How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, QVC for Mobile, and More

Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@theSamParr) break down Mr. Beast's Squid Games recreation and talk about how he was able to get 100M views in less than four days. They also discuss a number of business ideas including chrome extensions, building QVC for mobile, and more. _____ * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. _____ Show Notes & Links: (00:26) - Recapping Sam's conversation with Noah Kagan. (05:38) - Recapping and breaking down the Mr. Beast Squid Games (22:45) - Sam's real estate YouTube project (30:55) - Ad Block and chrome extensions (36:20) - Rolling up gaming platforms (44:05) - QVC for mobile (47:48) - How to get numbers out of someone who's reluctant to share (52:25) - Levels.io and remote work

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

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  When you go fish in a part of the pond that nobody else is fishing because everyone else thinks the water is too deep and it's too scary over there, the rewards are disproportionate even to the effort and the work that goes in.

• 0:23Sam Parr?

  All right. What's up?

• 0:24Shaan Puri?

  What up dude? How are you doing? Who did you have as a guest on the last episode when I was doing my own episode? And then you tweeted out, you wanted to guess who came on?

• 0:33Sam Parr?

  Two different people. The first was our own Ben. And so Ben and I did an episode where we talked about like thing, people in history and if there's any commonalities between a bunch of them. And then Noah Kagan, my friend Noah from AppSumo, I asked him if he would come on and he said, yeah. So I just recorded two that day.

• 0:51Shaan Puri?

  Cool. Did they turn out good or, you know?

• 0:53Sam Parr?

  We'll see. Noah, Noah was good. Ben and I was good as well. I just hope that, I don't know if that top, the topic is going to be a winner. So we'll see. Noah is amazing. Do you know about AppSumo?

• 1:05Shaan Puri?

  I know like loosely about AppSumo. So here's what I know. You tell me what I don't know. So what I know is that AppSumo is basically, it's a website where you can go to get like kind of software deals, I would say. They kind of like, they go find cool software. They make a deal. They say, hey, we'll get you in front of like whatever 50 million people, but you got to offer a deal to our audience, like sort of Groupon style or Wootz style. And apparently he's doing extremely well. He's been doing it for a long ass time, 10 plus years. I think it does over a hundred million in revenue. So that's what I know about it.

• 1:38Sam Parr?

  Almost all right. So AppSumo started as basically Noah. He emailed the founder of Imager and basically said, hey, you guys charge $10 a month. If I give you a bunch of new customers at $6 a month, can I get a little cut of the pie?

• 1:53Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:53Sam Parr?

  And that's how he started. He made 10 grand doing that by emailing a bunch of friends. Eventually it kind of still is this way, but they're gonna, they're becoming more of a marketplace and a website. But for like the last 10 years, it's basically an email list. And I think there's only 300,000 people on that email list and they email A few deals a week where they find companies that say, hey, give us a discount and give us a cut of the revenue.

• 2:16Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 2:16Sam Parr?

  And it was doing okay for years. It just some years it didn't do better than the year before. Sometimes it did a lot better. And I think it only did okay for a few years. Now, after close to 10 years, he, their goal this year was 100 million in revenue. They're going to miss it by a little bit, but he said they're going to get north of 80 million in revenue. Now, he didn't say it on the podcast. If I, if you just Google it, it appears of that 80 million in revenue. They pay out 30% to their partners and they get around 60 or 70% of the, of the actual revenue. And he owns most of the company, has never taken any outside money and they have like 150 employees at this point.

• 2:51Shaan Puri?

  Wow. Uh, I didn't realize some of those things. And, okay, so 300,000 people on the list. So do you know if they send out an email about some product, uh, have they ever done it for the hustle, by the way? Did they ever like, did you promote the hustle in there somehow or no? Cause it's already a free email.

• 3:07Sam Parr?

  I, I know. I don't, well, no, I don't think we've done it in a traditional way.

• 3:11Shaan Puri?

  Maybe.

• 3:12Sam Parr?

  I think we've done trend, but we've not done it in a major way. So you can, um, sometimes they'll only send it to part of the list. And I think that we've done like a part list, but, uh, some of the partners, they'll make over a million dollars in the, in one day.

• 3:23Shaan Puri?

  Well, I guess my question is, how many people take them up on their offer? So how many do they need for this, this business to kind of work? So is it like, cause I think it seems like maybe bigger than it is. I wouldn't be surprised if it's like, yeah, a thousand people click the thing and a thousand people is enough for this business to work. When a thousand people to take the offer, is it a thousand or is it more like 10,000?

• 3:43Sam Parr?

  Uh, I would think that it's in the single digit thousands. If I had to guess, that's how many buy. Because the products are like $400 a year or something like that. So you don't actually need that many people to buy in order to make 500,000 to a million of dollars. And you're saying they're sending emails constantly and now they have a website that people are doing stuff. Now here's where it gets interesting. I asked him. How much could you sell this business for right now? He was like, the huge range is 300 million to a billion. I think that's what he said.

• 4:12Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 4:13Sam Parr?

  Pretty crazy, right? It's, it's, it's like-

• 4:16Shaan Puri?

  Noah, good job. Good job, Noah.

• 4:18Sam Parr?

  And like a lot of things, like the hustle included, like people are like, and I say it as well. Well, it's just an email list. It's really simple. And yeah, that's true. It is just an email, but there's definitely a machine behind it. And AppSumo is like inherently quite simple. They just holler at companies. They say, give us a discount and give us a cut of the pie. And then they just email it out to people. And it's so simple and it just creates so much value.

• 4:42Shaan Puri?

  There's a, Ryan Hoover did this a while back. He created a list of big companies that started off as quote unquote, just email list. So he created Product Hunt. Product Hunt started off as an email list. Product Hunt got acquired by Angel List, which is like a three billion ish dollar company.

• 4:58Sam Parr?

  Or more.

• 4:59Shaan Puri?

  Angel List started as just an email list, just a list of angels that he was doing. Craigslist started off as an email list. And so there was a whole bunch of products that started off as just an email list. Some became more than that, some stayed an email list. Yeah.

• 5:15Sam Parr?

  Groupon started out, Groupon is basically was an email list for a long time.

• 5:19Shaan Puri?

  Right. And so, you know, don't underestimate, do not underestimate email. I, that's tattooed on Sam's back. Do not underestimate email. Let's talk about a couple of things. I have a, I have another business idea. I have another business I want to highlight. That's a, one of these like, that's so simple. Are you joking? That's the business. But first, before we do that one, we got to talk about this Squid Games thing that happened. The Beast Games by Mr. Beast. Did you watch it when it happened or have you watched it after the fact?

• 5:47Sam Parr?

  I heard basically Casey Neistat, who I follow on Twitter, was talking about saying, Mr. Beast, what he's doing with the Squid Games thing is one of the most epic things I've ever seen on YouTube. And Casey Neistat is one of the pioneers of YouTube and him saying that meant a lot.

• 6:02Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. That's, you know, Denzel saying, wow, the great acting in this movie. So, all right. So for those who didn't see it, all right. So Squid Games was this ultra popular. I think it is the most popular show ever on Netflix.

• 6:17Shaan Puri?

