#182 - How an Astrology App Makes $10m+, Why a Boxing Announcer is Worth $400m & Creating a Personal Monopoly

Shaan (@ShaanVP) and Sam (@TheSamParr) talk about an astrology app that has been creating controversy throughout Silicon Valley -- Sanctuary. VCs have come out against the app as pseudoscience, but the guys question their logic. These kinds of apps go into the bucket of "me-businesses" or businesses that tell the user about themselves. So from there, the guys brainstorm on ideas within this framework. The second half of the episode is focused on "personal monopolies" -- the concept of creating a big personal brand and monetizing it. We talk about a few people who have done it successfully and how you can too. --------- * Want to be featured in a future episode? Drop your question/comment/criticism/love here: https://www.mfmpod.com/p/hotline/ * Support the pod by spreading the word, become a referrer here: https://refer.fm/million * Have you joined our private Facebook group yet? Go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion and join thousands of other entrepreneurs and founders scheming up ideas. --------- Show notes: * (5:42) The controversy behind an astrology app * (20:18) Brainstorming "make-it-about-me" businesses * (28:40) Shaan and Sam's "one-night stand" businesses * (38:11) Why you shouldn't overthink your idea * (45:21) Personal monopolies: Michael Buffer, Judge Judy, and Ryan Seacrest * (54:57) Sam's Tim Ferriss story

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

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  I think you could build a easily 100,000 plus person list doing this product. And then there is a clear like premium offering on the backend. But the core of it is quiz funnel at top daily newsletter and get there and get to 100,000. I would, I'm on a throw down the gauntlet for somebody who's bored and looking for a project that will actually stick, that will actually get, have some legs, uh, because I know this would have legs.

• 0:35Sam Parr?

  All right, everyone, uh, we're going to talk about some good stuff in this episode. But before you get to it, can you do me a favor? Go to Spotify and click the follow button. The reason why is lately we've been getting way more listeners on Spotify. And I think it's because we're going up the charts, but I want to be sure of that. And in order to go up the charts, I need you to click follow. So it's going to be like a big experiment. I'm going to reveal the results next time, but go to Spotify, go to my first million and click that blue button that says follow, click it for me, please. I'll reveal the results soon. I think that's means we're going to go up in the charts. All right, first segment, we're going to talk about horoscopes specifically. There's a couple of companies that we talk about horoscopes.com astrology.com sanctuary world.co that make literally tens of millions of dollars a year talking about the horoscope business.

• 1:17Sam Parr?

  It's pretty wild because something like 50% of, uh, women in America are interested in that topic, which I had no idea. We also talk about Judge Judy and Michael Buffer. I know that sounds weird. You may not even know that name, Michael Buffer. He's a guy who says, let's get ready to rumble. We talked about those two folks and how they make something like $400 million. I mean, actually break down why they make that money and how you can replicate that. And then finally, we talk about two little side stories, uh, about side products that Sean and I have, we actually launched like dozens of products that we've never even pulled.

• 1:46Shaan Puri?

  These are our embarrassing side projects that we haven't talked about before that we, uh, reveal while we're talking about the horoscope thing.

• 1:53Sam Parr?

  They range from starting a crystal business, which is just weird even saying that. And they also to a, a, a fan page that I made for pit bulls. It's kind of odd. And then finally I talk about a story about meeting Tim Ferriss and it actually happened when I was kind of high on drugs one time. You'll, you'll hear about it. Get to it. It's in the episode. Like us on Spotify. See you at the end of the episode. All right. What's going on? We were just talking about losing weight. Sean, yeah, you look good. How long have you been doing meat only?

• 2:19Shaan Puri?

  Meat only is only four days in, but I had heard about this. Joe Rogan talked about the carnivore diet. And then it sounded fucking ridiculous at the time. Then you started sending me, you know, nude selfies and you were like, I was like, damn, Sam's pretty stacked. You're like, yeah, dude, I'm just only eating meat. I'm like, what? Yeah, I'm only eating meat. I was like, oh, the second person has mentioned it. And then my trainer was like, he's like getting shredded for kind of his season or whatever. And he's like, I was like, so what adjustments do you make? He goes, I just go to kind of a, pretty much a meat only diet, protein only, grass fed ground beef, grass fed, grass fed beef, some fish. That's pretty much it. A little bit of turkey. And so

• 3:01Shaan Puri?

  I was like, well, I don't know if this is going to kill me later, but I'll do it for two months. And let's see if I, if there's any noticeable change. So we'll see.

• 3:09Sam Parr?

  Well, yeah, I was just saying you look great. You look, you lost how many? I mean, I don't know, like pounds isn't the best way to measure it, but you probably have lost the equivalent of like 30 pounds of fat, maybe 20 pounds of fat.

• 3:20Shaan Puri?

  Uh, I don't know. That's, that'd be a lot. My weight is the same or higher than it was when I started working out, but my, I do the DEXA scan. We, which we talked about, which is that business where you go, you lay down and it's like a, it just shows you kind of like where the fat muscle and bone is in your body. Sort of like an MR, I don't know. It looks like an MRI machine, but it's not an MRI. And according to that thing, I've lost, you know, like, I don't forgot, like, I do it every three months. And so the last three months I went down three or 4% body fat. Now I'm going down another four or 5% body fat this time. So yeah, hopefully we'll lose like 10% of my body fat.

• 3:55Sam Parr?

  So the first idea I want to discuss is going to start with a fitness story. That's my segue. But before we get into that, you're going to do. And so for the listeners, we're gonna do mini episodes. I think you're gonna try the first one, right? I don't remember what it's gonna be, but you wanted to do a rant on something. And we don't even need to say what it was, but we're gonna try a mini episode. I wonder if it's gonna work. It's gonna be probably five to 10 minutes long, maybe. We'll see.

• 4:19Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 4:20Sam Parr?

  Today, we're gonna talk about a horoscope idea, which sounds silly, but it's actually gonna be pretty awesome. Then we're gonna talk about Judge Judy and Michael Buffer, which is actually gonna be pretty awesome. And then finally, we're gonna talk about something that I've asked Sean to prepare, and it's about how he manages this team of interns to get a lot done. I wanna get right into it. So I wanna tell you the story about this guy named Ross Clark.

• 4:40Shaan Puri?

  Never heard of him.

• 4:41Sam Parr?

  You've never heard of Ross Clark, probably. That's okay. So he kinda looks like me, just a white-haired blonde, corn-fed-looking dude from, I believe, South Carolina. He was a triathlete, and he used to do SoulCycle. And he would go to SoulCycle, and he loved seeing these women walk out of SoulCycle with a glow. They had a bunch of... They were very confident when they left. And he thought to himself, "How do I make people feel like that? I wanna make people feel confident. I wanna make these women feel great about themselves. I want them to have a better life." And so he thinks, "What can I do? What can I do to make that happen?" And then it hits him. And it's kind of a weird thing that's hit him. But he goes, "The best way that I can do this is I wanna create a store or a brand that sells crystals and Zodiac necklaces and T-shirts and customized

• 5:26Sam Parr?

  birth charts and geodes and smudge sticks, these things that make women feel great." Kinda weird, right?

• 5:32Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 5:33Sam Parr?

  And so that's what we're gonna talk about, the first idea. And he says he's gonna launch this brand that creates all these, I consider them kind of weird, kinda woo-woo. And he goes, "I'm gonna create a brand that sells all this stuff. But first, I'm gonna start with horoscopes." And that's the story of SanctuaryWorld.co. So I guess it's... I think they just call it Sanctuary. The URL is SanctuaryWorld.co. And the reason we're gonna talk about it is they just raised a seed round of $5 million. Is that correct?

• 6:02Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, something like that.

• 6:04Sam Parr?

  So they raised $5 million and it's caused a little bit of controversy because horoscopes are, well, they're bullshit. They're bullshit in the sense that there's not a lot of facts behind them. They're not real, but a lot of people buy into them thinking that they are legitimate. In fact, something like 40% of women check their horoscope on a regular basis and they, they will make decisions based off their horoscope. And the reason why I want to bring it up is because, A, it's interesting. So,

• 6:36Shaan Puri?

  By the way, what is this link to the SoulCycle thing? That sounds like, who's this guy? Ross? Ross Parker? Is that his name?

• 6:43Sam Parr?

  That's a story, bro.

