This guy made millions by inventing the McFlurry & the $1 Menu

Want to start your own million-dollar biz with less than $1k? Get the guide: https://clickhubspot.com/rko Episode 743: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk about the inventor of the McFlurry and Stuffed Crust Pizza plus Shaan’s stock picks. — Show Notes: (0:00) The godfather of junk food (26:02) Stockapalooza update — Links: • QSR Magazine - https://www.qsrmagazine.com/ • David Protein - https://davidprotein.com/ — 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 - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies! Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N. A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/ 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?

  All right, Sam, I got a Billy of the week for you. I'm excited about it. I got goosebumps thinking about this guy. He's an inventor. He's an innovator. You know, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Thomas Edison. Look, if those guys were going on a road trip, but there's only one set of keys, they would toss it to this guy. He would get to drive. And his name is Tom Ryan.

• 0:29Shaan Puri?

  Tom Ryan is basically the Leonardo da Vinci of calories.

• 0:33Sam Parr?

  Okay.

• 0:33Shaan Puri?

  This is a guy who has invented some of the most iconic foods in history. He invented the McGriddle. He invented stuffed crust cheese pizza. He invented Smash Burger, the chain. He invented the beef dip sandwich at Quiznos. He invented, this guy has just been inventing things in the food category. The McFlurry. He's just been inventing things for, you know, just decades. And he is like the godfather of food science. And so I want to tell you a little bit about this guy.

• 1:02Sam Parr?

  Okay, I'm, I'm interested because I didn't think that some of it like dipping a sandwich in au jus, I didn't think that was like an invention. And so I'm very.

• 1:08Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so some of these things, I'm using the word invention a little liberally, right? Some of them he genuinely invented, meaning like nobody had done that before. Some of it is he created that product at that company, which was not previously a product. And so sometimes it might be like, oh, well, you know, somebody else had, had the idea of, you know, a sweet sandwich. Okay, but cool. He invented the McGriddle. It's a specific thing that he invented that made it work, and here's why.

• 1:34Sam Parr?

  But can we, can we start by me asking, how'd you even discover this? Were you like on the McGriddle Wikipedia page?

• 1:41Shaan Puri?

  Just, you know, when you're eating something and it's so good, you're like, I'd like to pay homage. Who's the man who invented this? I'd like to put some flowers on his tombstone. That's not exactly what happened. I saw TikTok about this guy and I was like, there's no way. One guy did all this?

• 1:54Sam Parr?

  Okay.

• 1:55Shaan Puri?

  All right. So this guy, basically he goes to college. And when he's at college, he has a girlfriend. The girlfriend's taking a food science class. So she convinces him to take it. He goes there and immediately falls in love. He's like, oh my God, I didn't even realize there's a whole science behind. Things like ketchup and ice cream, like there's literally like chemistry science, but then there's also sort of the brain science, psychology, the tongue science of like what flavors work. And so then he not only studies food science, he then gets a masters in something called lipid toxicology, right? So this guy's just studying like the science of fat. And I would say this guy is like, you know, I don't know what the, what the equivalent of the Nobel Prize is, but for like

• 2:36Shaan Puri?

  obesity, what this guy deserves. So he, um, he just, so he goes and he gets a job at Duncan Hines. He then works at Jif and he's like pioneering a lot of their peanut butter work that he, that, you know, does some really great peanut butter work. The bus work. Yeah. He's like, you know, these open AI researchers that are just getting poached from lab to lab. That was him going from Heinz food lab to the Jif food lab. So then he gets a call from Pizza Hut and they recruit him as head of new products because he's got this reputation. Cause even at Jif, he was launching new products. And so he gets this reputation as being like this sort of mad, mad genius. And his friend tells him when he gets the job at Pizza Hut for head of new products, he goes, dude, I'm so sorry. He goes, what? He's like, that's a tough

• 3:20Shaan Puri?

  position, man. Everything's already been done in pizza. Like you're doomed. You're doomed to fail. Pizza is a solved problem. And he, there's a quote from him. He goes, that pissed me off. He goes, he goes, it pissed me off not because the guy was doubting me, but because a lot of the world thinks like that. They think the world is full of solved problems. I don't think like that. I think there's always an opportunity. So he goes into the research and he's doing research and he's like, all right, what do consumers care about when it comes to pizza? And he's like, all right, two things are very clear to me after studying how people eat pizza. Number one, cheese is the value driver. The more cheese, the better the cheese, um, the better. And there's really no limit to the amount of cheese that people are willing to have in their pizza. And second, the dogs eat the crust. He's like, the crust is the necessary part because you need

• 4:04Shaan Puri?

  a handle to hold the pizza, but it's the worst part of the pizza. People just give it to the dog. And so he's like, all right, I need to put cheese in the crust. And so, you know, he goes to his team and they're like, yeah, we'll just put some cheese on top of the crust. It'll be great. He's like, nah, it doesn't have that wow factor. He's like, we gotta have a wow factor. It's gotta feel different. It can't just be that we've added cheese to crust. It's gotta like be something that's marketable. And so he's like, let's figure out how to put cheese inside the crust. Which was a whole like physics problem because you know, he's like the first one he made like that he's like, it tasted pretty good, but it looked like a like a bike tire like I burnt the whole outer crust. It was like this fat, you know, like burnt thing. And so he had to figure out, how do you cook the pizza so that you can have gooey cheese in the crust without

• 4:46Shaan Puri?

  burning the crust? And so he does some work and they figure it out. They get a special dough and a special pan and they get it to work and it becomes this huge hit. But then he's also a marketing genius. And so he creates, he's like, you know what? We don't need to do something new. What we need to do is, have you ever seen this Malcolm Gladwell talk that he gives as his big Ted talk about the perfect pastas? Have you seen this?

• 5:09Sam Parr?

  No, that sounds great. What is it?

• 5:11Shaan Puri?

  So it's Malcolm Gladwell's famous Ted talk from back in the day when he was, you know, Malcolm Gladwell was the man writing Tipping Point and others. And he basically talks about this guy, another food scientist who got hired by a pasta sauce company, Ragout or whoever. And they were like, we need you to figure out how much, like, what's the perfect pasta sauce? Like, should it have like chunks in it? Should it be just smooth? Should it have like herbs in it or just be plain? Should it have cheese? Like, what's the perfect pasta sauce? And the guy, and the big takeaway, the spoiler of this Ted talk is, the guy discovers there's no perfect pasta sauce. There's only perfect pasta sauces, meaning you cluster people into like four or five categories. If you like chunks, then give them way more chunks than

• 5:54Shaan Puri?

  you're currently giving them. Like, they want way more. If you like spice, make it way spicier. It's too mild for them today. And if you like cheese, put cheese in. So you basically like, the middle that they're trying to serve everybody wasn't working and they actually needed to like go extreme. So this guy discovers the same thing in pizza. He creates the meat lovers pizza. He creates the pepperoni lovers pizza, the cheese lovers pizza, and he creates the lovers line of pizzas there. And that becomes a huge success. So he's crushing it at Pizza Hut.

• 6:20Sam Parr?

  Which, but all this sounds like silly, like I'm laughing. This is not silly. This is great. This is actually, this is really hard to do in a corporate setting to convince someone.

• 6:28Shaan Puri?

  This is true inventions, true innovations. I'm not, yeah, like, I'm laughing, but because it's legit. And this is moving billions of dollars of product, right? And this is like, you know, hitting millions of customers. And this is also, by the way, we have friends that work at Facebook and Google and they're like, yeah, I'm optimizing the like the marketplace banner ads to be like, you know, whatever. It's like, you know, you were talking about this with, I think your wife.

