#194 with Justin Mares - The 4 Types of Side Hustles and how to launch a $100M DTC brand

Justin Mares (@jwmares) joins Sam (@TheSamParr) and Shaan (@ShaanVP) on this episode. Justin breaks down his most popular blog post, the 4 types of side hustles, and brings all kinds of ideas for how you can start your own. They also talk about Justin's DTC businesses - Kettle & Fire, Perfect Keto, and Surely Wines. They end the episode with a few ideas around camping, a new dating app, and how to leverage VAs & no code tools. --------- * 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: * (1:23) How Sam & Justin know each other * (5:17) Justin's DTC bone broth company * (10:00) Frameworks for side hustles * (13:22) Side Hustle 1: Buying an asset * (17:51) Side Hustle 2: Launching on top of a marketplace with demand * (22:08) Side Hustle 3: Unique product that grows through paid acquisition * (25:31) How Justin balances all his projects * (30:38) The $30K/year CGM experiment * (39:09) The skinny on Duck Duck Go * (42:32) Ideas: Airbnb camping * (45:27) Idea: Non alcoholic wine * (51:10) How to naturally boost your T levels * (1:01:04) Idea: Dating app based on your credit card usage * (1:03:49) Idea: The no code automation officer * (1:07:28) How to follow Justin

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

• 0:00Sam Parr?

  I feel like there's a world where this like, let's be conservative. I feel like there's a like, this is very clearly a $10 million a year thing that makes $2 million in profit.

• 0:21Sam Parr?

  Dude, there's like a picture in the background that is just getting my attention so much. That crooked, there's like a crooked picture. You see it?

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 0:31Sam Parr?

  There, there's a whole subreddit called like, uh, I forget what it's exactly called, but it's about like minor things that are just slightly off. Like, what were they thinking?

• 0:38Shaan Puri?

  It's like mildly, like there's mildly interesting, mildly irritating or something like that.

• 0:43Sam Parr?

  No, it's called mildly infuriating.

• 0:45Shaan Puri?

  Mildly infuriating, yeah, exactly.

• 0:46Sam Parr?

  Did you, did you just guess that?

• 0:47Shaan Puri?

  Well, I know about mildly interesting, so.

• 0:50Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Uh, anyway, what's going on? Justin, um, do you know, you know what you're getting into? Like, do you know what we're, what we do?

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I know a good bit.

• 0:59Sam Parr?

  All right, good. So you, uh, we'll just do like a really quick intro, but you, uh, you've done a bunch of stuff. I've known you since 2013, I think, right?

• 1:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think actually a little earlier when you were doing the roommate thing.

• 1:13Sam Parr?

  We both had roommate businesses and he, we just became friends. He moved to San, you, you moved to San Francisco. I ended up introducing him. Or no, he met one of the girl, a girl he dated for a long time in the elevator on his way up to our meeting, who was my coworker. And so we just ran in like the circle of friends for years.

• 1:33Shaan Puri?

  That's pretty good. So did you get the number in the elevator or what was the, uh, the elevator's not, it's only a two floor. You're on the second floor, right? So that's not too long to.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  It was a fast, it was a fast close.

• 1:45Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, how'd that happen? Tell me about it.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, we met. Do you want me to share this? Yeah, I'm happy to.

• 1:52Sam Parr?

  I don't have anything to hide.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  That's sweet. Yeah, I mean, we met and this girl walked into an elevator and I was like, just making a joke. She was, I think, like, maybe a tiny bit drunk and tried to hit a button, but there are no buttons in the elevator. It's one of those fancy ones that like you walk into and the attendant sends you somewhere. And so I just started sort of making fun of her for that. And in the several story ride with like two other stops, I was like, hey, we should hang out. And then we hung out at Sam's apartment with party and Shane numbers and have been friends since.

• 2:22Shaan Puri?

  Amazing. Okay. And Sam, did you, did you know that Justin was going to go on to do great things at the time? Did you spot that early or no? Was he just another dude?

• 2:29Sam Parr?

  Yeah, well, we were both scheming. We were only 22, I think, when we met. That was a while ago. And he, he had this roommate thing and I had a roommate thing. And I think anyone who ever started, that's like, there's like three things that you start right when you graduate college. Like, that's like one of them. And so they never work out well. Like, they're never that good. So anyway.

• 2:48Shaan Puri?

  By the way, those three are like music discovery. Oh, why is it so hard to find new music? We could solve that problem. It's roommate, roommate discovery is another one. And then.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Food delivery.

• 3:00Shaan Puri?

  It depends who you're.

• 3:01Sam Parr?

  And then like, or like college Craigslist.

• 3:03Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. Local Craigslist. Sometimes it's to do list, or sometimes if it's like your first time commuting, you're like, if you're, I know this for engineers, I met like 10 engineers that all made the same thing first, which was basically like a bus tracking software. It's like tells them when the bus is coming. Because they're just like, you're so tired of the unpredictable, like, is it seven minutes more or less? And they're like, I need to make an app for this.

• 3:25Sam Parr?

  Well, so, yeah, we were, we were both doing that. And I knew, I mean, whatever, we, that was a stepping stone for both of us. And then he started, you co-wrote a book with a guy, or no, you, you sold a company or you joined a company. Somehow you were working with my friend Terry and their whole business was buying and selling stuff. And that was like, pretty successful, I believe. And then you also started working on writing this book called Traction with this Duck Duck Go guy, Gabe is his name, right?

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Yep, exactly.

• 3:54Sam Parr?

  And then it was, and then he was doing Udemy courses. And I was like, yeah, I mean, we're all like schemers. He had like Airbnbs and I think you, did you buy cars and rent them to Uber people?

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Uh, no, my, my roommate was doing that. I was looking at doing it, but decided it was a miserable business. So didn't end up doing it.

• 4:08Sam Parr?

  And we were, so we were always doing stuff. We had, you had a Udemy course. I probably was selling some type of information stuff. And then he started this thing called Kettle and Fire, which. First of all, like I thought it was so stupid on so many capacities or so many uh

• 4:23Shaan Puri?

  But let's go through the worst.

• 4:25Sam Parr?

  So first I was like, he was like, I want to start like selling like this uh like hard good. I'm like, bro, like we work in the internet. Why would you ever want to like start like a goods thing? Then he was like, it's gonna be food. And I'm like, ah, you're like, why would you ever do that? Then he said it was bone broth. And I was like, bone broth? People drink bone broth? And then this was like before, like this whole, like, I don't even think the word D to C was a was a thing. And so I mean, I thought it was the dumbest thing ever. And I was wrong, right? Like it was, it's been a, it's been a smashing success. And he started this kettle and fire thing and it's quite big. You've also started uh my neighbor Sean, is this guy named Anthony. I don't know who did it first. One of you guys like had this thing called uh Perfect Keto,

• 5:08Sam Parr?

  where you're selling keto products. And then you guys like combine, you you.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  So we we partnered up on it. Basically, we, I was like running kettle and fire and as I do sometimes, looking for like another side hustle thing to start on the side. Uh, and he had another business that was in the supplement space, but the two of us were just like, hey, we should work on a small side project together, make something that does 20 grand a month. And like, once we hit that threshold, we'll like blow it all on a ridiculous trip to Japan. And that was like the whole goal of the business.

• 5:36Sam Parr?

  And it's like pretty big, right?

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, we we thought it would take like a year or two to get to 20 grand a month. And we did it in the first like 45 days. It was insane.

• 5:45Sam Parr?

  And then kettle and fire is like a big thing too. You guys like, did you raise money or did you sell a portion of it?

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, so kettle and fire, we uh we raised money. We bootstrapped for the first 18 months, raised a tiny bit of money, less than a million dollars, ran it another like 16 months and then decided that the the opportunity was big enough that it made sense for us to raise. So we raised 16 million dollars in 2018. Uh, about half of that went to secondary and the other half went to like actually putting money into the business.

• 6:14Shaan Puri?

  So I've heard a number that either kettle and fire or perfect keto or both.

• 6:20Shaan Puri?

  Did a hundred million in revenue. I don't know if that's a cumulative lifetime number. I don't know if that's an annual number. Is this a public number or is this, what can you tell me about this? Cause that was a big number. I was very surprised and I'm a customer. I have like six of your bone broths, you know, sitting in my pantry right now.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:36Shaan Puri?

  I really like.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 6:37Shaan Puri?

  There's one flavor I really like and I feel like I never get it in any store. And then I'm like, all right, let me try these other five and see if any of them can match that one. I really love.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  What's the one that you're super into?

• 6:47Shaan Puri?

  Uh, I don't remember which one it's, it's like the top. It's like, I think it's like one of the Thai lime.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  The Tom Yum.

• 6:52Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. I think it's either the Tom Yum or one of the other ones like, it's like, that's like a Thai curry type flavor.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  And yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's one of my favorites.

• 6:59Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. And some of those, by the way, are nasty, but some of them are really good. And so I'm like, it's like, you know, those like, when you get a pack of cards, you're like looking for a hologram, like a holographic Charizard inside and then you get a squirtle. That's how I feel about kettle and fire. I know this is not common, but that's just my personal experience with, with so far.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  Thanks, Ben. I'll take that as a compliment, I guess.

• 7:21Shaan Puri?

  Okay. But back, back to the business side. So, uh, I was a customer, but I was shocked when I heard that hundred million number. What is that number?