  Those watched show and it's this kind of like crazy Korean death game show type of idea where, you know, a bunch of people enter this game and they're trying to win the big prize and then they get killed. The losing is like you die, basically. That's like the short version of it. I actually didn't watch Squid Games. So maybe I got something wrong there, but I did watch the Mr. Beast version of it. So what did Mr. Beast do? He basically decided I'm going to recreate Squid Games, but I'm not, yeah, obviously people aren't going to die, but he did it even better. So he invited 456 people to this arena that was built for this. And the prize was the number

• 6:55Shaan Puri?

  one, the winner of the games was going to win $456,000, runner up 10K and everybody who went got $2,000 each. And in total, the production plus the prize money. So I think he did about a billion and a half dollars of prizes and 2 million to build and produce it. Three and a half million dollars is what he spent on this content, on this 25 minute video. So let's talk about what happened. So first, players showed up, they're wearing the same outfits as in Squid Games. It's like kind of green windbreaker jumpsuit type thing. And they all have a number. So player one, player two, player three, all the way up to player 456. And inside their shirt, they have this like pack and the pack is like exploding paint. So if you, let's say, one of

• 7:40Shaan Puri?

  the games is called red light, green light, the old like game we used to play as a kid where if you say green light, you start moving, red light means you got to stop. If you keep going, after they say red light, you're out. And so there he's got a green light, then he's a red light. And if somebody flinched after that, their little pack inside their shirt would explode and red paint would come out as if they got shot, like, you know, like the real Squid Games. And then they would be out and then hey, you got to go to the next, you didn't make it to the next game. And so in the end, you know, player, whatever, player 27 ended up winning 456.

• 8:12Shaan Puri?

  Thousand dollars. So here's, I think this is amazing and this ties into some stuff we've been talking about. So just some numbers, the video got about 130 million views in seven days, which is crazy. I think I, I believe Ben, you can fact check me on this. I believe 130 million views is more than what the actual Squid Games got on Netflix. Now Netflix is a paid service and whatever, but like.

• 8:36Sam Parr?

  And people watched like.

• 8:37Shaan Puri?

  Multiple episodes.

• 8:38Sam Parr?

  Yeah, 12 hours of footage. It's, yes, it's still amazing.

• 8:42Shaan Puri?

  The fact that it's comparable, the fact that somebody just watched the show was like, oh yeah, we'll do like a backyard version of that and got 130 million people to watch is insane. So he spent three and a half million on it. Just to kind of put this in perspective. That's basically half the cost of a 30 second Super Bowl commercial.

• 9:00Sam Parr?

  Wow. Really? Did he have a sponsor?

• 9:03Shaan Puri?

  It was fully paid, I believe fully paid for by Brawl Stars, the, the big, the super popular mobile game. So if you look in the arena where it was, where it was hosted, it's a giant Brawl Stars arena. They have a huge logo that was in every shot. And so for Brawl Stars, this such a smart move. They basically paid half the cost of a Super Bowl ad, got more viewership than a Super Bowl ad. Cause you get 130 million people, the video is like 20 minutes long, 27 minutes long versus a 30 second clip. And this is an epic thing that's going to get shared. And then they could take this content, repurpose it for ads or anything else they wanted to do after the fact, if, if they wanted to. So really smart, you know, for Brawl Stars, $3 million is probably their daily, is a one day of ad spend on Facebook or something like that.

• 9:47Sam Parr?

  Brawl Stars is owned by Supercell and Supercell is like the, the biggest game.

• 9:51Shaan Puri?

  Publisher. Yeah.

• 9:52Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And so if I, I don't know if this is how it would have worked. If I'm Mr. Beast, I think he could have, so he would have gotten Supercell to pay for the whole thing. So three and a half million dollars. I bet he also would have gotten another like $500,000, just like.

• 10:07Shaan Puri?

  There's a vig on top of.

• 10:08Sam Parr?

  Yeah, just like, just for that. And then they would have probably, I would have said to them, also, I'm going to keep YouTube ads on this. And Mr. Beast, I get all of it. And so if Mr. Beast is getting 130. Million views in the first seven days. And if you do maybe $4 per CPM, that's around half a million dollars that he got in the first week. Plus,

• 10:31Shaan Puri?

  I believe he got His deal is going to be a lot better than $4 CPM. Because he's the number, he's like, you know, one of the faces of YouTube. These guys have custom negotiated deals that I would bet a lot of money is better than the standard kind of $4 to $5 CPM.

• 10:44Sam Parr?

  What do you think it is?

• 10:46Shaan Puri?

  I bet he's getting closer to $10 CPM.

• 10:48Sam Parr?

  So if it's 10, that's 1.3 million.

• 10:51Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, and just in a week.

• 10:52Sam Parr?

  In a week. Plus, according to our notes, it looks like he got 10,000 new subscribers.

• 10:57Shaan Puri?

  A million, million, million.

• 10:58Sam Parr?

  Sorry, oh my God. 10 million new subscribers in the first week and a normal week is 400,000 subscribers.

• 11:04Shaan Puri?

  So he is 20x to his subscriber growth. So what does this do? He continues to be the content leader. He gets 10 million new subscribers and those people are going to get notified for his next video. He makes a million dollars on ads. He gets the whole thing paid for by a sponsor. And this is a great example of something we've talked about before. We talked about this with Elon, when Elon does epic stuff like I'm going to go to Mars. We talked about it with, I forgot the guy's name, Mark Lasry or whoever it was that's building that epic train, train system in America. I ranted about Disney, Disneyland last week because again, when you shoot for these epic projects, things that get people inspired and excited.

• 11:45Shaan Puri?

  It's, it seems like it's harder to pull off, but in many ways it's easier to pull off because you'll get talent to pour in because they want to be a part of something bold. You'll get sponsors to pour in because they want to bet on this, this epic thing that's going to happen. They know that it's going to get a lot of visibility. And so, and you get your own motivation to get out of bed every day because you're working on something that's so, so grand that, you know, you're more motivated. Everybody does their best work and people tune in to watch, which is like, so Ben just looked it up. 140 million, 142 million people watched Squid Games on Netflix, 132 million watched Beast Games on YouTube. So about the same, one to one. So you get disproportionate prizes when you go fish in a part of the pond that nobody else is fishing because everyone else thinks the water is too deep and it's too scary over there.

• 12:30Shaan Puri?

  The rewards are like disproportionate even to the effort and the work that goes in.

• 12:35Sam Parr?

  I had a friend, it could have been Noah, in fact, you know, Noah, who we talked about, he was the number 20th or something employee at Facebook and he got fired nine months into his employee work in there. And so he didn't get any of his equity. But I have a friend who spoke to Mark Zuckerberg and he said to Mark, you know, why don't you just sell the company for a billion? Or why are you raising all this money? Like, things are growing. He's like, look, it's good. I only have 24 hours in the day and I'm only going to work the same amount of time in the day, whether it's big or small. So I might as well make it as big as I possibly can, because that's what interests me. And it's just as hard. It's equally hard to go big as it is somewhat like mild success. And that's a perfect example of what Mr. Beast has done is it's actually of equal work, you know,

• 13:19Sam Parr?

  it's same amount of time in the day. But when you see someone building someone, something so epic, it's exciting. So many people who don't give a shit about Mr. Beast, of which I am one of them, I know about this and I cared about it.

• 13:29Shaan Puri?

  Small ambition and large ambition take the same amount of effort if you want to win, if you want them to work. And that's exactly right. And so I think this was brilliant. I think this is another example of Mr. Beast being one step ahead of the curve. You're going to see a lot more people try to clone this. So the next thing that comes out, you're going to see four YouTubers who are the wannabe Mr. Beast, try to jump on it and recreate this. And by the way, this wasn't the first thing he did like this. Like, obviously, he's been doing stunts, but he even did like a, I'm going to recreate Fortnite. They like went to an island, it was 100 people playing paintball, and it was like a game of Fortnite. And he made a video on that. And I think it did well, but it wasn't this. It wasn't this level. But it's those reps that you, you know, you put in that give you the A,

• 14:13Shaan Puri?

  confidence, and B, shots on goal, until you get something to work like this. And I also was watching a clip of Mr. Beast yesterday, just coincidentally, and somebody said, you know, you've talked about you want to be a billionaire, you want to be the, you know, Quote-unquote, "The first billionaire creator," although there have been other creators that are worth a billion dollars. So, you want to be a billionaire? And they're like, "Are you there? Are you there already?" He goes, "No, no, no. I'm not there yet." And he goes, "I'm probably the, cash-wise, I'm probably the poorest person in this room." And they were like, "No, no way." He goes, "Yeah, because whatever I have is like, paper. It's not like, it's not liquid. And any cash I get, I just reinvest the next, and reinvest my videos." He goes, "If we make $3 million this

• 14:55Shaan Puri?

  month, I'll put $3 million into the next video. We have razor-thin margins." He goes, "I just reinvest the whole thing into content." I think on average, he said, he said, he was spending something like $2 or $3 million a month on his content.

