How to naturally monetize what you love

140+ real business ideas database: https://clickhubspot.com/lrgo Episode 858: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk about the weird ways people go all in on strange hobbies and make millions doing it. — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (0:24) scent social club (1:54) Museum hacks (16:34) Mafia tours (21:39) Dolly Parton--Honorary Billy of The Week (45:04) LeBron James's brilliant business move — Links: • Scent Social Club - https://www.scentsocialclub.com/ • We Don’t Sell Saddles Here - https://medium.com/@stewart/we-dont-sell-saddles-here-4c59524d650d • Equine Network - https://equinenetwork.com/ • Museum Hack - https://museumhack.com/ — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton (joinhampton.com): My community for founders. Average member does $25m/year. Many of the guests are members. Get after it...apply: http://joinhampton.com/mfm — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents. • Mercury - Shaan uses Mercury across all of his companies. you can too: http://mercury.com/ Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N. A., Members FDIC • I run all my newsletters on Beehiiv and you should too + we're giving away $10k to our favorite newsletter, check it out: beehiiv.com/mfm-challenge My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano /

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

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  It's a great example of you don't want to be the best, you want to be the only. That mentality is how you become the best. Whittle away the generic parts of what you do and you will be the best one because nobody else is the same as you and you're sort of in a market of one.

• 0:24Sam Parr?

  All right, Sean, I have something interesting to show you and this is going to be a little bit of an advice line, but not for me, but for the person I'm talking about. So the other day, as you know, my new thing in my household is I try to go on dates once a week, every Thursday, you know, trying to become less roommates, more of a married couple. And so this lady reached out to me because she listens to the pod and I had coincidentally also seen her Instagram and she did something really cool that I wanted to tell you about. So go to scentsocialclub.com. So her name's Asia Grant. She started this business, she was like a consultant, but she was obsessed with perfume. And she created this idea that I think is actually really cool that I call a perfume

• 1:07Sam Parr?

  tour, I guess, but basically there's this like part of New York, this like street of like perfume stores. Basically she sends out a type form in advance to everyone on the tour and you like tell her about your personality and things that you're into. You show up at a perfume store, she gives you a sheet where we list out three stores and three perfumes or colognes to view per store. And she took us on a tour where we went to three different stores, whatever. And she showed us like all this stuff and she's like, here's why I think you would like this thing. And she like pointed it out and you can or cannot buy it, you don't have to. But look at her Instagram because this lady was amazing.

• 1:46Sam Parr?

  But the reason I'm bringing this up is because I think that enthusiasm can be a moat in a business. So our friend Nick Gray, both you and I, one of our favorite people on earth. He has this story where he started this business called Museum Hack, which grew to $3 million in revenue over the course of like three or four years. And basically what he did was at the Met and a bunch of other museums in New York City, the museums are free and oftentimes you can get a free tour. But he was like, these tours are kind of lame. I'm going to give more exciting tours and instead of free, I'm going to charge $200. And he would give this tour where his whole shtick was like, I forget all of the things, but one of his main thing was like, I'm going to show you five pieces of art that I would love to steal today.

• 2:35Sam Parr?

  And like that small twist like makes a world of difference. And I don't care about perfumes at all, but I went on this lady's tour, Asia Grant's.

• 2:42Shaan Puri?

  It's contagious though, right?

• 2:44Sam Parr?

  But it's contagious. Yeah, I'm so into it. And like she showed me one perfume or whatever and I was like, that's dope, I'll take it. She's like, that's $1,200. I'm like, where's the cheaper one?

• 2:53Shaan Puri?

  I'll take it back to the shelf and I'll put it back.

• 2:57Sam Parr?

  I think I'll love the scent more of the cheaper ones. Where's like the Abercrombie?

• 3:04Sam Parr?

  But anyway, I wanted to show you this because A, I think enthusiasm is a moat and B, for people who have a passion, it doesn't matter how like quirky it is, this woman turned this thing into, it's a full-time job. She makes a lot of money, I think, doing it because she does it for like companies and shit.

• 3:18Shaan Puri?

  Well, first congratulations on the date night. That's actually pretty big in our culture. I appreciate what you've done there and very creative date night.

• 3:26Sam Parr?

  Yeah, gotta mix it up.

• 3:28Shaan Puri?

  This is good. So she's just doing this on the side for people?

• 3:31Sam Parr?

  No, it's her full, it's a full-time job. And I think that there's three types of customers. The first type is like a private tour, which we did, which I think it's like $500. The second thing is like she does group tours.

• 3:43Shaan Puri?

  Her bio is Asia Grant, I have a perfume for you. The best New York City perfume tour. It's a great example of you don't want to be the best, you want to be the only, which is always a hard thing, right? Because somebody's always doing something. But that mentality is how you become the best because you continue to refine and refine and refine, whittle away the generic parts of what you do until it's really the thing that you do well and you do. And really whether you're the only one, you will be the best one because nobody else is the same as you and you're those sort of in a market of one. And she's a great example of this. I mean, to be able to do this full-time in New York City, that's no joke. I mean, that is, you would not, you would not, that takes courage, right? You wouldn't go into it thinking, I'm sure this will work.

• 4:29Shaan Puri?

  No, not at all. And I'm curious, how did she build up brick by brick? Do you know?

• 4:33Sam Parr?

  Well, originally what she did was I think she got like her friends and she was like, this is my friend, like Jamal, I'm going to like show you his, I'm going to show you how I picked out his personal scent. And they like, and she like went store to store to store. She's, I don't think she has a huge following. What does she have, 15,000 followers?

• 4:49Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, 15,000 and you know, some of the videos do well, but, but they're not like out of this world. I would say, I feel like you might be early to the Asia Grant train.

• 4:59Sam Parr?

  Oh, that's why I'm talking about it.

• 5:00Shaan Puri?

  If she gets one format, she's one format away from being like 10 levels higher than where she is today and doing this. And this is great what she's doing right now, but when I say a format, I think people have this idea that like, oh yeah, I'll go viral. I think go viral is the wrong idea. It's sort of this like false hope, like lottery tickets type of mentality. But when you say I'm one format away, you have all of the upside of the go viral lottery ticket, but you're actually using a more grounded approach, which is, look, if I can just figure out one core like show mechanic, right? This, my Instagram reel is a one-minute show and this show, if I just get the right hook

• 5:44Shaan Puri?

  and then the right payoff, I can do that over and over again for a while here. I'm one format away from this becoming 10 times bigger than I am today. And I think she's kind of like this, maybe that format is something like, I don't know what she does exactly because I'm, I'm looking at her Instagram for the first time here, but I think if she stopped a guy on the street and like found his scent and like, but he just looked like a normal guy and it looks like she's stopping him on the street and he's a little hesitant, but it's this sort of makeover type of thing that's shrunk into this 30 second Instagram reel. I feel like she's one format away.

• 6:15Sam Parr?

  That's, I completely agree. That's great advice. I also wanted to ask you, how would you grow her business? So let's just say, I don't know how big she is, I'm just going to guess. Let's say she does $250,000 a year in revenue and $200,000 a year in profit. You know, she makes a good living for herself. I think that most every business can get to five or 10 million in revenue in some capacity, given enough time. How would you get her there?

• 6:36Shaan Puri?

  Well, I think you, well, here's, here's kind of a couple of ideas. So I would say one, you're one format away. The second is the content is the business, not the tours. So the tours are just content. Whereas I think what most people do is they say, I'm going to make content to try to get people to book the tour because that's where I get the transactional money. And so that's the real business. And I actually think if you want to go bigger, you have to flip that on its head. You have to say, the tour is just actors, I'm essentially having humans that I'm going to be using to create awesome content and the real business is going to be building this brand online. So that's the, the kind of the flip that I think you have to do if you want to scale this bigger because the in-person tours can only scale so much. A guy who's doing this well is that guy, um, Jack's Dining Room.