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that's not cumulative. Uh, you know, we, we, we stopped sort of disclosing revenue numbers recently, but I can say in 2019, like the two businesses combined did north of a hundred.

• 7:37Shaan Puri?

  Gotcha. And is, what is Perfect Keto? So I know kettle and fire. What's Perfect Keto?

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. So Perfect Keto is a, a line of supplements and food products for people interested in lowering their carb and sugar intake. And so we, we have like a clean label line of foods and supplements for people on a ketogenic diet, or who just like want to eat fewer carbs and no sugars.

• 7:55Shaan Puri?

  Gotcha. And are you keto?

• 7:56Sam Parr?

  And Sean, the guy who started it by, or his partner is literally my next door neighbor.

• 8:01Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. But you also say everyone's your neighbor. So I never know what to believe. And then I came to visit you and you drove me around. You're like, that's where this guy lives. That's where this person lives. That's where this person lives. So now I, now I believe you, but somebody's listening to the pod, they're like, wait, he said his neighbor is Neville. Then he said his neighbor is the guy who made the ice barrel thing that we talked about last time. Then he said his neighbor is the student loan guy. Then he said his neighbor is this other thing and.

• 8:25Sam Parr?

  Student, student loan hero guy and ice barrel guy are the same guy. They live like, he lives like 20 houses down. Anthony literally lives direct, like, uh, like 30 feet from me.

• 8:36Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 8:37Sam Parr?

  Uh, yeah, like literally right there.

• 8:38Shaan Puri?

  So the content, I guess the context here is. You knew Justin and Lucy and I've never met Justin.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  No, I did not, not Lucy.

• 8:46Shaan Puri?

  Oh, you know, well, okay.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  And intimately.

• 8:48Shaan Puri?

  And you've done two things I think that are really interesting. One is the perfect keto stuff and kettle and fire, basically building a brand that that's been pretty damn successful. And then the other is you write content and I want to actually talk about some of the content stuff you write. So you have the book traction, that's a good book, but on your blog, there's one blog post that I remember it's been sent to me several times. So I know other people like it too. So let's start there if you're, if you're cool with it, which is you have this side hustle post on, on your blog. And I'm assuming this is probably one of your more popular blog posts, is that right?

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely.

• 9:21Shaan Puri?

  And you basically outline that you've done a bunch of side hustles and then you have like, kind of like you break it down as like, there's these four types of side hustle. So can you give us kind of like, give us the, the side hustle bit here, which is like.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  And if you scroll all the way down to that sheet you're on, you'll see your.

• 9:36Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, which is basically like, what are the side hustles you've done? All right, how, how do you think about side hustles? And then break people, break those four down for people.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Totally. Yeah. So the reason that I got into this is when Sam and I met, you know, the two of us were like, we want to do this entrepreneurship thing. But in, in many ways, it's actually a lot easier and like emotionally bearable to start a company. If you have just like income coming in, it's covering your expenses. And so when I moved to San Francisco, you know, the, the city is super expensive. And so I started like doing a bunch of side hustles just to try and make income. That would give me the freedom to like, spend my time trying to launch a company that would really create a lot of like equity value and sort of like life changing. You know, financial freedom. And so when I, what I did, when I moved to SF, I like started Airbnb in our place.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  We, at one point, you know, this is 2013, we had like the number third, like the third ranked Airbnb in San Francisco. And so we were, uh, we were like renting out either our living room most nights or, uh, you know, over summers, we'd rent it out for like 15, 18 grand a month. And then we just, and we were paying three grand a month for the spot. So like, that was incredible at, at the time and we just travel and then launched like Udemy courses. There was a period where I was buying motorcycles that were on Craigslist in Oakland and selling them in San Francisco. Cause there was like an arbitrage there. So I was just doing a bunch of random, uh, random stuff. And so when I wrote this article. So many people that I've talked to were like, you know, I want to understand how to make

• 11:09Speaker 01

  side income and how to think about this stuff. And so I just kind of like broke down like the different sorts, in my mind, like the four kinds of businesses that you can start as a side hustle. You know, some of these that I've done actually ended up being more, more real businesses. But like, do you want me to just talk through the categories and kind of what I've

• 11:27Shaan Puri?

  You also had a good disclaimer, which is like, look, first things first, accept that what you're doing is not meant to be the next Facebook. It's not meant to be a startup. It's like you're trying to make money. You're trying to get some profitable cash flow from a business quickly without a ton of like, you know, without waiting seven years for this thing to pay off. So like, first, let's call it what it is. All right, let's call a spade a spade is, I thought, an important disclaimer. And then you had these four, four groups. So let's run through them. And then, Sam, you tell me if you've also done any in these categories.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. Yeah, I mean, I think truly, if you're Mark Zuckerberg or like a Colson brother, like fucking raise money, do like the massive thing that you're working on. I just think for most people, entrepreneurship is a means to an end. And that end is like a lifestyle that people are trying to create. And so the more that you can like, create that and the faster you get financial freedom, I just think that's a useful thing for more people to have in general. So the the four like, kinds of side hustles that, that I've talked about in my blog post, the first one that I talked about is like buying an existing asset. Basically, you can look at like, what's an existing asset that that you could try and purchase, leverage your skills, connections, resources, whatever, to upgrade that, you know, make it more cash flow positive, make it do better,

• 12:42Speaker 01

  whatever. And then you get to capture the value created by upgrading that asset. I did this with, like Sam, I'm sure you guys could do this if you bought an email newsletter, you know, you know how to run that better, buy it for a million bucks, improve it, you could probably sell it for, you know, three to five a couple of years later.

• 12:59Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I was, my friend Ramon bought something that I had a small part of. And it was a software, very small software app that when we bought it, maybe it was doing 20,000 a month. And all we did was we doubled the price of the product and it doubled the revenue.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 13:15Sam Parr?

  You did that too. Didn't you own a or you bought a thing called FOMO, right?

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So a partner and I bought a Shopify app called FOMO. It was doing 14K a month at the time we bought it.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  We paid less than 400. I'll say that.

• 13:30Sam Parr?

  Less than 400,000?

• 13:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, which was like a super good multiple.

• 13:34Shaan Puri?

  And you didn't put the whole thing down, right? So you seller financing or what'd you do?

• 13:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we had a really like the guy basically wanted out. It was a single founder and we were like, hey, we know how to market. We have connections. We can like really help grow this thing. And so we bought 85% of the business. We bought it and then we were basically were like, we're going to buy this and pay you in monthly chunks for the next 20 months. And so every like month for 20 months, we use the revenue that we were making from FOMO to make our payment to him. And like my partner and I basically came out of pocket $0 to acquire this asset. We were obviously working on running it. We like had to throw in, I think it ended up being five grand each to pay the developers the first couple of months. But um, but yeah, I mean, it was like an incredible acquisition.

• 14:20Sam Parr?

  How big is it now?

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Now it does about 95 grand a month.

• 14:24Sam Parr?

  Sounds like a good deal to me.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a good deal. I mean, it's a good deal for everyone. The guy like has gotten his time back. He started other companies in the interim and like when we exit this thing, he'll make probably more than he would have made on the exit than, you know, had he continued to run this for the last three years and with no headache. It's like a nice.

• 14:42Shaan Puri?

  So you're talking about buy, so category one, buying an asset. This can be a house that you Airbnb. It can be a internet company that you just, you know, you do what Sam did. You go in the code. You push, you know, Ctrl F, you find the price and then you change the number to double, which is like Sam's genius or what you did was.

• 14:59Sam Parr?

  You, you know, who I learned that from was Terry. You're, I don't know if she was your boss or what, but she taught me how to do that.

• 15:05Shaan Puri?

  How to find the price part of the code or what?

• 15:08Sam Parr?

  Well, she was like, she was like, look, the whole thing is that engineer-led businesses typically are priced poorly. And if you just double the price, uh, it works.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:16Sam Parr?

  And she was like, double the price, and then find out which emails, uh, URLs are being used a bunch of times. So for example, if you have like 18 people using at uber.com, contact the HR department or whoever, the procurement and like sell enterprise. She kind of like taught me the stuff that, uh, Justin's old company was doing.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So I, so I ended up, I really like this buy an asset thing. I think sometimes you have to have money, other times you can sell or finance. But we ended up doing this too with an apartment building in, in Vegas where we bought a 14-unit apartment building. Could put it all on Airbnb, uh, basically like tripled the cash flow and then sold it 18 months later. For, you know, 70% more than what we paid for.

• 15:56Shaan Puri?

  By the way, in the blog post, you had a couple of examples I think are useful. We don't have to go too much into them, but you were like, uh, you talked about this thing, which is like, okay, if you know you have the skills to like improve the value of the asset. So for Airbnb, you were like, all right, to get more Airbnb bookings, like, you know, first, if it's not on Airbnb, we should put it on Airbnb. If it is on Airbnb, we can like boost the bookings by like these three things, right? Put more and better photos up. Okay, easy. Anybody could do that, but most people haven't optimized that. Second, like instantly respond to every inquiry so that we get a fast response rate. The algorithm likes that. And then the last thing is like whatever, like five-star reviews at the end or something like that. And so you're like, I can just take those three levers and I can apply it to any property now that isn't optimized for Airbnb.

• 16:39Shaan Puri?

