#221 - How to Make Millions With a Modern Day Infomercial

In this episode Shaan (@ShaanVP) and Sam (@theSamParr) break down a 30-year-old infomercial and they discuss the modern day approach that can make you millions. They also talk about businesses built around trust, professional certifications, and what investors Shaan would call first if he was raising. You'll also meet a serial entrepreneur who is this weeks' Internet Founder of the Week. --------- * Want to be featured in a future episode? Drop your question/comment/criticism/love here: https://www.mfmpod.com/p/hotline/ * Support the pod by spreading the word, become a referrer here: https://refer.fm/million * Have you joined our private Facebook group yet? Go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion and join thousands of other entrepreneurs and founders scheming up ideas. --------- Show notes: * (0:57) Meet a future guest * (4:34) Building a business around trust * (9:17) The problem with content businesses * (12:25) Subscription opportunities for content based businesses * (18:30) Trust as a service businesses * (23:01) Someone got a little blue checkmark * (25:16) The health department score is BS * (28:34) Klout reimagined * (32:14) Thoughts on professional certifications * (34:24) Meet Matt Mickiewicz * (42:12) Guthy-Renker - direct marketing masters * (53:07) The modern day infomercial * (59:19) The first five investors Shaan would call

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

• 0:00Sam Parr?

  I think if you're starting a media company and if I started it again, if you didn't go subscription first, you're an idiot and you're a fool.

• 0:20Sam Parr?

  All right, we're live. So did you see I got Ariel Hawani to agree to come on?

• 0:25Shaan Puri?

  I know. Good job. How'd you do that?

• 0:27Sam Parr?

  A friend, a good buddy of mine is like best friends with him and I just begged him.

• 0:34Shaan Puri?

  Your outreach, I had never seen you try so hard. Normally you're pretty cool about things. I don't think you really care with too many people, but I could tell you wanted this one.

• 0:44Sam Parr?

  I did. So basically for the people listening, there's this guy named Ariel Hawani. He's got a million followers on Twitter. So he's not like that niche, but basically he's like the god of MMA journalism. And the reason why he's interesting is because he just quit ESPN where he was probably making close to a million dollars a year as a host and he created a Substack, his own podcast, and he's kind of building like a little media, media empire.

• 1:10Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 1:10Sam Parr?

  And so we'll have him on and talk about that.

• 1:14Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. And you know, the thing that's interesting about him was he's been in it for a while. So like you have this phrase, I think you've said like niches get riches, basically, which is like, yeah, a lot of people are afraid to go into a niche market. And is it niche or niche? By the way, I have no idea.

• 1:31Sam Parr?

  Both can work.

• 1:32Shaan Puri?

  Okay, good. So, you know, a lot of people are afraid, oh, is this too niche? And I think you have the opposite reaction, which is too niche? Fantastic. At least that's my, my understanding. You tell me if that's, that's right or wrong.

• 1:42Sam Parr?

  Well, it's the two things. One, when you, whenever you start doing something, it's definitely better to start for a very small group of people and a very small niche and corner that, or at least get big in that and then expand. Or the second thing is you can stay in a growing niche and grow with, but you know, start your, start your business on top of a huge wave. For example, Twitch. Video game streaming, super small niche. They never expanded really, right? It's still the same thing from day one.

• 2:14Shaan Puri?

  Tried, but it's still, you know, dominant where it's just gaming.

• 2:18Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and that niche has just, they're in it. It just is no longer really a niche. Or you have like an Amazon, only books, and then you dominate that, and then CDs, and then this, and then this, and then this. So yeah, I think starting small is always the way to go, or is often the way to go.

• 2:34Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think in Ariel's case, what he did was, I know he's a fan of, I kind of want to ask him this. He's a fan of the NBA, like he's a big basketball fan. But he didn't go for journalism, basketball journalism, which would have been a more obvious, safe choice. Instead, he went for MMA, which was like this fringe, really niche sport that, you know, it was kind of like, you know, John McCain in New York is calling it human cockfighting. It's like not allowed in certain places. And so it wasn't really like a very safe choice, but he was the only dude doing it, it felt like. It was like, you know, you can go back, you know, 15 years, basically, and you see clips of him talking to people backstage and just budget production value, but he was like the guy covering this regularly. And because of that, he's got like deep relationships, deep respect amongst the fans.

• 3:20Shaan Puri?

  To the point where even though Dana White, who's the president of UFC, hates him, and has banned him from UFC events, he's still the number one journalist. So imagine, you know, like this guy that Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the NFL, just hates and bans from the game, still being the number one, you know, journalist for the athletes. That's kind of unusual. And so he's an interesting dude with a cool story.

• 3:43Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I'm excited to have him. I actually think that, I think that it's gonna, it'll be a hit with our listeners, even the people who aren't into UFC. I think it's gonna be a hit, but I am a fanboy, so we'll see.

• 3:56Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's all good.

• 3:57Sam Parr?

  Can I tell you about a business that is built on trust that I'm obsessed with at the moment?

• 4:01Shaan Puri?

  Okay, go for it.

• 4:02Sam Parr?

  All right. Have you heard of examine.com?

• 4:05Shaan Puri?

  No. What is examine?

• 4:06Sam Parr?

  You've never heard that? Okay. Can you go to your computer now? You have, okay.

• 4:09Shaan Puri?

  I'm at it. Let me go there.

• 4:10Sam Parr?

  All right.

• 4:11Shaan Puri?

  So I'm gonna do it, tell you what I see?

• 4:13Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 4:14Shaan Puri?

  Okay, I go to examine.com and I thought it was gonna be about books or something. No, it says nutrition information you can trust. And then it's just like a giant, kind of like Google search bar. It's like, uh, like for example, oh, this is perfect, actually. My trainer was telling me about ashwagandha. I see ashwagandha.

• 4:28Sam Parr?

  I, I've been taking that for eight days now.

• 4:31Shaan Puri?

  Great. So it's a supplement. And so I go here and I guess the idea would be. Hey, there's gonna be a lot of, if you Google this, you're gonna find a lot of information, but we are a trusted source. We do the research, we put the pros and cons here, we make it easy to understand. Is that the idea?

• 4:45Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna summarize this. So, the reason this interests me is I have a friend named Sol, S-O-L Orwell. He's a good buddy of mine. I've never even met him, but we went to a bunch of conferences and we were in the same room and we never met up, but we became friends. And he's a great guy. And I just met him as a guy, and then I saw his business. And it's called examine.com. And what it does is, they do a few things. So first, they get about 40,000 visitors a day. And they get those visitors by having this free content. So what you're looking at, where it examines that supplement, ashwagandha. But, the model in which they make money, is that they have a membership. That membership has supplement guides. And then they also have a thing where they look at all the recent studies, and they

• 5:29Sam Parr?

  summarize it to tell you exactly what you need to know. And it'll say, this is a strong study, and the conclusion is this. This is a not great study, and the conclusion is this, and you shouldn't, you should avoid it. And they do that with all types of studies. And basically, what the company is, and I'll explain why I think this is a big deal. But basically, they take knowledge that's locked up, or complicated to understand, and they make sense of it into a really easy to understand way. And so they have, I'm gonna give you some stats. Forty thousand visitors a day, 20 employees, seven figures in revenue, 50,000 people have signed up for their membership, or bought some of the guides. And that's only been around for about two years, the guides have, or the membership. And so, they made money by selling guides. And so I bought the supplement guide. They have one on, like,

• 6:14Sam Parr?

  I have like, panic attack problems that I'm trying to fix. And they have guides on, it listed all the, it said here, if these six supplements have been proven... By clinical trials to help with panic attack. And it lists them all and it says, take this one. If you don't feel anything in two weeks, pair it with this one and then pair it with this one. And they tell you and they go, and when you buy it, make sure that it's magnesium, not magnesium oxide. Like they tell you very specific stuff. And I think this business is amazing. It's amazing because they've spent years building up trust. So men's health, Dr. Andrew Huberman, do you know who that is? He's that guy who has a YouTube where he talks about health stuff. He's like, kind of going viral right now, which is on Joe Rogan and Tim Ferriss.

• 6:56Sam Parr?

  They all, everyone cites examine.com, New York Times cites examine.com. They've spent years building up trust. Every word that they write is very meticulous. Now they're starting to monetize and this model, I actually think it's amazing. And I didn't, at first I was like, there's no way this can be a big idea. But there's this company called Up to Date. You've probably never heard of Up to Date. If you're listening and you're a doctor, you probably have heard of this. And so it's basically examine.com, but for doctors. I mean, it's been around before examine.com. So examine.com is that for nutrition. And this business, doctors pay, I believe $600 a year and they get the same exact thing. They get access to a content database that very explicitly and clearly says which clinical trials are proven, which are not, and what the conclusion is.

• 7:41Sam Parr?

  And then summarizes a bunch of stuff. Guess how much money that makes a year?

• 7:45Shaan Puri?

