#90 - How a Newsletter Generates $2m With Only 5,000 Subscribers

Joined our private FB group yet? It's a page where people share each others million dollar ideas or what they're already working on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion. This episode Shaan and Sam talk: leadership in turbulent times, the business of roof racks, a newsletter generating $2m, the opportunities in eCommerce, employee surveillance and the rift between Silicon Valley and the media. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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

• 0:07Sam Parr?

  How's the suburbs?

• 0:09Shaan Puri?

  It's good. Actually, I've said good now twice, and it's because my brother-in-law taught me this thing that I've been doing in my head. You know who Jaco Willink is, the guy who's like on Joe Rogan's podcast?

• 0:20Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Navy SEAL.

• 0:22Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, and I actually don't listen to him or whatever. My brother-in-law's like obsessed with him, and he buys his book and like listens to his podcast or whatever, and I just like overheard it. And this guy, he said this guy's shtick is that he's, he's like hardcore about everything, and his thing is like, discipline equals freedom.

• 0:38Sam Parr?

  He's like a David Goggins guy.

• 0:40Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he's just like, you know, torture yourself, and that's what makes you strong, and that's what sets you free, and that's how you get what you want to do, like, get what, get what you want. And so, you know, anytime something goes wrong, like, it'll be like, you know, your business failed, and he'll just be like, good, start a new one. Or like, you know,

• 0:57Sam Parr?

  Right, right, right.

• 0:57Shaan Puri?

  Faster to start the winner. Or he'll be like, you know,

• 1:00Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's always like, I'm gonna make this into something good.

• 1:03Shaan Puri?

  Flat tire, good, time to walk. And it's just like, that's this like, voice in my head now. It's cheesy as hell, but it's actually quite effective to just immediately correct any thought to the, like, to the positive, to the empowering. And it's like, got fired, good, I'm free.

• 1:22Sam Parr?

  Okay, I get it. I'm down with that. Have you read David Goggins' book?

• 1:26Shaan Puri?

  No, I actually don't like these guys, because I hate when I hear them.

• 1:28Sam Parr?

  No, read David Goggins. Goggins is cool. I mean, he's like cringe sometimes, but he's cool. Grew up in an abusive household and overcame a lot, and, you know, he's, he's definitely a good dude and an inspiration. He overdoes it, obviously, but these guys are good. They're not bad.

• 1:44Shaan Puri?

  I know. I, I've already done so much sort of motivation porn that now I need something else. It's like, I don't want to hear that you were like, you know, an orphan who had, you know, no food, and you crawled your way to success. It's like, I want somebody who was doing all right and having to do it great. Or like, you know, they're not even doing great, they're doing pretty good. It's like,

• 2:03Sam Parr?

  Well, let me tell you a good book.

• 2:05Shaan Puri?

  More motivation.

• 2:05Sam Parr?

  Let me tell you a book that I think is doing that for me, but how is it actually?

• 2:10Shaan Puri?

  What, live in the suburbs?

• 2:11Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 2:12Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's fantastic. It's amazing. I swim every day. That's like that alone, that one thing. I say that and like, no one gives a shit because it doesn't sound that interesting or new or novel. But for me, I went from not going in the pool and swimming every day to doing it. And it's like a combination of meditation, a massage and a workout. And it's amazing. And a shower. It's great. It's everything I want.

• 2:35Sam Parr?

  Great, because maybe I'll do it. I'll join you. Okay, you want to hear?

• 2:40Shaan Puri?

  Wait, are you back in SF?

• 2:42Sam Parr?

  I'm in my house in San Francisco. It looks messy because I've moved everything, so.

• 2:46Shaan Puri?

  Okay, you should come over then. Come over for the next podcast. We'll hang out here, we'll swim, and then we'll do the podcast live.

• 2:52Sam Parr?

  Okay, I'm down. I'm in San Francisco now, but I've packed everything up. I leave August 1st. I'm gonna go to, what's the place? Park City for a week. Because like I said, I wanted to hang out in Utah. And then I'm gonna go to St. Louis for two weeks, and then I'm gonna go to New York. I sound bougie saying this. I'm gonna stay in the Hamptons for a couple of weeks, and then I'm gonna rent a place in Brooklyn for a little while. And then maybe I'll go to Asheville, North Carolina. And then maybe back here. I don't know.

• 3:19Shaan Puri?

  All right. I like it.

• 3:20Sam Parr?