  So if they think it's worth a hundred, I already know it's worth a hundred 20 because I know I can just do that playbook again on, uh, on, on, on any property.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And, and that's like, that actually leads to the sort of like the second bucket of side hustles that I talk about, which is basically look at what is a marketplace with existing demand? Where you don't have to go out and find the customer, you just provide the supply side stuff, like buying, you know, putting a property on Airbnb. All I have to do is understand how does the property like, or how does Airbnb, uh, dictate where I rank? You know, and what does it want from me as a supplier? And then my, my shit is going to get booked up. Uh, like I don't actually have to go find every individual customer that's traveling to San Francisco that can rent our apartment. Cause like, Airbnb is doing that for me.

• 17:24Sam Parr?

  And you did that with like, uh, was it, you used to have a thing, it was called a sequel for programmers? Or what was it called?

• 17:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:30Sam Parr?

  Sequel for marketers. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So basically, exactly. So, so I've done this on a couple of platforms like Amazon is, is a big one. Like a bunch of people are starting FBA businesses, but I sort of think that focusing on up and coming platforms where the supply side isn't crazy competitive is actually a really good place to start. Where you could like, when I, when I was, um, when I launched my first Udemy course, you know, I filmed it literally over five days in my bedroom in San Francisco, no like good quality, no good editing. It was just like, it candidly like was not an amazing course from like student experience standpoint, but the content was good. But Udemy was such an early platform that I put it up there. And just by being literally the first guy to talk about here's how to learn SQL as a marketer.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  Like that course sold, I think like 60 grand over the next couple of years. And to this day, I still get like a thousand dollars a month from that course from Udemy, which is absurd. And, you know, that was all because like, here's an emerging platform. They want people creating stuff on the supply side. How do I create a course or whatever, uh, that just like can reach people who are already looking for something on a platform? And focus on that.

• 18:41Shaan Puri?

  And I don't know if you did this or that, but, uh, there's ways to basically figure out what are people searching for? So there's like tools like Ahrefs or whatever, you can figure out what, what Google searches are, are, are people doing? And in what volume? But, uh, even on individual platforms, there's ways to figure it out. Like I know, I looked at this business to buy and it was this girl selling a waist trainer. Do you know what a waist trainer is?

• 19:02Speaker 01

  No.

• 19:02Shaan Puri?

  It's basically, do you know what this thing is? It's like, I had no idea what this was before. So it's basically like, you know, like, okay, I'm going to, here's the, here's the mansplain to, here's three dudes talking about waist trainers. All right. So. You know, like if you watch like Pirates of the Caribbean or some, any movie or show that's like based in kind of like olden times, girls wear that corset. It's like this super tight thing that you're like, you squeeze into this and then you wear your dress on top.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:26Shaan Puri?

  Figure gets like, your stomach gets squeezed in and your boobs get squeezed out.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Like Spanx or something.

• 19:30Shaan Puri?

  It's like old school Spanx. And so what waist trainers are, are that. It's basically like a cinch you wear around your stomach constantly. And it makes you look good in the moment, but also the idea is that it trains your, your muscles or your body to like, to tighten up. Because you kind of have to keep it flexed in a way for it to not like kind of be uncomfortable, I guess. I don't know what the theory is, but that's my guess.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 19:53Shaan Puri?

  And like the Kardashians kind of like, you know, talk about the stuff and it kind of got a little more popular. So this girl who was building this business. I was like, cool. So like, what do you spend every month in marketing? She's like, oh, like we don't spend anything in marketing. So how do you, how are you growing so fast? She's like, oh, I just saw that on YouTube, nobody was owning the keyword for waist trainers. And like how to size one, how to wear one, do they work? So she just created like the YouTube channel to be the answer to every search question about waist trainers on YouTube. And you can go, if you go search waist trainers right now on YouTube, you'll find all her videos.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 20:24Shaan Puri?

  And so all her sales just come just from that. And she was doing a few million dollars a year of revenue, a million dollars of profit per year. Just through that one channel alone.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Amazing. Good for her. But yeah, I, I think exactly what you're talking about. It's like find where people are searching for something and there's no supply there. And that's a really good place to focus. Like when I launched SQL for marketers, there was literally almost nothing under the like marketing, like the technical marketing or like the data analytics, data-driven marketing section for you and me. And so it was like, cool. If I put that up there, that seems like it'll, it'll resonate and do well. Which ended up being correct.

• 21:04Sam Parr?

  And what are the third and fourth ones?

• 21:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the the third one is basically like launch a unique product in an area where you can buy customers via paid acquisition. And again, I think all of this is like super important to remember that you're not building Facebook. You're just like, if you look at Google AdWords or Waste Trainers, as you're saying, and there's a gap there, you can figure out how to make a product. And your goal is not like make a hundred million dollar business, but make one that does a million dollars a year. Like, there are almost infinite niches on the internet where you can just make a product, buy some rough keywords, and just sell through in a category that, you know, where you're like the first to market, or the first to do a really good job.

• 21:44Shaan Puri?

  What's an example, what's an example in that category that you've seen either from yourself, or a friend, or someone you've seen recently that's doing that that model?

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there, there's a company actually that is doing, that's like vests for dogs, but the vests are spiky, so that coyotes don't attack your dogs.

• 22:03Shaan Puri?

  Turn your dog into a porcupine.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Like, you could put this vest on a dog, and then it won't get eaten by coyotes because it's got like spikes all over it. So I mean, what an incredible niche product. You know, that's definitely not going to like go public, but that can be an incredible business. And so that, stuff like that, I mean, honestly, that's what um, that's what Kettle and Fire was going to be when we first launched it. I had no idea that bone broth would be such a compelling category, and and the trend would take off like it has. Like, our plan was basically, we looked at, we looked at Google searches, and we're like, I think we can build a like 20 to 40 grand a month business.

• 22:40Shaan Puri?

  So when you say we looked at Google searches, what does that mean in practical terms? Most people have never done that. So what?

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, fair. So we use like Google AdWords keyword tool, just to say like, which I

• 22:50Shaan Puri?

  That's like discontinued now.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. Now you'd have to use Ahrefs, or some SDM Rush, or something. But at the time, we used a tool that was basically like, there's 2000 people a month looking for like, buy bone broth online. And so if we can be the supplier that will sell you bone broth online, like, you know, assuming we convert like even 10% of those people, 200 orders, $50 a month, like, you know, that that's a pretty material side hustle. And so that was like the reason that we launched Kettle and Fire.

• 23:21Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, Google is like, you know, it's like a magic lamp. And on one side, you have all the Aladins out there making wishes, and then you just get to be the genie. So it's like, There are these tools that tell you, here's the wishes. People are entering into this magic box. They're just hoping for something. And if you notice that

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 23:36Shaan Puri?

  That's more people than I would have expected saying this thing or asking this question or wanting this thing. And you go search for it and you're like, wow, these results suck. Uh, okay. How do I just become the top result for that thing? And so you thought, you thought kettle and fire would do that. So give me a sense of how long did it take for you to get from? Idea, like seeing that keyword and being like, oh, maybe we could do this to actually making like, I don't know, a thousand dollars a month. How, how long was that process for you?

• 24:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the process took about a year. Most of it was because I'd never done a physical product before. And so it was like just bumbling around in the dark, like trying to find someone that can make this stuff. Had a bunch of false starts, but it took us basically 12 months to, uh, to go from like, hey, I think this is an opportunity to actually having product in box. But once we had product in box, you know, we did over 20 grand our first month that we were live. Uh, so.

• 24:24Sam Parr?

  And you, um, you, are you the CEO of kettle and fire?

• 24:28Speaker 01

  I am, yeah.

• 24:29Sam Parr?

  You've got like three, we're going to talk about this other thing that you're thinking about doing. How are you balancing all this time?

• 24:34Speaker 01

  It's a good question. Uh, I, I honestly, I've never had a good answer for this. I just like.

• 24:40Sam Parr?

  Are you balancing it well?

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Uh, okay. I mean, some of these things like perfect keto, like I don't have a day to day role in it anymore. You know, so I like co-founded it, but I've completely stepped away. Uh, one of the things that at kettle and fire that I think I'm proud of that we've done really well is like, we have a phenomenal team. And so to that, to that extent, I get to work on stuff that, uh, only I can do uniquely well, like writing long 15 page posts about how beef is actually like not bad for the environment and shit like this that I'm kind of interested in. But a lot of the day to day is handled by like the team that we've built over the last, you know, five, five plus years. So I really like am in control of my time in general, uh, which is quite nice.

• 25:21Sam Parr?

  When you partner with a guy like Anthony or whoever you're partnering with, and you aren't doing, uh, how many of these things do you have right now where you have your hands in roughly right now?

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Like five, probably.

• 25:33Sam Parr?

  Okay. And so, but there's one that's your day job, right?

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:37Sam Parr?

  Okay. So for the other four, when you make these structures with people, um, so a guy like Anthony, or it doesn't have to be him, but the representative that represents him, are you taking a draw from that business at all? Or are you just only gonna pay yourself if it sells?