• 7:21Shaan Puri?

  We've talked about him before on here, mostly because I don't really use Instagram and I bumped into this guy in New York and now he's like the one example I keep going to because I think it's pretty remarkable what he's done. He goes to places, he tries the best food in different cities and he just records Instagram content. Now, one thing he has is this thing called the reserve, which is like you pay some absurd amount of money. I don't even know what it is. It's like, it's tens of thousands, it might be a hundred thousand dollars. I don't know what it is. It's some crazy amount of money you pay to go on a one, you know, once in a lifetime food experience. You get on a private jet, on the jet, there's a Michelin star sushi chef. You land and there's caviar being poured down your eyes and then you get champagne and then you're, you know, Ben Affleck is there at this thing with you and like literally, like I think Leonardo DiCaprio goes on these, like he's got like mega stars that are fans of his that pay to go do these reserve things.

• 8:07Shaan Puri?

  But the thing is, even if he sells out all of these, it's like a million or two bucks, million bucks a year of revenue and then it costs a shit ton to run these things. It's not a great business, business, but it is absolutely incredible content. And so I think using the, the real world business stuff as content is the smart idea. Hormozzi's doing the same thing, by the way. If you see, he's got these like in-person workshops and I'm sure he charges for a brand for people to come. And I'm sure that thing actually, you know, does pretty well, like probably 10, 10 million a year. But really what he's done is he's using that as a farm system to produce clips and content and the content grows his brand and he's going to make way more off his brand being famous than he is off those workshops in the end.

• 8:46Sam Parr?

  So that's, that's the second piece of advice.

• 8:47Shaan Puri?

  The third piece of advice I would say is, hey, I want to tell you about something pretty cool. We have a database of all of the business ideas that have been discussed on this podcast. So hundreds of episodes, the team at HubSpot went through, they pulled out all the simple, relatable, interesting, profitable ideas that we have brainstormed and they're all available for download for free. Just click the link in the description below. Thank you to our friends at HubSpot for sponsoring this podcast and putting together this free resource for you guys. Back to the show. You remember that, that great blog post by the CEO of Slack called, "We don't sell saddles here." I think she should read that post. I think every founder should read that post. He wrote this to his team the day Slack launched and Slack became ultimately, I think, a $25 billion company. But this was day one.

• 9:32Sam Parr?

  And for those who don't know, it was a video game company for one or two or three years and it sucked.

• 9:37Shaan Puri?

  Failing.

• 9:37Sam Parr?

  And he was gonna, he was gonna give his money back to Andreessen Horowitz and they're like, dude, I don't care about this money. Figure it out. Just do something. And he does something.

• 9:44Shaan Puri?

  He's like, well, you know, while we were building this game, we did have this internal chat tool that was pretty cool. Like, what if we turned that into a product? That became Slack. So what did he say in this blog post? He basically says, look, let's imagine you're Acme, the Acme Saddle Inc. and you sell saddles. And today you could try to sell saddles to horseback riders. There's not that many of them. And he said, instead of selling saddles, we need to sell the joy of horseback riding. And he talked about how certain brands do this. You know, Nike famously did this with jogging. So, you know, Nike didn't sell shoes to people who were already track athletes only. They basically, you know, as jogging became a national trend, they piggybacked on this idea that like, people are gonna have athletic shoes, whether they're athletes or not.

• 10:29Shaan Puri?

  That the everyday mom and dad is gonna own these things and kids are gonna own these things. And you don't have to be an actual track athlete, the way that the company started. Lululemon did the same thing. Lululemon, if you walk in their stores, you can literally take a yoga class. That's kind of weird, right? Why would a clothing store offer yoga classes? It's not a big moneymaker, but it was because they needed to promote the lifestyle of being a little yoga girl. That you've got your cute water bottle and your cute pants and you're gonna go to this thing and you have friends there and namaste. And, you know, downward dog, baby. Here we go. And so they promoted the lifestyle of yoga, not just selling these $70 pants. And so he said, we're gonna have to do the same thing, that we know that when you use this tool, your, your calendar chills out. You don't have as many meetings.

• 11:12Shaan Puri?

  Your email inbox stops being overflowed, that you feel like a sense of camaraderie with your team, even if they're remote. That you have, it feels like you're in the same room together to hang it up. That's what we need to sell, is the feeling of great team communication, of a team working well together. Is what we're gonna sell and Slack is gonna be a tool to help you get there. It's just your saddle. It's a mentality around marketing that I think would work well here. And so why I say this is because, look, I'm not a, you weren't a perfume guy until you went on this thing. I'm not a cologne or perfume guy, but you are now. She sold you horseback riding, not a saddle. Because if she tried to say, hey, here's a cologne, you probably wouldn't have bought it. You weren't really interested. But then when you realize that like, actually smelling good is part of showing up well,

• 11:54Shaan Puri?

  is part of your personality, that you can have one that's, you know, tailored to you. And that's very different than something that just.

• 12:00Sam Parr?

  It was even better. She goes, "You're a masculine guy." Very Midwestern masculine values, stoicism, leadership, timelessness. Therefore, this one would be perfect. You smell it.

• 12:12Shaan Puri?

  I wrote this down. I wrote, "Horoscope, but better," when you started talking. Cause I was like, she, you can just cold read anyone and be like, you're a masculine guy, but you do have a soft side for the people that matter in your life. You're like, I do. That's so true. It's like, I can say that to any guy. And they're like, yes, thank you for telling. And this is horoscopes for better, because the horoscope trend and like kind of the cold reading tarot card type of fortune teller type of shit, obviously works. Obviously, there's like a market for people who love to be told something like about themselves and that they're part of something. Learn more about their favorite subject themselves. But in this case, she's selling a very good backend product. On the other end of it, which is like, here's water with two drops of oil and 99% profit margins.

• 12:57Shaan Puri?

  Which is way better than what the horoscope person sells, which is the horoscope reading. The reading is free. The, and you buy the water at the end at this insane markup. Wow, this is horoscopes, but better.

• 13:09Sam Parr?

  First of all, for those content creators out there who want to learn how to turn a date night into just a banger content session, you're welcome.

• 13:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that was a business expense. You could write that off now.

• 13:19Sam Parr?

  This is called being a professional. Take notes.

• 13:23Shaan Puri?

  Dude, was I just Neo in The Matrix just seeing you? I just know where Agent Smith was just now with that horoscopes for better shit?

• 13:32Sam Parr?

  Yeah, classes in session, fools. I completely agree with everything you said. I think it's awesome. We have to get Asia Grant, if you're listening. You gotta have like, implement some of this stuff and give us an update. I like finding these like creators who are early in the journey and figuratively buying stock in them. We did that with, you know, Hebermann, Brian Johnson, now Asia Grant. And so I think it'd be fun to get an update on her, but I, I wholeheartedly agree with your advice.

• 13:57Shaan Puri?

  By the way, our friend David Perrell, friend of the pod, David Perrell, has a great phrase on this. He calls it having a personal monopoly. And a personal monopoly is when you are, you are known for something. You're known. And so, you know, he was the writing guy online and he was all, he taught writing courses. He always talked about writing and he has a podcast called How I Write. He really wanted to build a personal monopoly. I feel like Asia Grant is building a good example of building a personal monopoly. She is gonna be the New York City scent girl or the New York City perfume person, right? Like she's got that, she's got that thing. Now, all she has to do is just add layers and layers and layers of defensibility of, of more, more and more stacking on top of that, until there is really only one. Nobody else could ever come into that category.

• 14:39Sam Parr?