• 6:51Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I was like, I was like, um, like if the, like my wife worked in the team of them trying to put stickers on photos. And she's like, well, if the dog's tongue is out of the mouth, uh, the click, the click the rate is 5% versus if it's in the mouth, it's only 1%.

• 7:04Shaan Puri?

  Right. And there's definitely like a cynical side of this, which is like our world's greatest minds are basically just fine tuning knobs inside of giant slot machines, which is really what's happening inside of most big tech companies and most big food companies. But hey, I'm not a hater. Let me just see some of positive things of this. Okay. So he gets the call. He's at Pizza Hut. He's crushing. He creates all the, all those products. Ring, ring. Hello? Yeah, this is Tom speaking. And then, uh, on the other side,

• 7:34Shaan Puri?

  Ronald, is that you? And Ronald McDonald calls. He gets called up to the biggest of the big leagues. He gets called by McDonald's. McDonald's says, we need you.

• 7:42Sam Parr?

  Is he a kid right now or is he like?

• 7:44Shaan Puri?

  Grown ass man.

• 7:45Sam Parr?

  Okay.

• 7:46Shaan Puri?

  So, and he has a great thing, by the way, at one of his frameworks, because they're like, how do you invent? Cause like honestly, he's like one of the more creative inventors of our lifetime. And they're like, how do you invent? And he goes, I try to get inside the mind of an ambitious 32 year old.

• 8:01Sam Parr?

  Why?

• 8:02Shaan Puri?

  He's like, basically when you're 32, you have money. You have taste. So you kind of know what you like and you don't like, but you're still open minded. You're not closed off to the world. And, um, you're not like easily swayed by the latest and latest trend of everything. So you're, but you're still like, you're still with it. And like, you're still a part of every major trend that like has staying power. And so he's like, I study the mind of the, of an ambitious 32 year old.

• 8:29Sam Parr?

  Okay.

• 8:30Shaan Puri?

  And he works backwards from that. So he gets a call from McDonald's. He goes there and they're like, all right, where's the opportunity? And he's like, all right, let's look at breakfast. They start looking at breakfast and he's like, all right, you've got coffee. Check. And then you have all your like savory foods. Check. He's like, I've got nothing sweet. And he starts thinking about it. He's like, all right, you know, casual answer, we need French toast. We need pancakes. And he's like, oh, this average first level thinking, ew, get out of my, get out of the room. And he's, um, he says, no, no, no. What are we really going to do? And he goes, So he's a master of constraints. So he says, how do we take the Denny's Grand Slam breakfast? And put it in your hand?

• 9:13Shaan Puri?

  And they're like, what? And he's like, I want an entire Grand Slam breakfast. But that will fit, just fit in your hand. Cause that's what McDonald's does.

• 9:21Sam Parr?

  This guy sounds like a Salt Park character.

• 9:26Shaan Puri?

  And so he creates the McGriddle, which is exactly that. It's a sweet breakfast item that fits in your hand, pops off McGriddle becomes a huge hit. McDonald's breakfast surges on the back of this creates billions of dollars in market cap. And all because, and he had to do some invention. He's like, well, we can't have this messy drippy. Um, syrup, you know, sticky sandwich. Like, yeah, I can't put a sticky thing in your hand, then your, your whole day's ruined. You're not coming back the next day. And I've never had a McGriddle. Have you had one?

• 9:58Sam Parr?

  Hell yeah. Yeah, of course. You've never had a McGriddle?

• 10:01Shaan Puri?

  I've never had a McGriddle.

• 10:02Sam Parr?

  Are you part of Al Qaeda? Like this is like the greatest, like the greatest American.

• 10:06Shaan Puri?

  I've been in one of those caves.

• 10:10Sam Parr?

  Where have you been?

• 10:10Shaan Puri?

  I thought the war was still going on.

• 10:12Sam Parr?

  What the hell, man? This is the best. They're the best.

• 10:16Shaan Puri?

  Honestly, I never even considered it, but after this, after this, I'm so in. Apparently there's, uh, so you tell me, I don't know. Is it not like covered in syrup? And actually there's something called syrup crystals that are inside the pancake?

• 10:28Sam Parr?

  They're like little, little balls of like sugary, like syrup and it's wonderful. And it mixes perfectly with the salty sausage.

• 10:35Shaan Puri?

  Okay. So that's it. That's what he did. Tom does it. So he does that. He creates.

• 10:39Sam Parr?

  And you don't get a mess on your hand. So you get the syrup, but not a mess on your hand. All right. So a lot of people will talk about how you need a million dollars and three years of experience to start a business. Nonsense. If you've listened to at least one episode on this podcast, you know, that is completely not true. My last company, The Hustle, we grew it to something like 17 or 18 million dollars in revenue. I started it with like $300. My current company Hampton does over 10 million in revenue. Started it with actually no money, maybe $29 or something like that, nothing. And so you don't actually need investors to. Start a company. You don't need a fancy business plan, but what you do need is systems that actually work. And so my old company, The Hustle, they put together

• 11:22Sam Parr?

  five proven business models that you could start right now, today with under a thousand dollars. These are models that if you do it correctly, it can make money this week. You can get it right now. You can scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now, back to the show.

• 11:38Shaan Puri?

  Now, you might be thinking, all right, is this guy like, you know, what's he really about? Is he just, is he just in this for himself? Is he an elite? Is he one of these elites that I should hate? Or is he a man of the people? Well, he's a man of the people. He creates the dollar menu? The dollar menu, dude. What a iconic, what an iconic move.

• 11:57Sam Parr?

  Is he an employee at McDonald's right now? Or is he an entrepreneur? No, I mean, in the story, in the story, at this point, in the story.

• 12:04Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, of course. That's what he did.

• 12:06Sam Parr?

  He's a mercenary. He's a hired gun and he drops in like, he's like a one man Navy SEAL who drops in and like nails the target and bounces out for a handful of years.

• 12:15Shaan Puri?

  I don't know why there's no movie about this guy yet, right?

• 12:20Shaan Puri?

  I don't want to see Jason Bourne. I want to see Tom Cruise.

• 12:22Sam Parr?

  The only question that we have at this point is, does he come in via parachute? Or just do they storm the beach on a boat? Like, what's he gonna do? Yeah, the story's been told.

• 12:30Shaan Puri?

  Like a hot dog truck barges in. So he creates the dollar menu, creates the McFlurry. And then he goes to Quiznos. Quiznos poaches him. He does a little bit of work there, but the owner of Quiznos is like, yeah, this is the guy. So he says, forget Quiznos, let's just create a whole new concept together. And they create Smash Burger together, which I don't know if you've paid attention, but as a former QSR operator myself, I have a lot of respect and esteem for Smash Burger.

• 12:56Sam Parr?

  Smash Burger is just, it's just thin. I mean, it's a burger that you, when you grill it, you put the meat, you stick the thing, the metal in the meat, right?

• 13:05Shaan Puri?

  So it's kind of like a thin crust pizza, but for burgers. So they kind of smash the burger, which gives it like more of a char on both sides.

• 13:12Sam Parr?

  Which is better for them too, because it's less meat.

• 13:14Shaan Puri?

  Well, I think it's the same. It just gets wider.

• 13:17Sam Parr?

  Got it. Okay.

• 13:17Shaan Puri?

  But, but it tastes better, I think.

• 13:20Sam Parr?

  Okay.

• 13:21Shaan Puri?