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. So at this point, I'm pretty focused on like creating equity value. And so, you know, for example, like a company I incubated, Shirley Wines, it's like a non-alcoholic wine company. We launched earlier this year. I recruited, I like basically had the idea, tested it, validated it, lined up supply chain, hired in the operator, um, the operator and CEO, he's taking a salary and like, I probably won't get a dollar out of that business, uh, for, until we eventually sell that business or whatever happens with it. Like I put in a bunch of my own money to capitalize it and get it up and running. But I'm just like, I'm not gonna suck money out of that thing until, uh, you know, until we have a good outcome.

• 26:32Sam Parr?

  So then really, the only thing that you, not the only thing, I mean, the thing you're bringing to the table is you are bringing a little bit of cash and also you're bringing some expertise and your guidance.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. But it also like.

• 26:42Shaan Puri?

  Incubated the whole idea in that one.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's basically like trying to create a, a compelling opportunity for someone where, you know, someone can go instead of going, if someone wants to be a founder, CEO, today their options are like, jump, take no salary for 12 to 18 months, hope they can figure out an idea and raise money and do all that kind of stuff. Or like build a side hustle, which is again, like a totally different skill set that we're kind of talking about. And so, with this one specifically, like I incubated the idea, had everything lined up, validated that it was big, brought investors, uh, and basically it was like, hey, man, if you want to be a founder and CEO, you can just walk into this role. You take zero healthcare, zero salary risk, uh, and you're, you're good. Like you're a founder, you have a ton of upside,

• 27:30Speaker 01

  you're this operating CEO, we have investors lined up, it's a big opportunity. Like it, it sort of works for both parties, uh, you know?

• 27:37Sam Parr?

  When you, um, are you, do you regret or are you thankful that you raised money for Kettle on Fire?

• 27:43Speaker 01

  Oh, definitely thankful. I mean,

• 27:45Sam Parr?

  Really?

• 27:45Speaker 01

  With, yeah, for sure. I mean, with with kettle and fire in particular, like the business had grown to a really meaningful amount and I still had like most of my net worth wrapped up in that. And so I think getting some secondary was like personally really meaningful. And it also meant that like I felt more okay pushing for a bigger outcome. It also meant like, I think I will probably raise for most things that I do going forward or invest my own money, just because the caliber of the team that we were able to hire around us, like what we were doing on a shoestring budget versus what we could do after was just night and day. Like we have an amazing team, but amazing people are expensive. And so it's definitely like made my life a hundred times easier and more enjoyable.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  Getting to spend other people's money to increase the value of my equity by hiring amazing people. It's like, that seems like a no brainer to me in a lot of ways.

• 28:36Sam Parr?

  Uh, yeah, when you explain that way it does, but if I was one of your investors and you're doing all this other stuff, I'd be like, what the fuck dude, only do this thing. I just gave you money.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, it's, it's something that I had to work through with our investors for sure. Was very upfront with it, with them about it and was like, look, this is my main focus. You know, which was very true and it was definitely something to manage around. I also think though, that like, it's one of those things where as long as the business is going well, no one's going to complain. You know what I mean? But certainly if things went sideways, then it's, then it's like, okay, this is an easy area to point.

• 29:13Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. It's like Elon can run Tesla and SpaceX and everyone's like, wow, he's amazing. And those businesses are amazing. And then Jack does the same thing with Twitter and Square. And if Twitter's misses its earnings, it's like off with his head. How dare he, you know? He's a part-time CEO. What the hell were we thinking? And, uh, and so it's, you know, people are pretty, they do what's called resulting pretty hard in that case. And you also did, you also did a pretty fun experiment. I don't know if this was a side hustle or what would you call this? Where me and Sam were both guinea pigs in your, uh, your continuous glucose monitoring trial. So you basically tweeted out.

• 29:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I was sending them like, I was sending them like shirtless pics of myself like every week.

• 29:51Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Including one photo with Lil Peep.

• 29:53Shaan Puri?

  That was not even like recommended.

• 29:56Sam Parr?

  Well, yeah, there was like a piss spot in one of my pics.

• 29:59Shaan Puri?

  A piss spot? What is that?

• 30:01Sam Parr?

  Your boxers? Like, you know, when you go pee and you like leak a little on your boxers?

• 30:04Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  Sam sent me like a just him and his boxers photo and there's just a little pee spot to show his body photo. Alright dude.

• 30:14Shaan Puri?

  And so you were doing this thing where you were like, hey, I need like 20 people or I don't know how many, maybe it's 40 people that you ended up using.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Fifty.

• 30:20Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, 50 people and you were like, hey, uh, we're gonna do this experiment. And what you did was you sent us all a levels, uh, glucose monitor. And then, um, continuous glucose monitor that we just, you know, punctured into our arm, basically. Now, okay, that's measuring. And then you put us all in like a WhatsApp group and you're like, hey, here's the idea. And it was like financial incentive, I think it was like. You would pay us out every day that we stayed in range. And if we missed it, like you kept our money or something like that. What was that experiment and what'd you learn out of it?

• 30:49Speaker 01

  Man, it was awesome. Like that, that experiment was, uh, kinda like many things in my life. I just had the idea, tweeted it immediately. And got such a strong response from people. But we had like a waitlist. Yeah, totally. Uh, where I was like, okay, now I gotta figure this out. You know, Sam was texting me every day being like, this is sweet. Like I'm, I'm gonna get all my fucking money back. Like you're very into it. I loved it. I was into it. Yeah, I was super good. Awesome. But yeah, so learned a ton, man. I mean, one of the craziest things I think was just how well that incentive of like $25 a day. Really worked for people to keep them, keep them honest. Like you go through, you know, pay 950 bucks for 30 days.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  Every day that you stay under a barrier, I like give you 25 bucks back. And just that tiny little behavior, like incentive where that brownie or whatever is not $4, but it's $29. Like that, uh, I think that little incentive goes a really long way and it's somewhat competitive and all this. And so we have had with literally no marketing, you know, we've, we've filled out 50 person cohorts every month since launching that in February.

• 31:55Sam Parr?

  Oh, it's still live?

• 31:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. People can still sign up. It's wearablechallenge.com. We've had one person go through it seven times. They've lost about 50 pounds. It's like unbelievable.

• 32:06Shaan Puri?

  Who?

• 32:06Speaker 01

  To see the results of this.

• 32:08Sam Parr?

  Who's, uh, who's running that?

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. So one of the guys in the first cohort, Aaron, uh, got so excited about the idea. I was like, hey, do you wanna run with this? And so he, uh, he's been running it the whole time.

• 32:18Shaan Puri?

  That's amazing. And is that a business to you or what is that?

• 32:22Speaker 01

  Not really. I mean, we're kind of thinking about like how to make it a business, but, but it's it's actually a perfect example of a side hustle. Like I will probably make, you know, somewhere between 20 and 30 grand this year from doing it.

• 32:35Shaan Puri?

  Uh, yeah, when I saw that.

• 32:36Speaker 01

  Maybe more if Sam joins and blows a bunch of his glucose levels.

• 32:39Shaan Puri?

  When I, when I saw that, I was like, hey, this is fun. And it's kind of like on brand for you because of the stuff you talk, you talk about your businesses. But then I was also like, oh, this is a great business because everybody wants the outcome. Everybody wants to eat, right? Lose weight. And the biggest hack is not knowledge, but accountability. And I like that you were coming at it from a accountability point of view. And I actually think like, you know, the company levels could do something like this, or there's going to be a company that does this, right? Whatever Weight Watchers is as a business model, like, I haven't studied it. I'm assuming you have, given what you do and what this business is. But could this not be like Weight Watchers 2.0?

• 33:18Speaker 01

  I think it could be. I mean, it just, it would need someone to like run at it really full time. But I do think that there's something here. I mean, there's a couple of companies like Stick and like one other that I'm forgetting, where you can sort of like bet money on, on different outcomes. And, you know, I think that that sort of works. I actually think the really powerful part of this is like, it's a cohort, it's a challenge for a set period of time, and you lose money only for that set period of time. And so like, I would love to expand this. And we're sort of have some ideas in the, in the hopper about like what expanding it might look like. But it's definitely not my like, full time thing at all.

• 33:53Sam Parr?

  Have you heard of Stick, Sean? That's actually an interesting company to buy. I haven't been there in years, but when I used to go there, it was even when I went there like years ago, it was considered like old. So it's Stick. It's spelled Stick, but I think there's two K's at the end, right?

• 34:06Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 34:07Shaan Puri?

  And. It's like a physical place?

• 34:09Sam Parr?

  No, it's a Stick.com, but two K's at the end. And is the website still all old and janky looking?

• 34:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:17Sam Parr?

  Okay. So it was like old back then, when, or in 2013 or 14, when I used to use it. And what you do is you enlist a friend to be the referee. And then you create, I believe, an anti-charity where you select something that you hate, and then you upload money to it. And then if you fail at your challenge, your friend clicks a button and it automatically goes to that place that you hate. And I think you can, you, there's a varieties of, of the service.

• 34:41Shaan Puri?

  Tim Ferriss talked about this, I think, in Four Hour Work Weekend. I think it got a lot to it from that.

• 34:45Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Yeah. It, it, did you think this company makes money, Justin?

• 34:50Speaker 01

  I would imagine so. I don't know how much, but I would imagine so.

• 34:54Sam Parr?

  It could be an interesting thing to buy. I mean, it's actually not that hard to replicate, but like if they already get traffic, it could be interesting. It would be an interesting, this would be an interesting thing to buy and revamp and make a little bit better. Cause I think they get a lot of traffic. When I, um, when we owned Toodle Do, there was this one guy, an author. Uh, I think he wrote a book, uh, Getting Things Done. G, what's it called?