  And I think people are surprised, but how big things can get. Our friend Nick Gray did this with museum tours. It was called Museum Hack.

• 14:47Shaan Puri?

  How, how big did that get?

• 14:48Sam Parr?

  He told me that they did $2.9 million in revenue the year they sold. And the way the business worked was he started doing a bunch of tours. He was probably the only tour guide for a year. People spent $168 or something like that, almost $200 per tour. Oftentimes the tours were not even sanctioned. Like he would just like get a group of eight people and just like walk through. And I think actually the whole time, he like, it was like, hey, I could just do this, right? And they're like, well, it's open to the public. So yeah, you can do it. And so he did that. And then eventually he hired, he had roughly a hundred people who were like up and coming Broadway people or comedians or actors, struggling, you know, creatives. And he would teach them how to do these tours and that's what he did.

• 15:26Shaan Puri?

  And then he sold, he sold at some multiple of, of, you know, either revenue or profit. So on, so in addition to making the money every year, it was actually a sellable asset, which people don't really think that something like that can.

• 15:37Sam Parr?

  And he became like the museum tour guide. And then, you know, this sounds silly to like use these phrases together, but he reinvented himself as the two hour cocktail party guy.

• 15:46Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 15:46Sam Parr?

  Another thing that you think is really stupid and dumb, a two hour cocktail party? That's ridiculous. A, who would write a book on that? And B, do people really want to learn how to do it? He wrote the best book on it and he sold, I, I think he sold hundreds of thousands of cocktails.

• 16:00Shaan Puri?

  It's another enthusiasm is the moat, because what's Nick's edge is that he just is more enthusiastic about two hour cocktail parties than anyone else you know on earth. That's what he, he naturally felt that way. And really it's less of getting yourself to do something as it is giving yourself permission and trusting that that's a thing, that you can lean into it and you don't have to like withhold some part of yourself or kind of sandbag yourself and kind of hedge. And he just didn't hedge. He didn't sandbag himself, just did what he wanted to do and like went for it. And, you know, obviously amazing things have come out of that as well. Can we talk a little bit about these kind of like real world experiential tours? So there was the guy in New York City who was doing a million dollars on Airbnb, doing the police tours, right? Or was it the?

• 16:45Sam Parr?

  Mafia tours. I did it. I also did that one. Awesome.

• 16:49Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So there's like a kind of genre of these things. You know, when we went to New York last, last month or whatever, actually David took us on a walking food tour, which was awesome. He basically just took us through New York, but like, I'm not big into sightseeing, but if you can't tell, I'm pretty into food. And so I was like, okay, you want to show me some stuff, but we're gonna eat at every stop at a cool place that has a little story and is known for having the best froyo and then the best burger and then the best this and then the best that. And that's what we did. And it was amazing. And I, I think that as a, like, as a thing, food tours, why isn't that a bigger deal? Like, that is the way I want to explore most cities. Is that already a thing?

• 17:28Sam Parr?

  When I travel, so my wife worked at Airbnb and, and I think she, I don't know if she worked on, but somehow was involved with Airbnb experiences. And so she would always hype it up and we would, we all, whenever we travel, we do food tours. That's like how we get around and like learn about the city. And it's really awesome. But I, there's this guy in New York City, if you Google like New York mafia tour Airbnb, you'll see his listing on Airbnb experiences. He was a retired police officer and he gives like a three hour tour where he would take you to different restaurants and different places where famous mafia incidents happened. And you end at a restaurant where he's in cahoots with, with the owner, like they gave him permission or he gets a reservation. And they, he tells you like, you know, the table that we're sitting at, you know, Sammy the Bull or whatever their names are,

• 18:09Sam Parr?

  like sat here and they brokered this deal. And so we are kind of like them right now. Let's eat some spaghetti. And it's awesome. And this guy, he's an ex-cop, he actually sold his Airbnb experiences listing to another person who now has like five or six or seven ex-cops giving these tours. And so it's a very miniature version of like, all right, I retired as a cop. I still like want something to do. Like this sounds like a good thing. Let me just step in and do this. And so I actually think that like people can very, it's not easy, but it's fairly simple. They can turn very passionate local experiences into thriving businesses. If I had to guess, you could make many hundreds of thousands of dollars a year doing experiences

• 18:52Sam Parr?

  based off of history and food, just like this.

• 18:55Shaan Puri?

  Another guy who did this was in the sushi space, actually. So there's a guy, I think he's in Hampton. His name is Guy, Guy Allen. And he opened up this restaurant. We went to it in New York. It's a little omakase bar. It was in the like, dude, you look like it was like, you have to go down this back alley staircase. I was like, there's no way. And then everyone's like, this is the hottest, hottest omakase ticket in New York right now. I was like, no way. Where are we? And I walk in, sushi's great. And I was like, dude, how did you, how do you get people to find this place? It's literally on an unmarked staircase and an unmarked door in the, like, how could people, how could this have gotten hot? Like, you are literally defying the laws of real estate here.

• 19:37Sam Parr?

  The restaurant is called Sendo Sushi.

• 19:39Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, Sendo Sushi. And he was like, oh, well, you know, I basically spent a decade building up my Instagram because I just love sushi. I just, he's a guy, just great enthusiasm for sushi and had been traveling around, talking about sushi on his Instagram. He had a book, like a sushi table, coffee table book, I think, that he had released. All that stuff led, led up to this point where as soon as he opens the restaurant, bang, you know, like line, waitlist, et cetera, et cetera.

• 20:04Sam Parr?

  And what's, what's funny, by the way, when I met him, I was, he like told me what he was doing and I was like, this is a horrible idea. And then I like researched him because he's like a white young guy and he's like, I'm opening up a sushi restaurant. I'm like, are you sure? Why?

• 20:15Shaan Puri?

  Like, dude, there's easier ways to meet Asian women. Like, it's not the only way, white guy in New York. But, but you know, one thing that was really fascinating, actually on the business side, because there's only like eight chairs in the restaurant. So I was like, dude, I get why there's a line. There's only eight chairs. Like, you know, what are you gonna do? And he's like, well, delivery is huge. And so apparently they're doing like millions a year in DoorDash deliveries and pickups, which is like, I just never really seen that. So it's like this interesting, kind of like a ghost kitchen, like more than half the restaurant is just the back, back kitchen for delivery. But it's a, it's not like most ghost kitchens on DoorDash, where you've never heard of the brand, or it's like, it's a random, like fictitious name.

• 20:58Shaan Puri?

  This is like a really high-end, well-known brand that has this huge delivery operation. I thought that was pretty interesting.

• 21:05Sam Parr?

  Yeah, they kill it. And it's awesome. We're giving shout outs to everyone. Order from Sono Sushi.

• 21:11Shaan Puri?

  Hey, let's take a quick break. You know that feeling when strategy is done, the brief is written, everyone's aligned, and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content? That someone is usually you, and it's due tomorrow. Well, the Breeze assistant from HubSpot can help. It works right inside HubSpot. You can draft a campaign copy, blog posts, emails, all in your brand voice, all using your actual customer data. So you don't create just content, you create content that converts. Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Well, call us Dolly Parton, because that's the next subject.

• 21:43Sam Parr?

  R I P.

• 21:44Shaan Puri?

  We famously had a Dolly Parton moment many years ago, where you were like, yeah, Dolly, you know, Dolly Parton. And I was like, honestly, not really. So you were like, what? I was like, I know the name, but I couldn't really tell you. Because you were like, no, no, you know, Dollywood? And I was like, Dollywood? What is Dollywood? And you made fun of me for years that I don't know Dolly Parton. And honestly, justified. Because now Dolly Parton unfortunately just passed away. And I went to learn about Dolly Parton. I did not put enough respect on this woman's name. Can we do a Dolly Parton?