  Let's talk about this book real quick that I started reading. So, okay, and it relates to what you're talking about a little bit. So I'm, I love history. I'm a history buff. And I started reading Leadership in Turbulent Times. It's by this wonderful woman named Doris something. She wrote the book by Abraham Lincoln. What's it called? The?

• 3:39Shaan Puri?

  Oh, yeah, it's like Alliance of Enemies or some shit like that.

• 3:42Sam Parr?

  Something like that. And it's, it's great. It's, I haven't read that one, but everyone talks about that one being great. Anyway, it's good because when I get, I'm like you, where I'm like, oh, I don't want to hear about all this motivational stuff. But this stuff actually is motivational. Imagine being Abraham Lincoln and like born without electricity and like, now I'm gonna go and I'm gonna like, free the slaves or Lewis and Clark and like, I'm gonna like go.

• 4:06Shaan Puri?

  You tweeted about this today.

• 4:08Sam Parr?

  I did, because when you think about it, I'm like, oh, I can't decide between living in the suburbs or not. And I'm like, fucking Lewis and Clark, like.

• 4:15Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I'm like, DoorDash isn't loading. God, DoorDash. And then you're like, Lewis and Clark walked across like the fucking ocean and mapped the whole thing and like had no electricity.

• 4:25Sam Parr?

  It's like, should I raise funding or not? Or how much should I pay myself? Or like all this bullshit. It's like, dude, these guys like were were the first white Americans and they like discovered this whole area for three years. And I'm like, oh, okay, this is easy. This is an easy conversation. I'm not going to discuss what time I should record the podcast.

• 4:46Shaan Puri?

  Okay, but this book, what's the book about? Is it about Abraham Lincoln?

• 4:49Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so it's called Leadership in Turbulent Times. This woman is a historian. She's she's she's a wonderful writer. And it looks at FDR, who had polio and had to lead America through World War Two, or the beginnings of World War Two, Abraham Lincoln, who came from nothing and then emancipated the slaves, Teddy Roosevelt, whose mother and wife died in the same house on the same day, and his child was born. So in one day, in the same home, his wife died, his mother died, and his daughter was born.

• 5:21Shaan Puri?

  Oh, my God.

• 5:22Sam Parr?

  Same day. And so he kind of led the Spanish-American War, I believe it was. And then who else is it about? Lyndon B. Johnson, who had to take over after JFK was assassinated. And so it talks about what the modern person can learn from leadership in turbulent times.

• 5:37Shaan Puri?

  All right. I like it. And you're done with it, or you're in the middle?

• 5:40Sam Parr?

  I'm in the middle of it, but I just find this fascinating that I think.

• 5:43Shaan Puri?

  Where does it rank? You know, one to 10? Because like, a book can be interesting, but then there's like the life-changing books that you're like, no, you have to read that. And then this one is like, it sounds like this one is like, oh, it's a cool read. It's not a.

• 5:54Sam Parr?

  It's a cool read so far, but I would say, I wouldn't say it's the book, but what is life-changing is learning about like men like Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.

• 6:03Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 6:03Sam Parr?

  These guys were like true, like, I'm very patriotic and I love America and I love reading about these people who who helped shape America. Because what makes America special to me is this optimistic mentality and this we can bond, we can get together and we can overcome this problem. And these guys just do that to the max.

• 6:21Shaan Puri?

  Love it. Okay. I don't think I'm gonna read it, but I like.

• 6:24Sam Parr?

  I'll finish it and tell you.

• 6:26Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I like that you like it. And I'm not, I'm not in that world yet. By the way, you bought the Happy Body when I mentioned it last time. Have you continued doing that workout?

• 6:34Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 6:34Shaan Puri?

  Or diet as well?

• 6:36Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's not a diet necessarily. I just, I, I mean, I already did it.

• 6:40Shaan Puri?

  There is, there is a like strict food plan.

• 6:43Sam Parr?

  But that's what I'm saying. It's not that strict. Like it just is, you just eat under a certain calories and eat healthy.

• 6:48Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, sure.

• 6:49Sam Parr?

  Then I, I do that. I mean, I, I lose weight. Like, I mean, I, I'm, I'm 15% body fat, probably.

• 6:55Shaan Puri?

  Are you, are you, because you know, they have that table. That's like for this height, you should be this much, this weight, this much body fat.

• 7:01Sam Parr?

  I'm five pounds over.

• 7:03Shaan Puri?

  Five pounds over. Okay, gotcha. Nice. I started.

• 7:05Sam Parr?

  I weigh 198. Oh, no, I'm, I'm, I weigh 198. I'm supposed to weigh 190.