  So they create Smashburger and become successful. But what a prolific career for this guy. And what a, what a, what a track record. Like, who has dominated their industry the way this man has dominated? Fast food science, right? Like, fast food food science. Pretty inspiring.

• 13:36Sam Parr?

  When I Googled his name, it came up with Jobbly Foods Corporation. Is he associated with that?

• 13:42Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I don't know what that is. He's got like new stuff that he's doing. He did like a, like a new, like, like sports bar type of deal. He's got Smashburger. He was the CEO of Smashburger for a while. I don't know what all he's doing now. But they were like, you want to retire? He's like, retire? I wake up every day. I wake up every day. I'm trying to dominate the palate. You think, you think I want to go play golf? What do you think this is?

• 14:05Sam Parr?

  Have you Googled him? He, uh, he's got, he's a beautiful man. He's just got the most beautiful head of hair I've seen in a long time.

• 14:11Shaan Puri?

  He looks like, yeah, like they have a British reporter, like, who's like covers like sports. He looks like that guy.

• 14:17Sam Parr?

  In the nineties, in every rom com, the woman was vying for an editor in chief job at Vogue or something like that. That was like, you had to be like. Well, no, he, he looks like the second character. Now, the second character is a British.

• 14:32Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 14:33Sam Parr?

  Or California, uh, record label executive. So they work in AR or they're running the label and they miss the kids' baseball game because they have to check out this band.

• 14:42Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 14:43Sam Parr?

  Like, he, he looks like that character. He looks like the record label executive, uh, from every nineties rom com movie. Is he like this alpha, like get after it type of guy? Or is he like a kooky, forgetful professor who wears two not matching socks?

• 15:00Shaan Puri?

  Okay, that I don't know, but he's an alpha in my mind. He's an alpha to me. I'm gladly a beta to him. This guy's amazing. Did I tell you, by the way, if we packed in the day when I was doing my sushi restaurant chain, we went to a, uh, you know, like these industry conferences that you, like you just sometimes, like, you know, we went to FarmCon. It's like a farmer's conference. Well, I went to like a food version of this. I don't know if you've ever been to any of these quirky, like, industry trade show conferences, but they're so funny, dude. So I went like.

• 15:29Sam Parr?

  I went to inbound, the inbound, the HubSpot's inbound marketing conference.

• 15:34Shaan Puri?

  Coming up next week.

• 15:35Sam Parr?

  Yeah. You'd be like that.

• 15:38Sam Parr?

  There's a whole talk on converting MQLs to SQLs.

• 15:44Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, like that. So I went to this thing because there's a QSR magazine, quick service restaurant. So there's a quick service restaurant. We, we apply, we're like, hey, we really want to go to the conference. Can you give us free tickets? And they're like, yeah. So we go. And you know what the icebreaker was? We got there. The icebreaker, when you come in, in the lobby, they have three tables set up of just like dirty dishes, like it's a restaurant table. And it was a speed bussing competition. So you would go with three other people, and you'd have to try to like bust the table as fast as you can. And whoever had like,

• 16:19Sam Parr?

  That's pretty good.

• 16:20Shaan Puri?

  The best bus was, you know, like succeeded basically, like won the, won the contest, got like a keychain or something like that. It was amazing. The guy who organized it, his name was literally Tom Hamburger. It was unreal.

• 16:31Sam Parr?

  Dude, this is, um, this is, I, we've done 750 plus, I think, episodes of MFM. And this happens a lot where a lot of people don't realize this, but for the majority of episodes, you and I don't talk in advance because we like to like surprise each other on air on the topic. This is funny. What you're saying is very similar to the topic that I had brought.

• 16:51Shaan Puri?

  Okay, what you got?

• 16:51Sam Parr?

  And so this can all actually be related. And I have, but I think could be like a nice little bow at the end to like how this could be good for entrepreneurs or business owners listening. I found a photo of a billboard that I saw recently that stopped me in my tracks. And so I want you to look at this billboard and tell me what it says.

• 17:09Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so this is boiled cod, and it's a picture of cod, slightly more protein per calorie than our bars. David, the David bar.

• 17:16Sam Parr?

  Okay, have you seen, have you seen this?

• 17:18Shaan Puri?

  No, amazing.

• 17:19Sam Parr?

  Okay, so I want to tell you a story about this. And I want to explain a little bit like nerdy marketing about why it works. So the story behind this, we had Peter Rahah on the podcast, I think like six months ago. So Peter was the guy who started RX Bar in his mom's basement. And he eventually sold it for something like $650 million, only six years after starting.

• 17:40Shaan Puri?

  By the way, the episode he did with us was awesome. Like, if you, if you want to, if let's go listen to a fun episode, listen to that one. It basically, he tells a story of how he built RX Bar, how he's building David Bar, but also he had like four or five other ideas of like, if I was going to go into a category, this is the type of category I look at and how I would attack it, which is like what you always want from a, an entrepreneur who's got like expertise that comes on the pods, like great. Tell me how you did it. Tell me what you're doing now. But, okay, that's great for you. What about for me? And do you have specific ideas? And like a specific approach you take that I can learn from? For like white space right now?

• 18:17Sam Parr?

  And he actually had a third part of that, uh, which was he had a beautiful attitude. Uh, and not beautiful in the sense of, um, fun to be around. Uh, like he was sort of like Napoleon. Like he had this like conquer the world energy that I thought was like actually kind of cool. Very intense energy.

• 18:34Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 18:35Sam Parr?

  That I thought was interesting. And so when he came on, he told us a story of RXBAR. He told us the story about David Protein Bars. I don't think David had launched at that point. But the background behind David is when he was, and I have to give a shout out to New York Times Daily. I'm using them as a source for this. But when he started, um, David, the idea was with RXBAR, it was a natural bar. It was made out, I think, dates and it had a very small amount of protein. And he noticed that had I had more protein in this bar, I think I would have been able to approach a larger market. And I could create something a lot bigger. And so David finds this thing called EPG. It's a delivery mechanism for protein. And eventually David, actually the company has bought the company that owns the patent for EPG.

• 19:20Sam Parr?

  And EPG is a type of chemical that allows protein to be delivered to you faster.

• 19:27Shaan Puri?

  So, so let me explain, let me just ask this question because the doc here says, it's a modified fat called EPG, which delivers the texture of fat, but it passes through your body with 92% fewer calories. Is this, remember when Paul Merlock, he came on and he was like diet coke is amazing. And he's like, I just wanted to make like diet coke for like any food into the equivalent of diet coke. So it's just like food that tastes really good, but it basically just passes straight through your body. It can't be absorbed and therefore like doesn't make you fat. Is that what this is? Basically it's like some of it tastes good. You could put it in a bar, but because it can't be absorbed by your body, it's, uh, you know, it doesn't have the sort of caloric impact. Is that what it is?

• 20:10Sam Parr?

  So basically it's the, it's, it's, it's one of the most efficient. Ways to get tons and tons of protein into your body per calorie. And the way they do that is via via EPG, which is a incredibly ultra processed food. So I don't know if it's what you're describing, but the criticisms for David, of which we had Justin Mares on the podcast, he's one, he was a very loud vocal critic of this. He has basically said, David may get you lots and lots of protein, but it's incredibly ultra processed. And there's the argument as to why that's not good because this, this, this chemical or whatever you want to call it EPG, there's a lot of people who, who want to criticize it and say it's bad. And I'm not going to place judgment on either side. I'm just telling you there's two

• 20:54Sam Parr?

  sides of this argument, which is what I'm going to get to. But people loved it. And so, uh, David, which I think, is it even two years old yet?