• 22:14Sam Parr?

  Yes.

• 22:14Shaan Puri?

  Billie of the Week?

• 22:15Sam Parr?

  Sean, describe who Dolly Parton is, or what she looks like, to a non-white Midwesterner guy.

• 22:23Shaan Puri?

  Well, you know, this changes over time, age, but like, you know, she was this kind of almost larger-than-life character, big blonde hair, almost like kind of all-American, but then every knob was just dialed up. The makeup was dialed up, the hair was dialed up, the body was dialed up, everything was dialed up, the style was dialed up. That's kind of like became part of the shtick. And she's actually talked about like the dumb blonde packaging. Like, she kind of created the brand, and then she was like, I don't mind when people call me a dumb blonde, because I know I'm not dumb. And I'm not a blonde either. And like, basically, like, you know, she created the brand, the iconic look, which was very distinct. And like, you know, I've always like joked about this with myself, like grew out long hair once during COVID. And I was like, well, people are like, why are you doing this? And I was like, well, you can't be good looking.

• 23:09Shaan Puri?

  You gotta be interesting looking. And it's just like a general philosophy, which is like, actually, like in terms of branding, that actually is not untrue, that, that you, like distinctiveness matters a lot more than sort of the objective attractiveness of, about somebody. Yeah.

• 23:23Sam Parr?

  So what do you know about her?

• 23:24Shaan Puri?

  For the, for the other ignorant people like me who didn't know, here's the story. So, fourth of 12 kids, you know, born in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, immediately has like, you know, a sort of gift, but also an interest in singing, writes her first song at five years old. At 10, she's performing on stage and, you know, fast forward the tape, and she's a very successful singer. And if that was the whole story, it wouldn't be a very interesting story. But the singing part is pretty impressive. She does a, over 100 million records sold, 10 Grammys. But then she just was a prolific businesswoman. So she owns this thing called Dollywood, which is this essentially like a Disney World in Tennessee, like an amusement park that brings in millions of visitors a year, and is actually a big contributor to her fortune.

• 24:09Shaan Puri?

  And the reason why she qualifies as Billie of the Week, she's, she kind of passed away with a net worth over $500 million, which very few artists ever get to. And then on top of that, is this larger-than-life personality. Every quote you hear about her, any person who ran into her, just like, on, on any, any age, any background, any race, any political orientation, they all loved her. And they all literally like, there's quotes now that she passed away. They're like, I remember meeting her and I went and called my friend. I was like, I think I actually met an angel. Like, you know, like just think of these, these quotes that you don't really hear from most people. And also a very prolific philanthropist, did a lot of great things in the world where her music is, you know, maybe three or four on the list of great things that she did in her lifetime.

• 24:54Shaan Puri?

  And I just wanted to kind of walk through some of these incredible, incredible things that she did. I was pretty inspired by some of this stuff.

• 25:01Sam Parr?

  And by the way, just on accomplishments, some of her most famous songs, she didn't sing. So I believe she wrote, I Will Always, is it I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston?

• 25:10Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, there's actually a great story around that. Do you know the full story of this?

• 25:13Sam Parr?

  No, no, no.

• 25:14Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so two, two crazy things about this. One, she wrote I Will Always Love You and Jolene in the same night.

• 25:21Sam Parr?

  Oh, wow.

• 25:22Shaan Puri?

  Which is one of those, like, there's these, this happens many times, it's like these, these, you know, days where decades happen type of thing, where people get this creative streak and they just go. And this is, she's, she's a good example of one of these. The second thing is, she did sing the song. So, so one of the things that happened was, when she went out to go try to be an artist, she leaves the home, she's gonna go try to make. And like, there's like this hero's journey of anyone who goes and tries to make it. We had our version of that, moving to San Francisco, trying to make it as a founder, as a tech entrepreneur.

• 25:52Sam Parr?

  And she went to Nashville.

• 25:53Shaan Puri?

  She went to Nashville, tried to make it as a country artist. And she was actually singing backup for this other guy. And she had a deal with him, where he's like, okay, I'll take you to my gigs, I'll pay you, but you'll be a backup singer and like kind of side performer, basically at my shows. And you, you gotta give me five years. And she's like, okay, like, I don't really have any other way to make it. But like, all right, so she agrees to this. She's now seven years into this thing, and it's pretty miserable. Like, she doesn't want to be this guy's sidekick. And he doesn't treat her that well. They're kind of are not even on speaking terms at this point. And she's still performing at his shows. And she kind of like, I'm gonna quit. And she, using the emotion of that, wrote, I Will Always Love You. She performs it for the guy. And she's like, I want to go out on my own. And he's like, on your own?

• 26:34Shaan Puri?

  And she's like, I have the song. She plays it. He breaks down crying. And he's basically like, all right, I'll let you go if you record this song, and I want a piece of the, the action of this song.

• 26:42Sam Parr?

  Ooh.

• 26:43Shaan Puri?

  And so she, and you know, one of the things that she did a great job of in her career, one of the reasons she built such a big empire, was she understood the value of her music in a way that most artists do not. And that song, I Will Always Love You, it was such a banger early on, that like, everyone who heard it knew this is gonna be a winner. Elvis wanted to buy it. So Elvis was like, I'll sing the song. And she's like, amazing. He's like, and I'll own over 50% of it. And she's like, I don't want to do that. Like, how about you sing the song, and we'll do the normal, like, kind of, you know, whatever the rights breakdown normally is of the, the song creator versus the artist who sings it.

• 27:25Shaan Puri?

  And Elvis was like, no, no, I need to own most of it. I'm Elvis, I'm gonna blow this thing up. And she turns him down. She turns down Elvis to make it better on herself.

• 27:33Sam Parr?

  That's like a Sylvester Stallone move.

• 27:35Shaan Puri?

  So she bets on herself, she sings the song, the song does well. One day, she's in her car, and she hears Whitney Houston singing it. And she's, breaks down, she's like, I'm like, it's like hearing the song for the first time. Like, what Whitney did with it was next level. So, but she, because she owned it, she got royalties on every time that song plays, which, if anyone's been in the world, it plays all the time. And so like in the 90s, she made like tens of millions in royalties just off of Whitney Houston's version of I Will Always Love You.

• 28:05Sam Parr?

  Well, and the album that that song was on, it was, it was for The Bodyguard, the movie The Bodyguard. That's, it's, at the time, I think it was the number one bestselling soundtrack of all time. And that was, that, that song and that movie was one of the reasons Whitney Houston became a American superstar, but catapulted to global superstar.

• 28:21Shaan Puri?

  And then, like the legend that she is, she took $10 million that she made of that in the 90s, reinvested it in like an all-black community to build housing. She was like, it just seemed like the right thing to do. And she just kept doing what seemed like the right thing to do over and over and over again. And nobody's perfect, but man, she did a lot of amazing things. I'm gonna tell you something.

• 28:39Sam Parr?

  What else? Yeah, tell me everything.

• 28:40Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so she's pretty famous for some of the philanthropy she did in Tennessee. So she, her dad could not read or write. And she always saw how that kind of held her back. And like, you know, 12 kids, dad can't read or write. He worked really hard, didn't make a lot of money. And so she was like, all right, like, they were like, Dolly, you know, you could set up a foundation, you could set up a fundraiser, you could perform at. She's like, how about I just get books in the home? And they're like, yeah, but Dolly, you're an artist. You could, you could go do this, and you could tap into your network, and you could raise money, and have a gala. She's like, how about I put books in the home? And so she just decided to send books to people's homes for free, for years. And she sent like 300 million plus books to people's homes over her lifetime.

• 29:23Sam Parr?

  What's that called?