• 35:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:15Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  David Allen?

• 35:16Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And he mentioned Toodle Do, this app that me and, uh, Ramon bought, bought. And most of our customers came to us because they read about Toodle Do. Like it just mentioned them in like a sentence or something in the book. And that's where most of the customers came from. And just because Tim Ferriss mentioned stick, I bet that's where the, the vast majority of their customers come from.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 35:37Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's funny. Uh, there was this thing called Gym Pact too. I don't know if you guys have, have you seen that? I don't know if it made it. It was like, it came out five years ago or something like that, but it was, you would basically pledge that you're going to go to the gym with some, some frequency and other people would too. And it basically, I think what they were doing was, like in your case, you're the house. You're like the bank. It's like, I give you the money and then you pay me back. And in this case, it was like, it would match you with somebody else. And, uh, if you ever didn't do your thing, your money would go to that person. Uh, if they did it and you didn't go, your money would go to them. And if you both went, your, your money would be safe. And, um, and so you're like making a pact that you would go to the gym for, uh, you know, some amount of frequency.

• 36:16Shaan Puri?

  But I do think there is something to this, like kind of financial incentive accountability, you know, betting, betting on yourself, betting on your habit, model that I think is pretty cool.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, we're, we're actually looking now at like, could you apply this to run little, you know, health bootcamps in like LA or Austin or something like that, where you have 30 people, 50 people opt in. We'll handle your meals. We'll, you know, we'll give you levels, like we'll do all this sort of stuff and a more like premium offering that, where it's like, hey, you're almost guaranteed to lose weight or get in better shape at the end of this month.

• 36:49Sam Parr?

  That would for sure work. That's a little bit better than my weight loss idea, which is called Kidnap, where you just go and you take a person and you bring them to the desert, uh, in like Vegas and you just like,

• 36:59Shaan Puri?

  Kidnap with two P's at the end?

• 37:00Sam Parr?

  Yeah. It's called Kidnap, Kidnap SF or we'll, we'll call it hostage. And we just bring you to like a farm and we just like, it's like, look, you only 1500 calories a day. Do whatever you want all day, but like this is it.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 37:13Sam Parr?

  Can I ask you-

• 37:14Speaker 01

  I imagine the refund rates would be high on that.

• 37:16Sam Parr?

  Well, you know, it'll be guaranteed success. Um, so I want to get to some of these ideas, but I first want to ask you about DuckDuckGo. So you're friends with that guy Gabe, right? The guy who started it or owns it? And are you bullish on that business? Because you're one of the few people I know that has insight onto it and I'm bit, I look at their traffic monthly, like, because they give out these monthly updates. Uh, that, does that, is that business like, uh, like, kind of like an under the radar thing? Do you think this is going to take over the world? Because that's kind of how I feel.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I, I think it's, it's crushing. Like, I think that you always see like, there's always like a counterpoint to some massive trend or massive amount of success. Like, you have like Amazon taking over the world, but then you have Shopify, which is crushing it. And I think that DuckDuckGo is like the counterpoint to, uh, to like Google and, you know, privacy eroding across the board, all this sort of stuff. Like, I do think there's an opportunity to be a big tech company, but with privates, like privacy is a core value rather than, uh, you know, selling ads to everyone. And so I think DuckDuckGo really has that, the opportunity to like be that company. And they have a lot of tailwinds that are working in their favor at this point. Um, it, it's also crazy, like Gabe, he's been working on that company for like 12 years. Five of those years.

• 38:29Sam Parr?

  Is it longer than 12?

• 38:30Speaker 01

  It, it might be actually. Um, but like for a large chunk of that time, he was just a solo founder, building a search engine to compete with Google. It's like, wow.

• 38:42Sam Parr?

  So I mean- They, they do north of a hundred million in revenue, I believe.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I believe it. I mean-

• 38:47Shaan Puri?

  Do you know how, like, I don't know if you, I don't know if you knew him during those early years, but like, uh, did you know him at the beginning or no?

• 38:54Speaker 01

  Not, not the very, very beginning, but I knew him when it was like him and one other person working on DuckDuckGo.

• 38:59Shaan Puri?

  And so I'm guessing at that point, it wasn't, it wasn't a case where it's him and one other person and man, it's crushing. It's him and one other person and it's sort of crawling forward.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:08Shaan Puri?

  What were those, like, what were your conversations? Like, what was the outlook? I mean, I find it fascinating when people work on these businesses that don't take off right away and they stick with it. And then they either like the world just changes or they figure something out or it just compounds slowly, but then all of a sudden it starts to take off. Like, what was that like there in the flat part? And then what do you think caused it to grow?

• 39:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that he was, he was just getting like small bits of positive feedback from communities like Hacker News community was like, DuckDuckGo is amazing for like stack overflow searches or you know, X, Y, and Z very specific niche sorts of searches. And then as he got good feedback from those groups, it's like, okay, let's invest in product to make this a little better, a little better. And I think that after, you know, let's call it 12, 14 years that he's been working on this, the product has gotten a lot better. But also the like sort of trend line of where big tech is going has, it's just gotten like way more, way more invasive and way more like privacy is way more of a concern for people today. Especially as you're seeing a lot of the censorship stuff and you know, some of this that's, that's happening in the big tech world.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Right now, I think that DuckDuckGo is like, one of the few companies that for over a decade now has been like, privacy is one of our, our like core things. And they've built an incredibly complex product to compete with Google that is just not easy to spin up overnight. You know, it's not a side hustle. It's not like the type of thing you or I can build with a couple hours a week over, you know, a weekend.

• 40:36Sam Parr?

  Can we talk about, can we go through some of these ideas? Do you want to start with Airbnb camping? Cause I, you, you were texting me about this and I want to learn about it. I just looked at a house the other day, by the way, down the street from my house to buy for Airbnb. I'll have to send you the numbers. I don't know if it, it seems like a lot of work for not a lot of output. We'll see.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's probably true for a lot of Airbnb right now. I think the thing that is compelling to me is like, we talked earlier about new platform stuff. Like HipCamp and some of these other like camping platforms are exploding. And again, I think if you could like leverage capital, build up the supply side and provide like, you know, water, toiletries, like all, all the basics. In locations that people actually want to camp at, you could build a pretty material business. And it's again, it like may not be a $10 billion business, but I think it would be a really solid side hustle and cash flow asset. And it would require a lot less. A lot less like management and work than Airbnb because at the end of the day,

• 41:39Speaker 01

  you're fucking camping. Like, sorry, you know, it's not like the stove burner doesn't work or the AC is off. It's like a plot of land.

• 41:47Shaan Puri?

  You're welcome.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  Plop a tent on there.

• 41:48Shaan Puri?

  The experience I provided for you, where nothing worked and you had to fend for yourself. That's what you want.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 41:55Sam Parr?

  Maybe I can host hostage on there.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 41:58Sam Parr?

  Do you, uh, when you were, when you were doing this, what numbers were you bottling out?

• 42:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I was mainly modeling it from like a NOI basis, uh, which is net operating income, which is like a term that's used a lot in real estate. But basically I think that you could get like 30 to 40% cash on cash returns by following the strategy.

• 42:18Sam Parr?

  That sounds like the greatest thing ever. Why, why have you done it?

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Because I am getting higher returns from my time elsewhere. You know, unfortunately. I would love to find someone to run.

• 42:27Shaan Puri?

  If somebody's listening to this, it's like, oh, I'm the perfect guy for this. I, I, I love camping. I know I have camper, I have a camper myself. I'm in an area that's like a high demand thing for, for hip camp or auto camp or whatever.

• 42:41Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, great. You be the operator. We'll put up the cash. We'll buy the RVs for you and you run the thing and let's split it. So, uh, email me [email protected] and then I'll, I'll loop in these guys and we will, uh, we will fund your, we will fund a, a small rental business of, uh, of campers. If anybody's in the location that does this, because that's a great, that's a great idea. You're absolutely right. They're basically tons of demand and they're supply constrained. And so if you just build out more supply, you're gonna get bookings and you're gonna get great returns off some.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And, and it's one of those things that's like, that could scale really nicely. These platforms are here to stay. Like, there's a lot of venture dollars going into making these more of a thing. I think that you could crush it on these platforms. Is it something I want to do full time at this point in my career? No, but do I think someone younger who like cares about camping more than I do could really do well here? Like, absolutely.

• 43:30Shaan Puri?

  Uh, okay, great. That's a great idea. What else you got?

• 43:33Sam Parr?

  Alcohol, baby. Let's talk about that.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. So.

• 43:36Sam Parr?

  Near and dear to my heart as a, as a, as a, as a non-alcoholic beer drinker.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you know, a couple earlier this year launched a company that I talked about Shirley, hi Shirley dot com, S U R E L Y. But we're basically like, we saw so much interest going into the non-alk beer space. Bud Light bought three spots at the Super Bowl. One was a seltzer spot, the other was for Bud Light, the other was for Bud Zero, which is like, the non-alk thing is so interesting and like, there's so much attention going towards it. And we saw like, a ton of really good non-alk beers, some really good like, non-alk spirits options, and nothing in the wine category. And so we decided to build the first clean label, really high-quality, non-alcoholic wine brand and wine company.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  Hired like, real wine-making talent and the like. We launched earlier this year and it's going, going super well. So I'm-

• 44:29Sam Parr?