  I think a lot. I think, I think probably, I mean, I'm just looking at up to date and I think it has 15, similar rub shows about 15 million visits a month. So that's pretty impressive. I would guess, okay, I'm going to go high and I'm going to go low. It's always fun to be blown away. So I'm going to say 50 million a year.

• 8:03Sam Parr?

  So the estimate is closer to $500 million a year in subscription.

• 8:07Shaan Puri?

  I'm blown away. I'm blown away, just as I hoped with my low estimate. Isn't it shitty when you're trying to, when you're trying to blow someone's mind? And then they estimate over and you're like, well, okay, not, not that much, but it's still cool. And it's like, God damn it. Like, you know, that should just be a rule amongst friends. If I ask you to ballpark something, you know, let me, let me blow you away.

• 8:26Sam Parr?

  And the company that owns this does the same thing for finance, tax and accounting, I believe, and that whole company is publicly traded. It does like 5 billion in sales a year. Crazy business model. And I'll tell you why this is interesting to me. This is interesting to me because I love content businesses. I love them. There's a huge problem with content businesses, which is they suck at making money. If you're gonna make money in the most traditional way of banner ads or some type of BuzzFeed style native ads. I fucking hate that. This model, I love. I think that you could use this model for a bunch of different categories, including skincare, including beauty. I think that would be the next, the easiest one, according to Saul. What do you think about this business? It's pretty neat, right?

• 9:09Shaan Puri?

  Genius. Yeah. So UpToDate makes total sense. Yeah, like I'm surprised I haven't heard of it. I am not surprised something like this exists and works. It just makes all the sense in the world. Examine.com also very, very cool. And I think sort of like, if UpToDate is kind of like a B to B, Examine is kind of like a B to C where it's like, you know, the average person who's just curious, like you, I'm curious about panic attacks, or I'm curious about ashwagandha, or I'm curious about, you know, whatever, L. carnitine. And, you know, I hear about it, I hear some buzz, but I'm trying to be like smart and safe about things. Where do I go that's not just trying to sell me shit? And not just trying to like print page views as like a content form. And so I think that

• 9:51Shaan Puri?

  trust is, you know, like sort of like one of the only things that matters in a like world of abundance. And that's where we are. We're in a world of abundance. And so trust is like one of the key, key things.

• 10:04Sam Parr?

  And Examine.com, their rule is they don't recommend any brand. So you can't find any brand on their site. If they say, take magnesium oxide, I was like, Saul, just tell me like which brand so I can just buy it on Amazon. He goes, no, we can't tell you that. You gotta go and figure that out because the day we start doing that is the day we start like incentivizing the wrong shit. So it's a pretty amazing business model. You know who else does this is consumer reviews. So consumer reviews, you probably don't use anymore. A lot of people who are younger or my age and younger don't use it anymore. So consumer reviews, it's Wirecutter, but they charge a subscription. That company, it's actually a nonprofit. So you can actually look up their revenues. Their revenues, they charge a subscription revenue. What did I say? Consumer review? Consumer report? Yeah.

• 10:49Sam Parr?

  Consumer report. It was around. It was around before Wirecutter. I prefer Wirecutter now, but Consumer Report is pretty amazing. They charge subscription revenue. They still do like $120 million in subscription revenue and they're telling you like the best TV, the best microphone, the best computer, and they crush it.

• 11:06Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, so let me just, Consumer Reports, subscription news and other sales. 20, in the year 2020, they did $212 million in subscription revenue.

• 11:15Sam Parr?

  Crazy, right?

• 11:17Shaan Puri?

  Subscription revenue, that's insane. 245 million overall, overall revenue in 2020. Insane.

• 11:25Sam Parr?

  I think if you're starting a media company, and if I started it again, if you didn't go subscription first, you're an idiot and you're a fool and you're a masochist and you like pain. If I, if I could do it all over again, knowing what I know now, I would only start that way. And it's totally, I think it's the best business model.

• 11:44Shaan Puri?

  Clip it. Alright, yeah, that's a good one. I like that a lot. You've talked about this, I like Consumer Reports for other things, right? So you've talked about it for SaaS tools, and then some people have tried that, G2 and others have tried that. What do you think about that? What's your latest thinking on that? Because you've been thinking about that idea for a while.

• 12:01Sam Parr?

  I think it's an amazing idea and someone could still do it. G2 has raised another round of funding at like a multi-billion dollar valuation. I think, I think it still could be done. There's a company called J2 Global. Have you heard of J2 Global?

• 12:13Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 12:13Sam Parr?

  Alright, look up the stock of J2 Global right now for me. I, I act like I'm setting you up. I actually haven't looked at it in a while. Is it good?

• 12:22Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so J2 Global, alright, it's trading at $130 a share. The market cap is $6.3 billion. And, yeah, you know, like sort of year to date, it's almost double.

• 12:34Sam Parr?

  So J2 Global, what they do is they own a handful of publications, including IGN, Mashable, PC Mag, offers.com, and one or two more. But basically, they make the bulk of the revenue, I believe, from suggesting which software to buy in PC Magazine, and that's how they make most of their revenue. And it's a publicly traded company, new, look it all up. So I think this model can still crush it. I think PC Magazine is pretty much garbage. G2 is okay. But anyway, I think it's a really big business that so many people are sleeping on.

• 13:06Shaan Puri?

  And, uh, you know, what else could you do this sort of trust, trust model for? So I have, I have one idea, but I'm curious what else comes to mind for you?

• 13:14Sam Parr?

  Skincare and beauty. That's what I, I think it could be done. Skincare and beauty.

• 13:18Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, because there's, there's an ocean of, there's an ocean of brands and you kind of care about, you know, the problem I think with that is you don't have fear. So that's, that's one really good thing about supplements and medicine is that there's like a fear component to it, right? Like, I don't want to actually like die or get side effects from this thing or have, have a, you know, a sort of a big problem occur because of the potential benefits of something. Whereas with skincare, I think, yeah, you might break out or you might just want to know which one's better, but it doesn't have that fear component where people are going to look it up and say, before I buy this, I've really got to check. And so I think that's one of the keys. You know, there's like, which one of these dishwashers is best? I think that's a Consumer Reports thing. It's like, ah, I don't want to research this. Like, oh, these guys test this

• 14:01Shaan Puri?

  for 5,000 cycles and they tell me which one lasts the longest and works the best. Like, okay, that's great. I was never going to do that myself. Um, you know, I think that's one version where it's like tires. Which tire is the best tire to get? What's refrigerator is the best refrigerator to get? And then on the other side, there's the fear one, like supplements, medicine, sort of like alternative medicines. What's, what's going to happen from those? I think those are two, like especially good categories. And I think the difference of choosing the right category versus the wrong category is a multiplier of like 10x, 10x or 50x of your outcome.

• 14:33Sam Parr?

  I, I would imagine you could do the same for physical therapy. So the reason physical therapy is interesting. So basically I've had a injured Achilles for about a year now, and I've been researching like crazy. And if you search Achilles tendonitis, there's loads of different stuff. And I've been reading so many studies. And what my conclusion now is this, there's only one way to fix your Achilles tendonitis, and that is to do,

• 14:54Shaan Puri?

  Rest.

• 14:55Sam Parr?

  Well, no, no, no, you know, it's rest, but it's to do six sets of 15 Achilles, like eccentric dropdown. So what that means is you stand on a curb or a step and you slowly let yourself fall. And then you, uh, kind of step up and then slow. And if you do that, and I read a study after study, it's almost like been unanimous that if you do this for three months, every single day, your Achilles tendonitis will get better. And I had to dig so deep for that. And I think that something like this could exist for physical therapy and injuries and things like that.

• 15:26Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of agree with you. Right now, my mom has this like, she had vertigo, but then it kind of went away, but she still feels symptoms. And the doctor's like, uh, you don't have vertigo. She's like, no, no, I get that. But what do I have? I have something. This is not right. And they're like, uh, blood work looks fine. And then she has to call back and be like, hey, I know the blood work looks fine, but I'm not right. Yeah. What do I do? They're like, uh, go to, let's do an MRI, same thing. And then it's like, finally, okay, do these, like, do this physical therapy. So she literally walks around the house with a piece of paper in front of her that has like a letter on it. So her eye has to focus on it. And she moves it to the right while she's walking and then moves it to the left while she's walking. It's like,

• 15:59Sam Parr?

  Oh my gosh.

• 16:00Shaan Puri?

  Dude, is this the exercise? Like, maybe it is. If it is fantastic, but where, how do we know that this is it? And that there's not like a much faster, better way? Because previously, when she had vertigo, uh, that was like vertigo proper, she went to three doctors, nobody knew what to do. The fourth doctor was like, oh, lay down. And he like shook her head like vigorously. And it's like this known cure. And basically it like loosens up the crystal in the inner ear or whatever. And she was like fixed in 10 minutes. And she's like, wow, like, if I just hadn't come to see you, how many more months or years would I have just had vertigo? That's a pretty scary thought.