• 21:04Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think it's one year old roughly because he was on about a year ago on the podcast. And I think it was like just about to launch or had just launched.

• 21:11Sam Parr?

  So this year they're going to do close to $200 million in sales in roughly the second year of business. They're, they're on, they're on a tear. They did a million dollars in the first week of sales. And if you go to like any store right now, I don't know what it's like in California, but any store in New York, they're everywhere. David protein bars are everywhere and they've crushed it on the marketing in particular. They've crushed on the product side, but they've really killed it on the marketing. And so when I saw this sign, Boyle Cod, it stopped me in my tracks. And the reason it stopped me in my tracks is I'm reading this book, I'm rereading, we had Tim Ferriss on the podcast and he had mentioned this book that he loved. It was called the 22 immutable laws of marketing. Have you, have you ever read of that?

• 21:48Shaan Puri?

  I have, I have it, but I haven't read it yet.

• 21:50Sam Parr?

  It was one of these things where like I skimmed before when I was younger, but when we had him on, I, he made a comment that it was a great book. And I was like, you know, I should actually sit down and read that. It's really short. It's only a hundred pages. You could basically read it in one or two sittings. And one of the laws is called the law of the opposite. And the reason why this is relevant to the story that you just said, is because it goes to like the science and the methodology behind 22 different ways to stand out and be different and to focus on something that's not better, but different. And so the law of the opposite states that if you're not the leader of a category, your strategy is then dictated by the leader, which Means it's best to not to be better than the leader, but to be the opposite. Customers already have the leader's position locked in their mind and you win by framing yourself as an alternative.

• 22:35Sam Parr?

  And the key is to embrace the differences and often exaggerate them. And the reason this all works is marketing is a battle of perceptions, not products. The challenger doesn't need to disprove the leader. They need to define themselves as the antidote, meaning we are not them, we're the other choice.

• 22:52Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 22:53Sam Parr?

  And so why is this so interesting? Because David took the criticisms of them being an ultra processed food and they ran towards the fire. So much so that on their website, I thought that this was a joke. And so what they're doing is they are positioning themselves as an alternative to natural foods. They're saying, yeah, natural frozen cod.

• 23:13Shaan Puri?

  Better for you.

• 23:14Sam Parr?

  That's the best. That's it's definitely the best. But like, it's disgusting. Who the hell wants to eat that? Eat this other thing that tastes good and it's like, it's just a little bit less good in terms of protein per calorie. But you're actually going to be able to consume this.

• 23:29Shaan Puri?

  They're actually selling.

• 23:30Sam Parr?

  So that's what I was gonna say. If you go to their website, they sell it. They're selling it. And so this is a masterclass on how to handle this situation.

• 23:40Shaan Puri?

  By the way, on the site, it's their cod, so their wild cod. And it's like 23 grams of protein, 100 calories and no sugar. You can get it. It's four fillets, flash frozen, add to cart. And then there's all their bars, like chocolate chip cookie dough, peanut butter chunk, all sold out. Here's all the sold out bars. Here's cod, fully available. We've got a lot of this stuff still in stock.

• 24:03Sam Parr?

  And there's a bunch of examples of the law of opposites. Do you remember, I don't know if you remember this as a kid, but you would see commercials for Avis. Do you remember Avis?

• 24:11Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, the rental car.

• 24:12Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So basically Avis was number two in the market and Hertz was the biggest company by far. And Avis had this amazing brand campaign where they said, we're number two, so we try harder. And that was their, that was their campaign, which is like, we know we're number two, we're going to try harder. That's another example of the law of opposite, but David has executed this flawlessly. Isn't this like an amazing thing to lean into? And this is like, not something that like.

• 24:37Shaan Puri?

  Dude, I'm just kicking myself because when he came on, I literally fell in love with the guy. I was like, I love this guy's intensity, love this guy's honesty, love his approach. He's clearly like an expert in this field and this industry and attacking this. It was so obvious that they had nailed the branding and packaging of the bar. So I'm just mad that I didn't push to like, try to invest in this thing and be like, hey, I just, I'm so bullish on this. And it has played out exactly as I would have guessed.

• 25:03Sam Parr?

  I think you go, I think we said, what's your goal? He goes, well, I actually think we're going to expand the TAM. And I think that this is going to be a $10 billion company.

• 25:12Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's crazy. I like their copy on their site. We thank our predecessors in the protein industry. We'll take it from here.

• 25:18Sam Parr?

  It's so good, right? They, they, they nail it on, on branding. They nail a bunch of stuff. And I saw, when I saw this COD billboard, I was like, oh, that's, that's so good. That's exactly what the book 22 Immune to the Laws of Marketing, that's exactly what they had mentioned with the law of opposites. And they completely nailed it. And if you are a small business owner, uh, very similar to what this guy, Tom Ryan did, I would highly recommend reading this book and then downloading it and uploading to ChatGPT. It's so cool and interesting, uh, to give you ideas on your product or, and all your positioning. And what, what, what he just was explaining about with the, with the McRiddle and all that stuff. It's all very, very, very similar to this, which is, it's not, the goal is not to be better. The goal is to be different. Because a meat lover's pizza, that's not particularly better.

• 26:03Sam Parr?

  It's just, that's remarkably different than anything else.

• 26:07Shaan Puri?

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• 26:49Shaan Puri?

  Okay, I have a little stock market thing. Can I do a stock thing?

• 26:54Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 26:56Shaan Puri?

  Which is pretty stupid and dangerous because like.

• 27:00Shaan Puri?

  Most likely just gonna get be wrong and get ripped apart here.

• 27:02Sam Parr?

  Not entirely. So the last time we talked about this type of stuff, you picked, so we're all disclosure. We're idiots. Don't do anything we're saying. The last time though, you picked UFC.

• 27:14Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So we did an episode called Stockapalooza. I don't about a year ago. I don't know when that was. And the idea was me and Sam would go research and we'd just try to pick a stock. So we tried to make a call similar to the Sone conference where you just try to find a company that you would believe in as a as an outperformer. And then we made our case. And I picked TKO, which is the parent company of UFC and WWE. And you picked Ferrari, right? And I think I believe we did that episode. So February 12th, 2024.

• 27:49Shaan Puri?

  Let's see what the stock price has performed since then.

• 27:54Shaan Puri?

  Okay. So the stock at that time was trading at $85 and it's currently at $185. Okay. So, you know, up, what, what is that? Over 100%, 117%?

• 28:05Sam Parr?

  Did you put any of your money into it?

• 28:07Shaan Puri?

  Of course not, bro. You think I'm here to make money? What's going on? Not because not for any particular reason. I was just like lazy. I didn't, I didn't pay attention. So anyways, that, that pick has performed well. I don't think Ferrari's done well. I think Ferrari's down like 5%. So I'm better than you.

• 28:24Shaan Puri?

  So let me, you just stay quiet for a minute. Let me just do this segment here. You could give a pick that's bad after this. I was hanging out with somebody recently who's a guest, you know, is a guest on the podcast. Super successful, like billionaire type of dude. And asked him two questions. One was, what would you be doing right now? What would be your AI play if you're just like young and broke, but like wanted to do something with AI? And he gave a pretty interesting answer to that, which is he's like, I would go into, he's like, I would go find a business owner who's built a successful book of business. Like, let's say it's in insurance or home mortgages or, you know, some, some, some nice industry, some juicy industry. And like the owner kind of knows like, oh, AI probably could benefit, like I could probably benefit from AI in my company.

• 29:09Sam Parr?

  But who cares? I'm 60.

• 29:10Shaan Puri?