  How much did you, by the way, I want to brag, I've been talking about this shit for like, four years now. Haven't I, Sean?

• 44:36Shaan Puri?

  I don't know if that's a brag, or really, it's a, it's a knock on you. You had the inside, he took the action. He-

• 44:41Sam Parr?

  Well, I don't want to do that. I mean, I don't, that's true. That's true. I mean, yeah, I'm just talking shit.

• 44:48Shaan Puri?

  But, but you have been-

• 44:49Sam Parr?

  So I get like, I get like, a, like a, just like a, like a attaboy. I deserve an attaboy.

• 44:55Shaan Puri?

  You do get an attaboy for that, for that, for sure. So I think you were gonna kind of ask him something like, how much did you put in to start this? Basically, how much of your own money did you, did you have to cede into making a venture like this happen?

• 45:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I put in close to a hundred K to make this happen. And some portion of that was a loan that, that I got out, just as like, revenue started to come in. But yeah, it was about a hundred K that's been up.

• 45:14Sam Parr?

  Nothing.

• 45:15Shaan Puri?

  Not a lot. That's great.

• 45:16Speaker 01

  No. Yeah, it's not a crazy knock.

• 45:18Shaan Puri?

  It's a weekend for Sam.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 45:21Sam Parr?

  I feel, I feel like, I feel like, like, okay, so if you're telling me you could start this with a hundred grand, and how many hours a week are you working on this?

• 45:30Speaker 01

  Uh, to get it spun up, I mean, it was much more like, hiring the right contractors and people. So it was five, 10, maybe, at most.

• 45:39Sam Parr?

  Okay, I feel like, there's a world where this, like, let's be conservative. I feel like there's a, like, this is very clearly a $10 million a year thing that makes $2 million in profit, right? Like, like, it could definitely be way bigger, but I feel like that's a relatively like-

• 45:52Shaan Puri?

  I'd be disappointed if it didn't hit that mark, right? That's kind of what you're saying. That would be-

• 45:56Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 45:57Shaan Puri?

  Expectations, at least.

• 45:58Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so, right? Like, and let's give the, let's give it six years to do that. Let's go, let's grow slow. Uh, I feel like that's like, it's a pretty surefire way you're gonna get that. Would you agree?

• 46:08Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I certainly do.

• 46:10Sam Parr?

  And so it seems like a good investment to me.

• 46:12Shaan Puri?

  Right. A D to C brand like that can sell for like one X revenue, let's say. So you could turn a hundred K investment and let's call it even 20 hours a week for, for a year to spin it up. To you, you turned a hundred K into basically, you know, 10 million bucks worth of, of, of total equity value in terms of the company in that case. I don't even think it'll take six years. I think that's two, two years.

• 46:35Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I'm being like all.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree. But yeah, I mean, that's the basic thing.

• 46:40Sam Parr?

  Where are the other opportunities in the space that you, when you're researching?

• 46:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I, there's a ton, right? Like, I think that we're at this generational shift where people, you know, 10 years ago, everyone was like, let's go out. Maybe this is just me getting older. I don't know. But all of my friends were like, let's go out to the bars and get really drunk. Now all my friends are like, let's have one glass of wine and then like, have a great long dinner and, or try, you know, or not drink at all. And instead.

• 47:05Sam Parr?

  Young people I don't, young people I don't think drink.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  It's becoming much more common, shockingly.

• 47:13Sam Parr?

  That's what I'm saying. Like the Gen Z years, like, like, uh, it's not as common, like when the second I could drive.

• 47:19Shaan Puri?

  Have you heard Sam's Gen Z analysis that he does? His, his trends analysis on Gen Z? He's like, they don't have sex, they don't drink and they're depressed, but they're really cool looking or what do you see? What do you call them? They're really cool.

• 47:32Sam Parr?

  They got, they got nice teeth. They always wear vans and they like, they always have like proper fitting.

• 47:38Shaan Puri?

  What color do they like?

• 47:41Sam Parr?

  What do I say like red or millennial?

• 47:43Shaan Puri?

  You'd have like a really sweeping generalization for that.

• 47:46Sam Parr?

  Dude, it's like the truth. They all have like sick ass haircuts.

• 47:52Sam Parr?

  It's true. They all got like amazing hair.

• 47:54Shaan Puri?

  Justin's got a Gen Z cut right now. He's, he's looking, he's looking Gen Z.

• 47:59Sam Parr?

  Dude, the young people, I'm saying they, they don't, they don't have, they don't have a lot of sex, not nearly as much as before, and they don't.

• 48:04Shaan Puri?

  Even with all that teeth and hair, they can't, they're not having sex. What's going on?

• 48:08Sam Parr?

  Dude, I don't know.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Male testosterone is down 50% over the last like 40 years.

• 48:13Shaan Puri?

  That's right.

• 48:13Sam Parr?

  Yeah, maybe that's it. It's like, that's something, there's something going on here and they also don't like alcohol. Like it's, it's a health thing or I don't know what it is, but they don't drink.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I honestly think one of the reasons I'm bullish on the non-alk space is like, we're getting to the point where there are just better drugs. Like if people want to, you know, alter their state of consciousness, I'm seeing a lot more friends that are like opting into cannabis or ketamine or some of the psychedelics or some of these other things that don't give you the hangover, don't give you the 30 extra pounds over a year of heavy drinking. Like I just think people are opting for for different sorts of compounds to give them the experience they want. Yeah.

• 48:53Shaan Puri?

  I tried that recess drink. You guys tried that?

• 48:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:56Shaan Puri?

  Doesn't do shit, does it? CBD, kind of like carbonated drink. Great branding, amazing branding, I would say. Drink tastes like shit and didn't do anything. So I was like, well, I'm out on that one. But I love the idea of it. I kind of wish it, if we just, if they just put La Croix in that can, I'd feel amazing. I'd be like, yeah, this is the best. This is the future. But instead, you know, they tried their own thing. What are some businesses that you're like, you mentioned testosterone, we invested in this testosterone replacement company because we were like, that's same.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Which one?

• 49:23Shaan Puri?

  It's called Peak, or they're just rebranding to Hone, but basically it's at home, direct to consumer, you know, testing for your T levels. And then when you get tested and it's if it's low, you're, they'll, there's like a telemedicine doctor who will be like, hey, by the way, if you want this to go up, you know, like there are some solutions that we can offer you. Basically, they have their own.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  You've not heard of that, Justin? I've heard of TRT. I didn't, I didn't heard of like Peak or Hone.

• 49:47Shaan Puri?

  It's basically D to C TRT, right?

• 49:50Speaker 01

  I don't believe in it.

• 49:50Shaan Puri?

  To throw six letters.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. You don't believe in it? It's real? Yeah, yeah. Maybe that's not a well said thing, but I tend to think that some of these things, it's like, you know, your testosterone levels are low. It's like, okay, the reason that they're low is some inputs from your environment are not healthy. And so rather than trying to fix the symptom, like you should try and fix the environment, but.

• 50:12Shaan Puri?

  What are the biggest inputs you can change to to boost testosterone from your opinion?

• 50:17Speaker 01

  I I think diet, sleep, uh, like inflammation, and then also trying to cut out like endocrine disrupting hormones, uh, which are, I think, like a horrifying thing that not a lot of people are talking about.

• 50:29Sam Parr?

  What is that?

• 50:30Shaan Puri?

  Talk about it.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, so so different, uh, plastics, compounds, like you've heard of like BPA free and all these sorts of things. Um, the whole class of something called phthalates, which is P H T P T H L A T E S. Um, that that effectively have like a really strong negative impact on one's testosterone, one's like endocrine and hormonal systems. And they're that are in like everything. And so avoiding like

• 50:56Shaan Puri?

  Or they're from something else.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, a lot of plastics. Yeah. Um, so these are like synthetic materials that are just in like water, plastics, food packaging, uh, creams that you use, like they're all they're in, they're everywhere.

• 51:08Shaan Puri?

  What's something you do lifestyle wise that I'd be like, dude, why are you doing that? Uh, like I went to my friend's house one time and he, instead of using toothpaste, he was like, he dipped his toothbrush in like this powder and started brushing his teeth. I was like, hey, man, what the fuck is that? Because he's always like three steps ahead in health and like products. And so any, at first I used to judge him and now I'm like, oh, am I killing myself by using toothpaste? Should I be using this powder shit? And like, you know, what are those?

• 51:33Sam Parr?

  Can I?

• 51:33Shaan Puri?

  What would yours be?

• 51:34Sam Parr?

  Can I guess, Justin? Can I guess? Can I guess? Um, do you use a microwave?

• 51:38Speaker 01

  No, not.

• 51:39Sam Parr?

  I didn't think, okay. Um,

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Although that is, yeah.

• 51:43Sam Parr?

  But like you go out of your way to not use a microwave, right?

• 51:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 51:47Sam Parr?

  Okay. Do you, um, you definitely only have glass Tupperware, correct?

• 51:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 51:52Sam Parr?

  Um, what else is there? Uh, um, do you, uh, I I've got a few more. I I've got a few more I could peg you, but you tell me.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  I got this like nineteen step home water filtration thing installed at my house. That's like

• 52:06Sam Parr?