• 16:31Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I think that could work. Or here's another thing. Do you know, you know, anything about chiropractor?

• 16:36Shaan Puri?

  I know. I know what, what most people know, which is like skeptical, skeptical hippo eyes, as our boy Brendan Chubb says.

• 16:43Sam Parr?

  And I didn't know that. I thought, sorry to chiropractors or chiropractors, uh, fans out there. But basically chiropractor, it was invented by a guy, I forget his name, but he was like a snake oil salesman. He was full of shit. And he thought that like, I'm gonna, someone's gonna correct me because I'm kind of getting it wrong. But basically like, there's like evil spirits or something in you. And if you adjust, if you adjust the spine, it releases it. Now, some chiropractor like can help, very little, like, but 90%, like 90% of what chiropractor is what we think they do, you, you, you can't adjust your spine and like your headaches stop. Like, that's just not how your body works. But it's nonsense, right? Also, the, the acceptance rate of chiropractor school is 100%. So like, and it's like, it's like, it's like a Google

• 17:27Sam Parr?

  AdSense certification. It's not like, you know what I mean? I know I'm gonna get flack for this. And yes, there are some chiropractors out there. A lot of it, though, is nonsense. And I think an examine.com can exist for all types of parts of the body. So anyway, that's my idea on examine.com. I thought it was interesting. I'm a bit obsessed with it. I'm currently on a vitamin regimen and I discovered it on there. I thought it was cool. You want to do another

• 17:50Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, okay. So let me give you another trust as a service. So this is just like a, I'm calling this my $2 blue collar side hustle right now, which is here's a side hustle that will make you some bucks. It's not going to be a huge business, probably. It's not even maybe going to be around five years from now, but I think right now it's a thing you could do. So are you big on, do you order a lot of food? Cause I'm a, I'm a doordasher, right? Like

• 18:13Sam Parr?

  I am, I do, but not, but not like you. You do like every meal.

• 18:16Shaan Puri?

  Well, I, I got a chef now, but even with the chef, there's still, you know, two, two meals a week where I'm like, ah, let me just fire up the doordash and see what happens.

• 18:24Sam Parr?

  Dude, it's so expensive. It hurts me.

• 18:26Shaan Puri?

  And so when, when you get your meal, they all have this like sticker on it now that says safety sealed. And it's just, all it is, is like, you know, normally it's like in a bag and they were like tied the bag in a knot. And now they like sticker it to show like no human, like the food went in and then we sealed this shit.

• 18:42Sam Parr?

  Because there's like viral videos of like doordashers eating the food.

• 18:46Shaan Puri?

  Eating food, coughing in the food. I don't even know what the fear is. It's just like, I can't lie. When I see this sticker, I'm like, good. I'm glad they sealed it. Like, good. I'd rather it be sealed than not sealed. That's for fucking sure. And it wasn't even a thing I was thinking about before, but somebody is out there selling branded safety seal stickers to restaurants. And I just think that in general, there's going to be a whole wave. If you just said, I'm going to sell trust and safety as a service. I'm going to sell it to every business that needs to reassure its customers that it is taking COVID safety protocol seriously. And then you can, you can dial that knob up to level 12 of like chiropractor where you're like, I'm just going to mail these to everybody. They, yeah, put it on yourself, honor code. This is an honor code system, you

• 19:29Shaan Puri?

  know, like just, just put this sign up in your, in your restaurant, uh, put this mat on the outside of your thing, put this on every doorknob, hang this on every doorknob, uh, you know, stick, put the sticker on every cup, you know, whatever. Um, you could just send it, or you could actually like go out and verify and say, hey, here's our five point, you know, safety inspection and we send mystery shoppers out or whatever. We like actually create kind of like a Zagat reviews type of, of sticker or seal of approval specifically for trust and safety around COVID. That's the general idea. What do you think?

• 20:01Sam Parr?

  I love it and I'm gonna show you an example of something similar to this. Have you heard of, I think it's pronounced LEED, L E E D.

• 20:09Shaan Puri?

  LEED certified, the like green buildings thing?

• 20:12Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so I was looking this up. So it's a nonprofit, so you could easily see their sales. So that, wow, they do, I think this is, I'm almost positive it's run by a company called the US, it's not a company, but a nonprofit, US Green Building Council. And I think they, is that it? Do you know?

• 20:30Shaan Puri?

  No, but yeah, I believe you.

• 20:32Sam Parr?

  And they do $31 million a year in sales. And basically, I have no idea what the, I have no idea why buildings are incentivized to do that. But I imagine the business model is such where you pay L E E D, LEED, I guess is what it's called. And, oh, here, Dan says he's a former accredited professional for LEED. So that's crazy.

• 20:54Shaan Puri?

  Dan, unmute. Dan. On a scale of one to chiropractor, where is LEED certification?

• 21:00Speaker 02

  It's nowhere near chiropractor. It's legit.

• 21:03Shaan Puri?

  And you are a LEED accredited professional. What the heck does that mean? Did you pay for the first, did you pay for this accreditation?

• 21:10Speaker 02

  My company, my former company did, yeah.

• 21:12Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so somebody paid for you to get certified and then you charged other companies to go give them the stamp of approval. Is that right?

• 21:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, so as a professional, you get like one point towards the point total you need to become a LEED building. And then there's like a silver, gold, platinum scale.

• 21:28Shaan Puri?

  And it's shit like, you know, you use the right kind of light bulbs, you use the right kind of insulation, that sort of thing when you're building, you're building, right? Or renovating?

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Yep, stuff like that. Air quality, indoor air quality, which is really bad normally, low use water, things like that. No smoking.

• 21:43Sam Parr?

  And why?

• 21:43Shaan Puri?

  You sound like a LEED professional right now, bro. I feel like I'm getting LEED certified as we speak.

• 21:48Sam Parr?

  Why does a building care about getting LEED certified?

• 21:52Speaker 02

  Look good, feel good? Good question. Yeah, I think it's a little bit of just wanting to be green.

• 21:57Sam Parr?

  But there's no incentivize incentivization.

• 21:59Shaan Puri?

  Dude.

• 22:00Sam Parr?

  Like the government does. Does the government like give you anything or is it simply just for branding and awareness?

• 22:05Speaker 02

  I don't know. It's been 15 years since I took the exam, so I'm a little out of pace on it. But I'm not sure if there's a big incentive for it.

• 22:12Shaan Puri?

  Dan, how old are you?

• 22:13Speaker 02

  I'm 35.

• 22:15Shaan Puri?

  Did this when you were 20? You were a 20 year old lead certified?

• 22:17Speaker 02

  Might be around a little bit. I think I was 22 when I took it.

• 22:20Shaan Puri?

  Okay. More importantly, I got a lead certification. Go to my Twitter profile real quick. Just see what you see there.

• 22:26Sam Parr?

  Dude, fuck that. I think you are the worst. That is so lame. So.

• 22:32Shaan Puri?

  To be verified? So lame? Are you kidding me?

• 22:34Sam Parr?

  John got verified on Twitter. He's got a blue check mark. I think that is the lamest, dude. You are not one of, you're not a man of the people anymore. You're so out of touch for getting.

• 22:43Shaan Puri?

  I used to shit on, uh, I don't need that. I don't need that. You know, what, what does that mean anyways? Who, who cares about that anyways? You know, I actually prefer not to have, and now that I have it. All that, all that bullshit is out the window. I am so glad I'm verified.

• 22:59Sam Parr?

  Why did you get it?

• 23:00Shaan Puri?

  So glad I got the blue check. Well, I got it for like actual legit reasons. Like first I was just, I wanted it for my ego for many years, but I was, you know, okay, whatever. It didn't happen. Who cares? But then people started actually like impersonating me and scamming my followers. So there were all these accounts that get created every month. And they would go DM my followers, but hey, yeah, what's up? And people were like, oh, hey, thanks for the DM. Like, no problem. You know, I saw you follow me. Um, you know, what, what are you doing with your portfolio lately? And they would scam them into either sending them crypto or buying random crypto shitcoins. Or they were, um, getting them to like buy stocks or like send them, like send them money to go like invest in their, like they like pretended they were my fund.

• 23:41Shaan Puri?

  And so people were actually like, you know, it used to just hurt my feelings that I wasn't verified, but then it was actually like hurting other people. And so I was like, dude, what the fuck? So I was bitching about it.

• 23:49Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 23:49Shaan Puri?

  And.

• 23:50Sam Parr?

  I get, I get that.

• 23:51Shaan Puri?

  Cries.

• 23:52Sam Parr?

  I get that, but that's the only reason I'll accept. I think every other reason is bullshit. I don't, I think they're stupid.

• 23:59Shaan Puri?

  What's that? It's a little jealousy I was smelling. I don't know. Like, I think you kind of want the blue check mark, too. I think the people on Twitter, Twitter need to help you out.

• 24:08Sam Parr?