• 6:43Shaan Puri?

  Sounds like bullshit to me, Ross Parker. It sounds like he was like, oh, women believe this shit? People, men believe this shit? I'm gonna sell this shit to them. Not, I was standing outside a SoulCycle, I saw them glowing and happy and somehow I connected the dots between feeling good after exercise to selling crystals and horoscopes. That doesn't make any sense to me.

• 7:05Sam Parr?

  It's, it's a bullshit story, but what he's doing is he's,

• 7:10Shaan Puri?

  You told it well. I'll give you that.

• 7:12Sam Parr?

  He's connecting SoulCycle. He also, in the article that I read, he mentions Headspace. He's just name dropping.

• 7:19Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 7:19Sam Parr?

  This is gonna be,

• 7:19Shaan Puri?

  He's trying to associate.

• 7:20Sam Parr?

  At one, dude, at one point, he called it the Uber for Zodiac signs.

• 7:27Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, basically, he's saying, if I say three or four legitimate company names alongside mine, I too will get the halo effect of being bucketed in with those guys. All right? I'm like meditation. I'm like religion. I'm like fitness.

• 7:42Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So that's what he did. I mean, Calm, Calm.com calls themselves the Nike of spiritual fitness. So, hey, look, we're, I ain't gonna hate the game. I'm not gonna hate the player. So let me explain to you why this is interesting. So Josh Wolf, a guy that I like, you like, he tweeted, "This is bullshit. Whoever funds this idea is a crook."

• 8:04Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 8:05Sam Parr?

  And I actually don't entirely agree with him. I understand where he's coming from, though. And now I want to give you some background about this app, the industry and where the opportunities are. So the way this app works is you download it.

• 8:17Shaan Puri?

  Can I read his tweet? He goes, This is Josh Wolfe on Twitter. He's a well-known VC. He says, "Seriously? Shame on anyone for funding or encouraging this bullshit. No doubt there is demand, but this isn't peddling entertainment. It's encouraging slippery slope, snake oil flapadoodle. We ought to desire informed, educated, rational, and not naive, gullible, superstitious society." And then he screenshotted all the investors who participated in the round. "I'm here for that shots fired, although I disagree with what he said. Go on."

• 8:50Sam Parr?

  Yes. And so the way this app works, I downloaded it. It's actually beautifully designed, and it sucked me in hardcore. And you sign up, you see like a spinning wheel.

• 8:59Shaan Puri?

  You are glowing, dude. I see the glow, so I should have known.

• 9:04Sam Parr?

  It got me. And you sign up, you say what, you know, you click your gem, I'm a Gemini. I don't know what the other 12 signs are, but you select your birthday and it says, "Today's your daily reading for your horoscope." It tells you like, it's like got these like text messaging vibes. So it feels like it's texting me this one or two sentence description of what I should expect. And then it says, "By the way, we want to tell you more in a few hours. Can you please turn notifications on so we can tell you more in a few hours about what's going to happen to you?" And they use this language that speaks exactly to me. And then they say, "Also, we have a little bit more that we can tell you if you sign up here." And then the way the app works is you can have this premium subscription where you get more info about you, or you can stay for free where you get daily updates. Or, now this is where

• 9:47Sam Parr?

  it gets interesting. You could pay a little bit more money and you could talk to a live, what do they call themselves?

• 9:53Shaan Puri?

  A reader.

• 9:54Sam Parr?

  A mystic.

• 9:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 9:55Sam Parr?

  A reader. You could talk to a reader and she'll tell you all about you. So basically, we've talked about Miss Cleo and how she made like a billion dollars. You get to talk to a Miss Cleo on the phone or via text, and they're going to tell you all about what you can expect for the coming year, the coming day, yada, yada, yada. Now, that in itself is not entirely interesting. I mean, it is pretty interesting, but what's, what's really interesting is how big this is. So as to... Thirty something year old men, we probably don't know too much about this, but it's way bigger than I ever thought. And the reason why I started diving deep into this is I started reading articles about the horoscope industry in a lot of like typical liberal, high educated blogs that were written by women. And I would have thought, oh, these women are gonna shit on it. They're gonna say this is a scam. And you know what?

• 10:40Sam Parr?

  All the articles were very positive. Even in TechCrunch, it was this woman named Sarah Perez wrote about it. And she goes, yeah, horoscopes aren't really harmful. It's just fun, meaningless entertainment. Whereas this guy, Josh, completely shit on it. And the reason why these women perhaps weren't, were okay with it is something like 50% of women check the horoscope on a, on a monthly basis. Thirty seven percent say they check daily.

• 11:04Shaan Puri?

  I always get into these awkward situations. My sister in law is a big believer in like the Zodiac thing. So, you know, a situation will be happening between her kids or we'll be talking and she's like, oh, such a Taurus, you know, you're such a Taurus. Or like, well, that's because, that's because, you know, they're Gemini and Gemini are this way. And I'm always like, you know, I don't know how to respond to this because I'm like, yeah, yeah, but like, that's totally fake. But yeah, yeah, that's super fake and true. Yeah, okay, good, go on. Like, I don't know what to say in response to that. Like, I can't validate it or agree because I don't agree. And I don't shit on it because who cares? I don't, I don't care if she, she believes. It puts me in this weird pickle.

• 11:44Sam Parr?

  I say, look, if I was, if I came out one second later at 12:01, you're telling me that I'm gonna react differently about this or that just because of that one nanosecond? Or I always say, well, what if I'm born in Australia where the hemisphere is different and the seasons are different and the moon's different, but it's on the same day?

• 12:00Shaan Puri?

  By the way, in India, they have this, they have, India's like this times 10. So if you think Miss Cleo is big, and Miss Cleo was big, Miss Cleo, I think, generated over a billion dollars in sales. If you're, if you watch TV in the nineties, you know who Miss Cleo is. If you don't, you don't. But in India, they have this still on TV all the time. There's these gurus, these mystics. And in every village, even like the poorest villages, in fact, especially in the poorest villages, because I think that's where superstition and religion is, is stronger than anywhere else. You take your, when your kid is born, you take your kid to a, kind of like your local... Stargazer mystic guy and he's basically he writes this giant thing on a act like on a scroll. He gives you a scroll and the scroll basically says, um, don't let him eat yellow

• 12:44Shaan Puri?

  lentils. Uh, it's just like all this like hypers like he shall not be married in the months of May, June, or August. And so people literally I know that are like, you know, educated doctors, lawyers, bankers, they'll be like engaged. I'm like, oh, when's the wedding this summer? They're like, no, we can't do summer. I say, why? It's because my parents had this reading done when I was two months old and it told them that I shall not be married in these months of the year. And so this is not just like an American thing. It's a worldwide thing under many, many different names. Um, this is, this is worldwide superstitions.

• 13:18Sam Parr?

  It's wild. And well, I'm going to tell you a little bit about the industry and some other people succeeding in the space. But I think I couldn't find too much on these folks revenue numbers because they're relatively new. So the way that the, the company started was this young guy or he's, I mean, he's 39. He's Ross Clark or whoever I said his name was. He, he was, he went through Lorne Michaels, the guy who started or runs SNL. He went through, apparently he has a, like a digital incubator. I guess NBC or someone sponsors. It's weird. It's weird. And he went through it and now he recently raised $5 million, including, I guess he raised money from NBC and Lorne Michaels somehow has a stake. He raised money from Advanced Capital, which Advance owns, um, loads and

• 14:00Sam Parr?

  loads of magazines. He raised money from, uh, Gray Croft, which is a media investor. So he raised money from all these media people. So this is like a traditional media company and or, uh, uh, traditional media people like this type of stuff. And the reason why they like this is horoscope business has been a large business for years and years and years. I mean, I've already just told you the numbers. This is not niche. I mean, we're talking like a third of Americans are into this shit. Um, so astrology.com. Have you heard of astrology.com?

• 14:28Shaan Puri?

  I have not.

• 14:28Sam Parr?