• 29:25Shaan Puri?

  The Imaginary Library. 325 million books since 1995 as a tribute to her father who couldn't read or write. Okay, so that was one of them. Here's another thing she did. She went to her county, and she got all the 7th and 8th graders in the county. And they had a huge problem with graduation, I think, like. Thirty-five percent of the kids were not graduating. And so she went and she said, I got an idea. Same thing, again, like, kind of ruthless simplicity in her approach to solving these things. And so she just went and she said, all right, I'm gonna pair all of you up. And here's the deal. You're gonna sign a contract with me. And the contract says if both of you, everybody gets a buddy. And if you and your buddy both graduate, when you graduate, you get $500. Now, this is back in the 80s, so it's like more like kind of 1,500 or $2,000, basically worth of money.

• 30:11Shaan Puri?

  Which is a lot to a kid. She was like, if you both graduate, you both get the money. But if you don't both graduate, you don't get the money.

• 30:18Sam Parr?

  Hmm, that's awesome.

• 30:19Shaan Puri?

  The dropout rate dropped from 35% of kids not graduating to like 6%. It was like this incredibly effective program that was basically Dolly Parton being like, listen up, kid. Like, give me 500 bucks if you graduate.

• 30:34Sam Parr?

  Dude, have you ever, like, there's all these studies going on right now about the stimmy checks, stimulus checks. And turns out that just giving poor people money is probably better than like a huge percentage of charities where they're like, you know, in order to like, help young, single moms who are poor, I'm gonna help you get a job. I'm gonna help you, like, you gotta go through this program and then we're gonna get like, or I'll just give you two grand. And like, they have found that, like, because it lacks administrative costs and it's just, here's just money. And like, there's a larger percentage of time, it just gets a desired outcome.

• 31:09Shaan Puri?

  And they asked her, they were like, you know, why are you doing this for these kids? And she basically, she didn't, she herself didn't have kids. And the reason why, she had endometriosis. And basically had like a hysterectomy when she was in her 30s. And so she couldn't have kids. But like, listen to this attitude. She goes, I didn't have children because I believe God didn't mean for me to have kids. So everybody's kids could be mine. And I could do things like the imaginary library, because if I hadn't had the freedom to do the work, I wouldn't have had, been able to do all the things that I've done. And like, what an attitude for somebody who took kind of like a lemon from life and was like, okay, I can't have kids. And put a different meaning on it. It's like, so everybody's kids can be mine. And I'm gonna go help all of these kids instead. And all, you know, I just thought that was like, kind of amazing.

• 31:51Sam Parr?

  Your, this, this evolution of Sean from not going to, from not knowing who she is to being her biggest fan, I find to be incredibly endearing. You are, I, this is like, this is like watching puppies play.

• 32:04Shaan Puri?

  Are you having this reaction in you? Cause I have this all the time. If I tell somebody about a show being great and they're kind of like, yeah, yeah. And they don't watch the show. And then years later, they're like, dude, have you seen the show? I love this show. I'm like, I told, I told you about the show. And I get infuriated. And I'm just like, I need to like assert my like, my claim to the like thing. Are you feeling that? Cause I feel like.

• 32:27Sam Parr?

  No, I can't stake that because frankly, at this point, you probably know more about her than I. Like, I grew up listening to her and I lived in Nashville. And in Nashville, she was always like, like a mini mayor. Like, she was like, she's always been like the shit forever. But now you actually know the facts. You're like a tourist who like knows how tall the tallest building is.

• 32:43Shaan Puri?

  So true, so true.

• 32:47Shaan Puri?

  So true. Yeah, I'm doing the tourist thing where I like got the pamphlet and the guide.

• 32:52Sam Parr?

  You know everything.

• 32:53Shaan Puri?

  And the local, you know why I paid attention to it? Cause I saw when it happened, I was like, okay, Dolly Parton passed away. And I remember just thinking like, oh, Sam's probably cares about this. And I scrolled on. And then I saw the, I saw Trump had like a tribute. And I scrolled one tweet and the democratic socialists had a tribute. And that never happens. Didn't happen when, you know, you know, the queen died, Michael Jackson, you know, it doesn't, nobody gets that side. I was like, wow. Who, who gets the like, these kind of like warring tribes to both actually be like, yeah, she was the shit. And rappers came out and were saying she's the shit. And Taylor, Eminem was saying it and Taylor Swift saying it. But they all not, didn't say like generically, they had a personal story of some way in which she did a really good thing for them somewhere along the road.

• 33:38Shaan Puri?

  Like, there was this great story that was like, she lost some Grammy, some musical award to 36 Mafia. And then they were like, Dolly, like, you know, you know, bummer on the lost, you know, 36 Mafia is kind of, you know. And she's like, they're bringing it home to Tennessee. I'm happy for, I don't know their music, but I'm really happy for, like, I'm really happy for them. You know, I'm gonna go home and listen.

• 33:59Sam Parr?

  Have you, if you look at what Martha Stewart has done, that's a really kind of, that's somewhat of an interesting comparison. Although I would say Dolly was probably a better person. She was married to the same guy forever and like, would seem like a pretty good person around. Whereas Martha's a little bit more sharky. But she was like well-respected by all these people. But she also, nine to five, if I'm going off memory, so I could be wrong here. But she was regarded as like a definitely like a woman's right advocate.

• 34:24Shaan Puri?

  The movie, you mean?

• 34:25Sam Parr?

  Well, the song was written for the movie.

• 34:27Shaan Puri?

  Oh, so, good story about the movie too. Here's another fun fact that earned another respect point in my, in my books. So she goes into acting. And I think a lot of people take confidence from one area and it becomes false bravado when they move into another area. You'll see this a lot with like, I'm a businessman. Now let me give you my views on Gaza. Right? Like, you know, it's like, well, maybe you're not the best person to do that. You just have the ability to talk about it. That doesn't mean you necessarily have like earned your stripes in this one area. So she goes into the movie business. And like, I would say most celebrities when they go into the movie business, they show up for the cameo and they wanna do a good job. But like, you know, they should kind of show up and, hey, I'm me, you know? So that should be enough, right?

• 35:11Shaan Puri?

  She not only learned her lines, she learned every line of every character in the movie. She had the whole movie downloaded in her brain because she wanted to be so prepared to do a good job. And that's how she showed up. And it kind of blew everybody away on the set because they were like, wait, why does Dolly know every, she knows where the, like, the scene changes? And she knows where the, the cut is gonna be. Like, how is this possible? We just got here, it's day one. Let me give you a couple others. Nobody knew her phone number. So she was, we all love a, an unavailable queen. And here she was, she was like, you know, nobody knows her phone number. If you wanna get in touch with her, you fax her manager your phone number. And then you'll get a call from a phone number and she'll talk to you. And so she wanted to be kind of independent in that way.

• 35:56Sam Parr?

  Did you read about her husband?

• 35:57Shaan Puri?

  Well, all I know is that she was married for like 60 plus years and this guy was like never in the limelight.

• 36:03Sam Parr?

  I don't think you could find a photo of him.

• 36:05Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's crazy.

• 36:06Sam Parr?

  He basically was, I think he was a truck driver, maybe I can correct me. But he was a blue collar guy. And there was like a joke, which I don't know if it was true, that he like never saw any of her performances. But she like loved him and like said he was the man. But he was like this very much like a, what is it called? The strong silent type?

• 36:24Shaan Puri?

  He was, he's got a masculine scent too, huh?

• 36:27Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah. He, I don't know if he would go on a perfume tour, but if he would, he would get the flavor rain, which was also the same one I bought.

• 36:37Sam Parr?

  And so, yeah, he was kind of cool. He was like, like mysterious.

• 36:42Shaan Puri?