  But I'm 60. I'm too old to like actually figure this stuff out. And go to, he's like, I would go to them. I would go to as many of those guys I can. I'd try to build a product and be like, hey.

• 29:21Shaan Puri?

  I will do all of the work to use AI to cut our costs internally. Like I can automate a bunch of processes and jobs and whatnot. Like I can increase our accuracy and decrease our costs. And if I do that, like, can I carve, basically will you carve me out 10% of this business? If I successfully do it, I'll do it totally on contingency. But like, here's the deal and we can like, measure the op exchange that I'm going to make in this business. If you just give me free rein for, you know, 12 months. He's like, it's the fastest way to kind of like own a piece. He's like, he's like, you know, and then I would try to, in that agreement, maybe create an option to buy the majority of the business at a fair value. If I can pull that off. So he's like, I thought that was interesting on this first thing. Second thing he was talking about, he goes, he was like, yeah. He's like SpaceX.

• 30:06Shaan Puri?

  He's like, I just think it's unbelievable that people, that there's any counter argument to SpaceX. He's like SpaceX is the most defensible company in the history of humanity. Like, what's the second best SpaceX? Like, is there anybody, you know, like, there's, there's so few companies that can even compete with SpaceX. And think about how monumentally difficult it would be to compete with SpaceX. Like, yeah, you got to literally get into the rocket business and like, not just the rocket business, the reusable rocket business, not only that, but to do it and like be competing, you know, competing for these giant government contracts. And you have to, you know, successfully demonstrate, you know, safe launches over a period of time. He's like, at this point SpaceX is so unbelievably defensible.

• 30:53Shaan Puri?

  He's like, I think it's the safest place to put money. And so I thought that was kind of interesting, just like generational defensibility. And really the question of like, who is set up over the next 20 years? Who just has an incredibly competitive position for the next 20 years? So I just took that frame and none of these names are unpopular. So I'm not giving you some like obscure pick, but I just like, this is my honest take. And like, I, you know, I'm basically trying to get into all of these companies because I think over a 20 year period, I think all of these companies have a very combination of they have a tailwind behind them. So the wind is in their sails of they're in the right place at the right time. Like clearly the industries they're in and the tech wave that they're surfing

• 31:36Shaan Puri?

  is the big tech wave that we're going to see play out over 20 years. And two, they don't have much competition, which was my case for the, for the. The TKO stock pick also because I was like, there's no competition to UFC and there's no competition to WWE. Like the number two MMA, you know, promotions, whether it's PFL, like Bellator, like these were companies that was literally on the brink, on the brink of bankruptcy. And like they're, they're like, not just like in second place, they're literally like 100 or 1,000 times smaller and behind and they, and because of that network effect, they have no chance to ever catch up.

• 32:13Sam Parr?

  UFC is a tens of billions of dollar company and the second best one, like they get in trouble for not being able to like make payroll, literally.

• 32:23Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. It's like a rich guy's hobby typically.

• 32:25Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Like it's not even close. Like it's like, it's like, it's like LeBron versus the freshman, the freshman team. It's not even in the same category.

• 32:32Shaan Puri?

  And so when you're in that category of one, it's like, that's a pretty big deal. Plus you have growth behind you, but like the fact that there's just no competition. Same thing with WWE. There's really no competition to WWE. And of course, since then, they both signed major, major like streaming deals, way bigger than, you know, people thought they would sign like billion dollar a year plus streaming deals.

• 32:51Sam Parr?

  But what's this have to do with the first part of AI?

• 32:54Shaan Puri?

  Oh, the AI part, that was separate. All right. So now, so here's, here's five other companies I think are extremely well positioned. So the first is a company that I've been, I was wrong about. I owned the stock very early on and I got so mad during the GameStop thing that I sold out of principle. I'm never going to let those stupid principles in my way again.

• 33:11Sam Parr?

  Are a bad way to, they're, they're, they give you bad directions, like in route to making money.

• 33:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. My, my big moral stand didn't seem to hurt this company. So Robin Hood was the company. I owned the stock when it was like, I don't know, $5, $7, whatever it was, like really early on, like right when it IPO'd basically. And it was like, actually after the IPO, it kind of dipped or something. And when the GameStop thing happened and they basically shut off the ability to buy, but continue to let people sell GameStop. I was like, that is the most corrupt thing I've ever seen.

• 33:42Sam Parr?

  Same.

• 33:42Shaan Puri?

  And I, it pissed me off so much that I was like, F these guys. I don't, I don't trust these guys. I'm out. Since then, they've just basically proceeded to like build what's clearly like Morgan Stanley for the next generation. So like the tailwind behind Robin Hood is the following. There's some like absurd amount of wealth. I don't know what it is, like 20 trillion, 50 trillion. There's like some stupid number like with a trillion behind it of wealth that's just going to get transferred from like the parent, you know, boomers to millennials or Gen Z over the next 20, 30 years. And so the question is, as that money gets handed down, what will those people do with it? And it's pretty clear that like, if you're a Gen Z or you're a millennial, the platforms you trust and gravitate towards, the financial platforms you're already a user of,

• 34:26Shaan Puri?

  when you have small check deposits, is Robinhood. And then they're like, great, we have crypto, we have 401ks, we have home mortgages, and we got credit cards. It's like, what else do you want?

• 34:37Sam Parr?

  Wait, they do, they do all those?

• 34:39Shaan Puri?

  They have prediction markets, which, which is a code word for sports betting and gambling. So you can gamble on there, you can buy crypto on there, you can buy stocks on there, you can buy fractional stocks of private companies, you could buy, you can do all the margin trading and options trading if you want to get really degenerate. You can do, you can put a 401, you can open up a 401k with them, you can get a Robinhood gold card, and you can use that as your credit card, and you get a home mortgage. It's like, an unbelievable amount of financial products that they've rolled out, all in one app. And it's basically this financial super app that Gen Z slash millennials are most comfortable with. And as the wealth transfer happens, they're going to be the beneficiary of that. So I think, next 20 years, they're extremely well positioned.

• 35:17Sam Parr?

  So Austin Rafe, the founder of Morningbird, one of my closest buddies, he has been texting me for the past six months, maybe longer, to be honest.

• 35:25Shaan Puri?

  Longer, he's been texting me too about this. In fact, he's the only reason I bought it. So I did buy it back again, like, maybe six months ago. I had, I was about to have a call with him. And he had been talking about Robinhood, but he's kicking himself because he doesn't own any. But he's been, it was like his call, he was like, it's gonna be great, I'm just waiting for a dip. The dip never came. And he doesn't own any of it, and it's basically ripped up like in a 5X, 7X, since he's been like, wanting to buy.

• 35:48Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he's been talking about it constantly.

• 35:49Shaan Puri?

  And I had a call with him, so before the call, I bought $100,000 of Robinhood stock, just so I could get on the call as a Robinhood shareholder, and be like, oh, thank you for the tip. And since then, it's up, you know, 30, 40% also. And so, he's responsible for my Robinhood conviction, even though he doesn't own any of it now.

• 36:03Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and I think his reasoning, I forget what it was exactly, or he had more than one point, but one of the points was like, Young people and he owns a company called, or he did own Morning Brew, which probably had 200 employees, which a lot of them were like 23 year old, like 100,000, $150,000 earning people. And he was like, my staff, that's the default. They all have 100% of their net worth in Robinhood. And that is only going to continue to grow. So they, because they keep their money in there and it's just going to keep on growing. This is, this company is unstoppable. And he's been bragging about it or calling that for, for maybe a year and a half. And so he's absolutely nailed it. I, and I agree with you. I did not buy into that argument at all. I thought Robinhood was silly.