  The metal one?

• 52:07Speaker 01

  It's like twenty five feet tall and in this outside, it's insane looking.

• 52:12Shaan Puri?

  It's outdoors?

• 52:12Speaker 01

  Uh, the plumbers, yeah, yeah, they they they're at every step. So there's one in the sink. There's one outside that like filtered all the home water. The guys came in to install it. They're like, we have never seen anyone install something like this. Um, but yeah, so I I have that set up, uh, that I just recently got the Tupperware stuff, uh, pretty diet cautious in general.

• 52:32Shaan Puri?

  Are you super ripped? I can't see you for your your neck up here. Are you like, okay?

• 52:37Sam Parr?

  No, he's lean. Yeah, you're lean. You're like ten percent body fat, right?

• 52:40Speaker 01

  I'll send you a pee spot photo.

• 52:42Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I need to, I need to pee.

• 52:44Sam Parr?

  Well, I've seen you without a shirt. Like, you're not like, uh, like huge, but you're like, you look like a, like a soccer player, right?

• 52:51Shaan Puri?

  Who's more fit? You're adjusting.

• 52:53Sam Parr?

  Uh, it depends on what we're talking about.

• 52:55Shaan Puri?

  Who is, do you aspire more for your body or for his body? Go.

• 53:00Sam Parr?

  Uh, I would, I, right now, I prefer to be leaner and skinnier. So I'm trying to lose fat and look a little bit more like him.

• 53:06Shaan Puri?

  All right, great. All right. So you have the insane water filtration system. And what is that, by the way? What's the name of it?

• 53:12Speaker 01

  Uh, it is called the radiant life, I think.

• 53:15Sam Parr?

  But there's another one, Sean, that all the people, all.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  I do. I have a saw.

• 53:20Shaan Puri?

  Do you like?

• 53:21Speaker 01

  I have a saw in my backyard.

• 53:22Sam Parr?

  Is it infrared or is it a hot stone?

• 53:24Speaker 01

  It's the, uh, yeah, it's like the, the hot stone one.

• 53:27Shaan Puri?

  And like red lights on your toes or something in the morning? What do you, what do you, do you do anything with any kind of light UV, anything?

• 53:32Speaker 01

  No, I try to get outside. I mean, this is one of those things that I think is like, there's some people that I think over optimize where they're like, oh, I need more light exposure. So I'm going to stay inside and like shine red light on myself. And I'm like, just.

• 53:45Sam Parr?

  Do you only use zero drop shoes?

• 53:49Speaker 01

  No.

• 53:50Shaan Puri?

  What is that?

• 53:51Speaker 01

  I did for a while. I just didn't really.

• 53:53Shaan Puri?

  What is a zero drop shoe?

• 53:55Speaker 01

  So. Basically shoes with no heel.

• 53:57Sam Parr?

  Yeah, most shoes have some type of, uh, like, yeah, but like the, a lot of people believe that that ruins your Achilles and hurts your calves, um, and a bunch and ruins your posture. Um, do you, um, uh, do you only eat meat from Salt and Time?

• 54:13Speaker 01

  I try to when I can. It's the best meat in Austin, for sure.

• 54:16Sam Parr?

  Where do you get your meat from?

• 54:18Speaker 01

  Uh, so I, now I eat, most of my meat is from Salt and Time or stuff that I've hunted or a friend has hunted.

• 54:25Shaan Puri?

  I love it. Okay, great. Did we miss any other ones? Any other good, uh, like sort of self? I don't, what do we even call these?

• 54:33Sam Parr?

  Well, look, I, I think what we're teasing, but there is truth in this. Like guys who are on the cutting edge and things that we joke and laugh at, I believe that's going to be normal. Uh, you know, like.

• 54:43Shaan Puri?

  Totally.

• 54:43Sam Parr?

  I, I remember like years ago, I, I got into this hobby, uh, about raw denim. Which is like, uh, at the time, it was like super nerdy and everyone made fun of me and it didn't get entirely mainstream, but a little bit mainstream. It got quite, uh, popular. Um, and that, and that was, um, that's kind of like what we're talking about here. So like, I remember years ago, people were talking about ayahuasca and I was like, what the fuck is that? And now like, I know so many people that are doing this stuff. So, uh, oh, and Dan said you use non-stick pans. You definitely, you don't use non-stick pans for sure. I could tell that.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I use a ceramic set or cast iron. Yeah.

• 55:17Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that, that, that's an easy one. But anyway, go ahead. What, what was the answer? Were you gonna, are there any other things that we can learn from how you live?

• 55:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I, I think that like, cutting out things that are causes of inflammation or, or the obvious ones. It's like, don't microwave stuff in plastic. Try and like buy stuff that is overly, not overly processed and packaged. Uh, and I think actually like avoiding vegetable oils is a tremendous, tremendous thing that, like you said about raw denim or ayahuasca, um, you know, five years from now, 10 years from now, a lot of people are going to be way more conscious about vegetable oils. And the damage that they specifically like a compound called linoleic acid in there, um, that the damage that does to like your inflammatory system.

• 55:58Sam Parr?

  What will they use instead? Olive oil or peanut oil or what?

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, hopefully olive oil, avocado oil, uh, animal fats, lard, ghee, butter, stuff like that, coconut oil.

• 56:09Sam Parr?

  Do you want to talk about, uh, you want to talk about one or two more of these, Sean, or what?

• 56:13Shaan Puri?

  Uh, yeah, let's do, let's do, you pick, you pick the topic. Let's do one more topic.

• 56:17Sam Parr?

  Oh, I know I was gonna ask you really quick. All these things that you're doing, this like no microwave, all this stuff, do you actually feel a difference? Or, um, is it, is it like?

• 56:26Shaan Puri?

  Are these all long-term or is there any short-term pleasure and benefit I can get out of these?

• 56:30Sam Parr?

  Like, do you feel different?

• 56:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I, the way that I think about this is like, from a baseline standpoint, uh, you know, if you, if you have a pretty high baseline, uh, like imagine you're super strong. It, it's going to be really hard for you to notice if you're a bodybuilder, if you're putting on like 1%, you know, two pounds of muscle or something, if you already, or if you're already like weighing 225. Um, so I think that I have a pretty high like health baseline. And so a lot of these things are more preventative and not like, oh my God, I feel amazing. Uh, you know, whereas I felt like shit the other day, but for, I think the average person like. If your baseline is relatively low, you want to lose like, or average, you want to lose weight, you're not sleeping well, um, you know, your stress hormones are all over the place. A lot of these interventions, like you'll feel a material difference after like 20 to 30 days.

• 57:15Sam Parr?

  I think there's a world to build like a wire cutter version of this. So for example, like you're saying a lot of stuff and my friend, my best friend, Jack is into all this stuff. And I stay at his house and I visit him. And so that's how I like, I see how he lives. And Jack's really honest. And I'll say, he takes all these supplements. I go, did any of these do anything? And he goes, no. Like, I don't feel any different. Um, and like a guy like you, I imagine you actually care about longevity and also you just like to tinker and you like trying gadgets, you know, I like trying gadgets as well. I just want to like, see the latest and greatest. It's fun to experiment. I would love, but, but the issue is, is that someone like you, like, or not you, but some of the folks in your world, like they can get a little woo woo. And I'm like, I don't know if they're like talking about fucking crystals, or if this is actually going to make a difference in

• 58:00Sam Parr?

  my life. It's really hard to know, like, uh, if like this actually truly is meaningful. I went, and, and I went to Peter, Peter Attia's blog about this as well to learn about fitness. And he talks about so much stuff about fitness and diet. And I'm like, just give me the, if you just do this, life will be a little bit better and you're 80% there.

• 58:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think there's a big opportunity for that. I, I think that one of the problems is like, if you're an influencer, you're going to get way more attention and interest from people when you talk about butthole sunning than you are about like eat a healthy diet. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, totally. Like, I think that's the problem.

• 58:35Shaan Puri?

  You've seen that.

• 58:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or perineum bathing.

• 58:39Sam Parr?

  What's that mean?

• 58:40Speaker 01

  Same thing.

• 58:41Shaan Puri?

  You've never seen this article? It went like super viral. Basically.

• 58:45Speaker 01

  I'll send you a.

• 58:46Shaan Puri?

  A bunch of naked people, they were going, like they're tanning, but then they raise their legs above their heads so that the sun goes directly into their butt. And they're like, oh, you know, never felt better, you know?

• 58:56Speaker 01

  The sun's energy right into your fourth eye.

• 58:59Sam Parr?

  Do we want to go over one more thing or two more things? What do you want to do?

• 59:04Shaan Puri?

  It's your call.

• 59:04Speaker 01

  Well, we can't end on butthole something.

• 59:06Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I guess. I guess that will probably leave a bad taste.

• 59:09Sam Parr?

  So I've got an interesting, you, you have something interesting and I want to, so I've got a friend named Nick. You, you know Nick Ray, I bet. And Nick, um, he, he jokes about it, but he's being serious. He matches with girls on Tinder or whatever app he uses. And he calls them for a pre-screening for a date. He's like, let's just talk to each other because he's Nick's, uh, he just wants to get down to business. Like, oh, do we want to date or not? And he calls them and one of the questions he asked Sean right away is what's your credit history? Or, uh, like, do you have debt? Um, and on here, Justin has, he goes, I think I could create a dating app that based off your credit card history.