  We'll leave you with a great Dolly Parton quote. I tried every diet in the book. This is about dieting. Tried every diet in the book. I tried some that weren't in the book. I tried eating the book. It tasted a lot better than most of the diets.

• 36:54Sam Parr?

  She's awesome, man.

• 36:55Shaan Puri?

  All right, well, Dolly, you'll be missed. Sorry I didn't learn about you till you passed away, but I am a big fan now.

• 37:01Sam Parr?

  I have one more story that I could tell you. As it happens all the time, coincidentally, it's all gonna converge. We're gonna combine enthusiasm into southern stuff. Have you heard of roping?

• 37:13Shaan Puri?

  Roping? Is that something you do in your date night now as well? Or what was going on?

• 37:18Sam Parr?

  We're not there yet. But roping is, it's, it's, it's similar to, it's, could be part of a rodeo, but it's basically where not a bull, but a steer. It's a, they're actually different. I think a steer is a castrated bull, in case you're wondering.

• 37:33Shaan Puri?

  Dude, what a low-key great insult to start using.

• 37:37Sam Parr?

  You're a steer, not even a bull.

• 37:38Shaan Puri?

  If you know what I mean. Could be a bull. No balls though.

• 37:42Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 37:45Sam Parr?

  Roping is when the steer goes into the, into the, the area. And then two guys have to like quickly like rope it, like, you know, yeah.

• 37:52Shaan Puri?

  Like a lasso, catch it. But what do you do? You just snag it, then what? Pulls you?

• 37:57Sam Parr?

  A lot of people think that I'm like a hillbilly and they assume I know these things, but like, I don't actually know.

• 38:02Shaan Puri?

  Right, cosplay.

• 38:03Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's cosplay.

• 38:04Shaan Puri?

  And dresses like a cowboy, but lives in a like fancy New York City apartment.

• 38:08Sam Parr?

  Yeah. I've been to the rodeo, but like, sort of like seeing like a Mardi Gras parade. Like, I can't tell you anything that's actually going on. And so.

• 38:17Shaan Puri?

  Roping, what you got?

• 38:18Sam Parr?

  But it's a sport because it's like done by like working class dudes. It's a little bit like golfing used to be. It was like enthusiasts were into it, but it's not much of a sport in terms of like professionalism and like being a big thing on TV. Although it is, it's still quite niche. Well, in the early 2000s, there was this guy, these two guys named Andy and Tom. And they started a company, I believe it was called Active Interest Media. And they started like buying these niche magazines. I think they bought one on sailing, they bought one on a couple other things. And eventually they kind of came to this conclusion that there's this like niche sport or people who care about horses. Like, they love horses, particularly like the cowboy shit, like roping. And they're like, this might be a thing.

• 39:00Sam Parr?

  And so they start this thing called the Aquine Network. And they start launching magazines where they are appealing to horse owners, which is kind of like laughable, if you think about it. Not laughable like to the people who are into it, but laughable of them like, you're gonna create a big business for people who own horses? Like, that doesn't sound that big or interesting. And they, they turned it into a magazine, magazines start going down. They turn it into a website where they only, only are getting like 600,000 monthly uniques. Like, it's pretty niche and small. But what they noticed was that there's this one company that was advertising on their website. And it was basically the AAA for horse trailers. So if you're driving, like my aunt and uncle, by the way, are professional cowboys. My cousin was a professional bull rider.

• 39:43Sam Parr?

  My aunt and uncle own the bulls that they are paid to bring to different rodeos. And they, it's called bucking bulls. That's what they call it. They're like, how hard can your bull buck? You get paid on, on that. But there's this whole subculture of people who are bringing horses on trailers. And when their trailer breaks down, they need a very particular type of like AA person. AA, AAA.

• 40:04Shaan Puri?

  AAA.

• 40:05Sam Parr?

  Yeah. AA? Yeah. It's like a Canadian talking about alcohol, anonymous, AA, eh? Anyways, they realized that this business is like, this is kind of interesting. And they called a guy, they're like, how do you grow this thing? And they're like, I don't really, I just advertise with you. That's how I've gotten all my customers. And they're like,

• 40:22Shaan Puri?

  They're like, when niching down doesn't work, nits down harder. Okay, go so then.

• 40:27Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and they did that. And they bought this business for like next to nothing and they've grown it. And they were like, bingo, we got the, we got this a great crazy idea. Where they had this like small website for horse owners, but they buy and start every business under the sun for this. And so they owned the AAA for horses. They own a fly control business that has 4,500 people spending something like 300, oh, sorry, 45,000 people spending like $300 a year. And they like send you stuff to keep flies off your horse. They now own the largest roping event in the country and they own all these other businesses. And I just saw that they sold, they sold for $300 million, I think like six months ago.

• 41:10Sam Parr?

  And now the guys who were previously, I believe the president and CEO of WWE are now helping run this business because they think that this is going to be like the next big entertainment business, particularly roping.

• 41:24Shaan Puri?

  They're like 401ks for your horses. They do everything.

• 41:27Sam Parr?

  Well, they have Ride TV, which is a $200 a year streaming network where you can watch the best roping events. They have a barrel racing event. They have a jumping event. They created software.

• 41:37Shaan Puri?

  How do you know this? Where did this come from?

• 41:40Sam Parr?

  That's what I do.

• 41:43Shaan Puri?

  She asking Mozart where the notes come from.

• 41:46Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I just, I've been, I've always been interested in media and I saw this business and the founder and CEO, he said they do $85 million a year in revenue with high twenties profit margins. They only have 200 employees. I saw they just got bought for $300 million and I saw that the WWE guys, I forget their names, who they are, but I saw that they are now on the boards and they're like, are leading the business. And I'm like, what is going on? And then coincidentally, we have a guy in Hampton, who's also name is Sam, and he built software to help horse owners like aggregate stuff. And I had kind of heard of this business and he was like, dude, you gotta check out the horse world. It's way bigger than anyone realizes. And he's like, these people who own horses, they will go broke, they will not pay their

• 42:29Sam Parr?

  rent before they give up their horse and their horse's rent. Cause horses cost like 30 Gs a year to maintain. And he's like, they are so passionate. I've never seen such a crazy thing. So anyway, that's how I got into the horse world, but pretty interesting, right?

• 42:41Shaan Puri?

  Dude, have you ever been on equine.com?

• 42:43Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:45Shaan Puri?

  I could literally just buy a horse right now.

• 42:51Sam Parr?

  I don't think that's their, I don't think that's theirs, is it?

• 42:53Shaan Puri?

  I don't know, but there's a horse called Houdini's Bride and right now the bid is $1. He's in New York, he's a thoroughbred, but like, I don't know, take a look at Houdini's Bride, he doesn't look like a thoroughbred to me.

• 43:05Sam Parr?

  Go to, go to equine network.com. It's pretty good.

• 43:09Shaan Puri?

  Hold on, I don't want to lose my cart as I check out here.

• 43:13Sam Parr?

  Go to equine network.com. Look at this website.

• 43:16Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it looks like they got the, the two businesses you talked about in terms of their product. Fly control and roadside assistance, EQN Sports Desk, your sport, your source for equine sports news.

• 43:28Sam Parr?

  In case you needed one.

• 43:29Shaan Puri?

  Dude, TBPN for horses? Let's go.

• 43:32Sam Parr?

  You, you know what I think is actually going to be a huge thing? Peptide for horses.

• 43:37Shaan Puri?

  Oh yeah. Peptide for anything.

• 43:39Sam Parr?

  Peptide for anything, peptide for babies.

• 43:41Shaan Puri?

  I haven't heard one peptide for X that I haven't liked. I kept going for dogs, I was like instantly like, hey, who's doing that? I need to invest in that. Peptides for men, peptides for women, peptides for horses, sure, why not?