• 7:10Shaan Puri?

  I started doing it like five days ago and I like it. And it's so weird. It's not like a normal exercise program. It's like, like literally my wife laughed at me. She's like, oh, she's like, I was doing it and she really wanted me to just like hold the baby and like do my shift. And then she was like mocking me, talking to the baby. She's like, oh, sorry, daddy's doing a really strenuous workout. Look at him. Cause it's like, it looks like you're doing absolutely nothing. You're lifting pretty much a single weight. No, I mean, it's like, you literally start with like 10 pound weights and.

• 7:38Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but my back can't, like, can you do the, can you like, put your, can you put your hands away above and squat down?

• 7:45Shaan Puri?

  No, not the squat part. Oh, but that's limited by like hamstrings and hips more than, like, my back is fine. It's my hips and hamstrings that suck. Anyways, this is not a fitness podcast. It's like, hey, you want to hear about fitness from Sean who doesn't, is not fit? This is the podcast for you. But it's a cool book and you should check it out. And it's very unorthodox. That's what I kind of like about it. I hate doing anything that seems mainstream. So this works for me. It gets me excited to do it.

• 8:09Sam Parr?

  I've been doing it and it ma, it makes my back feel better.

• 8:12Shaan Puri?

  Okay. So we gotta decide something first on, in the last podcast, at the very end, we were like, okay, interesting question. If you had to make a million bucks in the next two months, and you could only start with, I think like 10 grand of like, you only had 10 grand of budget, how would you do it? And we had said, we're going to come back on Monday with a bunch of good, we thought about it on the spot and it wasn't great. And we said, all right, we'll come back Monday and we'll, we'll, we'll think. And so it was July 4th this weekend. So I don't know. Did you, did you think about, are we ready to talk about it? Or are we going to punt it one, one episode and think about it?

• 8:45Sam Parr?

  I'm not ready to talk about it, but yeah, I thought about it a lot.

• 8:49Shaan Puri?

  I thought about it as well and I um oh is our next episode the 100th 100th episode okay that would be a good special one.

• 8:56Sam Parr?

  The thing is is it's gonna be so much work, but I think I'm down.

• 9:00Shaan Puri?

  Oh, to actually go pull it off.

• 9:02Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I think I could do it, though.

• 9:04Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think you could and should do it. Okay, so we're gonna punt it one one episode, let's say, so that we can come to this table with good answers. Because everything we talk about on here is off the cuff. Basically, during the week, we have this little Google spreadsheet that we, you know, if I'm out about and I see something or I'm talking to somebody or I'm meeting somebody and they say something interesting, I'll just toss it on that sheet. But don't do a ton of research and I don't know what you're gonna talk about. You don't know what I'm gonna talk about when we show up. So it's very off the cuff. But for this one, I wanna have thought about it and I wanna have researched so that I can have a good.

• 9:37Sam Parr?

  When I when I normally I laugh at people and they say like, oh, I don't want to tell you my idea. And I'm like, dude, shut up. Your idea is like, I've already thought of it or someone has thought of it. Like, that's not a big deal. But in this case, it actually is true. So when we talk about it, we uh will have will kind of have to be subliminal a little.

• 9:54Shaan Puri?

  Oh, I'm I'm just gonna say what I'm gonna do and I'm gonna do it. If and if somebody could beat me to it for, you know, good on you. But uh most people are just gonna enjoy their journey. All right, I have a bunch of other topics that are interesting that we can talk about.

• 10:05Sam Parr?

  I want to tell you about some research that I've done that shocked me. Okay, so let me pull it up because I didn't list it all in here. Okay, so car racks, you know, car racks?

• 10:14Shaan Puri?

  No, what is that?

• 10:15Sam Parr?

  Okay, so when you buy a car, most of the time, uh you have to do two things if you want to carry luggage on top of your car. First, you have to install the rack.

• 10:24Shaan Puri?

  Okay, gotcha.

• 10:25Sam Parr?

  Then you have to install the thing that you want to carry stuff. So you could wanna basket and you could carry stuff in the basket. You could install luggage, you could install bike rack, you could install. So there's two components of this. Now, these racks cost $500 to $1,000 for a rack and then another $500 to $3,000 for the luggage. And.

• 10:44Sam Parr?