• 15:08Sam Parr?

  I would have bet-

• 15:09Shaan Puri?

  Which is wild.

• 15:10Sam Parr?

  I would have guessed that he made around $2.5, $3 million a month in revenue. I would have guessed around $30 million in revenue off his operation. And so that makes total sense. In fact, we talked to a couple of people. I believe he has, Mr. Peace has around 30 to 40 full-time people working for him. And I actually recently read about, like, what, I was like, "What is it like to work with him?" And a lot of people complained. They said, they said, "Working with him is horrible. He's horrible to work with." And I was like, "Well, you know, what's going on? Why?" And they go, "He's a perfectionist." I was like, "Oh, okay. So it's actually not that bad." They would say, "Why isn't this good enough? Why is this so bad?" And he would analyze every single frame. And frankly, that made me even love him. But there's something interesting about

• 15:50Sam Parr?

  this, which is, I actually think being him is exhausting, because you have to go up every single time. And so, let me give you an example of two YouTubers that are incredibly interesting to me. Graham Stephan and Meet Kevin. Do you know who those guys are?

• 16:07Shaan Puri?

  I know Graham Stephan. I don't know Meet Kevin.

• 16:08Sam Parr?

  All right. Meet Kevin, I think, is even more famous. And he has 2.5 or 3 million subscribers. He recently did a video, and it was called, "Here's my entire $50 million portfolio at age 29." So I, and I noticed that he had done-

• 16:22Shaan Puri?

  All right, I'm clicking. Okay, okay. Double-click, full-screen, headphones on.

• 16:28Sam Parr?

  And I noticed that he did another one of these, like, nine months ago, or 13 months ago, something like around a year ago. And his net worth then was only 25. And I was like, "What is going on?" This guy is nuts. And so he's basically this guy, meet Kevin. I don't know his full name. He makes like three to four videos a day and he is talking about like which stocks he's buying, which types of houses he's buying for investment properties. And he shows his entire portfolio. And at the end, he goes, now here's proof. And he logs into all of his accounts and you could see all of it.

• 17:01Shaan Puri?

  Screen share.

• 17:02Sam Parr?

  Yes, which is amazing for many reasons. One, he's only 29 and he's a YouTuber with $50 million.

• 17:10Shaan Puri?

  How did he get that money? So he's just off of his YouTube or he had some other business that he started with?

• 17:17Sam Parr?

  At age 19, I believe he started as just a real estate agent. So just a normal guy. And he made a little bit of money, like 100 grand a year, took that 100 grand a year and bought some properties. And then started a YouTube channel in 2010 or 2011. And he just started documenting about his real estate investing. Slowly that started making additional income. Using that income, he bought even more properties. Eventually he had like a course and things like that where he was making like one or $2 million a year. So a significant amount of sum or a significant sum. Then he took that money and he started investing it and started talking about what he was investing. And you could see this entire growth over the last five years of his portfolio and how it's grown. Of course, it helps that A, he's got now a significant stream of like $4 million a year, I'd imagine.

• 18:01Sam Parr?

  And we're in the best bull market of all time. And so it kind of works. But that's how he's done it. And interestingly, this guy Kevin, when Gavin Newsom was being recalled, Kevin ran for office and there's this Republican named Larry Elder, who got second behind Gavin Newsom. Kevin was third with something like hundreds of thousands of votes. And so it's this kid's amazing. And so

• 18:24Shaan Puri?

  That's surprising. I feel like a YouTuber who's got a big following should crush any politician.

• 18:28Sam Parr?

  He doesn't have that big a following. He only has 2.5 or 3 million. It's not significant. And there has to be a California above 18 voter. So it's not like, it's not significant. But my point being with a lot of these YouTubers is this video was nutty. And Graham Stephan did the exact same thing. He goes,

• 18:44Shaan Puri?

  By the way, my prediction? Mr. Beast or a Mr. Beast type person will run for president and will surprise people with the type of following they get.

• 18:52Sam Parr?

  Oh, absolutely.

• 18:53Shaan Puri?

  Whether you want to be president or not, you could, you know, I think the original Trump playbook was I'm gonna just throw my hat in the ring. I'm gonna get tons of attention and press. I'm gonna build my brand off the, the massive amount of attention that goes into elections and I'll be the, the kind of curve ball story that everybody wants to cover. Everybody's got an opinion on like Kanye, Kanye did it or whatever. He threw his name in. You're gonna see the wild, wild west of people trying to put their name in the hat for running for office or running for these kind of like positions that will sound, you know, how could, how could a 21 year old YouTuber be doing this? And they're gonna get a little momentum and then that's gonna create a press cycle. That's gonna create more momentum. I don't think they'll actually win. I don't think they even want to win, but it would just be a smart move for the dog eat

• 19:37Shaan Puri?

  dog world of YouTube trying to get views.

• 19:39Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And, and, but here's back to the original point of getting views. What an exhausting life that you have to go and, and I'm thankful that Mr. Beast does what he does. I'm thankful that this Kevin guy and Graham are crazy enough to log in and show me their, that is so cool. They are fucking nuts. That is nuts.

• 20:00Shaan Puri?

  I had this exact thought the other day. We, um, I was figuring out who I was talking to, but I was talking to somebody and it was like, oh yeah, that's a great YouTube. I've had like five ideas about like, oh yeah, if we did that as a YouTube video, it would get clicks, right? Like one was, um, I was gonna show how you can make $10,000 being a Santa, like a Santa Claus for Christmas. And I was like, oh, this is easy. I'll buy the suit. I'll show the economics of that. I'll go do the thing that'll make for a funny thumbnail and it'll make for this little story that's semi viral. Another one is going and buying, buying fancy shit and like actually like, like Justin Khan did a video where he toured a $50 million home.

• 20:34Sam Parr?

  It was amazing.

• 20:35Shaan Puri?

  And it's a, you know, just, it's interesting content, right? It's like a super, it's junk food that people in our niche, we just like to consume that stuff like, oh yeah, what, what is it like, you know? How do you do it? How much money do you make? How do you invest it? And there's all these videos that you can make around this. And every time I think of one, I think, oh, that would work. I think to myself. I do not want to get on that treadmill. I just don't want to get on the treadmill because I know it's like the difference between sort of like knowledge and wisdom. It's like, I know this would work, but I'm also wise enough to know that that is not a path I want to double down on. I do not want to double down on the treadmill path because I don't feel that way about this podcast. For example, this podcast feels

• 21:15Sam Parr?

  Ongoing.

• 21:16Shaan Puri?

  It's a, it's a breeze, dude. We show up. I just shoot the shit with my friend for an hour. People seem to like it. It's so like, it's two hours of my week that I like, I'm on the, I'm on camera. I'm on, I'm on, I'm being recorded and I don't have to like, and also because it's a podcast, I'm not like worried about how I look and the angle and the this and the that, like, maybe I should a little more, but I just don't. I like the way that you do when you're recording YouTube videos and you have to edit everything and clip it and like do all these cuts. Podcasting is, podcasting has that risk reward ratio or that like effort reward ratio that works for me. And this like YouTube treadmill, I think has a much bigger prize. But I don't want to win that way. There's other ways to win and that treadmill is exhausting.

• 21:59Sam Parr?