• 43:54Sam Parr?

  Well, that's my story on the equine network. This is just like one of those same specials where I just want to show you something that I didn't think you knew about and hopefully awe you. Did I awe you?

• 44:04Shaan Puri?

  You awed me.

• 44:05Sam Parr?

  You don't seem odd.

• 44:07Shaan Puri?

  It's sort of like a silent fart, it's like an inner awe, like there's like a deep, a deep awe.

• 44:14Shaan Puri?

  Today's podcast is brought to you by my friends at Mercury. They make the world's best banking product. I think you know this already. I use Mercury for all of my businesses. I think I have like maybe seven or eight businesses. We use Mercury as our business banking across all of them. And now they actually just launched a personal banking account. So I have my personal account there. I moved off of Wells Fargo and Chase. I'm just all in on Mercury. Why? I like products that are easy to use. I like products that get me and the problems that I have. So like very easy to make a joint account with my wife, very easy to spin up virtual cards. One click and I get savings yield. It just has all the stuff that I need in one place. So if you're looking for the best banking product on the market, it's definitely Mercury. I will fist fight anybody who disagrees with me on that. Go to mercury.com slash personal and learn more. Mercury is a fintech, not an FDIC insured bank.

• 44:58Shaan Puri?

  Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group and Column NA, members FDIC.

• 45:04Shaan Puri?

  Can I give you a little quick hitter at the end here?

• 45:07Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 45:07Shaan Puri?

  Did you hear about LeBron James's brilliant business move?

• 45:11Sam Parr?

  Which one? No.

• 45:13Shaan Puri?

  A great answer. LeBron did something very, very interesting. I hadn't really heard of any athlete doing. So I don't know if you know, the Lakers owner got in a bunch of trouble and had to like flip the team recently and it was like this whole thing. Well, in that people started looking into like, well, what is his, his firm Guggenheim? Like these advisors, investment bank type shit. What have they been helping with? And one of the things they found is this thing called the like LeBron James.

• 45:37Sam Parr?

  Wait, hold on, you missed something else. The guy who owns the Lakers is rich because he owns a financial firm called Guggenheim. Is that right?

• 45:44Shaan Puri?

  He has like Guggenheim, but then he owns insurance companies. And why he's in trouble is because the insurance companies, insurance companies have a float. You can invest the float. That's what Buffett and others have been doing for a long time, but there's a caveat, you can't invest the float in companies you also own. And he had reported like, yeah, like I got a little bit of related party, yeah, like whatever, 1% or something like some small number, like a billion dollars of related party assets. And then they looked into it and it was more like $20 billion. It's like way above the threshold and therefore.

• 46:14Sam Parr?

  This is a legal thing.

• 46:16Shaan Puri?

  It's a therefore, yeah, like it was, there was like a whistleblower and it was like, so now he's in trouble and his insurance company needs to sell related party assets that they had used the money for to get back in good standing. And so he had to sell the Lakers, he's selling like his stake in Chelsea or something like that. Whatever, whatever team he owns.

• 46:35Sam Parr?

  Which is interesting, he sold the team to a guy who got rich partially because of an insurance company because he wanted the float. Josh Fisher.

• 46:42Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Correct. And so he, anyway, so that's what's going on there. So they find this thing about LeBron. And so what's the LeBron story? Okay, so here's the short story that I wanted the name of it. It's called Kim, King James Funding. People find this LLC, King James Funding. What is that? And why did it get $300 million in this bond offering? And this is like highly rated credit bond. So what, here's what happened. LeBron, when he was just many years ago, it's probably is 2018. LeBron James, while he's in the Cavs, decides to pull up, like create a bond offering against his Nike contract. So I don't know if you know, but LeBron has a lifetime contract with Nike.

• 47:24Shaan Puri?

  And so just like Jordan is still selling shoes, even after his career, LeBron has a deal with Nike to keep using LeBron's name and likeness to sell products. And LeBron realized LeBron and his team, and then actually his money manager, who's the same money manager for, wealth manager for Beyonce and a few others, came up with a very smart idea, which was they'd used the old Bowie bond thing. I don't know if you know David Bowie, David Bowie, the musician, created something called the Bowie bond back in the day and raised like $50 million selling future, selling his like future music catalog. It's like this really innovative way to pull down funding.

• 47:59Sam Parr?

  But it was a bond, so he wasn't selling it. He was getting money upfront and he would pay, I don't know what, a 7% loan and people thought that was a, is that right?

• 48:07Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. So what LeBron did was LeBron created a bond offering and it's a 30 year bond or 31 year bond with like a sub 5% coupon, right? So he basically owes 5% interest, but he got $300 million upfront. Now, the beauty of this is debt, when you get, when you get debt or a loan, it's tax free.

• 48:26Sam Parr?

  Taxed, yeah.

• 48:27Shaan Puri?

  So he gets 300 million of cash now, doesn't have to wait for this lifetime contract. He doesn't pay tax on the 300 million. So he gets 300 million outright that he can use to like invest or do other things. And it's secured by this Nike contract, but he still owns the upside of the Nike contract. It's not like he sold the asset, he just took a loan against it. So he still, if he, you know, he still will make more than that off the Nike contract.

• 48:48Sam Parr?

  How's this different than, than factoring? Or like when you get a loan against your receivables? It's not, right?

• 48:54Shaan Puri?

  I think it's like technically a little bit different, right? So in a bond offering, like, like other people could participate. So like several firms participated in this bond offering. It was rated by a credit agency who kind of like looked at it and said, this is like, this is better than the US Treasury, you know, like this thing will pay out. And so, you know, he, he did that and he, unlike factoring, you know, he didn't do the, he didn't like take the whole contract and basically like say, yeah, give me X upfront and you keep like, when you factor, let's say a million dollar contract, you might take 900,000, they get to keep 100,000.

• 49:29Sam Parr?

  Okay.

• 49:30Shaan Puri?

  Because that's the vig for, for giving the money upfront. He still gets his whole thing. He just has to pay this loan down over time.

• 49:37Sam Parr?

  And there was still some risk, like if he did something inappropriate or whatever, like Nike could have, you know, taken the contract away, but that's okay. So that's crazy. That's, that's interesting. Good for, good for LeBron.

• 49:49Shaan Puri?

  Kind of basically, and this is only on his off court income. It's not on his like actual basketball contracts at all. And so this was like just his endorsement deals and all that stuff. It's pretty brilliant. You know, props to LeBron for, for a pretty badass business move.

• 50:04Sam Parr?

  But what about Guggenheim? How did that come into play?

• 50:07Shaan Puri?

  Guggenheim has like an advisory practice. So when they traced it, they were like, it, great. So these different, like, you know, like, what were the names of the companies that like bought it, right? It was like, who bought it? It was like Midland National Life and North American Life and Health. Like there were like two midwestern life insurance companies were buying it, but they were advised by an arm of Guggenheim. And so that's just how it, it's not like LeBron is entangled in this. It's just, yeah. They just found it because they were, a lot of people were looking into like.

• 50:37Sam Parr?

  And it sounds like it was all, it's all very circular.

• 50:41Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, well, he wasn't even on the Lakers then and like, you know, maybe this, maybe there was a relationship and maybe that's why he went. I don't, I don't know all that, but like definitely, definitely very interesting. Not quite Kawhi Leonard interesting, but definitely interesting.

• 50:55Sam Parr?

  There's a funny meme going on right now in Instagram space of like, I guess there's a, there must be a channel or something, but it's popular now for athletes to talk about how much money they made. But they're like, like I made a hundred million dollars, but that's not as much as you think. And they like break it down. They're like, and then now there's like a competition to where it's like, but I still slept on an air mattress or like, but I, you know, like, but I still like only wore one sock. Like, it's like, it's so like.