  So I started researching this and I thought it was crazy and I found this crazy article that Berkeley, it's called Berkeley Lab, I guess it's funded by Berkeley University. So listen to this. In 2015, roof racks were responsible for about 1% of lightweight vehicle fuel consumption nationwide. That comes out to be about 100 million gallons of gasoline. So what happens when you put just the rack, not the cargo, just the small rack, is your gas efficiency, your fuel efficiency goes down 5 to 25%. So if you have a car that gets 25 miles a gallon, it goes down, what, 2.5 miles a gallon? And a lot of times people leave the racks on when they drive around. And I thought that was crazy.

• 11:29Sam Parr?

  So let me tell you one more stat, which is the study calculated that the additional fuel consumption caused by roof racks is about six times larger than the anticipated fuel savings from fuel cell vehicles and 40% of the anticipated fuel savings from electric battery vehicles in 2040. That's crazy to me. And so when I read that, I was like, I want to buy the most fuel efficient car rack there is. And there weren't a lot of things out there. And let me tell you about the company that I bought a car rack from. They're publicly traded. They mostly only sell car racks and they do about...

• 12:07Shaan Puri?

  What's their name?

• 12:08Sam Parr?

  It's called Thule, T-H-U-L-E. It's a publicly traded company in, what's S E, Switzerland. They do about $700 million in revenue with about $150 million in profit. Pretty big business and only on car racks. Is that crazy?

• 12:27Shaan Puri?

  That's really crazy. So the market cap on here says 25 billion. Now, is this in US dollars?

• 12:32Sam Parr?

  That's French franc or that's Swiss franc divided by 10 about, I think it's 0.11.

• 12:37Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so $2.5 billion market cap company for car roof racks.

• 12:42Sam Parr?

  Car roof racks.

• 12:42Shaan Puri?

  Mostly car roof racks.

• 12:44Sam Parr?

  And the study that I read, they go, yeah, Americans are buying roof racks like crazy, like it's growing at a really high rate.

• 12:50Shaan Puri?

  I believe it.

• 12:51Sam Parr?

  And I didn't believe that. And then I started like looking around and I'm like, oh my God, every freaking car has one.

• 12:57Shaan Puri?

  So when I go on Amazon, the racks look like they're like 70 to 200 bucks. So which ones are you talking about?

• 13:04Sam Parr?

  Well, I don't know what you're looking at, but because it's quite confusing because when you buy a rack, you have to buy the part that just attaches to the car and then you gotta buy the rack that attaches to the fittings. And then you gotta buy the cargo part that goes to the rack.

• 13:14Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 13:16Sam Parr?

  It's incredibly expensive. I mean, I'm looking at right now.

• 13:18Shaan Puri?

  So you just bought these?

• 13:20Sam Parr?

  I bought it used on Craigslist. I got them used everything for $600.

• 13:24Shaan Puri?

  And what about, uh, when you buy it used, okay, you bought it on Craigslist. If you were gonna go to a marketplace to buy this used, which marketplace would you go to?

• 13:31Sam Parr?

  I went to Craigslist.

• 13:33Shaan Puri?

  But if you weren't, if it wasn't Craigslist, where would you go? Is there like a marketplace? Okay, so you go to the kind of broad one. So there's no like, is there like a vertical marketplace for basically outdoorsy equipment? Like, you know, campers and surfboards and, you know, tents.

• 13:47Sam Parr?

  Well, campers, yeah, campers have their own thing.

• 13:50Shaan Puri?

  A lot of what we talk about is unbundling these big marketplaces into vertically focused marketplaces. And so I'm sure that, so I'm sure there's already one for this, but I haven't heard of it because I'm not a outdoorsy type.

• 14:01Sam Parr?

  Maybe. I didn't, I definitely didn't see it, but there wasn't a product that I wanted to ship. I wanted to go, um.

• 14:06Shaan Puri?

  Pick it up.

• 14:07Sam Parr?

  I drove like half an hour away and I picked it up because they're huge. I mean, this thing is like, it's like as big as a car roof.

• 14:13Shaan Puri?

  Right, right, right. So you wanted it to be local. Okay.

• 14:15Sam Parr?

  But isn't that amazing that, A, I can't believe how, I was shocked at how inefficient.

• 14:21Shaan Puri?

  This is the same thing. It's a hidden in plain sight. I see these on cars all the time. I never even once thought to myself, because I'm not buying it, right? Like, who makes these? How much do they cost? How much is that company worth, right? But like, boom, billion dollar company, hidden in plain sight, friggin roof racks of cars. And, you know, I'm curious how many, you know, D to C competitors they have already.

• 14:40Sam Parr?