  It's exhausting and there's a reason.

• 22:00Shaan Puri?

  It is exhausting.

• 22:01Sam Parr?

  There's a reason why you don't see Casey Neistat anymore. I've watched a couple of recent interviews with him and he said, now I don't do anything. He goes, for those three years that I was recording daily vlogs, everything in my life, everything in my day, if someone invited me to dinner, I had to message them and saying, I can't unless someone interesting is coming or you want to go somewhere intriguing because it has to be content. And I lost a lot of friends, me and my wife almost divorced and it was exhausting. And now he's 37 years old. He's financially successful and he goes, I'm not doing it anymore. I have to take a break. And so.

• 22:34Shaan Puri?

  I think it's cool to dabble with it, but I am wary of the treadmill. Now you did a video, so it's kind of on the other side of the coin. You've been putting out your fitness content, which I think is probably just fun for you and motivating.

• 22:44Sam Parr?

  It's fun.

• 22:45Shaan Puri?

  And then you did a video that I loved, which was you put a video up on, I think your own, just your personal YouTube channel of this real estate project you're doing. So I wanted to ask you about this. Here's what, for those who didn't watch it, here's, here's the, the summary of the video. Uh, you bought a piece of land right next to your house. I think like adjacent to or like

• 23:04Sam Parr?

  Literally my next door neighbor.

• 23:05Shaan Puri?

  Your neighbor, you bought the neighbor lot next to your house and it's got this like really rundown shack on it. Like it's a large piece of grass with a really shitty shack that somebody was living in. And it's like

• 23:19Sam Parr?

  Twenty years.

• 23:20Shaan Puri?

  Looks brutal. Like this is like, you know, I wouldn't wish this on an enemy. These conditions. So it would looked like just like this rundown shack. And you're like, cool. Like here's the thing I bought and you, you broke down the economics. You're like, you know, I brought this. So how much did you buy for exactly?

• 23:36Sam Parr?

  Six hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

• 23:38Shaan Puri?

  Six hundred and fifty thousand dollars. You bought the whole thing and you bought it leveraged or you bought it all cash?

• 23:42Sam Parr?

  Cash.

• 23:43Shaan Puri?

  Okay. You bought it all cash. Why didn't you borrow?

• 23:46Sam Parr?

  Because I wanted to purchase before they put it up to on market. So basically the background.

• 23:51Shaan Puri?

  Now.

• 23:52Sam Parr?

  It was a 90 year old couple that who owned it and they rented it to a guy and I, the day I moved into this house, I used a little bit of research and I found who they were. And I said, Hey, you know, just so you know, my name's Sam. I'm, I live now next to your property. If anything ever happens, you want to sell this, please contact me. And so the man died on a Monday. The wife called me on a Wednesday and said, would you like to buy it? And I bought it on a Thursday.

• 24:14Shaan Puri?

  Amazing. Okay. I love that. And you're like, this is going to be my first kind of like, you don't know shit about real estate. You don't know shit about building any like a home. Um, and so you're like, this is going to be fun. It's going to be a hands on project. I'm going to kind of document it as I go. And then you had this spreadsheet, which basically said, all right, look, I bought it for 650K. And, um, and then, you know, in this, in this area, there's a sort of like a price per square foot that you can get. And here's the range. And then I talked to, you got bids from some contractors and you were like, you know, I can, uh, you know, on the low end, it seems like you could build it for this much. And then if I'm concerned and it might be more expensive than we think, it might cost this much. So I might have to put a million dollars in to build the actual structure in the home, modern ground up.

• 24:55Shaan Puri?

  And, uh, so, you know, I might be in for 1.6 million, but based on the, the price per square foot in this area, I should be able to sell this for two. It should be worth two or 2.5 like when I'm done with this thing. I'd like, the margin of safety was really strong. It seemed like just like a, an absolute no brainer of a deal, assuming this is how you want to spend your time, right? Like the time is almost more expensive or the risk here more so than the, the buy is great. You, you made your money on the buy, as they say in real estate, rather than trying to make your money on the sale.

• 25:23Sam Parr?

  Yes, but it's not taking nearly as much time and I'll tell you why. So what I did was before I even bought the piece of property, I found things in the area that sold for my ideal price per square foot.

• 25:34Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 25:35Sam Parr?

  I went on Zillow and Redfin, I found the architect and then I called them and then I also called the builder and I go, hey, guys, how much would it cost to build this exact same home right now?

• 25:44Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 25:44Sam Parr?

  And they told me and I go, great.

• 25:47Shaan Puri?

  Can you do that?

• 25:49Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And I bought this lot and I called them again. I go, hey, um, you know that house that just sold for a thousand dollars a square foot? Do that again over here for me, please.

• 25:57Shaan Puri?

  So you're, you're not trying to innovate and add the sand park touches of like, uh, you know, a 3,000 square foot gym and like a thousand square foot house? Like you're doing a normal house build out.

• 26:08Sam Parr?

  It's a normal house build out, but I said, make it a two car garage because I may, if I decide to live there, I'll build a gym there. And that's basically it. Yes. I just said, I took, I took a house that was crushing it that I just sold for a lot of money. And I said, and I hired the same people and I just said, do it again.

• 26:24Shaan Puri?

  By the way.

• 26:24Sam Parr?

  So I'm not, I don't, I'm not spending any time on it. I spent no time on it.

• 26:27Shaan Puri?

  Just the fact that it's next door also is surprisingly going to be like a 50% savings in the time and headache that's involved with this. Because, uh, like my family do this, we've, we, uh, we had a house in San Francisco and then we bought a house two doors down. And just the fact that it was two doors down had like all these extra benefits, which was like, it was super easy to go see. It was super easy to like manage any, any construction that was going on. It's, we, they like share a fridge in their like garage. It's like, oh yeah, just use the extra fridge across the street. Uh, my sister runs a business out of one of them and since she's able to manage it from like, without having to get in her car and commute somewhere. And just the, just it being like within eyesight and, and like a two minute walk away is so important.

• 27:11Shaan Puri?

  And like, if anyone's going to do a project like this, do not underestimate that. I've now seen it a couple of times and I feel this way. Uh, this is my rule. With friends and family also, which is you want to live so close to your best friends or family that you could go unplanned to their house. Like you don't need to pack a bag and think about, okay, well then how will I get what, you know, when should we go? Should we beat the traffic? And then, you know, we're gonna have to head back for the night. It's like, I should be able to pop over and pop back unplanned because it's so convenient. And like, the difference between 15 minutes away and four minutes away is going to fundamentally change the way the like the amount of times you you see that person or do that thing.

• 27:47Sam Parr?

  So why'd you bring up that YouTube video, by the way?

• 27:50Shaan Puri?

  So that was awesome.

• 27:51Sam Parr?

  Oh, thanks.

• 27:52Shaan Puri?

  And I just wanted to hear more about the like, the like, the actual real estate side of the side.

• 27:56Sam Parr?

  I think that the the the numbers are the way they're going to work out. And not a lot of people believe me, but I think it's going to happen this way. I'm going to make half a million dollars in profit or more from it. I think there's a world where I make closer to a million than half a million. There's

• 28:09Shaan Puri?

  Is your plan to sell it or rent it out?

• 28:11Sam Parr?

  There's a I have a few options. I can live in it and sell my home.

• 28:16Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 28:16Sam Parr?

  But the way that all this math is going to work, it's going to be what both this house and that house, I'll have made around a million dollars in profit in like 18 months.

• 28:25Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 28:25Sam Parr?

  Because things just worked out. And so I'll make more from this real estate project than I will my entire hustle salary combined ever.

• 28:36Shaan Puri?

  And it only in this project, for example, but you're gonna have to invest, right? That's the that's the kicker here. So like you, you couldn't have done this back then because you didn't have a spare 1.6 million dollars to go like invest in buying the lot plus building the home out.