• 36:48Sam Parr?

  I, I thought on principle, I'm not on board with what these guys did.

• 36:51Shaan Puri?

  You're more of like a Schwab type of guy. I feel like you, you want, when it comes to money, you want boring. You want like a bow tie. You want like, you know, a man with a briefcase is what you want.

• 37:02Sam Parr?

  Well, you know, I, I potentially have a lot of money and I didn't want to keep it in an app. Like the thing I'm keeping it in an app was like, kind of, that's a little nerve wracking. And like the interface is so cute that I thought it was like, they cared more about looks. I was like, I want the ugliest website that's got the biggest vault.

• 37:19Shaan Puri?

  You didn't want to keep it in an app as if it's like a shoebox? Like where, where do you think the money's kept in any of these? Like if it was a website, that's better. What did you want?

• 37:27Sam Parr?

  I wanted the like forgot password button to be like hidden. Like I didn't want someone to like, I don't know. I just, it was too user friendly. Dude, if it's too user friendly to me, that means it's easily hackable. That was the issue, that it was too good, you know? It's like, you find good deals on Craigslist because you're finding something like interesting that no one else uses. Robinhood scared me.

• 37:46Shaan Puri?

  Honestly, I get, I actually get what you're talking about. I actually felt similar. I was like, I don't want to keep huge amounts of money in this app.

• 37:52Sam Parr?

  But I did keep some, I, I had some money. I think I bought like crypto on it before and like they, for years, they did this thing where instead of giving you like Uber for your new ride, if you referred someone to a new ride, they give you $10. Robinhood had this amazing thing where you could like do a scratch off. You could pick option one, two, or three, which obviously it's not actually one, two, three is all the same. And they would give you stock. And so like I owned like-

• 38:13Shaan Puri?

  $10 of stock, yeah.

• 38:14Sam Parr?

  I owned like $10 of Ford and that is now worth more because I did this like, you know, right when they launched. And so I like Robinhood though, as a company. I just Googled it. Is it true, did they do $1.1 billion of profit on 3 billion in revenue?

• 38:29Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, basically, when interest rates went up, all of the like financial service companies started printing money because now all the money that they hold, they're able to like and money that they lend out at high rates, but like the money they hold, they're earning like four or five percent on their float, which is like pretty crazy. So they're, you know, they're very interest rate dependent right now. By the way, the criticism for all of these is that these are

• 38:50Sam Parr?

  Valuation is crazy.

• 38:52Shaan Puri?

  The valuation is crazy. Look at the fundamentals. Oh, you know, Tesla, you know, they need to sell this many crazy amount of cars in order to justify this or like even self-driving and have to be like bigger than Uber to to just be where it's valued at currently, right? So like your upside is priced in would be the counter argument. And by the way, I have no argument against that. I just think very simply, this has actually served me pretty well, which is like, I told you this story, like in 2010, I was kind of like, oh, like, these internet companies seem to be like pretty dominant. Everybody uses them.

• 39:23Sam Parr?

  Let me get some of that. That's the

• 39:26Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I don't really know how to do discount cash flows. You know, I can't, I can't really tell you much about that, about the P ratios and like any of that stuff, but like, I don't know, this internet thing, that toothpaste is not going back in the bottle. And so like, similarly, it's like pretty obvious that with some of these, it's like, yeah.

• 39:43Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like I like that partners. That's the name of your, that's the name of your firm. I like that. Running my company Hampton, it gives me the chance to meet with hundreds of different businesses. And I'm always surprised by how many of them still use spreadsheets, emails, and clunky tools that do not talk to each other. It's like watching someone build a house with duct tape. So here's my take. Custom software that actually fits your needs isn't just convenient, it's a competitive advantage to transform the way you do business. And that's why you need to know about a no-code platform called Bubble. With Bubble, you can build powerful web and mobile apps by literally dragging and dropping different elements on a screen. No coding required. By the way, I use Bubble on a ton of different apps, including

• 40:27Sam Parr?

  Hampton. And if you want help building something complex on Bubble, you have to bring in zero code. They're the top Bubble agency out there and literally the biggest plugging creator for the platform. They can build anything. Custom portals, SaaS products, and they do it about 10 times faster and cheaper than traditional development. Zero Code is also all about AI business automation, transforming manual and slow processes into efficient automated ones. So stop cobbling together different tools and solutions and head to zerocode.com. That's zero code, as in the word zero, and then code, Q O D E. Again, code is with a Q and tell them that Sam sent you. All right, what's the next one?

• 41:06Shaan Puri?

  All right, let me just run through a couple of Coinbase is basically the same case, except what they have is Coinbase has nine product lines that do over $100 million of revenue each. I thought that's a stunning, stunning statement. I can't believe how many different ways that they make a lot of money. I think basically it's like I'm bullish on Bitcoin in general and crypto. And if you're bullish on crypto, the most trusted exchange that basically everybody that takes a fee on everybody's interest, everybody's enthusiasm around crypto. They take a fee of every buy and every sell, like that's a business that's going to do very well. And also like as now like the governments, the government's pro crypto, they're buying crypto, there's ETFs, it's in people's retirement accounts.

• 41:48Shaan Puri?

  Like same thing, can't, can't put the toothpaste back in the bottle on that.

• 41:52Sam Parr?

  And that CEO is an animal. He's an animal.

• 41:55Shaan Puri?

  And so I just think they're, they're extremely, you know, well positioned similarly for, for, you know, the future.

• 42:00Sam Parr?

  When it IPO'd, I never do this. I've only done this two or three times or something like that. I bought.

• 42:06Shaan Puri?

  You jumped up and clapped?

• 42:07Sam Parr?

  I.

• 42:10Shaan Puri?

  You clicked the heels.

• 42:13Sam Parr?

  Right after I purchased like a hundred grand worth of stock and I just looked at my, I just looked at it. I, I just made the money back now that it's like on a, on a tear. It looks like I'm, I'm even now after I think four years or three years.

• 42:29Shaan Puri?

  All right, the other two. Again, this is, this is so cliche. I mean, I almost didn't even want to do this segment, but I do believe in this. So like,

• 42:36Sam Parr?

  It's not cliche to me because I don't follow all this stuff. So I think a lot of people won't find it totally cliche.

• 42:41Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, unfortunately, the YouTube comments aren't as forgiving and kind as you are. All right. So Tesla is the next one, which is basically, if you think about what are the next big industries to get unlocked, a combination of self-driving cars is going to change the world and then the robots. Now, the time scale is obviously the question here. But again, I'm taking, if you take a 20-year outlook, nobody's better positioned to do self-driving cars and robots than Tesla. So, and then I also think, by the way, he's going to end up merging XAI with Tesla, like he's going to, he's going to put it all together.

• 43:14Sam Parr?

  I don't understand that. I don't get that. I don't get that combo.

• 43:17Shaan Puri?

  Why it would go together? Well, it's basically, one is an AI lab, and then all the, although the future of Tesla is as an AI company. And if he's able to basically like financially engineer his way into owning more Tesla by, by having Tesla buy XAI, like, he's also like done this before at SolarCity, where he like bails out his own companies in a way, right?

• 43:38Sam Parr?

  I guess I get that. The way how Twitter has basically become AI, which is then a Tesla-owned thing, that's a wild journey. That's the wild part. I wouldn't own any, I don't want to own any stock that Elon controls because he's a crazy person. And I don't mind being, I don't mind him being crazy. What I mind is like when he tweets something, the stock changes. Or, and so I'm like, well, what if he gets shot? Which is definitely not unreasonable. Like, there has to be like a 1% chance that he gets assassinated, or a 1% chance that he dies doing something reckless.