  I think I'm, I think I'm barely famous enough to get it, but I will not get it. I'm not, you have crypto bros to call you.

• 24:16Shaan Puri?

  You tell me right now, you push a button and you could just have it or not have it. No, nothing else. Just push this little key on your keeper. You tell me you wouldn't push that button?

• 24:23Sam Parr?

  I give you my word, I will not push that button.

• 24:26Shaan Puri?

  Wow.

• 24:26Sam Parr?

  But, but, but if I, if I end up having scams like you, then yes. But I've not had that, I've not had that problem.

• 24:34Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it became like a legit problem. Anyways, so, okay, lead certification. So yeah, basically, I think, I think lead is another good one. Like, I would love if somebody just took on lead and just called it like, you know, Green Home. Oh, you, oh, you're, you're Green Home Triple Star? Wow.

• 24:53Shaan Puri?

  Doesn't that sound good already?

• 24:54Sam Parr?

  Yes.

• 24:55Shaan Puri?

  And like, again, you could turn the knob. How, like, you can go super legit if you really, like, find ways that you could kind of score buildings. Or you could, like, be somewhere in the middle and, you know, don't scam, but like,

• 25:07Sam Parr?

  Dude, I would do that.

• 25:08Shaan Puri?

  Trust of the service is a great business.

• 25:09Sam Parr?

  I actually think that the health department's scorecard is bullshit. So I had a hot dog stand. I mean, duh. I talk about that too much.

• 25:18Shaan Puri?

  Have you told that story?

• 25:19Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah. You know, I don't drink either.

• 25:24Sam Parr?

  And when, when they, when they did my health certificate, like, I just bullshitted through it like hardcore. And like, I mean, I, my shit was clean, but like, they had all these boxes we had to check and it was bullshit. But in the day that we were doing it, I actually was wearing flip flops and they gave me a 95 instead of 100. And so, like, I think it's kind of not.

• 25:44Shaan Puri?

  Gross toes out while you're making hot dogs. Yeah, nobody wants that.

• 25:47Sam Parr?

  Outside in 100 degrees selling meat that's been sitting there for like, you know what I mean? Like forever. Like, it's, it's fucking disgusting anyway.

• 25:55Shaan Puri?

  I, it is super disgusting. I worked, so with my first thing was sushi restaurant and we had a commissary, we worked out of a commissary kitchen, which is like a, it's a central kitchen where like caterers and bakers, it's like a kitchen without a storefront. So in there was all the food truck guys. And so you, so in that I saw the hierarchy of like degeneracy. It's like caterers, okay, so like bakers, bakers are good people. Bakers are nice women who care about their product and they do a great job and they're very hygienic. And then caterers are like, kind of like, they're like bakers, they're legit, but you know, the the neat, the demands on a caterer are so high, it's always high urgency, they're preparing for a 200 person party or whatever. So, you know, they're kind of get shit done, they'll

• 26:36Shaan Puri?

  cut through the red tape, but you know, you you you respect their decisions. Then there's the fucking food truck guys, food truck guys, they think this is a bar, they're just drunk while they're prepping their tacos, they're pretty disgusting. And then you have the hot dog guy at the end. This guy straight up, okay, so there's like a sink, and if you don't know what a three compartment sink is, you haven't paid your blue collar dues, but basically a three compartment sink is like, kind of where you do the dishes in a in a commercial kitchen. And like, the three, three compartment sink is just literally, it's full of like, the dirtiest dishes, and just a chemical bomb you put in there to like, clean them. And the fucking hot dog guy in our commissary kitchen would just go and he'd just fill up the sink with the hot dogs that he's gonna be selling like, three hours later. He'd just be throwing the hot dogs around there, washing them, dry, you know, put them

• 27:21Shaan Puri?

  in the other sink to dry off. And it's like, this guy, there was zero, and I literally, I don't think I've had a hot dog since, uh, because I saw how the sausage was made, and I now never want to see it again. So that's my phone service announcement, don't eat hot dogs.

• 27:34Sam Parr?

  I agree. I was clean. I mean, I kept myself clean, but I can see why most don't. You can get, you don't have to, you can just get away with it.

• 27:42Shaan Puri?

  It's not even counting what's the meat. I'm like, forget the meat, let's say the meat was pure, the way it's handled, disgusting.

• 27:48Sam Parr?

  So I think you could build a new version of a of a of a health department's score, actually. I actually think that's legitimate.

• 27:54Shaan Puri?

  Dude, how many other, Eric, can we just do this, like, okay, I'm bullshit about Twitter right now, could you just do this where it's like, you have a content, you have like, a content score, like, you know, just like, how, uh, either like, how, like, you know, uh, safe and kind of like, non-offensive your content is, like, maybe it's something that's like, you know, it's around your cancellation.

• 28:12Sam Parr?

  You know what we should do?

• 28:13Shaan Puri?

  Or the interestingness, or your fans score, like, how much your fans care about you, we just bullshit like your engagement score, but we make it really visible. It's like, Sam, he may not have the most followers, but his followers love him. It's like, we make your Q score, you know what Q, Q is, it's like a popularity ranking, uh, we just make, oh, you haven't heard this, Q score, it's like a thing for celebrities. Yeah, it's a thing for like, Hollywood celebrities, like, what's your, what's your popularity, kind of like, it's not approval rating, it's like your popularity rating, how, how well do people know you? And like, you know, Obama has a high Q score. And, uh, I feel like you could do that on social media with clout, but just like, bullshit the whole thing.

• 28:50Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I think that's crazy. And I think that's good. Klout Score. I actually think Klout was amazing. So Klout was a company that was around. It was spelled K L O U T. They had like 100 employees. They raised a lot of money. They ended up selling for $100 million. I think it was like $100 million of stock in a privately held company. Like, I don't think it was actually that good of an exit. But they

• 29:10Shaan Puri?

  Great idea, Klout. Early. You were just too early.

• 29:12Sam Parr?

  Amazing idea. Way too early. Amazing idea. If it were around now, it would be the best.

• 29:18Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, somebody restart Klout and just DM us.

• 29:21Sam Parr?

  I thought it was it was a great branding and people still to me make jokes about Klout. Like, they'll be like, oh, I got to increase that Klout score. I know what they're talking about. I had a Klout score and basically what happened, I mean, my Klout score wasn't that great. I had like 5,000 friends on Facebook, though, and so I qualified and so McDonald's

• 29:36Shaan Puri?

  The fact that you're justifying it shows how good of a hook this is.

• 29:39Sam Parr?

  Well, I would use it all the time. McDonald's would send me a $5 gift card once a month.

• 29:44Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah, amazing.

• 29:46Sam Parr?

  It was it was so cool. I loved Klout. So I think that could exist and I think that could that could kick ass. I think this is like, yeah, I think there's a lot of interesting businesses here.

• 29:56Shaan Puri?

  I don't even think you really need to do that much differently, right? Like, there's I'm sure there's like 20% of things you would tweak, maybe in the execution. Like, you know, maybe you don't have to raise that much money. I think the timing is the biggest tweak that you needed to make. Maybe you change the way it's calculated or the way you promote it or the business model, whatever. I don't think you need to change that much. I just think that the time, the time is now and like, as Donald Trump basically created this thing called fake news, I think fake news is very underrated, how like big of a wave that actually was created, how much distrust there is around around brands and entities now. And so people are kind of like the atomic unit of a brand at this point. And so, yeah, I think that that Klout, Klout should be remade.

• 30:35Sam Parr?

  How about the fact that so HubSpot has a hub. So this one woman who works with me just got Scrum certified and we paid five grand, it was $5,000 or $4,000. And I'm like, so Scrum, I don't even know what it is. I guess it's just like a project management.

• 30:51Shaan Puri?

  It's how you manage engineering sprints. Yeah.

• 30:53Sam Parr?

  And we paid five grand and I was like, who the heck like is the scrum like decision maker? And then I realized HubSpot.

• 30:59Shaan Puri?

  Called a scrum master, by the way.

• 31:01Sam Parr?

  Is it really? Oh, my God. It's much more like legit that it that it probably really is. HubSpot has HubSpot certification courses. And if you look on people's LinkedIn, they they brag about passing HubSpot certification courses. We got to talk. I got to talk to us. I'll be like, how did I'm like, look, like you guys are amazing and wonderful and legit. But like you weren't always amazing, wonderful and legit. You were just starting out and you somehow convinced people to trust you and take this seriously.

• 31:23Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 31:23Sam Parr?

  How on earth did you do that? Because that's amazing.

• 31:26Shaan Puri?

  So they paid HubSpot. So the so HubSpot is the collector of the 5,000 dues for the scrum training?

• 31:31Sam Parr?

  No, sorry. There's a different organization that does scrum, but HubSpot, you've never seen people brag about their HubSpot certification. So like if you Google HubSpot certification, they've got like these classes on social media.

• 31:42Shaan Puri?

  People if they tried to brag to me about that. So that's an immediate block.