• 28:49Sam Parr?

  Or if I did do it, it was like all of my money.

• 28:51Shaan Puri?

  Right, exactly. So you know, you would have had to go like completely all in on it.

• 28:56Sam Parr?

  Can I tell you?

• 28:57Shaan Puri?

  What else we got?

• 28:57Sam Parr?

  Can I tell you about? Let me tell you about a company that interests me. Okay, so I was talking to someone recently and I can't say who it is, but they had a Google Chrome extension that made something like 25 million dollars in revenue with only two guys, two people. It's amazing.

• 29:12Shaan Puri?

  Can you say what the extension did or no?

• 29:15Sam Parr?

  No.

• 29:16Shaan Puri?

  Roughly.

• 29:17Sam Parr?

  Helping people on Amazon sell stuff.

• 29:20Shaan Puri?

  Okay, cool.

• 29:20Sam Parr?

  So like, kinda like, uh, what's that thing called Jungle Scout? Something in that world.

• 29:25Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 29:26Sam Parr?

  And so basically, uh, I started, I got kind of curious. So there's two extensions that caught my, caught my attention. The first, and they're basically the same thing with almost exactly the same name. The first is this thing called AdBlock. I think that's the one I used. The second one is called AdBlock Plus. So that's why it's a little confusing. And so AdBlock was created by one guy in Georgia named Michael Gunlak. And he, uh, uh, he just kind of built this thing in 2009. And he's been the only employee the whole time. And I went to his personal website to learn about him. And he only has 55 followers on Twitter. His website is called sorryrobot.com. That's his personal website. And he has like Python projects, a Unity game that he built called Asteroids.

• 30:11Sam Parr?

  And he even has an MP3 of him singing a Christmas song at church during Christmas time. This is like-

• 30:16Shaan Puri?

  By the way, his LinkedIn, uh, his job description is just a guy. Uh, he lives in Duluth, Georgia, and it says, "I am not available for work. Please do not contact me about job opportunities. I created AdBlock, the most popular Chrome extension for Google, Chrome extension and for Safari with around 20 million users." It's neat. Before that, I did some other neat things.

• 30:38Sam Parr?

  And he was the only employee. And then I did some research on his competitor called AdBlock Plus. Now this company, they have a few, few more employees. I think they've got 20 or 30 people. And because they're based in Europe, when you're a European company, oftentimes, at least in England, and I know it's a lot of, uh, a lot of case in different European countries. If you make over $20 million in revenue, you basically have to file a report that reveals your revenue and profit. And so I went and looked at this company called I/O. It's called I/O. They own AdBlocker Plus. In 2017, they did $44 million in revenue and $26 million in profit, which is astounding. And they had at least 100 million users. However-

• 31:18Sam Parr?

  If you look in the group, the Chrome plugin store, AdBlock Plus has around 150,000 reviews and it says they've got over 10 million users. If you look at AdBlock, which is the one founded by this one guy, they've got something like 300,000 reviews and also it says 10 million users. And so there's potential that this one guy had a business making all of this money, tens of millions of dollars a year, very likely, tens of millions of dollars a year in profit just off a Chrome extension. Is that amazing?

• 31:49Shaan Puri?

  This is amazing. I'm still on this guy, Michael Gunlock's website, sorryrobot.com/resume.pdf. And I think you said this, but I was reading while you were talking. So he was an engineer at Google, working on Google Ads and Google AdSense. Did you already say that part?

• 32:07Sam Parr?

  No. And he worked on Google and basically he goes, nah, fuck that. I hate these ads.

• 32:12Shaan Puri?

  So his job was, he goes, at Google, I kept the global Google Ads and AdSense networks alive and kicking. In my spare time, I built this other thing and I built this other thing, you know, like, because Google has that 20% time. He's like, I built this JavaScript framework, blah, blah. So basically he goes from working at Google and Google AdWords and AdSense to creating AdBlock and makes $20 million, makes more than that off 20 million users who love this thing.

• 32:39Sam Parr?

  And what year did he work at Google? I believe like 05.

• 32:42Shaan Puri?

  2005, yeah. So which is like right after the IPO, basically.

• 32:45Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So he probably made $30 million at Google, like collectively, it's, that's what it's worth now. If he held it. So he made tens of millions of dollars off that. And then reportedly, now, the thing about this guy is everything's very quiet about this guy. He's hard to find. Everything's impossible. However, I think in 2015, an anonymous buyer bought AdBlock.

• 33:07Shaan Puri?

  Interesting.

• 33:07Sam Parr?

  There's a world where it could have been sold for like 200 or 300 million dollars. I mean, there's a world where that exists. Maybe it was lower, but it's a huge property.

• 33:17Shaan Puri?

  It looks like he stopped, he stopped working on AdBlock or, you know, it sold probably 2015, which is kind of scary because these Chrome extensions are a giant security hole for people. Because Chrome extensions can like read and write all the data on your, as you browse the web. So that's all, every email you're writing, the text is, can be picked up by these Chrome extensions. And even if they start off safe, because you know, just a guy from Duluth, Georgia, built it and he's an engineer who has the right intentions. Somebody who buys it with the wrong intentions can really like, uh, do some dirty stuff.

• 33:51Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 33:51Shaan Puri?

  You know, with the data and even modifying it and things like that. So you gotta be careful with Chrome extensions. I try to install the minimum amount of Chrome extensions as possible.

• 33:59Sam Parr?

  Yeah, they are pretty scary. And, um, yeah, they're nuts. And the, but it's a wild business. I think that what here's, so I love these extension style businesses. There's a few platforms that I think are quite interesting. The first, Google Chrome, still makes a ton of sense. The second, um, Shopify still makes a ton of sense. Our friend Andrew has a business where all he does is buy, buys Shopify plugins and it's market cap. It's a publicly traded company. It's like in the $600 million range. It's on the Canadian stock exchange. But the third thing, which you probably have not thought of, and the fourth thing you definitely haven't thought of, Salesforce plugins, and then finally Zoho plugins. Incredibly interesting. So we used to hire this engineer, uh, at the hustle and he would,

• 34:44Sam Parr?

  he was in another country and we would pay him 20 bucks an hour to just build little apps for us, for our sales team.

• 34:50Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 34:50Sam Parr?

  And, uh, I think Zoho, I would imagine is, which is like a Salesforce competitor, but a little jankier, has an equal amount of users as Salesforce. I think you could build a really great business just doing Salesforce plugins.

• 35:03Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah. And or rolling them up. Um, so I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about this, but I'll say it in a vague way.

• 35:11Shaan Puri?

  Met a guy, I heard about a guy that was rolling up games inside of a big gaming platform. So there's like a very popular game. And then there's games within that are little like modules people create and they monetize. And this person was rolling them up and they're like, dude.

• 35:27Sam Parr?

  Does that mean like?

• 35:28Shaan Puri?

  These are created by like.

• 35:29Sam Parr?

  I don't play games.

• 35:30Shaan Puri?

  Kids like, you know, okay. So for example, there are big gaming platforms like Fortnite and Minecraft and Roblox. And like all these different games that exist. And inside the game, you can create little experiences and you can monetize them.

• 35:42Sam Parr?

  Kind of like people who create like different colored guns for Call of Duty.

• 35:46Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, although I don't know if I don't know if you could, do people create those? I thought the game created those, but like, yeah, there's, there used to be mods and you know, mods of different games and maps and things like that that you can create. That's always been kind of like a part of it, but some of these games now are so big and they actually like formalized their little creator economy inside the game. And the person I knew was rolling them up and they were like, these are selling for nothing because they're like, it's just like a kid who made this. It sells for like less than one X revenue or something like that. Like it's like crazy, like compared to going and buying that same cash flowing asset on, whether it's FBA or Shopify or something else. And now everything has a different profile of like, maybe this game is a fad. Maybe people will stop using this. Maybe, you know, the game will change the rules and you're screwed all of a sudden.