• 44:11Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, there's crazy E-Man risk with him.

• 44:13Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's too crazy. Like, when he tweeted that Trump was a pedophile, what, did it go up or down? Like, did it move?

• 44:21Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it went down, then it went back up.

• 44:23Sam Parr?

  I, I, yeah, I don't have the stomach for that.

• 44:26Shaan Puri?

  The stock trades in completely crazy ways in the short term. Like, they'll be like, oh, we missed delivery estimates by a lot. My bad. And the stock's like up 10%. It's like, what? What's going on here?

• 44:37Sam Parr?

  It's weird, man. Tesla's too weird for me. Yeah, I'm too old school for that. But I do, I understand the argument.

• 44:45Shaan Puri?

  I mean, again, the idea is like, we're gonna have robots doing human labor. Once you, if you disagree with that, then you're wrong and we disagree. But if you realize that robots are gonna do human labor and that human labor is the biggest market in the world, is the market for human labor, then the company that makes the robots that do the human labor is gonna sell more. It's gonna be like the iPhone. The iPhone was like this product that everybody in the world bought that, you know, sells billions and billions and billions of units. As soon as they have robots that can actually do functional work, they're gonna sell billions and billions. There's gonna be more robots than humans, because why would you not? I'd be like, yeah, give me five, give me five of those guys to be doing shit around my house, my backyard, my factory, my warehouse, my whatever, right?

• 45:28Shaan Puri?

  Like, as soon as people, as soon as that exists, then the question is, do you believe it will exist? Do you believe that Tesla can pull it off?

• 45:34Sam Parr?

  Yes, the, it's definitely worth betting that they will.

• 45:37Shaan Puri?

  So, so, once you go down the logic train of like, the biggest market in the world, human labor. We now have the technology wave happening where robots will be able to do that human labor. And that if you had that, what would be the demand for that? Okay, pretty much the biggest demand we've ever seen for anything, ever. Okay, great, so let's go to the next one. Who is gonna be able to, you know, who's gonna be able to, who's well positioned to do it? Tesla, okay, great. So you go down that chain and you realize like, okay, they're pretty well positioned.

• 46:02Sam Parr?

  It's just hard, because, so I have a friend that joined OpenAI in, I forget the exactly what year, but at the time, I think they're worth $30 billion. And he was debating, he's like, should I do this, should I not do this? And he said, we all said the same thing, which is, wow, $30 billion, that's a lot of money. Is there any upside to this? Well, he joined, I believe he's made about $30 million. And as of now, the stock that he was granted back then, it is grant, it is now worth 10 million a year. So every vest, it's something like $10 million.

• 46:38Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 46:38Sam Parr?

  And he sold a little bit to, to where he's good. But we were talking the other day and we were like, this could definitely 10x again. Like, your grants could be $100 million a year. And that's, that's, it's very hard to like, overcome that, that, to get to that conclusion, just because, not logic, because of emotion, you know what I mean?

• 46:58Shaan Puri?

  Totally. The smartest investors I know, and the reason why I think there's merit to just having a very like, simple, simpleton model of investing is

• 47:12Shaan Puri?

  For most of the like, I guess, if I look back at the last 10 years, I look back at a couple of the smartest investors I know. They always had like a very like two sentence, two sentence level of conviction and they sort of pointed out, they're like, hey, like all you needed to do was BTC and chill. Like, all you needed to do was Bitcoin and chill, right? You know, when we sold to Amazon and we got our Amazon grant, and it was like, okay, you own this much Amazon stock now. Guess what? I did all these side projects. I did all this other shit during the meantime. I like, I like worked, got up every day, went to work. All I needed to do was hold Amazon and chill. Like, if you get a big enough lump sum, you just can let things compound. And so like,

• 47:55Shaan Puri?

  one of my friends, Zach, he has this phrase that basically every year, there's one investment that's sort of like the power law, like, you know, when Ozempic happened, he was like, oh, I think I just need to own the companies that are like the Ozempic companies. And he's like, yep, like that was the only thing that you needed to do. Ozempic was the investment theme of the year. You just had to recognize it and you had to take action on it. It didn't take a like a literal genius to do it, right? You didn't have to predict Ozempic. You didn't have to like be knee deep in clinical trials six years ago, like even if it just like after it happened, you just had to like, understand what was actually happening and buy and hold. And like, that was what you needed to do. And he basically has a list of every year. What's the one thing that mattered? What was the one deal that mattered?

• 48:38Sam Parr?

  I think he said one year was like OnlyFans.

• 48:40Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, one year he was like, it's OnlyFans this year. And I was like, OnlyFans? This was like before, it was, this was actually, I think in 2019.

• 48:48Sam Parr?

  We talked about it.

• 48:49Shaan Puri?

  We sold, and we sold to Twitch and he texted me and he was like, OnlyFans, I believe is going to make more money than Twitch. I go, bro, Twitch is making like, and I shared with him, you know, I was like, Twitch is making a lot of money. He's like, I said what I said. Everything else is noise for me this year. I just need to figure out if I can get into OnlyFans.

• 49:06Sam Parr?

  Did he get it?

• 49:07Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he did. And so, you know, he's, you know, but I just really respect that level of thinking, that type of thing. In fact, one of my friends who's like this, he came to, he came over to my house and he goes,

• 49:20Shaan Puri?

  Take two, take two, what would it take two, let's take two.

• 49:23Sam Parr?

  Do difference talk really strangely?

• 49:28Shaan Puri?

  There's no like, no connecting words.

• 49:32Sam Parr?

  It sounds like, is it, was he Kramer? You just knocked on the door and said, take two?

• 49:37Shaan Puri?

  I asked him, I'm like, what's the thing right now? Because he was, he was the one who early on was just like, you need to have 100% of your net worth in Bitcoin. And he was just like, every day he would just tell me this and he would just tell me this every day. This is 2014, 2015, 2016. Every day he's just telling me the same thing. And he would tell me exactly why and he would write it, he wrote it down for me and he just kept doing it. And because of my own more Bitcoin than I would have otherwise. So I, you know, at least I didn't listen to him. I didn't do a hundred percent, but I did listen to him. He was basically making a case why the company that makes Grand Theft Auto, he's like, Grand Theft Auto is coming, GTA 6 is coming out. And when it comes out, is it right now? The stock is a little depressed because it's, the game's been delayed for like multiple years.

• 50:18Shaan Puri?

  He's like, the game is going to come out and when the game comes out, it's going to be the biggest selling game ever. There's no competition. He goes, and he's like, uses all these like economics where like, you know, some word for like, there are no substitutes. Like there's no substitute for GTA.

• 50:31Sam Parr?

  Yeah. He was using words like elastic, elastic or something.

• 50:34Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. So he's like.

• 50:36Sam Parr?

  Rubber bands or stocks, bro.

• 50:37Shaan Puri?

  He's like, you know, a great investment has these like six properties and like, you know, here's the six properties and I'm like, and Grand Theft Auto fits all those? He's like, yes. And so that's like, you know, his big, he said, this is what he was saying a year ago. It's already up like 30% or something since he told me this. And he would, you know, to whatever, there's more to that story. I will, I'm like, I can't share here, but like, is that type of thinking? That's like, I don't know. It's very, very attractive to me. I fall, I get seduced by that level of that type of thinking very easily. And obviously I'm cherry picking like, you know, things that worked. I'm sure there's, if I really thought about it, I'm sure I have a bunch of smart friends who, you know, fell in love with random, single securities that didn't, didn't do anything. I'm not saying this is like a foolproof thing.

• 51:16Sam Parr?

  Dude, when you, whenever we talk about this, I like, I started thinking, I would be like the Warren Buffett thing where I'm like, well, I just don't understand it. So I'm going to stick to that thing. Which is a really novel way of saying, uh, like, you know, whatever, I'm, I'm not doing it. And then I started thinking about this recently where I was like, well, it's been eight years. Maybe I should learn about it.

• 51:35Shaan Puri?

  That circle of confidence needs to expand a little bit.

• 51:38Sam Parr?

  It's so like six months ago, I went and bought a book on it and like started reading it. And I was like, oh yeah, yeah, I wish I would have read this a long time ago. This book was published like years ago. What am I doing?

• 51:51Sam Parr?

  Well, I don't know it. I don't understand it, so I'm not going to do it. But that's been eight years. Yeah, I should have read way sooner.

• 52:00Sam Parr?

  What's the fourth company?

• 52:02Shaan Puri?

  OpenAI is one of them, but I think that's the most controversial one because I think they, you know, there's so much competition, who knows? And I just was thinking like, who else is uniquely positioned on a 20 year time scale? Where they have the winds of technology behind their back. So they're, they're in the right space where like clearly they're, they're sitting in the lane where the, the, the, the highest velocity of like, you know, of, of change and sort of upside is, but then also that they have a unique defensibility. Well, they will actually capture it. I think SpaceX, SpaceX is uniquely defensible. I think Coinbase is uniquely defensible. I think Tesla is uniquely defensible. None of these things are like, you know, completely foolproof. Of course, like, you know, there's, there are competitors.

• 52:43Shaan Puri?

  I'm not saying that, but I just think like on the sliding scale of defensibility, it's very, very hard to compete with any of those companies. Cause they built up these durable, durable modes, right? Like whether it's regulatory modes, whether it's brand, whether it's network effect, whether it's like hard, you know, hard technical, you know, technical things that are, you know, take years for other people to catch up to. But then by then they're on the next generation.

• 53:07Sam Parr?

  Do not wonder, like, this is total, like the bro science of financial investing, but I don't look into like, I don't really read about the fundamentals of certain companies. And the only few times that I've bought an individual stock, it's been mostly because the founder, the entrepreneur behind it. And so when we hung out with Mario, the guy who started Oscar Health, he like explained a little, little bit about Oscar. And I was like, okay, it's a health insurance company, but I, I don't really know anything else, but like you, you're really inspiring. And so I bought a little bit of that. And then the first one was Atlassian. I read an article about Atlassian and their office. I don't know if you remember this, but my office was at, where was?

• 53:48Sam Parr?

  It was in Soma and their office was like on the street of my of my office, The Hustle. And I used to like look in their office and I was like, wow, I love the interior design of your office. And I read a little bit about the founders and they seemed really smart and I bought, I think a thousand dollars worth of it because I didn't have any money. I think it turned into fifty fifty grand. I think it like fifty Xed. And it was and so both of the times that they have made money, it's literally just been because the founder was interesting to me. Total bro science. No, I don't even know what a glassian does to this day. Like I, they make software, but I don't know what software. I don't know.

• 54:21Shaan Puri?

  Make Australian software, I think.

• 54:25Sam Parr?

  Like they, they, they say words like schedule instead of schedule.

• 54:30Sam Parr?

  Like, you know, it's a scheduler. I don't know what a schedule is. But it's been like, that's kind of been like an interesting way. It just seems like someone has willed something into existence and the cool factor. So for example, Palantir. I'm pretty sure they're trading at like 200 times. Revenue or something like that. And I have to imagine there's got to be some research on what the Alex Carp like cool factor adds to that multiple.

• 54:56Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, these become cults. Like there's enough like, um, there's enough sort of like retail energy now where these things become cults. Like right now, they're trying to make it happen for open door. I don't know if you've paid attention to this.

• 55:06Sam Parr?

  I have, I have. I've seen open door. I don't understand why there's what's who's the cult leader behind like, what? Why do people care about?

• 55:14Shaan Puri?

  And it's like this guy Eric Jackson and others. I mean, I don't know. I'm not too far. I, I stay away from the like, the, you know, everybody's got their, um, their, their vices. Meme stocks are not, not one that that does it for me. So fortunately I don't get sucked into that.

• 55:30Sam Parr?

  So your buddy was like, I should just pick one stock and go all in. If there's one skill set that you should go all in, honestly, like I learned it a little bit with Hermosy and we've seen it time and time again. But like. Becoming a very charismatic person that knows how to talk to the masses is obviously the answer. That's the skill set that you have to learn.

• 55:48Shaan Puri?

  Manipulation is what I'm saying.

• 55:50Sam Parr?

  Everything else. Just learned that. I think Rob the Bank, who you had on a while ago, he like talked about some book. He's like, I don't even want to say the name of this book. He like teed it up perfectly. And I think you did. I think you did the same. He's like, there's this one book on how to manipulate people. I don't even want to say the name. It's just too powerful and I don't want the price to go up.

• 56:09Shaan Puri?

  The dark arts.

• 56:10Sam Parr?

  Do you remember when he said that?

• 56:13Shaan Puri?

  Maybe. Like, did you say it on our podcast or somewhere else?

• 56:15Sam Parr?

  Yes. Or maybe he said it on, I started following him after you had him on. And he said something like that. And I went and like read it. And I'm like, yeah, you're right. This is like the, this is like the skill that everyone should learn. Screw products, screw being smart with AI.

• 56:27Shaan Puri?

  What is it? I want to know now.

• 56:29Sam Parr?

  I'm not going to say.

• 56:32Shaan Puri?

  You get it to me.

• 56:33Sam Parr?

  I'll tell you after.

• 56:35Shaan Puri?

  Well, Robert Green, they say this about his book, right? Forty Eight Laws of Power. Like, I think one of the like, marketing shticks, which I don't know if he completely made up, or is true. And then he used it to like, to market his book. But it was, this book is banned from prisons.

• 56:49Sam Parr?

  It's the best.

• 56:50Shaan Puri?

  Because they don't want the prisons to like, the prisoners to be able to like, over, overtake.

• 56:55Sam Parr?

  So powerful.

• 56:56Shaan Puri?

  It's so powerful that it's banned in prisons is, ah, just perfect marketing.

• 57:01Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 57:02Shaan Puri?

  You know, that's, that's like the cod level marketing.

• 57:05Sam Parr?

  And I have it somewhere in my Goodreads that I'll say, that I'll, that I'll find it. But it's, I don't even remember the title from being honest, but it was like.

• 57:12Shaan Puri?

  So you think I should go all in on, on charlatan manipulation or what?

• 57:17Sam Parr?

  Yeah. I mean, you're, we're kind of, we kind of do that a little bit.

• 57:21Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 57:23Sam Parr?

  I'm just saying, like, go all in. Yeah, just be better. Just do what you're doing now, but better.

• 57:32Sam Parr?

  Is that it? Is that the pod?

• 57:33Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's it.

• 57:44Shaan Puri?

  All right, let's take a quick break because as you know, we are on the HubSpot Podcast Network, but we're not the only ones. There's other podcasts on this network too. And maybe you liked it. Maybe you should check them out. One of them that I want to draw your attention to is called Nudge by Phil Agnew. And whether you're a marketer or a salesperson and you're looking for the small changes you could make, the new habits you could do, the, the small decisions you could make that will make a big difference. That's what that podcast is all about. Check it out. It's called Nudge and you can get it wherever you get your podcasts.