• 31:46Sam Parr?

  So there's like inbound sales, HubSpot marketing software, inbound marketing. And if you Google people, if you Google like that and LinkedIn, there's so many people that put that on their LinkedIn, like certified in.

• 31:58Sam Parr?

  Whatever. Like, there's so many people that cite HubSpot as their thing. And so like, and so they put it like, you know, like one time, if you look up Tyra Banks on LinkedIn, she probably still does this. She puts that she graduates from Harvard. Okay. She went to a Harvard. Executive learning day and people put like, yeah, it's like a two day. Look at, look at, if you look up Tyra Banks.

• 32:24Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so she did a nine week program for executives called the the owner president management extension program. Yeah, dude, Harvard makes it unbelievable. I'm going to break this down next to next podcast. Harvard's kind of whole business model around online programs, Harvard Business Review, the the media company. I'm going to break that whole thing down because it's crazy.

• 32:43Sam Parr?

  Do it with you. I've studied the business review a bunch. All right. Can I tell you about another another idea or a person, actually?

• 32:49Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 32:49Sam Parr?

  All right. There's this guy named Matt. How do you pronounce his last name? From.

• 32:54Shaan Puri?

  Which or whatever.

• 32:56Sam Parr?

  I don't want to butcher this guy. Mick. Sorry, Matt. I like you. I just don't know how to say your last name.

• 33:01Shaan Puri?

  It's kind of like Mickey. And then with the weeks at the end, make it weeks.

• 33:06Sam Parr?

  Mikewitz. I've known about this guy for a long time, but I want to tell you everything that he's done, because I bet you you know all of his work, but you maybe didn't know he was the one behind it. So in 1998, when he lived in Australia, he started this company while he was in high school called SitePoint. SitePoint basically is a publisher of books, courses and articles for developers. And so you can like learn HTML, CSS, Java, Ruby, all that. They've never raised any funding and they have like 50 employees. I imagine if I had a bet, they probably make five to 10, maybe five to 15 million dollars a year. That's my guess.

• 33:40Sam Parr?

  Well, how do you spell it?

• 33:43Shaan Puri?

  Mitskovich.

• 33:44Sam Parr?

  Mitskovich. His name is Matt Mitskovich. Have you heard of SitePoint? SitePoint.com?

• 33:48Shaan Puri?

  No, is it still around?

• 33:50Sam Parr?

  All right. It's still around. And so like I've heard his story. He was like, basically, I started this like as a forum and then a blog. And people would come to my forum and blog and I was taking like $10,000 advertising checks when I was like 17 in high school. So I dropped out of high school and went all in on this. Then, when he went all in on it, his forum on SitePoint, people were buying and selling businesses on it. And so he spun out one of the forums into its own business called Flippa. You've heard of Flippa, right?

• 34:13Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 34:14Sam Parr?

  So I believe they-

• 34:15Shaan Puri?

  Prolific. This guy's really prolific. You haven't even got the two of his hits.

• 34:20Sam Parr?

  Listen, so he started Flippa, which is a marketplace for buying and selling smallish websites and stores and things like that. They've got millions of users. Flippa is like now micro acquires in the space, but Flippa is like considered like the thing. And in fact, I think they just raised a little bit of funding, like 20 million dollars recently. It's got hundreds of employees. It's a pretty big business. Third, on SitePoint, he also discovered that people in the forum were

• 34:45Sam Parr?

  buying and selling designs. And so he started this thing called 99designs, which is amazing. 99designs is one of the best sites that I've used. It's a great place that you basically, you on 99designs, you give them $1,000, you tell them what you want. And like 100 designers give you a mockup of what they think that your project should look like. And then you pay for it. You select the one you like and they get the money. So they they do close to 100 million, I believe, in revenue. They've raised $45 million in funding. Okay, from there, he also saw that people were hiring all types of devs. So he started- Hire.com Hire.com I think it kind of fizzled out a little bit. It might still be around. It's definitely around, but it kind of fizzled a little, but they raised $132 million in funding. Definitely could still be quite big. So that's pretty amazing. Then he now his next thing is he's creating.

• 35:29Sam Parr?

  And so this is all has to do with SitePoint. He started SitePoint in 1998. His next thing is called Unstoppable Domains. You know what that is? I bet you know that is better than I do. Go ahead.

• 35:37Shaan Puri?

  It's just a way to buy, uh, buy domains in crypto. So like I have a domain that ends instead of dot com. It ends in dot ETH, which is dot ETH, right? So it's a, it's a domain name service like, uh, it's a, it's a domain, uh, domain. I think it's a registrar. So it's a domain registrar for making crypto domains. And the reason it's called unstoppable domains is because when you own that namespace, nobody, it's on the blockchain. Nobody can sort of take it away from you. Nobody can switch the rules on you. It is sort of there forever.

• 36:08Sam Parr?

  So this guy, Matt Mitzkowitz, has done all of this.

• 36:12Shaan Puri?

  I don't think he started it, by the way. I think he joined it, which is I DM'd him when he joined it. Cause I was like, if, if the guy who's a founder of all these successful companies joins a company, it's like one of the strongest signals that there could be. Um, like just recently, uh, I was saying this about, uh, my, my friend, uh, David McIntosh. He started Tenor. It's a, it's a gift keyboard, sold it to Google for I think a couple hundred million dollars. And then he joined Instacart as like one of their execs. So you know, like anytime you're, you, it's like this person's independently massively wealthy. Has started their own company and they, if they want to join as like, not even like join as number one, it wasn't join a CEO, didn't join a CTO, just CPO.

• 36:51Shaan Puri?

  He was like, you know, maybe like in the top 10 of the Insta work execs. So that's when you know, like, oh shit, this is like, uh, this is a juggernaut. That's this, this person thinks this is a hundred billion dollar company if they're doing something like that.

• 37:03Sam Parr?

  Crazy to me. So the, and this guy, Matt.

• 37:05Shaan Puri?

  Let me just tell you. So I DM'd him. I go, you join unstoppable. Super interesting move. I said, what makes you bullish on it? Here's what he said. I'm just going to read it out loud. Uh, may or may not mean anything. He goes, there's a trillion dollar asset class. Which is basically domains that people are navigating, use the equivalent of an IP address. If web and crypto, if web three and crypto is here to stay, then building the identity, like the, the, basically the address for consumers is one of the most important companies of the decade. Then he's like, in the normal, normal web, you have ICANN. You know what ICANN is?

• 37:37Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So it's like, it's like, it's like a committee, which is kind of bullshit to me, but.

• 37:41Shaan Puri?

  It's a committee that decides shit about the internet. What domains can be, you know, can you have a dot photo or dot biz?

• 37:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 37:47Shaan Puri?

  A domain like ICANN kind of decides those types of things. He goes, it's one of the oldest monopolies on the internet. It's begging to be disrupted. Crypto gives us a way to disrupt that because it's creating like a new, a new ground where they don't have jurisdiction. They don't have rule of law over there.

• 38:03Sam Parr?

  That's one of the few crypto examples or blockchain examples where I wholeheartedly agree. And I think that's actually incredibly useful and totally right. I don't know who's going to host the domain or like how that works. But I agree with that, like idea, because if, if you're doing something, ICANN or whoever can, can pull it.

• 38:20Shaan Puri?

  Right. Um, yeah, anyway, so, so, so then he was just telling me a little more about it, but I was like, yeah, that's, that's great. That's cool. And I, I bought an unstoppable domain.

• 38:30Sam Parr?

  This guy's amazing. So, um, and get this, he's 37. He's only 37 years old. Amazing. This is, have you, you've heard of him?

• 38:39Shaan Puri?

  People don't really, yeah, people don't really know about this guy, like, or they don't really talk about this guy. But he's, it's a pretty prolific career and he's kind of like independent and definitely like a, um, I don't know. He's an independent thinker. I could tell, right? Cause 999 Designs is actually a pretty like very novel mechanism. It's like, oh, what if we created kind of like a design auction, right?

• 38:59Sam Parr?

  And it's the best. It's the best.

• 39:01Shaan Puri?

  Like we used it for our podcast thumbnail or our cover photo.

• 39:04Sam Parr?

  Yes, we did.

• 39:05Shaan Puri?

  Done through 999 Designs.

• 39:06Sam Parr?

  And check this out. When we did it, HubSpot, um, like had all these designers work on this stuff. And they made like some pretty good logos and then, but we still went with, uh, this guy in the Philippines who made this logo. And it was even, it was better than all of them. The, the, the trends.co website I had designed on there because like, you know, like when you work with the designer, you don't want to be rude to your own designer and be like, no, this sucks. Can you just do exactly what I told you to do, please? But you can do that with a freelancer, a little bit more than a full timer. So I'm, I'm a fan of 999 Designs.

• 39:35Shaan Puri?