• 36:32Shaan Puri?

  So yeah, there's some risk, but I love these game plans of go to these niche platforms. We've talked about Etsy. We've talked about Poshmark, FBA. We've now you're talking about Zoho and Salesforce and Slack and like all these different platforms. There are little apps that just make $50,000, $100,000, $50,000 a month. And you can go and you can buy these out and you can roll them up and you can have a company that does 10 to 20 million dollars of revenue profitably. And you could buy your way there without even having to invent anything. All you gotta do is go get cheap, cheap debt, buy this thing and profit. And it's really like that simple.

• 37:11Sam Parr?

  But there's one major thing, which is if Call of Duty or Fortnite, or whatever it is, they go, hey, we're going to go in a different direction.

• 37:18Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 37:21Shaan Puri?

  And that's why you got like, that's the same thing with FBA, right? And all these like Thrasio and all these rollups. FBA is not, I mean, it's, you're dependent on a single platform, which is Amazon. That's known to compete very hostilely. And there's other, there's other, they could change the algorithm and all of a sudden your thing that was at the top is now at the bottom. There is definitely risk. And so you gotta look at like, okay, if my payback period is nine months, I feel pretty good about it. If it's three years, I don't feel so good about it anymore. And so that's where you gotta like. You know, place your bets. All right. Can I tell you about a really random, small one like that? Okay, so our buddy Ramon tweeted this out. He goes, here's an example of a silly, stupid business. So Ramon is, he's Ramon Van Meere on Twitter.

• 38:04Shaan Puri?

  And so he goes, simple website moneymaker. This emoji website gets 5 million visitors a month. And all it does, and I use this, by the way, all the time. Cause if you're on your computer and you want to use an emoji, it's not easy to get the keyboard up for the emoji thing. So you just, you, you just Google like laughing emoji. And then it gives it to you and it says, click to copy your, to your clipboard. And then you go and you like copy it, you paste it in Twitter or paste it wherever you're writing, your email or whatever. And so all it does is it lets you look up, look up emoji, copy, paste them, and it'll also explain what the emoji means. So there's like emoji Pedia is a, is a good example of this. So emoji Pedia. Emoji Pedia? Yeah, I don't know if you've ever seen this.

• 38:44Shaan Puri?

  It's like the top ranking one that comes through when you, when you search for this stuff. It's like Wikipedia, but for emoji. And so Ramon was looking at, you know, like depending on, and it's just plastered with ads. There's like ads everywhere on the site. And it's like, depending on what the ad revenue is, like this site could be making between 50 and a hundred fifty thousand dollars a month of all profit. Like do not underestimate these small, simple sites. And we've talked about this with crosswords, Sudoku games, things like that. Just like these really simple things that people like to search for. And if you could own the domain and you could just have the really simple like online game or like Scrabble, Scrabble word solver, you know, crossword hint, get hint cheats, you know, whatever. Those little websites can be really good.

• 39:29Shaan Puri?

  So this emoji one, I thought is another example of that. And even better, I was like, oh, who owns this thing? I was looking for the Michael Gunlock, some random engineer who's like, oh yeah. A huge company that owns. So some company bought it. They own it and it's called Zedge. And I was like, okay, what the heck is Zedge? I saw. Z E D G E. And this is one of those companies that you're like, really? This, so Zedge is a public company. It's market cap is around $130 million. So it's a very small, small cap public company on the New York Stock Exchange. And what they do is they it's a publisher or a roll up. They bought a bunch of these little apps and websites that just get a bunch of traffic because people want self-expression.

• 40:07Shaan Puri?

  So they bought wallpapers, ringtones, stickers, alarm clock sounds, emoji, emoji Pedia, like things like that. They bought all these bottom all in one roof. And then they're a public company. So you can go see a bunch of their numbers. So they'll do like, you know, it's almost like 50%, they'll do like 50% profit on their, on their, on their product, or like at least operating profit. And then, you know, like the EBITDA will be closer to like, you know, 2 million or whatever on their, on their each quarter.

• 40:38Sam Parr?

  Why the hell would a company like that go public? Don't go public.

• 40:42Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think there's a bunch of reasons why they might go public. But I just thought it was interesting. So they have about 350 million people have downloaded, like their wallpaper app. They have, they say they have 40 million monthly active users. And this, these companies that are just hidden in plain sight. So it's like, you know, let me just look at their annual revenue again. I don't know if I have annual or quarterly. I think that they do about $20 million a year in revenue and 10 million, 10 million of operating profit. And yeah, so they did 2017, they did, let's see, pull this up. Okay, sales and revenue, it says a little lower than what I saw here. And I'm doing this quick. So basically for the last five years, it's just been flat, like $10 million of revenue,

• 41:25Shaan Puri?

  $2 million of COGS, you know, their gross income is between seven and eight million. And then, then they pay for a huge amount of, you know, like other sales and SG and A expenses. And so, you know, they're, they're not showing a bunch of profit at the end, but I would bet that these things are like spitting off profit if you want, you know, they're, they're putting money in their own pockets, basically, out of this. So I thought that was just like a really crazy little company behind, behind the stuff. And it just shows you how much money is in really simple things that a lot of, simple things that a lot of people use. So like alarm clock sounds, wallpapers, that sort of thing.

• 42:00Sam Parr?

  What, um, what's live reviews?

• 42:04Shaan Puri?

  Uh, this is an idea. So, so I just got a sauna and I know you're in the market for a sauna.

• 42:08Sam Parr?

  Oh, what time did you get?

• 42:10Shaan Puri?

  So I got a sanctuary, a clear light sanctuary, uh, like the infrared sauna. And I like a lot of it. Like I like the size, the look, the shape, all that. But it doesn't make me sweat enough. And so I'm like, well,

• 42:24Sam Parr?

  That's the problem with infrared. That's the problem with infrared.

• 42:27Shaan Puri?

  There's the point of the sauna. So I'm like, well, that's a bust. And I'm like, so I'm like, first I realized, okay, I didn't have one of the panels plugged in. So that's why it was like, you know, part of it was like dead. Okay, that was one issue. They got better. And then it's like, well, the best way you use it is you break a little sweat before you go in. So you just do like a quick five minute, 10 minute cardio, just warm. Cause what infrared is doing is it's not warming up the air, it's warming up your body.

• 42:51Sam Parr?

  Yeah, you're just like microwaving you.

• 42:53Shaan Puri?

  It's microwaving you, which seems like pretty awful for you, but I guess it's not so bad. I guess it's good for you, actually. Um, you know, blah, blah, blah, heat shock proteins, blah, blah, blah. So, um, so I, you know, I broke a sweat before I got in and it was better. But I was like, dude, I'm not trying to do all this. I'm trying to go sit in the sauna and sweat in five minutes. So I think for my house, my space, like I didn't want to do extra electrical. I didn't want to like do, I didn't want to, I didn't have a huge space where I was putting it. I put it in my garage gym. So like, uh, the dry sauna, in retrospect, I would now hold out for a dry sauna. But, uh, it didn't really fit my current situation. So, you know, whatever it is, what it is. So I was thinking like, God, I, I actually did the research. I, I talked to people, I read reviews.

• 43:37Shaan Puri?

  But you know, the thing that I feel like is missing is I wish there was just, so like people have tried this QVC thing where you, it's like, oh, I'm going to go live and I'm going to sell this item. And people have tried to make QVC for mobile and it's never really worked.

• 43:51Shaan Puri?

  And I don't know if this would work either, but I kind of wish this existed just based on this current experience. And Toby, maybe there is a, maybe there is a product here, which is, Why can't, why can't I go on and just say, I'd like to talk to somebody about Saunas? And why isn't there a person live on video who is a third-party impartial source? That can basically show me live on video, talk to me about what I'm looking for?