• 59:49Shaan Puri?

  But, but this wasn't, just to be clear, it's not your credit rating he's talking about. Not like, I only want to be rich, credit worthy people. It's more like, if I know what you.

• 59:56Sam Parr?

  You don't have to be rich to have a.

• 59:58Shaan Puri?

  Or whatever. What he's saying is, I want to look at your purchase history, basically the stuff you buy. If you shop at Whole Foods, if you go to the gym, if you don't, whatever, uh, you go to the bar, you ring up a bill. That'll tell us how compatible we are. That was your idea?

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:00:11Shaan Puri?

  And are you dating right now? Are you single?

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  Uh, I am recently engaged.

• 1:00:15Shaan Puri?

  Recently engaged.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  Six months ago.

• 1:00:16Shaan Puri?

  And if you matched you and your fiance's bills up before you got engaged, would, would you have been a good match?

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  Great fit.

• 1:00:22Shaan Puri?

  Great fit?

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  I think that like where you spend your resources tells a lot about someone that a hinge profile doesn't. And so I suspect if like, you were to say, hey, we are matching the two of you up because you spend an absurd amount of your income at this like weird butcher shop in Austin or at Whole Foods, like, we're probably going to get along, you know? Or at least have a higher odds of doing that, uh, from a lifestyle compatibility standpoint than, than hinged us, you know?

• 1:00:51Shaan Puri?

  Sam, what do you think?

• 1:00:52Sam Parr?

  All right, let's do. Yeah, I mean.

• 1:00:56Sam Parr?

  I mean, I think no, this would work. I think this is one of those things that people say they want.

• 1:01:01Shaan Puri?

  I think we're gonna give that one a no, but I enjoy that you said it.

• 1:01:05Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like I think my opinion is like, when it comes to dating, you really just like, you want to optimize for getting laid quickly. I think like regardless of that's what people admit or not, but like they just want to get to like, date one so they can get in bed for step two. And I think that really people like they say they like so, when we had our roommate matching app, I don't know if you could actually vouch if you saw this on your end. People said they wanted this, they wanted that, they wanted this. And then they would meet someone and they're like, nah, fuck it. Like, I'll just do it. Right? Like, and so I think the same is with dating. You say you want to do this, you want to do that. But then if I show you like a person who you just think is attractive, even though you had all these rules, you're gonna say, ah, all right, whatever. Let's just do it.

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's probably true. I think this probably would be better as a like matchmaking service than a broad-based dating app.

• 1:01:52Sam Parr?

  Right. And, and then let's, let's wrap up with the one that we've actually talked about before, about this automation officer.

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's do it. Basically, I think with the rise of no-code tools, virtual assistants, all this sort of stuff, like, I think the average company, and we do this at my company, could just be 30% more productive. Like, we, we have basically one virtual assistant hire for every two people that we have that are on the team. And we give them like a training that's like, here's how to use virtual assistants, get all of the repetitive stuff off your plate. And I just wish I could hire someone to do that as a service where like he or she sits in product meetings or marketing or logistics team shit. And it's just like, we're gonna automate these five pieces and just continually does that across the company.

• 1:02:36Sam Parr?

  Where did you learn that from? Who? That's so, so interesting to give VAs to every two people.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just started doing it when we started the company.

• 1:02:45Sam Parr?

  I think that's pretty amazing. Right?

• 1:02:48Shaan Puri?

  It's been great. How did you learn the how to, how to manage a VA, what you can use them for, what you can't? Where did you learn that part? Obviously, start trial and error, but like, what was the spark?

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, when I, when I left, when I left, like the company I was working with, Teri App, we got acquired. And then I was kind of like, starting to do my own stuff on the side and was like, okay, I want to try and scale myself to do more stuff on the side. So like originally hired VAs to help with responding to Airbnb requests. And then viewed me requests and then like slowly got them more integrated into my life.

• 1:03:21Shaan Puri?

  I love it. And did you take a course or something like where did you, this training that you have for, for your employees? Is that modeled off something or what?

• 1:03:29Speaker 01

  No, we, we basically like, we have some internal documents that myself and other people on the team have written up around how to leverage virtual assistants and we just do that.

• 1:03:37Shaan Puri?

  You should publish this.

• 1:03:39Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I feel like that's, I feel like you're kind of like this, you're not dismissing this, but you're kind of like brushing over this. I feel like that's actually one of the more interesting things that I've learned today. I think that's actually pretty amazing.

• 1:03:48Shaan Puri?

  I've had a lot of people ask me for this and I actually suck at using VAs and don't really use them, but I know I should and could do more. And this is one of, if I, I kind of like pinged the audience, I was like, all right. If I could teach you anything that you think, like, what do you think I could teach you that I know that, that you want to know? And surprisingly, this was like number five on that list. And so I plan to eventually A, learn it myself and better so that I can like, offer this to others. But I was very surprised to see that on the top list of things people wanted to learn that they felt like they were just curious about and they felt that there was value there, but they didn't know how to unlock it.

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, maybe this is something that I should publish at some point and I don't know.

• 1:04:28Sam Parr?

  How much do, what, what, how much budget do you allocate? Is it like two grand a month per two people or what?

• 1:04:33Speaker 01

  We, yeah, we probably about that, like, call it like 10 ish grand across like the whole company.

• 1:04:41Sam Parr?

  So you, what do you guys have? You have 20 people?

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  We have 33.

• 1:04:46Sam Parr?

  Dude, that's pretty sick how you've kept it like relatively small for, I, I, I have no intel. I would imagine your revenue is in the 60 million range, if I had to guess. And that's pretty a lean mean team for how value, how much value that is.

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  Definitely. And I think the VA piece is a big part of it. Like we just have a very efficient team. That's pretty focused on getting stuff done that they uniquely can do. And the VAs are super helpful with the rest.

• 1:05:13Sam Parr?

  Well dude, this is sick, man. I can't see Sean's face. I can't see where he's at.

• 1:05:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, my camera overheats. Uh, this is a recurring problem. I moved it all in. I moved my whole setup inside for this, but then I also got two babies inside. So I thought, alright, do I want to risk babies crying? Or my camera overheating, guaranteed camera overheating. And I chose the camera.

• 1:05:32Sam Parr?

  Justin, do you want to promote yourself? Where do you want, where do you want people to go to? I, a lot of people are going to listen to this. So, uh, what, your dot com, your Twitter? Where are you gonna, what are you gonna pimp?

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, so probably my Twitter. I'm at JW Mares. Uh, or, you know, my website, JustinMares.com. I have a monthly newsletter that I send out. I, where I talk about various things. I think about health, business, and whatever else is kind of on my mind. That seems like people like, I think Sam, you like it too, right?

• 1:06:01Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I'm, I'm looking at your stuff now. I'm a subscriber. I get your, it's not a Substack, it's just a blog, right?

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, but I have a monthly newsletter that is on Substack, but.

• 1:06:10Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that's right. I, I get your emails in my, uh, thing, or in my email. And I, and I message you about it. I'm like, oh, I just saw your Airbnb thing. I'm, because I actually want to do that. I think that's sick. I, I think that'd be a great way to finance, uh, like a, a, a pretty large bit of land. I think that's fun. I went, I went shooting, I went to this place out in Texas where you shoot guns. And then afterwards you go and ride ATVs. And it was like, I was in heaven. I was like, this is just the most fun I could possibly have. I have to go and buy a place so I can do this all the time.

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  It's awesome.

• 1:06:42Sam Parr?

  Uh, what are you gonna say, Sean?

• 1:06:43Shaan Puri?

  Uh, I was gonna say, Justin, I gotta give you the compliment I'll give your blog is that your, your content is so good. It made me question. I was like, is this guy really like a good entrepreneur? Or is this like, because like usually, like there's some people who are truly great at putting out content. And truly great at do it, actually like walking the walk and doing the, doing the business side have actually done it themselves. They're not just like studying others and writing content. But often what you'll find is that people are good at one of the, I know a bunch of amazing business people who don't want to or suck at creating content. And I know some great content people that I'm like, once I meet them, I'm like, oh, you've, this is what, this is your business. You've never done a business outside of this content business. And, uh, so then when I found out that you were good at both, I was like, okay, you know, props to you for both.

• 1:07:26Shaan Puri?

  But that's how good the content was, that it made me, it made me do the research and say, is this, is this guy legit or what?

• 1:07:33Speaker 01

  I appreciate that. I'm definitely not good at like the content business side of things or posting frequently, but I like really enjoy putting it out.

• 1:07:40Shaan Puri?

  You've been doing this for years.

• 1:07:43Sam Parr?

  Yeah, you've been doing it for years. I'm looking at your site now. I'm reading your 2020 review. I just clicked off Central Athlete because you talked about Central Athlete. I mean, it seems like you've been doing this for years. So I mean, that's consistent.

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  Definitely. I like it, but in small doses, not as a full-time thing.

• 1:07:58Shaan Puri?

  All right, great. We should wrap it up. Dude, thanks for coming on. This was fun. You're like a perfect fit for like the type of audience that we have. They're gonna love, I think, the content that you, uh, the ideas and stuff you shared. So that was great.

• 1:08:10Sam Parr?

  Yeah, this is awesome. Thank you.

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me on, guys. This was fun.