  And by the way, it looks like there's this guy, Mark, uh, who is his co-founder, cause it says co-founder of 999 Designs, Flippa and SitePoint. So it's like, that's pretty cool. I like when people create this kind of like duo. It's like, yeah, let's just build a bunch of companies together. I find that to be like pretty inspiring. Uh, and it tells you something about how somebody is to work with, if somebody wants to keep going back in and, uh, and work with you again.

• 39:56Sam Parr?

  And I've talked to this guy. I actually invited him to HustleCon two or three different times and he committed and then some scheduling stuff happened and we weren't able to make it happen. But I've talked to him on the phone. He's very humble. So I'm a big fan of this guy.

• 40:10Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, me too. Okay, so he's kind of like our little, you know, internet founder of the week. I don't know. We need a name for that. We had the Billy of the week. We got the blue collar side hustle. We need something for just founders who are badass who have done like serial entrepreneurs.

• 40:25Sam Parr?

  Yeah, this guy's great. All right. You want to do one or two more?

• 40:28Shaan Puri?

  Uh, yeah, let's do some other ones. Okay, so do you know this company, Guthrie Ranker? I bet you know about it and I bet most of them don't.

• 40:36Sam Parr?

  I can tell you all about them.

• 40:38Shaan Puri?

  Tell me all about it. So last night, I've been on this binge. I gotta say, I've been on this binge. I'm rereading the book that really got me into being like, kind of like a startup founder.

• 40:53Sam Parr?

  Can I guess? Can I guess?

• 40:55Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 40:56Sam Parr?

  Think and Grow Rich.

• 40:58Shaan Puri?

  No, but that is a good guess, especially if I know what we're talking about. I actually haven't read that book. So I want to read it now after reading about Guthrie Ranker. But

• 41:07Shaan Puri?

  I am rereading The Four Hour Work Week. So your bud, Tim Ferriss, wrote this book. I got it right when I was starting my first company. So I started my company before this. But once I started reading it, I was like, oh, wow. There's people that are like me that are out there who think this way. And this guy's got like, systems about this. I'm just, I just started figuring this stuff out. This guy's like, been doing this for a decade. Great. And I got what you call the four hour fever, which is what happens right after you read the book, is my own term, because I've given this book to maybe 50 people since and they all get the four hour fever right after I infect them with the book. And

• 41:47Sam Parr?

  We already lived the four hour work week.

• 41:48Shaan Puri?

  So now we live it. And so I went back and I'm rereading it. I'm like, okay, I'd rather, yeah, I want to reread the classics. And so I went back and rereading it. And I just want to see, you know, what of it do I still believe in? What of it do I disagree with? What's changed? Anyway, it's pretty interesting. I'm taking a ton of notes. And I texted you this while I was reading it. I go, let's write a bestselling book. 10 million copies sold. The next four hour week and then you're like, okay, easy. And I was like, all right, perfect. Um, cause I'm serious about that. I'm like obsessed with this. So I've just been writing content. I've been writing and I've been reading all weekend long. Like I've just been binging, like I'm up till four in the morning every night doing this. And I'm like, pretty convinced that we could put out like an amazing, amazing book. So anyways, that's like, you know, just calling

• 42:32Shaan Puri?

  my shot. Um, gonna do that. We'll be surprised.

• 42:36Sam Parr?

  We're gonna use, well, I want to be involved. Let me, let's.

• 42:39Shaan Puri?

  I invited, I wanted to do, I'm like, I'm doing this either way. But I was like, what would be the best? I go, what if the best writer I know partnered with me on this and we traded off chapters. So like, I can say something, I'll write a chapter and I, what I want you to do is basically, I want you to read it. And then you write what you would write right after you read that. So it's like, uh, you know, like, actually, I totally agree with Sean with this one. I have my own story of how I did that. Or disagree, I do it totally differently. And I just think that if we play off of each other a little bit, it can become a very interesting book. Cause it's not many books that are, that are out there that are like that. That may all change, but that's what's in my head.

• 43:14Sam Parr?

  I also think that we should do, there's one book that had a pretty fundamental change in my outlook and it's called Founders at Work. And it was by Jessica Livingston, the woman who started, uh, Y Combinator with Paul Graham, their husband and wife. And basically it was just interviews, but for some reason it was really special. And it was just interviews transcribed. I think we could do just interviews and write our analysis and reply to the interviews.

• 43:40Shaan Puri?

  And we, I read that book on a plane. I still remember it because there's a chapter in there about hotmail. And I just remember reading that book and being like, this is awesome. This is what, is this what it's like to start a company or be around people that start companies? This is fucking awesome. And you know, by the way, I hope this podcast ends up being that for some number of people in the world.

• 43:58Sam Parr?

  That could be our first book if you want, because that's like a pretty easy and actually amazing and could be fun.

• 44:04Shaan Puri?

  I don't even care on the details. I just know 10 million copies sold, bestseller. For some people, this is their version of For Our Work. What For Our Work was for me, I want this to be that for like a whole, you know, a million people out there. I think that would just be amazing.

• 44:16Sam Parr?

  So let's talk about Gunther Raker. Can I tell you what I know and you could tell me if it's true or not?

• 44:21Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, explain them. I did a deep dive on them last night. So

• 44:25Sam Parr?

  All right.

• 44:27Sam Parr?

  All right. So they are a marketing and IP owner. So they own like a, it's a business that markets other stuff. They mostly don't develop their own products, but they buy products or they license them. It started by a guy named Steven Gunther. Is that his name?

• 44:43Shaan Puri?

  There's a guy, one of them's last name is Gunther, Guthie, Guthie, not Guthie. And then the other guy's last name is Raker. So that's

• 44:49Sam Parr?

  And they, and they started, I think as early as the early eighties, they're in marketing and they bought, basically bought infomercials. And one of their first big hits was they bought the rights to the book Think and Grow Rich. And they created infomercials and direct response copywriting ads that they put in magazines and they sold shitloads of this book, like millions. And then they just repeated and then they eventually bought proactive. They own proactive. They own proactive and they own a bunch more. They probably do a billion, north of a billion in sales and they do the same type of model. Go ahead.

• 45:19Shaan Puri?

  So it's an infomercial, it's a direct response company, which basically they made their name by doing infomercial based sales. And they do about between one and a half to two billion in sales a year. They own brands that you've heard, they, they, they brought brands to market that you've heard of, like proactive. Also Tony Robbins, his kind of personal power, like audiobooks, Thinking Rich. So, okay. So here's kind of some of the cool stuff I found out about them. Okay. So how did it start? One of the guys, I think Guthie, he had started a company and this is how funny the world works and why really all you gotta do is just get in the game and start making shit happen because nobody could have predicted this path, right? So he starts a company that just does audio cassette production. So like copying. So like you have a cassette, you want more copies of that cassette.

• 46:05Shaan Puri?

  Send me the, send me the original recording. I'll make you a bunch of copies. So it's basically like, these guys are fucking like Kinko's, right? Like it's just like a printer for audio cassettes. And he gets this order and this guy says, hey, I need 200 to 250. Oh, sorry. I don't know why I said that. This is a small number. Basically, the guy wanted almost, almost 100,000 cassettes made. He goes, 100,000, what are you making? And, um, you know, it ended up being 50,000 copies of a cassette. That was about real estate, about how to make money doing real estate investments. And he's like, wow, this is, that's amazing. And he looked up the company and the guy was selling through infomercials. So he goes to his buddy, uh, Ranker and Ranker at this time, I think, had his family owned like, kind of like a, a resort, like a tennis resort or something like that. So he probably comes from a good family.

• 46:51Shaan Puri?

  So he goes, hey dude, this guy ordered for me 50,000 copies of this cassette. It's amazing. Forget making cassettes, like let's do this infomercial thing. That must be amazing. And so they go, okay, what are we gonna do? We need a product. And so they, that's when they were like, hey, what's, what's something we're both into? It's like they both had made their bones. They both really loved this book, Think and Grow Rich. And that's when they went and bought the rights to it for a hundred thousand dollars. They ended up making $10 million in the next three years off of sales of Think and Grow Rich, right? They basically bought the rights to Think and Grow Rich and they produced this infomercial. They hire this football player, Frank Tarkenton to do it. They go, and I, by the way, I watched the full 30 minute infomercial last night at four in the morning.

• 47:34Shaan Puri?

  I'm like, uh, I'm like watching this thing and you could find it on YouTube and it has 875 views on this video. And basically it's this infomercial and it starts with like, um, this production. And it's basically like these people, it's kind of like testimonials, but they don't tell you what the product is. It's like, you know, I always wanted to just own my own business. I was so tired of working for somebody else. And then finally, I felt like this is the solution, broken down into tactical steps. They don't tell you the name, right? And then it's like an interview with the founder of Domino's. He's like, I never went to college. I had the lowest GPA in my high school class, but I read this book. And afterwards, you know, like it became my blueprint for how I started Domino's.

• 48:18Shaan Puri?

  And like, it's like, it's like, what's the book? What's it? It just gets you like salivating. What's the book? And then three minutes in Frank Tarkety comes on. He says, you know, the richest people in the world, Andrew Carnegie and the Rothschilds and whoever else, like all these people are Andrew Carnegie commissioned this guy to go study what the most successful people on earth, the Rothschilds and others were doing. And he went and he interviewed all of them and he packs it into attack. It's all that, that knowledge and wisdom into a book that's been a best seller for years. It's the book that executives say is their secret weapon, blah, blah, blah. It's just like, it's like such a hard sell, but that's like what infomercials are. It's like, once you get in, you're like, all right, I'll buy it. What is it? So yeah, like, okay, I'll order the thing. And so that's how they sold Think and Grow Rich. It's kind of like an amazing infomercial.

• 49:01Shaan Puri?

  I recommend you go watch it if you're kind of like a marketing person.

• 49:04Sam Parr?

  By the way, they bought that in 1988. So a hundred grand is the equivalent of, is this true? Only $225,000. So it's only 2.2X.

• 49:14Sam Parr?

  And when they, uh, what would the takeaway here should not be like, I can't do that nowadays. But actually the, if you look at the infomercial and if you go and if you Google like Guthrie Raker infomercial breakdown, or if you just go and make your own and you look at, you break it down and you like copy it word for word and you break down the sections and you apply that section to a sales letter right now, it 100% will continue to work.

• 49:40Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 49:41Sam Parr?

  Like if you see their infomercial, like the ladies are going to be wearing like 1980s clothes and the guys will have weird haircuts. And you're like, oh my God, it's so old. No, it will continue to work.

• 49:50Shaan Puri?

  And TV infomercials at the time was like dirt cheap. So they were they, when they did the thing of growth, they just bought TV space in six small TV markets. And like you could buy the midnight slot, the 2am slot. And these are basically like, it's essentially free. They needed some programming to fill airtime. And so these started out really, really cheap. Now it's gotten much more expensive, right? So like, let's take proactive. I think proactive at its heyday or, or, you know, kind of like some, you know, this is maybe a 10 year old data at this point. But they were spending about $250 million a year just on the media buying. So just on the infomercial space. And then they're spending like, because if you go, if you watch a proactive thing, it's like Justin Bieber was their like

• 50:32Shaan Puri?

  signature person, right? Because proactive was basically saying, hey, teens, you don't need, you don't have to have acne. You can get rid of your acne this way. And Justin Bieber was like, you know, the teen idol with great skin. And so it was like, uh, Justin Bieber and Adam Levine and like, you know, the maroon five guy. Like there's all these people, right? I don't know who else it was, but they, they would get paid five to 10 million dollars to appear in a proactive infomercial, like crazy money for, for an influencer. Like that's a big influencer spend. And so this is just influencer marketing done like at level 12, as I like to say, right? Like what is the, what is the maxed out version of this? Proactive is the maxed out version of it. And so they own like a bunch of brands. They own like glow by J Lo. It's like, you want J Lo's skin?

• 51:15Shaan Puri?

  Buy J Lo's glow. Then it's like, oh, you want, uh, this other supermodel skin? Buy her thing. It's a very much around skincare because that I guess is like one of the like, you know, that's like the sweet spot of like price, big market and celebrity endorsements go a long way. The two big niches are fitness. Or I would say three, skincare, fitness, self-help. So like Tony Robbins became like a household name using this on the self-help side. On the fitness side, they had a bunch of different brands and then Beachbody took the same playbook. And they created P90X and the Beachbody program using the same, same idea. They became competitors.

• 51:50Sam Parr?

  There's a guy, I'm trying to think of what, what's it called? It's called, uh, Mind something. I'm trying to look it up, but basically there's a guy, it's not mind body, but it's similar to that word. I can't remember what it was.

• 52:01Shaan Puri?

  Mind Valley.

• 52:01Sam Parr?

  Mind Valley. Yes. You knew exactly what I was talking about.

• 52:04Shaan Puri?

  There's a guy in like the Philippines or Thailand, or I don't know where they're based.

• 52:07Sam Parr?

  Yeah, there's some, I don't want to be disrespectful, but there's some weird stuff going on with this company. I don't know what the truth is, but basically if you look up this company, Mind Valley, mindvalley.com. He does this now, and basically this company, what they do, they probably do 50 million a year in sales. And what they do is they buy programs from people. So they have one called Lifebook, one called Om, Om Vana. I think that's a yoga thing. And then they have Ever Coach, which is, uh, I actually don't know what some of these services are, but they have a bunch of these. And what they do is they find people who have like a yoga course or some type of program on, so they have programs on sleep. They've got programs on yoga, on meditation.

• 52:49Shaan Puri?

  It's like health, wellness and hippie dippy shit, you know? It's like a combination of like very legit to like, uh, you know, like tantric astrology or whatever, you know? Like it could be anything.

• 52:58Sam Parr?

  And they're experts on long form copywriting, which is basically an infomercial. And they're really good at buying traffic and they make tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue, all bootstrapped. And so if you want to look at the internet version of this, there's also Agora, which is a 1.5 billion dollars. And another version of this is, uh, we had a guy named Craig, is Craig Clemens. We had a guy named Craig Clemens. His business is called Golden Hippo. They own, I think eight or nine brands. And I think, if I remember correctly, didn't he say they do like mid nine figures in revenue?

• 53:32Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think, I think Golden Hippo or our buddy Craig's company, I think it's on par with Guthrie Ranker. In terms of like, sort of like success, I, I think other record does, does over a billion in sales. So, you know, it's, it's the next level, but. Golden Hippo is that from the internet for the for the internet instead of instead of TV infomercials, they basically just do it with like long form blogs and then long form embedded videos. So if you ever like go down the rabbit hole, like I've tried to do it. I've tried to figure out like, look at some of his brands.

• 54:00Sam Parr?

  They hide their brands. They hide them really well.

• 54:03Shaan Puri?

  Very hard to find, but when you do find one, you're like, oh, okay. And then it's hard to find where they're advertising. It's like, okay, so they buy a display ad through Tabula on some random article and it's for a toe cream toe fungus removal. And then you click that and then you watch a 40 minute video that auto plays with no pause or skip button. And then by the end of that, you're like, goddamn, like, you know, if you ended up making it there, you're almost certainly going to buy this token. Then you subscribe to the SMSs and then you get like text messages from this legit doctor who, you know, is the face of the brand. It's kind of like the, the, the, the, you know, like Rodan and Fields is another one, which spun out of Gunther Raker. It's basically like two, they created proactive. So I think it's two dermatologists that created the formula for proactive. And then they left and created Rodan and Fields,

• 54:48Shaan Puri?

  which is a multi-level marketing company that does this, that created their own, they created new formulations and this one they owned, you know, a hundred percent. I think that's a multi billion dollar company as well.

• 54:58Sam Parr?

  And if you're on your computer, listening to this, one of Golden Hippo's brands is called Gundry M D. I think Dr. Steven Gundry, a lot of people, he's kind of famous, I think. He's not famous in my world, but I think he's famous in like, kind of mainstream world, actually. Gundry M D dot com is their website. Go to that website and look at this website and it they make it look like it's a small, like almost mom and pop thing.

• 55:22Shaan Puri?

  First thing, peak mobility plus. It's all about you. Mobility. You love mobility.

• 55:26Sam Parr?

  Mobility. And they even sell dog food. It's like, it's, it's a pretty wild business. And I think this is their most popular brand. This brand, if you told me does a hundred million in sales, I actually wouldn't be surprised. But if you didn't know better, you go to it, you would have no idea.

• 55:41Shaan Puri?

  Right. And this is all about like gut health, plant-based, you know, plant-based eating, stuff like that. And so like, you know, I get their text messages all the time, like, don't, you know, don't get leaky gut syndrome, like by this thing. And, uh, and so, you know, it's very fascinating. And the reason I like bringing these up or like what you brought up, I think all the companies you brought up today are cool because. If you work in our, like, most of our friends who are like successful internet entrepreneurs, tech people, Silicon Valley executives at big tech companies, they will have never heard of any of this. In fact, I did a breakdown of one of Golden Hippo's flows and I sent it to all the execs at Twitch. I go, hey, I went down the rabbit hole of this.

• 56:21Sam Parr?

  They laughed at you. They laughed at you.

• 56:23Shaan Puri?

  They were just like, huh, fascinating. And they went back to doing like, you know, spending millions of dollars on Facebook ads that just said, download Twitch. And it's like, okay, like, you know, like, is there any creativity we could do here? Like to try to like, like, I just showed you one of the most creative things and like, nobody really cared. Nobody asked any follow-up questions. Some people were just like, huh, cool.

• 56:44Sam Parr?

  Send it to me. Send it to me.

• 56:46Shaan Puri?