• 44:16Sam Parr?

  Dude, this is exactly what Mark Laurie said. So Mark Laurie, the guy who started Jet.com, he sold it for three or two or some billions of dollars to Walmart. He said, one thing that they were working on at Jet, that could have been a massive business, but they shut it down for a bunch of different reasons. But he goes, I actually think it still could be big with concierge shopping. So you simply log on and you just tell us, you know, I'm looking for a toaster and a clerk is online saying, okay, for your needs, I think this is best. Would you like this one? And he said that that would be a big business.

• 44:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. And so like even with this, actually, if you go to the website to buy this thing, you can't just buy the sauna. There's no buy button. You had to call someone, but this is their sales rep, right? So I called the sales rep. It's 8:00 PM. She picks up. She's an American person. I was like, whoa, what the hell? Like, I was like, you worked this hour? Like, who, what, who are you? Like, you were really good at what your job, like, you know, you built a lot of trust quickly and you got me over the line to buy the $6,000 sauna on the phone here. And she was like, yeah, like, there's a network, the way we work is we only sell through-

• 45:15Sam Parr?

  The sauna company?

• 45:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So it's owned by Jacuzzi, the, you know, the Jacuzzi company. So she's like, yeah, it's basically we have a network of sales reps. We all pick up the phone. You could, if you're offline, you're offline. You didn't get that commission. She's like, I get a commission if you buy. And that's how we make our money. And she's like, yeah, like, I make good money. Like, I'll sell. I was like, how many of these do you sell in a day? She's like, on a good day, I could sell like four of these in a day. And on a bad day, I'll sell like one or zero.

• 45:42Sam Parr?

  Dude, listen, the reason why you and I are pretty good at what we do, which in this case, I'm referring to just coming up with ideas, like people say shit to us all the time. It's, and I'm kind of like jerking ourselves off here, sorry. But because of that question that you just asked. And I do that all the time and people are amazed that you could do that. Like when you're just going to a food truck and be like, hey, how many customers you get a day? And they just tell you. And so what you just did is a perfect example. You got intel that is hard to find, but it was very easy to get.

• 46:12Shaan Puri?

  And I asked multiple, and you could triangulate. That's the secret. If you don't ask a very rude question, it's how much money do you make? Or how much does this company make? I said, what's a good day? How many, how many of these do you sell on a good day? So already I softened the blow by saying good day. And I'm asking just for a day. That doesn't seem like top secret information. Okay, cool. Then I say, and then I was, I was like, and you're great at this. Like I was like, I really like this. Like this was like kind of an awesome experience for me on the phone. I was like, are you one of like the better sales reps? Like, do you like, are you like a top performer? Or are you like, like, are you kind of like middle of the pack? She's like, no, I'm like, actually one of the top performers, blah, blah. And she's like, you know, I picked up the phone at 8:00 PM. A lot of people just don't pick up the phone. Like I'm, I work, like I work hard. And I, and I was like, oh, interesting. Okay, cool.

• 46:55Shaan Puri?

  And then I was like, I was like, how many reps are there? And again, I'm not like digging, I'm not like saying like, and okay. My next question is how many reps are there? I'm like, I'm just sounding amazed because I was amazed.

• 47:06Sam Parr?

  What you say to that reply is, wow, are you guys all in America? Yeah, we're all in America. Wow. What I mean, what are there like 10,000 of you? Of course, you know, it's not even close. Oh, no, it's way smaller, hundreds. Oh, like a hundred, ah, more like 800.

• 47:21Shaan Puri?

  Right, right. Exactly, exactly. And so I was able to like suss out how this system works. I was like, I was like, wow, I was like, that's great. So I was like, I was like, so this is awesome. So I bought this thing and you're going to make like, what 400 or 500 bucks off this?

• 47:33Sam Parr?

  Yes.

• 47:34Shaan Puri?

  So now I know the commission structure. So like, you know, I was able to kind of like, and I'm just doing it because I'm curious. I have no agenda. I'm not starting a sauna company. I don't care, but I'm just trying to learn. And then like, you know, I took a piece of that to our own. I had a meeting with our own team for ecommerce. I was like, hey, you know, I have this kind of great experience. You know, should we be having a phone number on the site? And like, should we be helping people like that? Like, how would that work? We're a way lower price point. Like, would this still work? And, and then I met this guy Ezra, Ezra Firestone is his name.

• 48:04Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he's amazing.

• 48:06Shaan Puri?

  He's super well known in the ecommerce space and he's got this famous brand called Boom by Cindy Joseph or something like that.

• 48:13Sam Parr?

  Is that makeup, right?

• 48:14Shaan Puri?

  It's like, kind of like makeup and like anti aging, face cream, stuff like that for like women who are like 50 to 70 or something. That's what it looks like to me at least. And this brand does great. I think he's pretty open about it. Like he publishes stuff like, I think they do like 80 or a hundred million dollars a year of revenue. And he told me that, uh, he told me on a, we, I did a talk, a talk at Ecom World. He was interviewing me. And of course-

• 48:35Sam Parr?

  When, when was that?

• 48:37Shaan Puri?

  Uh, it was like, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago.

• 48:39Sam Parr?

  Oh, that's pretty sick. His, that's a pretty legit thing.

• 48:42Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So he goes, uh, he was like, you know, so how do you do your sales? Like, I don't know. What do you mean? Like this is Shopify. You push the buy button. He's like, okay. So you don't do any live chat? I was like, yeah, we have chat, but like whatever, customer service. He goes, okay, interesting. He goes, for us, we do phone. He goes, you don't do phone? I go, no, we don't do phone. I go, do you? Does anybody do phone? Does that shit work? Same thing, same type of question that will get somebody to like defend the thing they do.

• 49:03Sam Parr?

  Does that shit work? That's what you said.

• 49:05Shaan Puri?

  I was like, there's no way. Does that shit work? And he was like, dude, 30% of our sales close over the phone. And I was like, ping, data point. Interesting. Should I be doing that? That's like a learning.

• 49:16Sam Parr?

  The next thing that you ask is, yeah, but there's no way that's profitable. And they'll say, of course it's profitable. We only pay them 18, uh, like $8 an hour.

• 49:23Shaan Puri?

  Are you my a bad entrepreneur? No, I'll tell you that. I'll tell you how it all works down.

• 49:29Shaan Puri?

  So yeah, that's exactly the-

• 49:30Sam Parr?

  How much do they pay people? How do they pay people? How much do they pay people an hour?

• 49:35Shaan Puri?

  Uh, I don't know. I didn't ask in this case because we were live on the panel, but you know, had this been a normal conversation, I would have, would have been, uh, breaking it down.

• 49:44Sam Parr?

  That's badass. Um, all right. You want to do one more?

• 49:48Sam Parr?

  Wait, what's this fluffy stuff about luck of timing?

• 49:51Shaan Puri?

  Let's do, just do a non fluffy one. Cause I feel like I've been doing a lot of fluffy stuff lately. I feel like we've kind of been on a kick of like sort of fluffy stuff. Cause if you let me, I'm going to talk about mindset all day. And then the second thing is, uh, we did a lot of like gossip about like, you know, like billionaires and their like affairs and shit like that. So I'm like, okay, just noted. I'm going to like to, to turn that down a little bit. So I want to do one more cool idea. Cause I think, you know, people love that shit.

• 50:16Sam Parr?

  Okay.

• 50:16Shaan Puri?

  So rebase. Um, have you seen this before, before I put it on this sheet?

• 50:21Sam Parr?

  No, I'm looking it up now.

• 50:23Shaan Puri?

  All right. So you know, the guy who's behind this is that guy Levels, um, levels.io. Who is?

• 50:29Sam Parr?