• 51:24Sam Parr?

  Or they're like, have you noticed this? Like, this is, we gotta like, I don't know if this is actually a meme, but I'm kind of pretending that it needs to be.

• 51:31Shaan Puri?

  P P R poison is basically saying a hundred million dollars isn't as much as people think. So it's like, you first dig a huge hole and then to get out of the hole, you're like, but I only wore the one sock. It's like, you have to do the like, really likeable, like, I'm just so grounded, you know, type of thing at the end to try to dig yourself out of this hole of, of a hundred million isn't as much as people, people think.

• 51:52Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I just like, again, I'm trying to say we have to buy stock in this potential meme. It hasn't happened yet, but I'm noticing that like, I'm seeing all these athletes like, I only made this much money. Enter huge sum of money. But when you think about it, it actually, you gotta do this tax, you gotta pay your guy, you gotta get your mama house, you gotta do this. So I really only netted with, enter also big numbers. And therefore I had to do, enter an extreme frugal thing that potentially may or may not is that frugal.

• 52:21Shaan Puri?

  Right, right, right. Yeah. Like LeBron famously like, he doesn't turn on roaming when they go play the Raptors in Canada. He's like, no, I'm good. Like, if I got wifi, I got it. If not, I'm not. And he's got like Spotify with ads still. It's like, geez. There's a, there's another version to this. I think like, you could watch the pendulum swing in culture. And so there was like a big swing for a long time, which was like flashiness. So like, away, like the cool thing to do was to ball out. Whether it's the cars, the houses, the clothes, the chains, the grills, whatever it was. And now I think it's swinging back the other way where like, you see the athletes bragging like, I didn't even touch my NBA contract. I live off my shoe deal.

• 53:03Shaan Puri?

  My NBA contract goes into this and that's compounding. And I own 42 gas stations. And can I tell you about cap rates? And the other, they're going like, Said Balki on their ass. And they're like, you know, on the other side of the spectrum. And I think it's going to be cool to be fiscally responsible. It seems like that's the way that the culture has shifted. And that's now the brag. And before that's the flex, before the flex was, look at, you know, like, the hydraulics on my car type shit.

• 53:31Sam Parr?

  Yeah, well, it's because all these guys, current and ex-players have podcasts now. And like, the best clips, the ones that go most viral are when they talk about money. And therefore like sophisticated or savvy or just like slightly responsible moves and discussions are becoming the viral things. And therefore it's becoming more popular to actually be that.

• 53:54Shaan Puri?

  Well, actually, I think LeBron gets a lot of credit in this. You know, LeBron did a bunch of things that most guys don't do. So he turned down McDonald's and Coca-Cola early on. And why, one of the reasons why was they've basically discovered this pizza chain called Blaze. And they were like, look, you could do this McDonald's deal and you'll get the cash. You'll get cash every year, but we could be owners of Blaze. And we could be a part of like the franchise. And if we talk about that, we use our, put our, put our muscle behind that, that might end up being worth a lot more. Magic Johnson and Shaq had done these things with franchises. So people, people kind of started to understand like, oh, you don't want to be the employee. You want to be the employer. You don't want to be the one getting just this marketing payment. You want to be the owner. And like, that's the goal.

• 54:38Shaan Puri?

  And so, and similarly like, his tastes are not, like, he doesn't shout about drinking Hennessy. He's like an avid wine head and will talk about wines that he loves. And it's like, almost like, in some ways, it looks sometimes like a little overcompensation is like, you know, it's kind of like the funny memes where he's like reading, he's like holding a book, but it's like upside down. He's on page two, always like, what's your favorite thing from the book? And he's like, oh man, so many, so many. How can I choose? And they're like, well, just name one. And he's like, oh man, one is like, I just so many are coming to mind and I just can't even tell you any of them. So it's like, he kind of gets made fun of that way. But like, in a way, look, this guy grew up super poor, single mother, never met his dad type of shit.

• 55:20Shaan Puri?

  And like, to have made it, it's like, yeah, I own assets. I have wine collections. I read, I do, you know, like all the sort of hobbies of the traditionally white and wealthy. And I think like those golf, like he's on a huge golf kick right now.

• 55:37Sam Parr?

  Is he good?

• 55:38Shaan Puri?

  Uh, he's like, okay. Actually, his son is amazing. Really? So his son, who gets a lot of shit because he's like, you know, can't live up to his dad's basketball career. Watch one video of Bronny James swinging at a golf club and tell me he didn't choose the wrong sport. Smooth as butter, unbelievable golf swing. And so, um, you know, like, I just think there's like an interesting thing to watch where the trend setters are, it's cool now to do the stuff that was kind of lame white guy stuff before. And now that's the cool thing to do.

• 56:07Sam Parr?

  Dude, that's awesome. I, um, I've never been like the biggest LeBron fan. I don't pay attention to basketball, but like, obviously he's famous and I like.

• 56:14Shaan Puri?

  He's no Dolly Parton.

• 56:15Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but like, he doesn't do anything bad.

• 56:19Shaan Puri?

  No, it's incredible.

• 56:20Sam Parr?

  I mean, like, you could like, again, this is not a basketball guy. Like, I guess there's a stereotype that he flops and that he, they, I saw a video that I don't know if it's AI or not, where Dennis Rodman, he goes, Michael Jordan's the GOAT and then LeBron's the other GOAT. Go on to another team.

• 56:40Shaan Puri?

  I was not prepared for that. That's good.

• 56:41Sam Parr?

  He's like, again, I don't know if it's AI or not, AI or not, but it, but it was like, potentially AI Dennis Rodman being like, Michael Jordan stayed with the same team. He won all the time. This guy like gets upset and he leaves. Like that's, you're not the, you're not the GOAT. But like, he seems like pretty controversial free.

• 56:56Shaan Puri?

  He's unassailable. I mean, basically look at the history of any child actor, any child star.

• 57:01Sam Parr?

  Impossible to be as clean as him.

• 57:03Shaan Puri?

  He was a star from time he was, you know, 12, 13, 14, on the cover of magazines at 15. You know, his, his high school was airing his games when he was a junior in high school on ESPN. They're playing high school basketball games at this kid. And for that to have worked out.

• 57:19Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 57:20Shaan Puri?

  That's literally like one in eight billion. Like, there's not really, you know, go look at McCollough and go look at like, people who had far less fame and attention and expectations as LeBron, to have not just not become a screw up, but to have actually exceeded the delusional expectations is unbelievable.

• 57:38Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I like got teary eyed the other day because there's like an inspirational video of him playing with his son. And I'm like, that is the coolest shit ever. Like those videos or when like someone plays their first MLB game and the, and the dad's in the crowd like crying.

• 57:50Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 57:50Sam Parr?

  I'm like, that gets me every time. Is, does he have other sons or just one?

• 57:56Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he's got another son Bryce, who's also a basketball player. He's in college still. He's, he's better. So I think he, he has a good chance, uh, to make it. But, uh, and then he has a daughter as well.

• 58:09Sam Parr?

  This episode is called The Boys Got Range. Cause frankly, we were all over the place. And also frankly, I think all of it was amazing.

• 58:18Shaan Puri?

  And frankly, it all landed.

• 58:20Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 58:22Sam Parr?

  So shout out to Frank, shout out to everyone. That was awesome. That's it. That's the pod.

• 58:37Shaan Puri?

  All right, let's take a quick break. I want to tell you about Marketing School. It is a podcast that is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network and it is run by Neil Patel and Eric Su. And these guys are both marketers who are running businesses. And so if you want real world tactics from practitioners who are actually out there in the field doing it, this is the podcast for you. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts.