people, they just need to learn how to, in order to be successful in life, they got to figure out how to follow rules, how to work within the rules, and not be free roaming all the time. And they need to figure out how to master grade school, so they can get into a good high school. They got to master high school, just so they can get to a good college. And they have to do good in college, just so they can get a job with a high paying, starting, with a high starting salary. And then they're going

• 47:50Sam Parr?

  to do that until 55 or 65, but they're going to retire, and they're going to have grandkids. Like, for a lot of people, I think that that linear route of discipline is the right decision. And I get nervous with some of these, these schools, that that would happen. Of course, you and I are always going to say, our kids are going to be different, or we're in a different situation, and we're going to figure it out. Maybe that's true, maybe that's not true. But that's what I get nervous about some of these schools.

• 48:12Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, I think it's definitely, but you also wonder how much of it's self fulfilling, meaning like, how much of it is nature versus nurture? And like, if you had that environment, or if you were, if that was the expectation or the norm for you, that you were not expected to go down that, that linear path that you just described. Then you'd be like, well, I guess that's what I'm doing. Like, you know, my wife, she grew up and in her family, everybody did business. So for her, even when she had a job in her head, she's like, oh, this is the temporary part. Before I have my own business. And sure enough, now she has her own business like, you know, like that happened. Um, whereas for me, I grew up every single family member, aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, everybody. It was what you described.

• 48:55Shaan Puri?

  Good school, get to good college, good college, get to a good job, get a good salary, get to a better salary. Overtime, work your way up, become a good manager, right? Whatever it was, I knew zero people that did their own business. Now I'm lucky that I got off that track and I was able to go into the world business through other influences. But it would have, but that was not the default. And in fact, I think if I played my life out, you know, eight times out of 10, I would have been on the, the job side. Just because that's all I knew, that's what normal was. And, uh, you know, I think if there's any like takeaway there, it's, you know? If you want something, if you have an inkling that you want something out of your life, you gotta go where that's normal. That's why I liked moving to Silicon Valley. It was very normal here for people to be starting a company with a half baked idea. And that was what the smart, capable people were doing.

• 49:40Shaan Puri?

  It's not what the like, you know, fringe weirdos were doing. Whereas everywhere else I lived, anybody who was like, I quit my job, I'm going to go work on this app for, um, checking into restaurants. People would have been like, ah, this guy's just weird and he's off, he's off track. And so, uh, you know, in Silicon Valley, if you're like, hey, I took this job at this, you know, uh, I'm working at JP Morgan. It's like, bro, you better have a side hustle if you're trying to like, get any respect around here. Like, you know, you, that is not what's the respected path. It's a literally just moving. My body moved me in the direction of who I wanted to be because I just moved my body into a place where the norm and the default and the expected was, you're going to go create a company, right? That's what we do here. Um, and so I kind of think it's the same thing with schooling.

• 50:23Shaan Puri?

  Like if you're around, if you're in a school environment that expects you to be creative or dynamic or like work on projects. And not just be like, you know, sit down and take tests. Like, I think that that's, uh, it's going to be self fulfilling in a way.

• 50:36Sam Parr?

  Dude, I remember being in San Francisco and I would meet people who worked at JP Morgan or just had like a normal job, but they would introduce themselves as like the founder of this thing. And we're like, what is this thing? And like, oh, it's just a, you know, it's just a project I'm working on. But I, and I used to make fun of that back then. I kinda like it though. I kinda like it.

• 50:53Shaan Puri?

  Like, like their side hustle or their main, their main work at their, at JP Morgan?

• 50:58Sam Parr?

  No, like the, well, I'm gonna get this, uh, this app off the ground, but as a side hustle, I worked nine to five at JP Morgan.

• 51:06Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. No, no, they, they turn into cheating husbands. They're like, I work at JP Morgan, but it's not what it looks like. Okay. It's, this is just, it's just a thing that's temporary. This is, there's not an emotional connection to it. I swear. I just had to do it. You know, like I just, two years, that's all. That I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do the real thing.

• 51:24Sam Parr?

  I love that. Um, you wanna wrap up talking about poop?

• 51:29Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, let's talk about it. Thanksgiving, I'm around a lot of family members. There's a lot of 13, 14 people in my house right now. There's a lot of bathroom time going on.

• 51:40Shaan Puri?

  Fiber is everywhere, dude. I think fiber supplements, I think are a little opportunity. So, uh, you know, people, a lot of people aged 36 and up are, uh, are taking fiber regularly. And when I look at these supplements, you know, Metamucil, Benafiber, like these brands just sat, they literally sound like poop, which maybe is intentional, but I think there's an opportunity to make a, a fiber supplement that is, uh, you know, just

• 52:08Sam Parr?

  You know, you know what's going through that right now?

• 52:11Shaan Puri?

  What?

• 52:12Sam Parr?

  What's going through that right now is creatine. Do you know what creatine is?

• 52:15Shaan Puri?

  Bro, don't make me flex. Of course I know what creatine is.

• 52:18Sam Parr?

  Creatine's like, I believe it's the most studied supplement of all time. Um, but basically it's proven like constantly where it just makes you stronger and build more muscle mass. I don't know by what percent. It's like one or 2%, but historically creatine was powder form. And it doesn't necessarily have a, a bad taste, but mostly it's neutral. But there's this guy, it tastes fine. It's mostly neutral, but you still like, when you drink it, it's kind of chalky. Um, but it's no big deal. But, um, I take creatine all the time. I love creatine. And creatine, when we were kids, when we were in high school, that was just like what the jock football players would

• 52:55Shaan Puri?

  Oh, it was like, I was scared of it. Right? It was like, is this bad for you? It's gonna mess up your kidney and your liver or something like that? I was like, I guess I stay away from creatine. I'm not that, I don't need, I don't need to be a bodybuilder, right? Like.

• 53:06Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and it's, and that's mostly nonsense. Creatine, it's, it's just like, uh, it's probably some health guy might yell at me for saying this, but it's basically just like consuming more protein, you know, like, it's just like, it should be almost part of a, of a daily routine. Like, it's a very stable thing. You're not particularly gonna get sick, whatever. It's, it's just gonna make you stronger and build more muscle. But, uh, what's pack, what's the, what's the McCormick guy's first name? He started a creatine company that they basically made it like a Flint's, they made a Flintstone vitamin, but for creatine, and he shares all of his revenue online. And like six months after starting the business, I think it's doing like $800,000 a month in sales. And I actually really appreciate that this guy's doing this because he's taking an old supplement that is wonderful.

• 53:48Sam Parr?

  But people are afraid of, and it's not really that easy to consume. So with his stuff, he made it into like a, a Flintstone gummy bear, like, style supplement where you could take, because you can't really take creatine in your bathroom unless you have a cup there, because you have to mix it with water. He does, it's a chewable that tastes kinda good. And I think it's really amazing what he's doing with creatine.

• 54:07Shaan Puri?

  So his name is.

• 54:07Sam Parr?

  It's been very fascinating.

• 54:08Shaan Puri?

  His name is Dan McCormick. I'm gonna pull up whatever his last update is. So three million in all time revenue. So basically it looks like he's gonna do about three million in the first year. But I remember he posted some of his margins and they weren't, uh, they were not very good. Oh, here we go. Okay. So here's his revenues. Um, we can put this chart up. So December, when he started at 21K, January 64K. And then it basically goes up 128, 172, 244. And then the last two, uh, August, September were 550K.

• 54:40Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So, and what he's doing is he's taking creatine and he's kinda making it popular and, and making it easier to consume. There's another drug or a vitamin that I like. It's called Ashwagandha. Do you know what that is?

• 54:51Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 54:52Sam Parr?

  So ashwagandha, a lot of people use it for anxiety. So there's ashwagandha and then there's kava. So kava, I remember drinking it in Fiji. It looks like a mud, like it's like a powder and you mix it with water. And in Fiji, they'll sit around a fire and drink kava. And it kind of makes you a little bit high. But if you take it in small doses, like you can get, you can buy kava at the store and it's, and it calms you. And ashwagandha is another one like that. And so I like these ideas of taking a fiber and ashwagandha, a kava, something that has decades or centuries of like proven usage, but it doesn't, it's not packaged in a way that seems very approachable. I think that's a very fascinating way to go about this. People years ago did it with melatonin. Melatonin wasn't quite popular. Now it's incredibly popular.

• 55:36Sam Parr?

  It's a very accessible thing. I love when people do that with certain supplements.

• 55:40Shaan Puri?

  Dude, I have a supplement story that's going to blow your mind. And I'm not going to tell you now. I'm going to tell you like a year from now because it's playing out right now. Uh, I have a very small part in this, but it is wild to see what a successful supplement company can look like. And it's too good right now. I can't say anything about it, but.

• 56:02Sam Parr?

  Can you say what the drug or what the vitamin is?

• 56:05Shaan Puri?

  No, I'm not saying anything. Um, that's how you know it's good because I gotta just shut up about it.

• 56:10Sam Parr?

  You're an investor in it?

• 56:11Shaan Puri?

  I'm not going to say anything. A year or two from now, uh, I will tell the story and it's going to be unbelievable.

• 56:17Sam Parr?

  Oh, all right. I'm very eager. I, I'm very eager. You know, at once we had Derek from More Plates More Dates on it. And he talked about his supplement business. I thought that that was, it was pretty amazing. Um, I wonder if it's Derek. Blink twice.

• 56:32Shaan Puri?

  I, I, I'm not saying anything. I'm, I'm saving this from you too, because I want to see your reaction when it all plays out. Uh, I'm not going to give you any hints either before then.

• 56:41Sam Parr?

  Would you, um, go into the supplement business?

• 56:45Shaan Puri?

  Uh, yes.

• 56:48Shaan Puri?

  Where I need my soundboard. Where's the Bezos? Hell, yes. That's, that's how I feel.

• 56:55Shaan Puri?

  About the supplement industry. Yeah.

• 56:58Sam Parr?

  So I have nothing to do with any supplement business. And from an outside perspective, it just seems like an overcrowded space. That's really challenging, but I know some of the.

• 57:06Shaan Puri?

  I think it is saturated. It's very saturated. I don't think it's very, I don't think it's necessarily like, you know, anybody can play. But if you're good, it's the right type of e-commerce business to be in. You know, I'm in the wrong type of e-commerce to be in, the hard slog e-commerce type of business to be in. If you're good, like, you know, it's somewhat binary, I would say in the supplement side, like it's, you know, the, it's not easy to win. But once you get it going, if you have the right supplement and the right branding and the right market and the right, right advertising, if you could stack those blocks together in the right formation. It's a beautiful business. Why? Supplements, super high margin. Supplements are repeat purchase consumables.

• 57:47Shaan Puri?

  Supplements get bought by, you know, bigger companies all the time. So the exit market is fantastic. The multiples are good. Supplements can go into retail really well. The inventory is very simple. You only have like a limited number of SKUs that you need to deal with. Usually they're made in the United States. So your cycle time is very low, which means that you don't have a bunch of money tied up in inventory at any given time. You might even have negative cash conversion. So there's all these benefits of the supplement category, if you could be in it. It's a clear problem solution. So it's easy to market.

• 58:16Sam Parr?

  And it's expensive. I probably spend a hundred bucks a month on, on protein powders and creatines and a few other things. It's, it's expensive.

• 58:24Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 58:25Sam Parr?

  Hundreds, probably.

• 58:26Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, way more than a hundred.

• 58:27Sam Parr?

  I get a bag from Whole Foods. It's like 80 bucks.

• 58:29Shaan Puri?

  I, so my, my sister-in-law is in town. This is a funny story. So my sister-in-law is in town. I was telling her about this supplement. And she is, I, I remember because at previous Thanksgivings, she was like, telling me about, she's like, oh, leaky gut. Oh, you, I was, I was like, I was like, yeah, what is that? I've kind of heard that. What the hell is that? And she's like.

• 58:47Sam Parr?

  It's brilliant branding.

• 58:49Shaan Puri?

  She's like, oh, my God, you don't want leaky gut. Imagine like a leaky gut. Like, it's just like. You know, like imagine your sewer has a hole in it, right? Your sewer lines like you don't want that getting everywhere. No. And she's like, it's toxic. It's bad. And I was like, how do I know if I have it? She's like, you probably have it. Everybody's everybody has it. I'm like, oh my God, my gut health. I've just been totally mixed up. My gut health over here. What am I doing? I'm sleeping on my gut health. My microbiome is just a fucking mess right now. And I was like,

• 59:16Shaan Puri?

  and so I'm, and so I was like, hey, are you still into leaky gut? She's like, I was like, scale of one to 10, how into leaky gut? That was last year. She goes 500. I don't stop thinking about my gut. And I was like, so tell me, and I literally recorded, I have a voice memo of her describing all of the things. She's like, oh, fiber. Yeah, you gotta have the, see, this fiber is bad because look, it has all these extra ingredients, natural flavors. You don't want that. You want this other one. It's super clean. My garden of life. It's got the three different source of fiber because that you get the blend. And when you get the blend of three fibers, and she's like drawing these diagrams. And then she's like, and then she's like, yeah, and like, um, you know, you just want to have living water. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's that? What's living water? I don't know what that is. Have you heard of living water? No.

• 1:00:01Shaan Puri?

  And so she's describing living water and she's telling me about that. And then she's telling me about this other thing. And I was laughing so hard. And I was just like, you are like, if I could take my Facebook pixel and I could just show my Facebook pixel, your face, I'd be like, only advertise to this type of woman. Like, you know, rich woman who's like, believes in all of these things is like the best market. She is spending, gotta be spending hundreds of dollars every month, $500 a month on just like, for her, for her kids, for her husband. Does she consume all of it? But then she's like, she's like, yeah, I, she's like, I wish I, she's like, I'm not even taking all the stuff I should be taking. I wish I was more on top of it, but I'm so busy with life. So that's why to supplement for it. Then I do my water fast and I do my three day water

• 1:00:42Shaan Puri?

  fast because it's the detox. And I was like, you do all the things. And that's really what you want is like, if you're going to build a product like this, you are advertising to these women in, in, in women across America who are like, there's this demographic of women that will, will buy all of these products and they will do the fast and they want to alkalize their body. And I'm not even saying that this is all BS. Like, maybe it's all true. Maybe it's all false. I have no idea. Like, But they believe it's true. And as an entrepreneur, that's all that matters is that there are people that that are all bought in like they are bought fully into a lifestyle. And in that lifestyle, you could then tack on other angles. So like, you know, who knew that water could be dead or alive? I didn't. That's a position. That's a product positioning

• 1:01:26Shaan Puri?

  play, right? You know, who knew that you could sell, you know, collagen and like all of these different angles to to do, you know, to improving the quality of somebody's health in their body. And it's just, can you tell a story? If you could tell a story? Because she told me all the stories. She basically played back to me, you know, ads, Facebook ads that she has read, you know, and then gone down the rabbit hole of reading about. And if you could tell the right story, that's fantastic. Like when Craig Clemens was on and he talked about probiotics and how he basically created the probiotics revolution. Did you listen to that episode? Do you know that part?

• 1:02:02Sam Parr?

  No, I didn't hear that part.

• 1:02:04Shaan Puri?

  You've heard of probiotics. Probiotics were like a semi big deal. Have you ever heard of prebiotics?

• 1:02:11Sam Parr?

  Five Minute Abs.

• 1:02:13Shaan Puri?

  Craig Clemens taught the world about prebiotics. Yesterday, when she was talking, she was talking about prebiotics. And I'm like, you know, my friend literally like created that word. Like, there wasn't like, maybe it existed, but nobody knew about it. And I don't know if you've seen this, but Craig has this video that he created. This one ad that he talked about on the pod. So I can share it here. He created one ad called

• 1:02:34Shaan Puri?

  The American Parasite. Have you ever heard of this? And like Joe Rogan tweeted it out. He goes, yo, this video is freaking me out. This is back then. It's 15 years ago now. The video is like hard to even find online. I found it. But like, there's a this ad called American.

• 1:02:48Sam Parr?

  Is this like a direct marketer video?

• 1:02:51Shaan Puri?

  No, this one looks a little different. This looks like a TED Talk where, you know, like the, have you ever seen the draw during a TED Talk? Like, there's a TED Talk voice, but the hand is drawing on a whiteboard, like what the guy's saying. It's kind of like keeps your attention. So it's

• 1:03:03Sam Parr?

  Oh, I see. I have it up. It's been viewed a lot.

• 1:03:06Shaan Puri?

  And so he and Craig described this on the podcast. He's like, basically, this went, this, this video went insanely viral. And I've heard him share on other podcasts. So they, they started with a, with a long form sales letter, and they were selling these prebiotics and they did like 10K. The first day they spent 10K and they spent four or five K, they made 50K. He's like, holy shit. They did that again, did it again, and they sold out within like a week. So then they made a big bet. They ordered, they ordered a million dollars of inventory for, uh, for the prebiotic because they believed that this thing would sell when it comes time. And when they did it, they relaunched it when they got inventory back in stock. First day they did 500K in sales.

• 1:03:47Shaan Puri?

  Second day they did 600K. So 1.1 million in sales in two days when this came back. And he created this video sales, uh, this video ad. It's a 30 minute, basically documentary talking about how our food supply is fucked up, how it creates a bad, you know, like micro, you know, bio in your gut. And how that, that's like the, he calls it the great American parasite that is, you know, eating away, uh, you know, it's, it's ruining your health. It's the reason you can't control your cravings. It's the reason you're gaining weight. It's the reason for all your problems. It's not you. It's this parasite in your stomach. And isn't that a convenient explanation that somebody wants to wrap their, their arms around? And so he took that and basically that thing was viewed like hundreds of millions of times. People were sharing this like crazy. But this was back when there wasn't a lot of ads.

• 1:04:30Shaan Puri?

  And so, um, the, and people were a lot more willing to share on social media when they found an interesting video. And so this thing went crazy, uh, to the point where he said that Coke changed their formula for Diet Coke. They took aspartame out on the, because this video was causing so much like public, you know, like awareness and uproar over these like fake sugars that people were putting in things. He's like, and then over six months, like Coke sales went down because Coke without aspartame, it doesn't taste as good. And then they put it back in like six to nine months later.

• 1:05:01Sam Parr?

  What was the name of Craig's?

• 1:05:03Shaan Puri?

  Keybiotics was the name of his company back then.

• 1:05:05Sam Parr?

  And how much did it make?

• 1:05:06Shaan Puri?

  A lot of money.

• 1:05:08Sam Parr?

  Oh my God.

• 1:05:10Shaan Puri?

  So he kind of popularized or created the pre, the prebiotic market in the United States.

• 1:05:15Sam Parr?

  But that's insane. Yeah. I'm looking at it now. Have you heard of, um, do you know ancient nutrition?

• 1:05:21Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's the Liver King guy.

• 1:05:24Sam Parr?

  No, it's a different guy.

• 1:05:25Shaan Puri?

  Oh, the carnivore.

• 1:05:26Sam Parr?

  Company. Yeah, well, no, a different one. Uh, Ancient Nutrition, they've raised a hundred million dollars. So I have to imagine they're doing hundreds of millions of revenue. And it started because this guy named Josh Axe, Dr. Axe is what his name was. Or his name is, and he's got a.

• 1:05:40Shaan Puri?

  Of course it is. Of course his name is Dr. Axe.

• 1:05:42Sam Parr?

  It's Dr. Axe, spelled like an axe. And he had a blog and the majority of the blog at the time, it talked about leaky gut. And he would sell info products on how to fix the leaky gut. And then eventually they were like, all right, let's actually make stuff. And that's how Ancient Nutrition started. Uh, and it's like a huge, huge business, but a lot of his whole thing was leaky gut. And he helped popularize leaky gut. The, the branding of leaky gut is like.

• 1:06:08Shaan Puri?

  Brilliant.

• 1:06:08Sam Parr?

  Brilliant. It's, it's kind of like, it's kind of like when people talk about doing a cleanse and they act like their blood is like a pipe and like doing a cleanse is like putting a pipe cleaner through it. You, it's like, it's like, I don't know if arteries work that way, but.

• 1:06:22Shaan Puri?

  Powerful visual.

• 1:06:23Sam Parr?

  Image that now I automate. Yeah, like, I don't even know if that's true. It probably even isn't, but for some reason you've made me believe that that's how it is. Same with leaky gut. You're like, so like, first of all, I don't even know what a gut is. Is that your colon? So like this organ that has poop in it is just leaking to the rest of my body? Is that what you're saying? Of course, that's a huge deal. I don't want poison in my body. And I, I don't even know, I have no idea if that's how it works or if it doesn't work. But they do a great job of making me believe it by, because of that phrase, leaky gut.

• 1:06:52Shaan Puri?

  Right, right. Uh, yeah, Scott Adams, I forgot what he called it. Like he had these two words he said, he said, he had one that was called a linguistic kill shot. And they did another one that was about visuals. Um, so what did he say? I forgot what he called it, but like, let's call it a visual kill shot. Like, I think that idea of the pipe cleaner or the leaky gut, these are visual kill shots. It's, uh, words that make you see things. And there are things you can't unsee once you've seen them, right? And it's like, that's, and, and, and, you know, he's, he's, Scott Adams used to say Trump did this. He called Jeb Bush, when Jeb Bush was the frontrunner in the Republican debates. Cause he's, you know, he's a Bush and you know, he's a whatever. He was the governor of Florida or whatever the hell he was.

• 1:07:35Shaan Puri?

  And there, and then he goes, low energy Jeb. And tired Jeb. And basically every time you look at Jeb Bush from then on out, you're like, he does look fucking low energy. And it just like.

• 1:07:45Sam Parr?

  Yeah, or sleepy Joe.

• 1:07:46Shaan Puri?

  Sleepy, yeah, sleepy Joe, right? Crooked Hillary, right? Like she does, not just like. Immoral Hillary, or like, you know, whatever. Crooked. It's a visual word, right? Uh, the wall, it's gonna be a big, beautiful wall, right? Like, he wasn't saying better border control policy. He said, we're gonna build a big wall, beautiful wall, biggest wall you've ever seen, right? Like, you have a visual of the border being strong and protected. And so, like, Trump was kind of a master at this shit. And, uh, Scott Adams, he's, he's pretty interesting, the way he, um, he described, you know, what, what Trump was able to do with these visual kill shots.

• 1:08:21Sam Parr?

  Okay, well, in one year, we're gonna play the clip of you saying, I'm not gonna tell you now, but we'll tell you in a year, because I'm very eager now. You've got me on the hook. You've used, you've used, you've gotten me, you've got me hooked. And I'm so eager to know who it is. I'm, I'm eager to know everything about it. So I guess we'll end there, and you gotta come back in a year and tell me.

• 1:08:40Shaan Puri?

  Done.

• 1:08:41Sam Parr?

  Um, all right, that's the pod.