  There was a few Chinese knockoffs on, uh, Amazon, but I didn't want to buy it because Thule is like, so I bought a Volvo car, like a nice new Volvo car, and they're not like luxury, but they're like quality, right? And Thule is like probably the Volvo of car racks where it's, it's not like the most expensive, but it's like.

• 15:00Shaan Puri?

  And people spend, people spend for quality on outdoor stuff, like whether it's like REI gear or, you know, like, that's just like a common thing I see. It's not just that people spend on their hobby. It's like specifically outdoor stuff, they'll pay more for the rugged, sturdy, reliable thing. And I, I understand why. It makes, makes total sense. Okay, I have another niche thing unless you wanted to say anymore about fuel.

• 15:23Sam Parr?

  I just thought that was crazy because A, I couldn't find one that was marketing it as like the most fuel efficient rack and I was amazed at how big these businesses were. I thought like it was like something started in like Portland that was like had thirty employees.

• 15:38Shaan Puri?

  Right. Alright, so I saw this tweet by this guy Chris Back and I don't, I've never met this guy. He seems legit. His bio is that he has three exits to Indeed, Zillow and Notel. So I don't know who this guy is exactly. He's a founder slash operator. He follows me, so I think he might listen to the podcast. So his handle is-

• 15:58Sam Parr?

  He tweeted something that pissed me off the other day. I know who this guy is.

• 16:00Shaan Puri?

  His handle is Chris J Back, Back with B A K K E.

• 16:06Shaan Puri?

  So he tweeted this and I thought it was really interesting. I wanted to shout it out. So he goes, he was like, you know, one of my favorite small business ideas is to pick a hobby that you spend too much money on, create a newsletter for that hobby and then market it to other enthusiasts via Reddit, Twitter, Facebook. For example, the Ferrari Market Letter has 5,000 email subscribers and does 2 million in revenue with a team of two. And I was like, what? Like, that was crazy to me. I hadn't heard of this. And you're knee deep in the newsletter world. Did you know about this one specifically? I know this whole thing won't surprise you, but did you know about this one?

• 16:36Sam Parr?

  No, but I think what he's saying is a bit misleading. Well, I went to the ferrari market letter.com. It, yeah, I mean, I guess I get it. Yeah.

• 16:48Shaan Puri?

  He said, breakdown of someone who's knowledgeable about their business. They make 600 to 900,000 from five to 6,000 people who will pay about 100 to 200 bucks for online or print access. And then they make another million dollars a year, an annual member to member classified revenue, and then the remainder is from advertising. So the classified revenue, that's like sort of their little marketplace for enthusiasts to, to transact. And then about a million bucks is for people who want the sort of the online and print access to the content. So I thought that was, that was pretty interesting. I had never heard of this before and I thought that it was pretty significant for some, you know, really niche enthusiast hobby.

• 17:28Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and you could do this for a variety of things. I mean, hell, you could just pick Porsche or Mercedes that both have fanatical followings. Yeah, I buy it. I'm not even remotely surprised about this. If you go to the website, it says they're celebrating their 45th year. So it must be two guys that are like in their 60s or something or older, and they just love Ferraris. So yeah, I buy it. Way simpler than you think.

• 17:53Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, and I bet, you know, the content is so niche that, you know, you just get this disproportionate engagement from people who are, you know, the more niche, the more passion, generally speaking. So, so I think that's the, and then when it's Ferrari is your niche, well, then the money comes with it.

• 18:10Sam Parr?

  And I'm a, I'm a huge fan of cars and vintage cars and things like that. There's a few people in this space. There's Hemming Motor News. So if you go to hemmings.com, it's a company that's been around for, since 1954. If you told me this business made $50 million, I would not be surprised. It's a classified site for vintage cars. Additionally, just, if anyone wants to watch, wants to watch a business get built in big, real time, you have to follow this. So, one of my favorite YouTubers is a car blogger, carsandbids.com. I'm following him building this. I think this is gonna be quite large.

• 18:48Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I like it.

• 18:49Sam Parr?

  He's hiring for it. It's gonna be pretty big. So watch that.

• 18:53Shaan Puri?

  Cool. Your turn. What else, what else you got?

• 18:55Sam Parr?

  Oh, okay. So I saw a chart, and this is like, e-commerce compared to retail, it's only like 25%, it's only 25 or 20%.

• 19:05Shaan Puri?

  Of all retail, yeah.

• 19:06Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and it's crazy when you think about that.

• 19:08Shaan Puri?