  Oh, I love that guy.

• 50:30Shaan Puri?

  Kind of like, his name's Peter Levels, I think is his name. Uh, his handle is levels.io. So he's, he's kind of a prolific guy. He was ahead of the curve on like remote work. So I remember maybe six years ago, he was, he created, you know, Nomad List. He created a remote, like a remote, like, uh, remote working Slack. He was like, oh, if you're a remote worker, pay 10 bucks and get into Slack. And he had like 6,000 members. I was like, whoa, you've made a lot of money off this little, like, just a Slack invite. I never seen that.

• 50:55Sam Parr?

  And he, um, reveals all of his revenue. So, uh, I don't, what's his, so it's levels.io. That's his, that's one of his sites. He's got like four sites, I think. And if you go to Levels and then scroll all, okay. So he has, his, his, his Twitter name is Levels.io. I, it's probably pronounced actually differently. And you could see a link to all of his websites and looks like he's got close to 10 there. And if you click them and then scroll all the way.

• 51:20Shaan Puri?

  See the little meter in his location?

• 51:22Sam Parr?

  Oh, that's amazing for one.

• 51:24Shaan Puri?

  Amazing.

• 51:24Sam Parr?

  That's amazing. Oh my God, that's beautiful.

• 51:28Shaan Puri?

  So what did, on Twitter, where you put your location and most people just write like San Francisco or New York. Instead, he just, he used the emoji for, to create like 10 squares and it's like a meter. And it go, and at the end of the meter, it says $5 million a year. And then he shows the meter is like, uh, like 60% of the way there. Um, which shows that he's kind of like, you know, he's probably at two and a half, uh, to, to, to $3 million a year is what he's making. It's just a subtle, it's a subtle thing. Very nicely done. Very interesting. Very cool. I like it.

• 52:04Sam Parr?

  And if you go to any of his sites, so it looks like he's got eight or something sites listed. And you click around, you're going to see a phrase on all of his sites called open startup. And I just sent you a link. Do you see the link I sent you? And you could see all of his metrics. So you can see how much revenue they have, how much, like, he's got weird metrics. How much CO2 removed from the atmosphere, GitHub commits, daily revenue, daily signups, meetups organized, new paid membership.

• 52:31Sam Parr?

  Live streaming events, last month's signups, how many customers are in total? How many page views, where the page views are coming from? You can see everything, the uptime of the websites. This guy's amazing.

• 52:44Shaan Puri?

  And if you notice, Nomad List is doing $531,000 a year. It's halfway to the goal of a million dollars a year from this business.

• 52:53Sam Parr?

  And this guy, we just explained how he's kind of got this like unique little Easter egg on his Twitter. He's got like little things like that throughout all of his websites. And so this guy is, in my mind, he, this man's an artist. This guy's like, he's an artist who just so happens to, his art just so happens to make money. This guy is, I love this guy. I don't know his name.

• 53:14Shaan Puri?

  Peter, I think it's Peter Levels.

• 53:16Sam Parr?

  That's his full name? I didn't know that. I would just thought his company was called Levels.

• 53:19Shaan Puri?

  So if you look at like one of his things I was going to show you, so, okay, so his latest thing, this thing called Rebase. And he tries to like sniff out a trend and then quickly spin up the semi-viral, slightly profitable, like a semi-viral, simple profitable version of a website. So what is Rebase? Rebase is people are trying to relocate with the pandemic and with tax changes and with cryptocurrency and all this good stuff. People are more like kind of, you know, like fluid than ever. There are people are gender fluid and their location fluid. There's a fluidity going on. So he basically said, Portugal came out and Portugal said, we want to, they, I think in 2021,

• 54:01Shaan Puri?

  they had the largest population decrease in the last 50 years. And so they decided, all right, our population is shrinking. We need foreigners to come live here and spend here and work here. So they said, the Portuguese government said, we want to attract high-tech remote workers. And they gave out, they created a program called the NHR program. And so the NHR program basically has a bunch of benefits. Now, I don't know if they're all as good as advertised, meaning like I didn't go read the fine print, but here's some of the things it says. 0% tax on foreign income. So they're not going to tax you for income that comes outside of the state. 0% tax on crypto. It's considered a currency, unlike in the US where it's considered a property. 0% tax on dividends, 0% tax on wealth, 10% tax on pension, 20% tax on freelancing.

• 54:46Shaan Puri?

  So that's like, you know, where what a lot of people would do there. There's no minimum stay. You can get fast track for EU passport.

• 54:53Shaan Puri?

  They have a whole bunch of like, you know, sort of things that are benefits for coming here. You know, we're, we have a 90% vaccination rate. We have friendly people, blah, blah. So that's, so he created a website that just has the sales, but if the benefits of if you wanted to relocate or get a passport in Portugal. And then what Levels did was he basically created a, okay, you, here's the on-ramp to Portugal. So it's like, for 150 bucks, you'll do an onboarding call and we'll walk you through it. And there'll be a tax expert and a lawyer that will analyze your situation. For $650, we'll get you set up with Portuguese residency and you'll get a Portuguese tax ID. For 150 years, $150 a year, we'll do your taxes. And it's like, start now. Here's the button. And I was like, this is such a smart, simple, you know, simple idea.

• 55:36Shaan Puri?

  And already it's like booked out. So, you know, he, his max was that he could do, the lawyer could do 50, 50 calls per month. And immediately it was at 300 calls per month. And so he's like trying to hire another lawyer so he can scale it up a little bit more.

• 55:50Sam Parr?

  If you had to ask, like, someone asked me the other, the other day, like who I admire. And I would ask it a little bit differently, which is who am I jealous of? This guy, Peter, I'm looking at his websites. I am jealous of, I'm jealous of so many things about him. First is creativity. It just oozes. And second, he can do it. Like every, like everything that I see on his website, I'm like, oh my God, this is perfect. This is the perfect example of how a product should be made. He's, this guy's incredibly prolific and incredibly capable.

• 56:23Shaan Puri?

  He's like a music producer to me. Like he's a producer of websites. He's just making these little hit songs. And they're not like, he's not trying to be Justin Bieber, like the one mega hit franchise that goes on tour. He's just a producer that makes dope beats. And instead of beats, he just makes dope websites and his websites pay for a dope lifestyle.

• 56:43Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I mean, and a lot of subscription revenue, he's got like, look at inflationchart.com. That's one of his.

• 56:49Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 56:49Sam Parr?

  This website tracks real inflation, which is happening that governments don't tell you about in their official numbers. Okay, super easy, I understand, that's just a really cute, neat widget. I get it, it's awesome.

• 57:00Shaan Puri?

  Even on, on what's it called, the website I was just talking about on Rebase, the very first benefit, it goes McDonald's has the Royale Deluxe. McDonald's in Portugal has the Royale Deluxe and the Big Tasty Double. That was the first benefit, right? Because he could have just gone into like tax benefit, tax benefit, tax. But he, let me get to you, let me break, you know, let me, let me break the ice here. A little fun, little Easter egg, a little fun, little nugget that just shows you who the site's built by. It's built by somebody who's got a personality. It's built by an indie software maker, not some stiff company or bureaucracy. And I think these little touches matter, that's why he's an artist.

• 57:31Sam Parr?

  This guy's amazing. I love this guy. Good, good, good, fine. I've known about him for a little while. I, I always thought he was really talented. I didn't realize that he was like the Kanye of like internet website builders.

• 57:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he's great. Okay, so I wouldn't even say he's like, you know, Rick Rubin or something like that. He's, he's got his, got his own shtick. Anything else you want to do, otherwise we can wrap it.

• 57:57Sam Parr?

  No, no, well, we could wrap it. We could save that other, I, I want to hear about some of these things that you have on here, but we could save them.

• 58:02Shaan Puri?

  Okay, sounds good. We're out.