  I'm gonna send it to you. It was, it's crazy to me. And so like, so I feel like there's a lot you can learn from, from these kind of under the radar brands or non-traditional. And a lot of people just write them off. They're like, oh, infomercial, sleazy affiliate marketing, sleazy MLM, sleazy. And like, you may be right about like the, the sort of like, that these aren't the best products, that they're maybe the best sold products. But look, I'm trying to get great at sales. So why would I not look at the best sold products? It's like a no-brainer to me.

• 57:15Sam Parr?

  This was a good one, I think.

• 57:16Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think it's a good one. Uh, this is definitely sort of like unusual slash potentially gray hat. Trust and untrust trustworthy businesses. Um, you know, I think it's, I think it's gonna be entertaining. So, yeah.

• 57:29Sam Parr?

  Can we wrap up with, well, let me wrap up. First of all, gun three raker is amazing. I would love to see your notes on that if you can share them. Um, the also, I want to wrap up with one thing that you, on Twitter, you said you wouldn't call me to invest in your company because I'm risk averse. You, you said this and I want to explain myself because that was a dig at me. I don't think you meant to be rude, but I took it as you being rude. And I think that. A lot of our friends call me this as well. You guys are so wrong. I just don't take dumb risks. So here's my philosophy. Listen, here's my philosophy. I, so from age 20, I said, by 30, I'm going to make enough money that I never have to worry about money ever again.

• 58:13Shaan Puri?

  And not.

• 58:13Sam Parr?

  And so that's when I started my company. Many would say that was incredibly risky. I would say, compared to the average Joe, it was, but it wasn't that risky, the reality. It wasn't that risky. Then I got the money and I invest in safe stuff. But here's the thing, when I find shit that I love, I go all in on it. I just, what you and a lot of our friends do is they go, they go to, they spread their shit like wild. I try to go all in on a couple of things. So I think, I don't think I'm risky or risk averse. I think that I just pick and choose them differently.

• 58:46Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's true. Like, okay, let's say, uh, let's say I was starting a company. Uh, and I think, I think I know what your answer would be, but let's see. If I was starting a company and, um, let's say I either didn't have an idea, I just said, I'm going to start a company, or I said, it's going to be in this space, but I don't know exactly what, or I said an idea that you're like, I don't even get that, or that sounds kind of dumb or fuzzy to me. Um, would you just invest then? Or would you want to wait? Cause you know, I would let you in at any point. So you're like, you could.

• 59:15Sam Parr?

  Well, what, what, I would ask one question. Are you going all in and this is going to be your only focus?

• 59:21Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 59:22Sam Parr?

  If the answer is, if the answer is yes, I would be like.

• 59:24Shaan Puri?

  And that wouldn't raise money.

• 59:25Sam Parr?

  I wouldn't, I wouldn't even ask the valuation. I would just say, okay.

• 59:29Shaan Puri?

  So that's what I think the answer is. And that's kind of the, so the person asked a good question. I did a Twitter, kind of like, I don't know, like AMA, where I was like, you know, just shoot me a questions. My, my wife took the kids out to Target. I got an hour. I want some immediate rush of Twitter love. Let's just do, do some Q and A. And the person said, you're raising money for a company. Who are your, who's the first person you call? And I said, I said, like, here's my first five phone calls. And I basically.

• 59:53Sam Parr?

  Name them, name them.

• 59:55Shaan Puri?

  Uh, I don't really remember what I said. So I.

• 59:57Sam Parr?

  I'll tell you, Suli, Suli Ali, I totally agree with that. He's an amazing operator, very good investor. Scott Belsky, amazing investor, good signal to everyone. Uh, the third was, uh.

• 1:00:09Shaan Puri?

  Justin Kalback, I think I had on there.

• 1:00:12Sam Parr?

  Who's a, I don't know him well, but he's an amazing investor.

• 1:00:16Shaan Puri?

  And then I had, uh, Balaji, I think I had on there, that put Balaji on.

• 1:00:19Sam Parr?

  Okay, obvious reason.

• 1:00:21Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:21Sam Parr?

  Pretty brilliant.

• 1:00:21Shaan Puri?

  And then I had one more person. Who, who else is on there? And I can't find the tweet.

• 1:00:26Sam Parr?

  I forget who that fifth person was as well. But I I'm not offended that I didn't make that list. I'm offended that people think that I'm risk adverse. And and I had a friend text me, he goes, do people think you're risk adverse? And I was like, oh, I think they do, but I think they're wrong.

• 1:00:40Shaan Puri?

  The first person I had was Michael Birch, the person who backed me with my previous company. So that that would be my first. So here's my like, in reality, you know, I'm answering these questions fast. In reality, I would actually not like two people who would, two people who I would not actually go to first would not be Scott Belsky or Bology, right? Because two reasons, I don't actually know them that well. They're not like my homies. They're like, you know, like Bology, I consider like, yeah, we're kind of friends, but we never like, we never hung out. Yeah, we're cordial. Scott Belsky, same sort of thing, like even, even, even more distance, actually. And so like, you know, respect, but you know, I can't say this is like my homie.

• 1:01:15Shaan Puri?

  And so in reality, my first five calls would be to, to like you, Suli, Michael Birch, you know, Ramon, like a bunch of our, like my true friends who I'm like, hey, I'm doing something.

• 1:01:26Sam Parr?

  Like family.

• 1:01:26Shaan Puri?

  Basically like family, exactly. And so that's like the true answer for Twitter, you know, I kind of like, I didn't want to put only people that people would not like not recognize their names. You know, so I put a couple of people that they would know in there. And it's also kind of aspirational, like who would I want to be in my company? I think Scott Belsky is an amazing product person. So I think that's just like an amazing person to have on there. I think Bology.

• 1:01:47Sam Parr?

  And he's like the greatest, and I mean, he's one of the best angel investors.

• 1:01:50Shaan Puri?

  Right, so he's done well, and I think he's well connected. So I think that's useful to have. And I think Bology also is like a different kind of signal. So super, obviously like hyper intelligent. He comes from the future, so that's helpful in general. And I think that, and I think that having him adds credibility. Because if you only have your friends there, it doesn't help you get the next investor on board necessarily. Because they look at who else is invested and if they don't see a name that they recognize, that they respect, then they don't, hasn't been like, kind of like, they don't see the Harvard stamp of approval on there. So you need that mix in there. So that's my justification for it. But yeah, in reality, of course, we'd call you.

• 1:02:27Sam Parr?

  I know, but you said, I don't care about that. I care about.

• 1:02:29Shaan Puri?

  Oh, that I told other people that you're risk averse.

• 1:02:33Sam Parr?

  I think that's crazy. I think

• 1:02:34Shaan Puri?

  I put the smiley face. That means it's a joke. The smiley face means it's a joke.

• 1:02:38Sam Parr?

  Oh, my God. You think that I'm re- and and just I'm gonna wrap it up and talk about Scott Belsky. Scott Belsky, his grandpa started Kaplan, Kaplan.

• 1:02:47Shaan Puri?

  Oh, really? No way. I did not know that.

• 1:02:49Sam Parr?

  Yeah, his his grandpa started Kaplan, sold that for like eighty or a hundred million dollars. And like, I think the eighties or nineties. So it's like, you know, that's like the equivalent of like three hundred dollars. Then, when he was twenty four, he invested fifteen thousand dollars into Pinterest when it was worth three million dollars. And fifteen thousand dollars into Uber when it was worth three million dollars. He did this while he was running his company called Behance, which was mostly bootstrapped until like six months before they sold it. They raised a Series A, but prior to that, it was bootstrapped. And when he sold it, he owned, I think, seventy five percent of it. He sold it for like a hundred and fifty million dollars. And then so he made probably a hundred million from the sale, probably a hundred million on Uber and a hundred million on Pinterest or give or take fifty percent. And now he's next in line to become CEO at Adobe.

• 1:03:34Shaan Puri?

  Gangster.

• 1:03:35Sam Parr?

  Which is like the fortieth largest company in the world.

• 1:03:38Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, total gangster. And good dude, just fun, fun hang, which is, you know.

• 1:03:44Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Financially successful. Whenever I met with him, I met with him a while ago. And like, he's like really good looking. He dresses really nice. And he's like fucking dreamy. He's like so optimistic and so happy. And whenever he like talked, I was just like, dude, whatever you say.

• 1:04:01Shaan Puri?

  He looks like the guy from Rune Five, Adam Levine.

• 1:04:04Sam Parr?

  Exactly.

• 1:04:04Shaan Puri?

  Looks like that guy.

• 1:04:05Sam Parr?

  Very good looking and he's nice as hell. He's really nice.

• 1:04:09Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Okay, we should, we should wrap it up before we just totally, you know, totally.

• 1:04:18Sam Parr?

  Gay for, gay for.

• 1:04:19Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, gay for Belsky. I was trying to think of something that would like be appropriate to say. My mind only went to dirty words.

• 1:04:25Sam Parr?

  I'm I'm gay for Belsky. I'm hardcore gay for him. I like him a lot.

• 1:04:29Shaan Puri?

  All right, we're out of here.