  Of course you have. Of course you have. Um, so they do low eight figures in revenue. And the way that they make money is they have, they do a lot of programmatic advertising. So they do low cost advertising, like the bottom of the pool and outbreak. They get you to come to their website and they make a little bit of money off advertising. Uh, they have ads on their website. So it's an ad arbitrage play. And then they also sell subscriptions. So you do like a click this button and you're going to get a little bit of an extra reading. They make, uh, Tens of millions, low tens of millions doing that. And it's been like that for like 30 years. This is astrology.com and horoscope.com. Horoscope.com is another competitor. They do about 20, or they get about 20 million people coming to their website a month. So it's quite large. These guys have been around since like 1995, 1999-ish. So they've been around forever just making 10

• 15:11Sam Parr?

  million plus in revenue in kind of a pretty fascinating business. My opinion is I-

• 15:16Shaan Puri?

  About 15 million visitors a month to their website.

• 15:21Sam Parr?

  Which is a lot. That's a lot. And I bet you a lot of that is direct or search, which is really good.

• 15:26Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So which way do you want to go with this? So I, I think we can do a couple of things. One is, uh, there's the controversy, you know, Vinod Khosla, Josh Wolfe, they came out saying, oh, how, how evil for funding this and for doing this. There's, so there's agree or disagree there.

• 15:42Sam Parr?

  Well, we could actually address that right away, which is there, I totally disagree and they're bullshit. They're wrong. Like, let's like saying like, why would you ever invest in the nicotine business or alcohol business? Like dude, there's, there's a place for all types of bullshit.

• 15:54Shaan Puri?

  Or a burger chain, or Netflix, or whatever, right? Like you can, you can believe that, uh, there are sort of negative consequences for society and humanity for Facebook as well, right? Uh, I think in this case, their, their sort of view is very tainted. And here's the, here's the easy example. If somebody was doing a religion app, they would be, they would never say anything about this, but because the religion is the stars instead of the gods, um, now it's snake oil. Now it's bullshit. Now it's, you know, peddling, uh, you know, fake science. What is religion? What is the difference of religion, right? Like it is a belief in something that is supernatural, that is invisible, that cannot be proved by science. It is blind faith in something. And

• 16:35Shaan Puri?

  that faith gives people comfort, entertainment, community, you know, like many like positive benefits. And so if you're going to say this about, uh, horoscopes, you better also say it about religion. Otherwise I, I view you sort of as a hypocrite there.

• 16:50Sam Parr?

  Yeah, we're, we're on the same page there. And also like dude, I like many people, they have a shitty life. They go to work, they go home at, at 5:00 PM and they just want to fucking veg out. If, if a little horoscope gives them a little bit of hope, who cares?

• 17:02Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 17:03Sam Parr?

  You know, we, I need all the help I can get. And I'm sure a lot of people do too. So I don't care. And I will, I, I will say it's bullshit. Just like I think a lot of religion is. Sorry if you're religious, but I respect that if you like it. But I think it's bullshit too. But it's okay.

• 17:15Shaan Puri?

  Me too. Um, okay. So then the second piece is, uh, that I'll just say on that is- Fucking annoying, the virtue signaling by VCs. Nobody, like this big grandstanding that people do is so annoying to me. And I recently, we'll, we'll talk about this more in a month. Weird teaser, I know, but we'll, we'll go, I'm going to go in depth about a topic in a month, about a fight I had on Twitter, a good, a good old Twitter ruckus. But one of the things that came out of it was the just absolute hypocritical nature of people and, and virtue signaling. This is almost more annoying to me than like cancel culture is virtue, virtue signaling

• 17:54Shaan Puri?

  culture, where people take any chance they get to say how they're greater than others. Because, you know, they, they sort of just try to take the moral high ground at any cost. And I find it to be so annoying and such a like weak move of people to do that. So if you're an investor, to go and say, I'm a good guy. I would never fund something like this. That is such an annoying move to me personally. What do you think of that?

• 18:20Sam Parr?

  So I completely agree with you. I mean, like, I think that we have to remember that, like, there's some mom, like my mother in Missouri, who's having a hard day. She needs to get off somehow. Like, that sounded weird, but you know what I mean? She needs to like find her a little bit of happiness somewhere. I don't care if she watches a soap opera or reads about horoscopes. Who cares? Not everything needs to save the world. It just needs to be a little bit of fun and entertainment.

• 18:42Shaan Puri?

  And not everyone needs to agree with you. Okay, you don't want to fund it. No problem. You don't have to fund it. But to like call out and demonize the people that do fund it, let them do what they want. Like, I find it weird that the people who are trying to be so like righteous, they lose the one, like, kind of like, one of the more fundamental things, which is open-mindedness, that maybe other people have different beliefs than you and will act in different ways in accordance of their beliefs. And, and that they should not be judged or demonized for it. So anyways, I think, I think that's kind of annoying. But, okay.

• 19:14Sam Parr?

  So for all the people who like this, let's talk about the opportunities and why this works. You want to talk about that?

• 19:19Shaan Puri?

  Yes, I have, I have a couple.

• 19:21Sam Parr?

  Okay, I'll go first. The first is Myers-Briggs and other personality tests. You can do this exact same thing with that.

• 19:27Shaan Puri?

  And by the way, let's frame this as the most interesting subject to anybody is?

• 19:34Sam Parr?

  Themselves.

• 19:34Shaan Puri?

  Themselves, exactly. And so that's the umbrella. We're not talking about selling pseudoscience. Yeah, that's actually like a technique. Why does this work is because the most interesting topic to me is me and the most interesting topic to you is you. And so because of that, if you if you accept that that is true, which by the way it is, once you understand that that is true, it opens up a set of business possibilities that you can go through and work through and try to figure out. So, okay, go on.

• 20:00Sam Parr?

  So the goal is to find, so the reason why I went to this app, why it was so interesting, I bet, so for most apps, the free to paid conversion ratio is probably 1%, maybe? You think that's about right?

• 20:11Shaan Puri?

  It can get higher. It can get to like 3%, 4%.

• 20:14Sam Parr?

  Okay, with this app, I bet you it's as high as 10%. If you tell, if they, if they told me 10, I wouldn't be surprised.

• 20:19Shaan Puri?

  I'd be impressed and not surprised.

• 20:21Sam Parr?

  I would be impressed and not surprised, exactly. And a 10% free to paid conversion rate is stupid. That is so good. The reason why it's good is you could spend a lot of money to advertise. Now, the churn might be high, but that's a situation we could address after we're already big and popular. But so the reason why they're, they're, let's just assume that that is true. Let's say it's 6%. The reason why it's 6% is that it's so personal. And the reason this business works is that it is personal. So what you need to do is go out and find personal stuff. So that's the reason why Myers, any type of personality test, because I could say, oh, so you've just told me these 10 things about you. That means that you're probably disorganized.

• 20:58Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 20:58Sam Parr?

  Let me tell you all about being disorganized and what that means. Personality tests are great. It's actually the same, in a way, the same thing as a horoscope. And what you can do is you could do it, you could really just do a daily email if you wanted to. So it's not really simple.

• 21:10Shaan Puri?

  By the way, all those people who are like, horoscopes, huh, like, yeah, that's for dumb Trump voters to believe in. And then they'll also be putting on their Twitter bio, like, I'm an ENTJ, right? They'll go put their like fucking personality quiz results into their bio. And I know there's slightly more science that, you know, that says that that's a real thing. But I don't know, this is all, yeah, exactly. This is all hand wavy shit as far as I'm concerned.

• 21:40Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And, and guess what? I'm in favor of it all.

• 21:43Shaan Puri?

  Right. I take these tests. Enjoy them.

• 21:46Sam Parr?

  So I think that you can do a daily email for this. Um, I also think that paid content, paid subscriptions for these types of things works really well. And what this app is doing that I particularly love, that I think could work for so many different things is you get a top of funnel thing where you give these tests and then you do a come and talk to a person and you would charge $50 per person or per hour or whatever it is. And as a middle person, you take a cut. I think that is brilliant.

• 22:13Shaan Puri?

  By the way, I was talking to, um, there was a, a company we talked about here. It's called, I feel like it's called intro. Was it called intro? It was basically like you can book a, a call with like Justin Bieber stylist or like, um,

• 22:26Sam Parr?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:28Shaan Puri?

  It was called intro. I can't recall.

• 22:29Sam Parr?

  No, it was called something else, but oh, maybe you're right.

• 22:32Shaan Puri?

  So anyways.

• 22:33Sam Parr?

  Intro.co.

• 22:34Shaan Puri?

  Intro.co, right. Uh, founder's legit, sold his last company, starts this thing. He's like, oh, it's great because I'm remodeling my kitchen. Wouldn't it be great to be able to do a 30 minute call with the person who remodels kitchens on HTTV? And so they got all these stars on and it's all good. Guess what vertical is the number one vertical for them? Astrology readings. They found all these Instagrammers and you can go on Instagram. You could find all these people who have like cult Instagram followings. They have like 50,000, 150,000 followers and they just post a daily sort of like, you know, reading and the people will pay to book time to get a personal reading from them. It's taking off now. He doesn't publicize that. If you go to the website, it still looks like it's about style, home renovations and other things.

• 23:15Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 23:15Shaan Puri?

  And that is a part of it, but.

• 23:17Sam Parr?

  Fitness, nutrition, makeup.

• 23:18Shaan Puri?

  Fitness, nutrition, makeup, all these things that, you know, smart people will nod their head and say, that sounds good. That sounds healthy. Uh, then it's like, what do people really want? Where's the, where's the highest demand? It was in the tell me about me through a reading, uh, either a psychic reading, astrology reading, whatever it is. Um, okay. I want to go back to something you said very quickly, but I think is super legit. And this is, we need a sound effect for whenever me and you have such total conviction. It's like in, um, if you watch like, uh, I don't know, America's Got Talent or something like that, or, or the X Factor, the golden button, the golden buzzer where they're just like, we don't need to vote. I'm going to push this button right now and you're, you automatically advance. So I'm pushing the golden button right now for anybody who wants to take this idea.

• 24:02Shaan Puri?

  Of creating this funnel. So to do this, you need to know nothing about code, but you do need to be kind of like internet savvy and kind of clever. Here's what you do.

• 24:13Sam Parr?

  And you should probably go and read like Ryan Hoover's book, Hooked.

• 24:18Shaan Puri?

  Near I was like the editor.

• 24:21Sam Parr?

  Whatever. Sorry, Near. Or go and read Influence by Robert Cialdini.

• 24:26Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. Somebody who gets into this stuff and is nonjudgmental. I'm not going to do this forever, but here's the experiment. The experiment is you create a quiz that's the top of the funnel that basically says, find out your personality, find out your X, find out your Myers-Briggs, find out whatever it is, your horoscope, whatever. And you create a quiz at the top. And then to get your results, you put in your email. We email you the results and then we send you a daily newsletter that's personalized to you. Right? Because you are a, because you were born on this day of this year, I'm going to give you your daily horoscope. I'm going to give you your daily reading. And so that's the whole product right now. I think if we do this, I will put money in. I bet Sam would put some money in too. You put a little money behind the paid acquisition here.

• 25:09Shaan Puri?

  And there's inherent virality because people will share their quiz results. They will share their readings, especially when it says like, see if you're compatible with your brother, your girlfriend, your mother, whoever. Right? You'll get somebody to share the quiz with somebody else. So I think you could build a easily 100,000 plus person list doing this product. And then there is a clear like premium offering on the backend. But the core of it is quiz funnel at top, daily newsletter and get there and get to 100,000. I would, I'm going to throw down the gauntlet for somebody who's bored and looking for a project that will actually stick, that will actually get, have some legs. Because I know this will have legs.

• 25:47Sam Parr?

  And I don't know how big a legs are, but I do, I would say with a high degree of certainty, if you work on this full time for three years, you have a $5 million a year in revenue.

• 25:57Shaan Puri?

  Or even simpler, right? Like a lot of people who, when I surveyed my audience, one of the biggest things was, dude, I'd love to just have a side hustle that I could do a few hours a day that would bring in a few thousand dollars a month. This will do that. So if you want to do this, DM me, email me, email, email us. Find a way to contact us because I want somebody legit to actually try this. Let me tell you about some experiments I've done in this area. I don't even know if you know about these things. So.

• 26:28Shaan Puri?

  I don't know when it was, not too long ago, within the last couple of years, I was quite bored. I had sold my company and I basically said, you know, last episode, you asked like, do you want to build something that lasts for like 30, 40 years? Like a, like a long lasting company. I'm like, yeah, sometimes I dream about that. And then sometimes I dream about what's something I could do this weekend? That would be fun. And like, I could throw away next weekend if I wanted to, like a low commitment fling of a business.

• 26:53Sam Parr?

  Just a fun scheme.

• 26:54Shaan Puri?

  Right. A hookup. And so I want to, I wanted a business hookup.

• 26:58Sam Parr?

  And yeah, one night stand.

• 26:59Shaan Puri?

  And I created, I created three ideas that I thought would work. The first was a IQ test. I always wanted to know my IQ. I don't know my IQ. I'd like to think I'm smart. I think I'm above average smart. Guess what? Everybody thinks they're above average smart. And so I thought, why isn't there like an easier way to do an IQ test? Why, if there was an ad on Facebook that was like a puzzle and it's like, solve this puzzle. And this is like the start of an IQ test. I would go through that. I would take the IQ test for 20 minutes and then I would want to get my results. I'd give you my email and I might even pay for like the full results of this thing. So I thought that was kind of interesting, doing IQ tests and kind of like recreating Mensa as, as a sort of like online funnel.

• 27:42Shaan Puri?

  Again, no physical product needed, no shipping, no logistics, no supply chain, but a pure play sort of digital info product. Second one, have you read the book, The Five Love Languages or Five Languages of Love?

• 27:56Sam Parr?

  Obviously.

• 27:57Shaan Puri?

  Okay. You're married. So at some point you were given this book. I've been like, hey asshole, read this. And so that's one that, that's a pretty successful franchise. So if you go look at my Facebook page right now, my Facebook profile, you'll see, oh, why is Sean the admin of a page called The Love Doctor? Well, let me tell you why, because I wanted to take the Five Love Languages test, put it online, send people through that flow where they answer a bunch of questions and then say, would you like to know what your love language is? Put your email in and then I'll send you your results. And then I say, well, wait, we need to see who you're compatible with. Do your love languages match? And do they know yours? Send this to your partner and boom.

• 28:38Shaan Puri?

  And then by, by the way, like here, buy the ebook, buy the PDF that will tell you what to do, given your love language. Cause there's only like five, so I could just make five PDFs and sell them. So these are these little business experiment flings. And I have one last one that I did because as you could tell, these types of businesses appeal to me.

• 28:57Shaan Puri?

  I like simple lightweight stuff that people that has a lot of demand that Silicon Valley likes to poo poo and say that they're they're better than that. I find this as an opportunity. So the last one is crystals. You said something about crystals.

• 29:11Sam Parr?

  Yes, I did. So this guy, what he wants to do is he wants to sell crystals. I don't like I don't. And I don't say, oh, my gosh. And like, I think it's wrong to say sell because I think it's like anything that like, you know, Tony Robbins, is he bullshit? Yeah, but I read it sometimes.

• 29:26Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, helpful bullshit.

• 29:28Sam Parr?

  So who cares? But I think crystals are nonsense.

• 29:31Shaan Puri?

  Yes, exactly. So so is a placebo a bad thing? Right? If this thing has no measurable effects, but I believe it to have a positive effect and it helps me feel better, then has it not achieved its purpose of helping me feel better? Right? So so I looked at these three ideas and I had to pick one because I didn't have too much time, right? I had a weekend hookup to go to. So I said, should I do the IQ one? Should I do this love doctor one, the five languages love test? Or should I do this crystal thing? As I looked into the crystal thing, I saw I saw a bunch of interesting things, which is that there's a lot of female kind of like influencers. So Adele carries a rose quartz crystal with her and uses it before every before she goes on stage for every performance. Gwyneth Paltrow from, you know, with Goop, she's all about, you know, these all about

• 30:15Shaan Puri?

  crystals, you know, just go through the list of who's who. So the Kardashians, after Kim Kardashian got mugged or robbed and she was feeling like very unsafe, she like she credits crystals to being one of the things that helped her center herself, calm herself and feel better about herself and be able to go back into the world, feel safe again. So I found that, wow, a lot of these sort of like female celebrities and idols have pictures and quotes with these. I thought, oh, that'd be pretty useful to help sell this thing. And then I found that I could source crystals very easily, right? The crystals are not that expensive. And so I created a e-commerce store for crystals. I tried it for a couple of weekends and I spent, you know, five, 10 grand booting this thing up.

• 30:57Shaan Puri?

  And I broke even and I even made a little bit of profit. And in the end, I sort of like got bored of the, you know, I got bored of the hookup and was ready to move on with my life.

• 31:05Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 31:05Shaan Puri?

  But I kind of validated that this idea could kind of work. And there was, it wasn't like gangbusters. Like, look, if this started printing money, I wouldn't have given it up.

• 31:13Sam Parr?

  No, but it could have been. I mean, you only did it for a few weekends.

• 31:15Shaan Puri?

  Right? Like, which is most things, you have to stay at it for a bit to actually get it to work.

• 31:20Sam Parr?

  That's brilliant. I like hearing these stories. And as I was thinking, I made fun of crystals, but I actually had something similar. So there's this guy named Ryan Holiday. You know Ryan Holiday?

• 31:31Shaan Puri?

  The author of Trust Me, I'm Lying, is that it?

• 31:34Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 31:35Shaan Puri?

  He's got a few books. Yeah, usually. The Enemy, I think is one of his, right?

• 31:39Sam Parr?

  I have some of them up here, and he's got many books. And his famous thing is Stoicism. So he talks a lot about Stoicism, which basically just means how to be, how to deal with adversity, how to be a tough guy. Obviously, horoscopes mostly women. This is probably mostly men. And I read one of his books. I thought it was nice. It made me feel better about myself. And I went to DailyStoic.com, and I bought a $30 coin that says some Greek thing on there. That's, I don't even know what it says, but it translates into like, you live and then you're gonna die. So like, live well, or something like that. It just, and I would carry it. I always, I don't know where it is.

• 32:15Shaan Puri?

  Who gets the tattoo of an Asian, Asian character on his arm and doesn't know what it means?

• 32:20Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I don't, but I.

• 32:22Shaan Puri?

  Doesn't matter what it means. It means something to you.

• 32:23Sam Parr?

  When I was, yeah, like, it's got a, like, stoic on there. They're supposed to be tough. And I would carry it around me, and I paid 30 bucks for it. I think it cost a dollar for him to make. I think he'd make it a few million dollars. So that shit works. I dig it. And by the way, my, my one night stand recently, about a couple of years ago as well, our friend Ramon was killing it on Dog Stuff. I'm like, oh, my gosh, that, that looks so fun. And so he would create all these Facebook pages about, dedicated to a specific dog breed. And I go, whoa, that's so fun. I just want to tinker. I'm gonna try it. I created this one page called Bully Boo. So the word bully, and then space, the word boo, B-O-O. I just made that word up. Bully is a, like a bully breeds. They're like pit bulls, whatever, yada, yada. And I just went and got viral videos from Reddit, and I posted it on Bully Boo.

• 33:08Sam Parr?

  Dude, I got like 10,000 followers on Facebook, like, in a matter of like five days. Yeah, so that shit works. So anyway.

• 33:15Shaan Puri?

  By the way, I also have a pet one. Heard this guy was making a bunch of money when he bought Printing Your Pets photo on socks as a gift. And I was like, great, weekend hookup, tried it, spun up the whole thing. Had a guy, my friend Eric, who has this cool sock company called Tribe. He was like, I'll print the socks for you. Here's a link. Here's a, here's, here's an easy way to set it up. Tried it. My results weren't great, but same sort of thing where I was like, I really enjoy these mini experiments. And here's the thing, like, when I share these, I think part of it is interesting of just hearing these little, like, random things. Most people listen to this, I don't think do that. I think we're somewhat unique in that we have done many of these, right? Like, I didn't even know you did this bully boo thing.

• 33:58Shaan Puri?

  You didn't know I've done these three things. There's actually like 10 more that I've done that you've done that we haven't talked about. So

• 34:04Sam Parr?

  A lot of which are so embarrassing, I don't think I'll ever say.

• 34:06Shaan Puri?

  These are the ones we're talking about. Imagine the ones we don't talk about. So, um, so I think the, one of the like meta takeaways is, um, like just experiment more and be willing to spin something up quickly and then throw it away when you, when you're done with it. And, uh, like, don't try to like marry everything, everything, you know, it's okay to date. It's okay to have a hookup or a fling or a one night stand with a business. And, um, I think that is a lot of our skill is built. So in doing that, um, I used to tell kind of one of, one of my interns who was working with me on, on the crystal thing. He's like, dude, I don't know if this crystal thing is going to work, but I'm just, I'm amazed that in 48 hours, we went from, you were just bullshitting about the idea to our first sale. And that's just kind of amazing. He called it a

• 34:50Shaan Puri?

  flash brand. He's like, I love that. We just created this whole brand. It looks real. It's got a name. We like named it after my sister's kid. Um, you know, like we, we, we created a logo. We got this, like this Shopify store spun up. And in doing so, we learned all these like mechanics of like, how do you, how like, how do you get better at writing copy? How do you get rid of naming things? How do you get better at making a logo? How do you use these tools like Shopify and Klaviyo and all these different tools that you need the piping to sell, to sell stuff? And I think that there's a lot of, even if you think the ideas we're talking about are dumb, it's not dumb to like, use these as an excuse to go learn about Facebook ads or to learn about building a Facebook page quickly, because that might come in handy again, three days later or three years later, when you're trying to do the next thing.

• 35:33Sam Parr?

  And of course, that's not really what you're, the, the most important thing you're learning. What you're learning is the confidence to just go through the motion and get shit done. In the same way that like, it's a lot easier to get skinny when you know how to bench press properly, or you feel comfortable squatting and you're like, oh yeah, I just do this, this, this, and I eat less and boom, I'm confident. I can, I just follow the, I just go to the steps.

• 35:49Shaan Puri?

  Can I tell you a mini story on this real quick and then we'll move on? Um, so I invested in that company Maven, uh, which is started by our, our mutual friend, uh, Gagan Beyani. He, he started Udemy and now he's got it, which is a $3 billion ed tech company. And now he's got a new ed tech company, uh, for teaching online. And I invested in the company and in order to get in, it was such a competitive deal. In order to get in, he's like, "Look, you guys have a good audience. Like, you have a big Twitter following. You gotta, you gotta do a course. If you, if you agree to do a course, be one of the teachers, be a user, then I'll let you in the round." And I was like, "Done," because I wanted to invest. And so then he's been hitting me up like, "Dude, do the, where's your course? Come on, man, make your course." And so I was like, "All right, shit." And so then, and I was overthinking it. And the lesson here is not,

• 36:31Shaan Puri?

  it really has nothing to do with my course. Or I guess I'll tell the end of the story and then I'll tell you what, how I almost fucked up. So the end of the story is, yesterday I took about 20 minutes, I wrote a three tweet, tweet storm about how writing has helped me. And I said, you know, in school, I was a shitty writer. In school, they want you to write long essays, like they have like a minimum word count you have to hit, literally. And, you know, you study Shakespeare and you think that's what good writing is, or you read the Odyssey. But then, you know, in the real world, it's the exact opposite. You know, you're paid to be concise, not have a lot of words, right? You're not trying to write like really epic, complex things. You need to be simple and crisp and communicate well. And I said, "I've gotten good at that." So I sucked at school writing, but I've gotten

• 37:14Shaan Puri?

  pretty good at real world writing through trial and error and studying some of the best people, yourself included, our friend Neville, I bought his course, I took that whole thing, I got better at copywriting. But I said, "In general, there's this whole like, like how much value can be unlocked if you're good at writing emails, tweets, blog posts, company memos, investor letters, like all those things can generate a lot of value. It's made me millions of dollars. I think it can do that for other people, too, if you get better at writing." So anyways, I tweeted that out and I said, "I want a package, you know, I've probably studied this stuff for like a thousand hours in my life. I wanted to still it down into something you can learn in 10 days. If you're interested in that, it'll cost 400 bucks. Here's a link, put it into a shitty Google form where you

• 37:57Shaan Puri?

  put in your name and email, and you tell me why you want to take this course." So I've tweeted it out. Guess how many responses I got?

• 38:05Sam Parr?

  300.

• 38:06Shaan Puri?

  So I got 1,000 responses already of people who are, who gave me all their info and said, I'd like to sign up to be in the first batch. I thought, so the way that Maven works is they encourage you to do this to test demand to see if you have 100 people. If you get 100 people, they say, all right, there's enough demand. You should go like, kind of figure out why they want to do this and then, then, then launch your actual course. A thousand blew me away off of, you know, one tweet, basically. Let alone email list or anything else. So I thought, oh, that's interesting. Wow, like, let's say that, let's, let's say that this is 1,000 people. The course costs $400. Not all of them will convert, but like.

• 38:41Sam Parr?

  200, maybe.

• 38:42Shaan Puri?

  But this was.

• 38:43Sam Parr?

  Say 100.

• 38:43Shaan Puri?

  He said about 30 to 40% of people will, will end up converting of, but that's if, once you qualify the list a little bit. So, but even this was just one tweet. So let's assume I also email it out or I tweet again about it. I think I could probably triple the size of the interest list because this was just whoever was on Twitter in that moment that saw it. So I could probably triple the size of this list. And then let's say 30% of them convert, 25% of them convert. Okay, so let's say the net net is.

• 39:08Sam Parr?

  $120,000.

• 39:09Shaan Puri?

  I could easily make six figures. I think 100,000 on the low end, 400,000, 500,000 on the high end of this course. Okay, so that's sweet, but what's the lesson here? The lesson here is actually that I didn't, I was not going to send this tweet. I was telling like, going, I was like, all right, you know, you need to like test your, test the demand for this course. And I was like, great, so here's my plan. I'm gonna, first I'm gonna like work on the content of the course. I'm gonna like, make sure it's good. And then actually I want to like, show people I'm good at this. So I'm gonna do like 10 example, I'm gonna do 10 emails showing me like, taking something that was kind of bad writing and turning it, making it better. So that'll like, get people interested. Then I'll do it, I'll mention it on the podcast and then I'll do this other thing. And he's like, dude, you don't need to do all that.

• 39:53Shaan Puri?

  Like, trust me, just say, hey, I'm thinking about doing this. You know, here's why I think it would be good for you. If you're interested, sign up.

• 40:01Shaan Puri?

  And I was like, yeah, fuck, you're right. I'm doing that thing. And that thing is what most people do, which is you're afraid to fail. So you overthink what you need to do to make it successful. And Abreu, you're listening to this, you're about to go do your own startup. Don't make this mistake that I was about to make that I've made many times in the past that most people make every time they go do a new venture, is that they are afraid to fail. Therefore, they, you know, they, they overestimate what they need to do to get started. I need to incorporate, I need to come up with a good name. I need to buy the domain. I need to like, build it to make sure I, you know, I want to have a high quality product. I don't want to go out with a bad product and disappoint people. Or, you know, I need to like, create a whole website before I do this thing. Nope. Shitty

• 40:45Shaan Puri?

  tweet, shitty Google form, thousand responses, right? Like, you can get results with a much shittier sort of go to market. And so, you know, the classic quote here is if you're not embarrassed by your, by your first product, you, by your first version of your product, you waited too long to launch. And so anyways, the middle lesson I relearned was, don't overthink it. I almost overthought it.

• 41:07Sam Parr?

  Do you know what you're gonna teach? Or are you gonna figure that out?

• 41:09Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I have a good idea, actually. I think this would be cool. So, tell me what you think of this. I haven't told anybody this yet. So, I think the way to get good at writing is to write, obviously. Sorry, it's the greatest good at anything is to do it. And so I'm like, all right, but I can't just tell you to go do it. If, if it was that easy, you would have already done it. So I thought, okay, what about this? What if every day I gave you a prompt? So like, let's say, let's say that we want to get better at writing, writing for the real world, right? So let's, let's say it's a cold email, like the way you cold emailed people to come be speakers at HustleCon. Great. So I say, we're gonna write a cold email to somebody who you want to come speak at your event. I'm not gonna tell you how to do it. First, try it. Take, put 15 minutes

• 41:50Shaan Puri?

  on the clock and just try it. Write a shitty version. So they try it. Then I'm going to give them a, like a kind of a learning. So it's like do, learn, and then do. So you do it. Then I tell you how I would do it with four examples. Like here's, here's one way of doing it. Here's another way of doing it. Here's another way of doing it. Here's the common principles I'm using in all these. All right. You learned that? Good. Now do it again. And you submit that one and I'll give feedback on all the submissions that people give and be like, hey, this is actually awesome. Or, hey, this is much better than your first attempt. Look, in 30 minutes, you just went from like really shitty to pretty good. And here's how you can go from pretty good to like amazing. If you made this one tweak additional. So I want people to get a daily reps at writing one of those things. So it might be headline, right?

• 42:35Shaan Puri?

  Here's the story. Write the headline. Okay, cool. That was, that was a bad headline. Here's, here's what goes into a great headline. Do it again.

• 42:43Sam Parr?

  You better launch fast. Someone, a listener is going to go and do this. Of course, they don't have 150,000 followers, but.

• 42:48Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. If you want to do this, help me do it. I think there's just, this should exist. I think this would be a cool way for people to get better by actually doing something. And doing it in like a controlled sandbox. So not just saying, open it. I don't know. Go write a bunch of shit. It's like very specific. Write this. Here's examples of what, what, what good looks like. And then good, boom, boom. Now that you know the, now that you've learned the principle, go apply it. So anyways, that's what I'm going to try to teach.

• 43:11Sam Parr?

  Do you want to talk about Michael Buffer?

• 43:12Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 43:14Sam Parr?

  What do you, so on our doc, Sean's got Michael Buffer and Judge Judy personal monopoly written down there. I'm very curious what that even means.

• 43:22Shaan Puri?

  So this started with just curiosity. I was watching the Canelo Alvarez boxing match that happened last weekend. Fun match. Guy, he fucking broke this guy's face.

• 43:34Shaan Puri?

  Punched a guy, broke his, broke his face in three places and then the guy quit between rounds. So anyways, boxing is this funny thing where like the match itself only lasts for, you know, some number of minutes. But they need to charge you all this money for pay per view. So there's all this like pomp and circumstances, all this parade around it, right? They walk out with music and their kind of entourage and their outfit. And then the next person walks out and then there's the introduction. And in the introductions, there's always this guy, you've probably seen him. It's this white guy who basically is like, got a great voice. And in boxing, he says, um, like, you know, ladies and gentlemen, let's get ready to rumble. Right? That's like the signature thing. Uh, like you, you would kind of get wired over the years of following the sport that like, yes, this is the main event. This is the big one.

• 44:19Sam Parr?

  And, and by the way, do you know who that guy's brother is?

• 44:21Shaan Puri?

  Bruce Buffer, right? So. Bruce is in the UFC and he says, I'll let you do it.

• 44:27Sam Parr?

  He goes, it's time.

• 44:30Shaan Puri?

  It's time.

• 44:30Sam Parr?

  And by the way, they didn't know that they are brothers until they were like both in their 50s.

• 44:34Shaan Puri?

  Exactly.

• 44:34Sam Parr?

  There's a crazy story about that.

• 44:36Shaan Puri?

  So, so I, so I, I was just watching this and I was like, how much does Michael Buffer get paid? Right? So I do the search, Michael Buffer salary. Jess, do you know how much Michael, you might know, it sounds like you know some things.

• 44:47Sam Parr?

  No, I, I don't know, but based off his 10 million a year.

• 44:52Shaan Puri?

  So Michael Buffer has made $400 million in his career doing what he's doing. He's made most of that off of the, the fact that he has created a personal monopoly. He is synonymous with a big boxing match and his phrase, let's get ready to rumble is a trademarked phrase. Now, how is it a trademark? And he's trademarked it and he licenses it out to video games, to, um, you know, like movies and shows and stuff like that. And actually, if you go watch, uh, like the back catalog of UFC fights, they cut out Bruce Buffer's it's time part, because they don't want to pay him the royalty on it's time.

• 45:28Sam Parr?

  How, well, first of all, I, I knew he was faulty because he looks like he's got a lot of work done on his face. So like, he's got that like Wayne Newton look where like Sigmund Freud, where I'm like, oh, that's that Las Vegas rich look. And, uh, second, how on earth does the boxing federation or whatever it's called, allow him to own it along with Bruce Buffer?

• 45:46Shaan Puri?

  So the, so the way that's happened, so, so the way it happened was Michael Buffer is the, is the, the announcer guy, right? And at first he's not making much and boxing is kind of nascent and he's, he grew with the sport, right? So as Tyson got popular and Holyfield and all, all these big names, you know, you just keep seeing this one guy for like 30 years. So he ended up building his own brand, you know, along the way. So nowadays he gets paid about, um, or sorry, I don't know exactly what Michael Buffer gets paid per event, but he, he got to the point where it's let's say 1984 and he's saying, let's get ready to rumble. And, uh, Bruce Buffer, uh, who doesn't know that they are siblings.

• 46:26Sam Parr?

  He is half.

• 46:27Shaan Puri?

  They're half siblings. So he's watching, um, what is it? He's watching the event or something like that. And he sees that this guy's last name is Buffer. And he goes, oh, that's cool. I've never met another Buffer. He doesn't think they're brothers. He just thinks this guy's last name is also Buffer. That's cool. I've never met another Buffer. He goes in the Yellow Pages and he looks and there's no other Buffers. So he's like, dude, this is crazy that this guy's last name is Buffer. And he's driving with his dad or something like that. And he asks his dad, he's like, yeah, this guy's, uh, oh, no, he finds out. He, so he looks into Michael Buffer, he finds out he was, um, he grew up in a town like, I don't know, half a mile away from Bruce. He's like, dude, dad, how crazy is this? This guy, you know, that guy on the boxing thing, Michael Buffer, you know, last name Buffer?

• 47:10Shaan Puri?

  And he grew up, uh, you know, half a mile, half a mile away from us. And the dad while driving just goes, yeah, I think that's your brother. He's like, what? He's like, yeah, you know, you didn't know this, but before you and your mom, you know, they've been married 50 years before you and your mom got together. Uh, you know, I had others, I had a son, I don't know if it's him, but maybe that's your brother. And so they go and they find out that they are actually half brothers. They share a den. So Bruce then goes to Michael and he says, Michael, you're doing great. Um, but you have no like business manager. I'll be your manager. And he's like, okay, what does that mean? He goes, dude, you, you need to trademark this phrase. This is your catchphrase. So he applies for the trademark, he gets it. And then he basically says, uh, takes that trademark and he starts licensing it out.

• 47:53Shaan Puri?

  Merchandise, you know, hats, shirts, video games, everything. So he starts building this guy's brand. And then later, Michael gets Bruce into the comment, the announcing game. And Bruce becomes the announcer for the UFC. So a different sport. And Bruce is making like, on any given event, if you go watch a UFC event, he's making 50 to a hundred grand for that night's work, which is basically before every fight, he just announces, you know, in this corner, we have this guy.

• 48:16Sam Parr?

  That's right now.

• 48:17Shaan Puri?

  That's now.

• 48:18Sam Parr?

  He makes a hundred.

• 48:18Shaan Puri?

  Makes a hundred grand for big fights and 50 grandish. And this is like, we got a caveat. This is like, you know, when you Google someone's net worth, like, I don't know if this is actually his number. This is like the, this is the, it's in a bunch of articles, but maybe they're all referencing the same shitty source. I don't know.

• 48:33Sam Parr?

  Right. And he does probably three a month.

• 48:35Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 48:36Sam Parr?

  So you're looking at about three and a half, four million dollars a year.

• 48:38Shaan Puri?

  And it, it says that, you know, his net worth, net worth is sort of in the tens of millions, uh, whereas Michael Buffer is in the hundreds of millions. Uh, and so this sort of came to this concept of creating a personal monopoly. So how do you build yourself to the point where you are unreplaceable? And this is like Ryan Seacrest with American Idol, right? When American Idol first started, there's two dudes.

• 49:01Sam Parr?

  And at this point, Ryan Seacrest, actually, go ahead.

• 49:04Shaan Puri?

  Well, I was gonna say, Ryan Seacrest is now, you know, sort of synonymous with American Idol. It's like Chris Harrison with The Bachelor. It's Jeff Probst with Survivor. And, you know, these are, these are hosts that on the surface, it's like, oh, he just comes out here and says a few lines. Anybody could do that.

• 49:19Sam Parr?

  No, no, no, no.

• 49:20Shaan Puri?

  The fans grow attached to this person and that becomes part of the brand of the event. And the consistency of seeing those same faces, the same recurring cast members, saying those same catchphrases is part of what makes it popular. So Judge Judy.

• 49:34Sam Parr?

  And at this point, Ryan Seacrest has Ryan Seacrest Productions, which is a production company, which frankly, I've always been wondering, like, what does a production company actually mean? Like, that's one of those Hollywood terms that I'm sure does something, but I don't get it. But it does something like north of a hundred million in revenue.

• 49:51Shaan Puri?

  Well, he produced the Kardashians show, Keeping Up With The Kardashians. He was the creator and producer of that show, I think. So it was his idea.

• 49:58Sam Parr?

  So he partly that into something. And I don't exactly, like I said, I don't entirely understand how a production company.

• 50:03Shaan Puri?

  And there's this fork in the road, because at the beginning of American Idol, there was two hosts. And one guy after season one was like, oh, this is a hit. I want more money. And at that time, he didn't have a personal monopoly yet. He was replaceable because the show was so new. And so they said, no, thanks, we'll keep Ryan. Ryan, you could just be the lead guy now. And Ryan Seacrest did it for like 15 years. And then by the end of it, was sort of making, I don't know, 10, 15 million bucks a season doing it. Because he waited until he became entrenched in the franchise as like the face. And he became a valuable character like Simon Cowell and the other guys. So Judge Judy is probably the greatest example of this. So the highest paid person on TV was Judge Judy for a number of years. She was making $47 million a year for, I don't know, 50, I think, days of filming.

• 50:48Shaan Puri?

  So she was making about $900,000 a day filming the show for Judge Judy, which is, she was a judge before that, making $113,000 a year. And so from the commodity, the skill of the job of being a judge, to building your personal monopoly, as the show is called Judge Judy. She was able to turn $113,000 a year of, of, of pricing power into $47 million a year. And then, you know, CBS bought the back catalog of Judge Judy for $100 million. So she's still making royalties without working anymore. So I just find this to be. Tremendously interesting. It's something that was counterintuitive to me. Seems to me like all these people are replaceable, but clearly the economics of Hollywood show that they're not. And, um, and so I just found this to be very interesting. I also like the story of,

• 51:33Shaan Puri?

  you know, the long lost brothers. One brother finds the other, becomes his manager, convinces him to trademark it. And that trademark is, you know, that building that personal monopoly of IP is what helped him build a multi hundred million dollar franchise. So I thought that was amazing.

• 51:47Sam Parr?

  So I want to, let's go down the strap hole. I don't think we're going to get to the intern thing, but maybe we will. Um, let's put on the strap hole because I know a few people that have these personal brands. Maybe some people think that I have that, but I, I actually don't have it because I'm not nearly careful enough. But you're, you seem quite careful enough about your brand that you might, uh, you, you have this, but

• 52:05Shaan Puri?

  Who comes to mine?

• 52:05Sam Parr?

  I know Tim, Tim Ferriss. I know Tim Ferriss. I know Jack Butcher.

• 52:09Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 52:09Sam Parr?

  Jack Butcher is a great friend of mine. Um, he created this huge following off of visualize value. Great name. All he does is he makes one picture that describes a thousand words. So basically you have this complicated topic. He makes one graphic a day and it explains exactly how it works. You would think that's silly. He's crushed it. He probably makes two to three million dollars a year, uh, selling a course on that topic. The second one, Tim Ferriss. And the reason why I can't do this is because these guys are so protective and particular about their brand. Tim Ferriss, I'm going to tell, I'm going to tell a Tim Ferriss story that I, we, I don't want to turn this into clips. I don't want this to get popular, but I'm going to tell a story. So Tim Ferriss years ago came to my office

• 52:51Sam Parr?

  when it was, when he had Justin, I, I know Tim Ferriss because he would walk his dog. We were neighbors. We lived down the block from each other. We would walk our dogs together. Like he would be at the park and I would be at the park and I wouldn't bring up business. I wouldn't even act like I was a fan other than I'm saying, hey, I just listened to this podcast the other day. It was wonderful. Good job. Uh, anyway.

• 53:11Shaan Puri?

  Can you tell how the first time y'all met? How did you, because I think when people meet somebody that they know and admire, they often blow it by totally fangirling over them. Uh, what was the story? Do you even remember? Like, what was the first interaction where it became?

• 53:24Sam Parr?

  Dude, okay. The, the, the funny story is I was on the way home from the hospital after getting a kidney stone and I was super high on morphine. I had gotten a kidney stone and my wife Sarah, who was my girlfriend at the time, was driving me home. It was eight AM because I got the kidney stone at like five o'clock in the morning. I was coming home eight AM. I see Tim walking in front of my house and I was on the passenger seat riding dirty with my seat back because I was all high and shit. And I see him walk by and I go, hold on Sarah, back up. Hey, hey Tim, what are you doing around here, man? And he goes, I lived on the street. I go, that's cool. I'm a big fan. Uh, just got a kidney stone. You got any tips for that? And uh, I was like all obnoxious. And then I saw him again the next day walking his dog and I go, Tim, I just wanted to apologize. I was under the influence.

• 54:09Sam Parr?

  But uh, anyway, I know your books, uh, big fan. Um, what's, what's your dog's name? Yeah. That's it. Right. And then we were just, we were just talking about dogs. That's all. And then eventually he uh, cold emailed me months later when he goes, hey, I heard about the hustle. It seems cool. Do you want to have dinner so we can talk about it? I go to dinner and he goes, wait a minute, you're the guy with the dog. I go, yeah, man, what's going on? It's me, Sam. I'm your neighbor. I didn't ever want to bring up email business to you because uh, you know, I don't want to be tacky. Yeah. So it was a weird thing that we knew each other. And so one day he, after he invested in my company, comes to the office. He sees me drinking a Coke Zero and he goes, hey, man, can I have one of those? I go, yeah, dude, you can have as many as you want. Let me go get you one. I give him one and he chugs it super fast. He goes, can I get one more? I go, yeah, yeah, I got two. I brought them two. He chugs them.

• 54:53Sam Parr?

  We get done with this meeting. There's six of us in the office. I'm in a, we're in a little baby conference room, which is basically a one bedroom, a bedroom in one of the apartments. There's about six of my employees or four of them and then Siobhan was there. And he goes, all right, well, that was a good meeting. And he pushes the Coke cans my way. And I go, what? He goes, you mind throwing those away for me? And I go, yeah, yeah, I'll throw them away. And I take them and he just didn't want to be seen walking out with a diet soda can.

• 55:17Sam Parr?

  That's how particular this guy was. And you know what? I think it's great. I dig it. And whenever we work with Tim, um, if I write something and there's a, a missed comma or something, he's on top of it. Right. And at first I was like, you know, you're really being a pain in the butt. And then I realized, you know what? You're not being a pain in the butt. You are. You're being Tim Ferriss. You are being exactly how you should be. You are protecting your brand. You want things in a very particular way. You're being demanding and I respect that and I like that. And that's when I realized, I don't think I could ever be a personal brand because you have to guard that shit like crazy. You have to be on top of it every single time. It has to be a. It's got to be exactly a very particular way every single time. And that's how you build a really good brand. You have to be on when you're on. I mean,

• 55:59Shaan Puri?

  Sir, there's a phrase I use. I don't know if I made this up or somebody told me this. I have no idea. It was a long time ago, 10 years ago. It's called EPOC. E P O C. It stands for every point of contact. It said, if you want to make a great brand, you need to be congruent. So you need to have something you stand for. All right. Most people don't know what they stand for. They're not clear about it. It's not unique. It's not compelling. It's not, it's not something notable. But once you do that, the second step is at every point of contact, you have to embody that. Right? So you can't be the four hour body and be out of shape. Right? You can't be like, you know, for our work week guy, and then, you know, you're super inefficient and you're working 80 hours a week.

• 56:40Shaan Puri?

  So you have to be congruent at all times. That should be the goal as a brand is to, at every point of contact a customer has with you in any, any place, they're getting that same, they're getting that same thing that you stand for. And, and so that's, that's like an aspirational goal. Of course, you don't do that. It's not, it's not achievable, but it is a mindset to have in order to reinforce the brand many, many times, because people will have experiences with you. Right? This is like Disney World. Disney World has all these things, right? Where they're like, you know, there's no, I forgot what all the things are. It's like, there's no trash cans and there's no like, you can't see the mascots ever taking a smoke break with their head off. You know, you can't see Mickey Mouse smoking a cigarette. It's like, no, we have to be at every point of contact.

• 57:24Shaan Puri?

  This place stands for joy, then everything's got to be joy. All right? The bathroom's got to be joy. The food's got to be joy. Right? Like all these different things. That's what great sort of brand owners are strive to do.

• 57:35Sam Parr?

  And what you and I do, or at least I know I do it, is I test stuff with people. And so in a way, we have a podcast. I mean, I would say we're actually, what you see is what you get. I mean, we, you and I talk like this regardless if the camera's on or not. But I do know like which jokes hit and I'll test them on people. Or I kind of see like, oh, this story I just told, it caught that guy's attention. I should tell it a little bit differently, though. And with Tim and other people, I've seen them repeat phrases like,

• 58:04Sam Parr?

  I don't pretend to be a doctor and I don't play one on TV. Like, that's just like this phrase that he uses. And I guess it kind of hits.

• 58:10Shaan Puri?

  You're so likable.

• 58:11Sam Parr?

  And and and these phrases that I've seen these quote famous people. So a guy like Tim, who else do I know? That's like fits this category. Jack is definitely one of them. Um, Jack Butcher.

• 58:22Shaan Puri?

  I've told the story before on the pod, but Chris Saka did this and it blew me away. I met him in person. And for those who don't know, Chris Saka is like one of the best investors ever to a point where he's already retired. He doesn't now he only invest in climate change stuff because he's like already already won the game of like money and success.

• 58:37Sam Parr?

  He's it's called post economic.

• 58:39Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he's post economic as Balaji taught us. Uh, so I met him in person and he told this story. And as I was telling the story, he had all these little offhand little moments where he's like, he's like, you know, I didn't. I didn't realize that that at the time. Um, or like he'd be like, he'd say something, he'd correct himself. And he'd be like, blah, blah, blah. Well, I guess that would mean this, but blah, blah, blah.

• 59:03Sam Parr?

  Oh, but he used that line on everything, didn't he?

• 59:04Shaan Puri?

  I saw him on CNBC one day and he said the same fucking thing, the exact same fucking way, like a comedian does in their sets. Where a comedian, if you go up there and it feels like a comedian has said this joke a million times, they're bored of it, then it's not funny. But a comedian has to sort of like, it's almost like they're realizing or telling this story for the first time. That's when it really hits. And so I saw him do that and I go, oh, there's levels to this shit. Like, not only do you have to be able to be good at it, this is like, this is like comedy. This is like storytelling. This is like, this is like a play, you know, a Broadway show that goes on on stage every night. And there's a new person in the crowd and they have to do it like it's the, this is a Tuesday night, but no, this is our open.

• 59:47Shaan Puri?

  This is our best performance ever. This is the first time we've ever done it. This show matters the most. And we repeat our lines and I thought, oh, wow, I've never even thought about that. But yeah, I guess it makes sense. You could kind of craft these stories that hit. And you could tell them over and over. Once you have them, that's in your bank and you could, I tell this story, people feel this way about me. And, um, That's cool.

• 1:00:08Sam Parr?

  So I'm gonna try and bring this back to the brand thing, but before I do, another way that you can see this is when you're pitching stuff. So when you're pitching your company to people, you have to, and I mean, I did this well when I, when both when I was selling the company, if I was ever trying to raise money, if I'm ever trying to convince, you know, I do, when I am on other podcasts and also when I am hiring someone. I've got the same pitch and I look at the inflection of my, or I, I, I look at their person's eyebrows and I look at their body language to see where I get them to lean in. And I get, I see where I give it a full backwards and you gotta find these hooks and you constantly gotta throw them out and you gotta see what, what, what bait works. And then you just rinse and repeat and he was like, ooh, that line.

• 1:00:47Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:00:48Sam Parr?

  Or when I said I wanted to be like Ted Turner, fuck, they didn't know who Ted Turner was. Okay. What else do I got?

• 1:00:53Shaan Puri?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 1:00:55Sam Parr?

  So to bring it back to Judge Judy, I don't know how I'm gonna do that.

• 1:00:59Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, fuck, let's just move on. Anyways, cool story about Michael Buffer and Judge Judy. If you didn't know, they made a bunch of money and you know, it pays to have a personal monopoly.

• 1:01:08Sam Parr?

  All right, that's the podcast.