  Which, by the way, that used to be like 6 or 7%, like, only a handful of years ago. And I remember, and this was like, Amazon was here, like, it was, and I remember seeing that and being like, that's crazy that it's only 6 or 7% penetration. So now, I guess, you're saying it's like 20%, 25%?

• 19:23Sam Parr?

  Ish. Yeah. I don't know how you measure that, but ish. I think that e-commerce, like, when I think of e-commerce, when I think of like, what you and our friends do, I'm like, I respect it, but for me, that, that's not for me. I don't want to do that. That's boring. But then, I'm like, when you see that growth, you're like, that is pretty neat. So what do you think that would look like at 50 or 60%? I mean, What do you think that's not being sold online? So a few things that are interesting to me is homes are not really being bought online. I've I've thought about this since 2012 when I worked at an apartment company. I was like, oh, someone's going to rent apartments online without seeing them. Once the REED mapping is a thing, which Matterport's doing that. Diamond rings, I bought an incredibly expensive diamond ring on bluenile.com. So diamonds are being sold.

• 20:08Sam Parr?

  Cars are being sold. What else is, what's not being sold now that will?

• 20:13Shaan Puri?

  I think businesses are going to be bought and sold online. Obviously today, online businesses are, but you know, brick and mortar sort of offline businesses like, you know, my uncle bought a liquor store, you know, and I was like, how did you do it? And he's like, well, you know, in the newspaper, you see an ad. And there are things like LoopNet out there that you can buy and sell, you know, businesses. But they're not as common and it's not as well developed as, you know, an online business marketplace would be.

• 20:40Sam Parr?

  What else?

• 20:41Shaan Puri?

  I think more so than new shit being sold online that's not online is just more, more percentage, right? So it's like, okay, of of the amount of groceries I I used to order online, like online groceries was a thing. But now it's for a household like mine, we do it 50% of the time now. We used to do it 5% of the time, right? We only used to do it when we're in a pinch and now we'll do it, you know, generally, unless we really need to go grab something specific from somewhere. And so I think it's just going to be the market share of of each individual like item is going to be more and more bought online, right? So clothes and glasses, like these have been for sale online. But out of 20 people, maybe one was buying their glasses from Warby Parker.

• 21:25Shaan Puri?

  And 19 were still going to Costco or wherever and picking out frames, LensCrafters or some shit. And that number is going to go from one to five to eight to 12 to 20, you know, eventually. And so, so I think that that's, that's more where the change is going to happen. It's just what percentage of people buy X item online today? They're all like kind of single digits out of 20 and it'll be double digits out of 20 when it's over.

• 21:49Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I'm still just kind of thinking about everything. I think that there, have you read about Blue Nile?

• 21:55Shaan Puri?

  I've read about Blue Nile and also there's another one. The name slips my mind, but there's another diamond company like that online. But tell me about what you know about it. I don't know much besides the name.

• 22:05Sam Parr?

  Okay, so Blue Nile was founded by this ex McKinsey guy. Seems like a really interesting guy, way under the radar. Blue Nile is, it's now owned by Bain Capital. It does, it went public. It did north and $500 million in sales. This guy also helped start Moosejaw. I believe he also started or helped found as an advisor Chewy.com. So a lot of interesting companies. They were acquired by Bain. They did hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. Incredibly fascinating. You can buy diamond ring on there up to probably a million dollars and they refund you within two weeks if you don't like it. And so I actually bought my engagement ring for Sarah on there and I timed it. So when I proposed, she still had 10 days to return it if she didn't like it.

• 22:50Shaan Puri?

  I timed it so that she could open up the package and get her ring from there. So why did you pick this versus somebody else? Is it cheaper? Is it better? What's better about it?

• 22:59Sam Parr?

  It's interesting because when you go and buy a diamond ring, like everyone's like, oh, I got a guy, right? And like when you go to like, when you've got a guy, that means that like the selection probably isn't huge. And you don't actually know like what's what. You don't know what's good. You don't know if you're being sold to. And so because of the, because they're online, you have far more transparency about what quality is this? Is this company Blue Nile reputable? You have a more of a guarantee. You have a larger selection, things like that.

• 23:25Shaan Puri?

  Right. And what do you think about this like alt rings where, you know, people are like, some people are anti diamonds because they're like, hey, diamonds are not always ethically sourced, blah, blah, blah. We should do, you know, alternative rings that, you know, stand for something by using alternative materials, right? We've seen this with alt milks. We've seen it with alt beers. Are we going to see this with alt rings? What do you think?

• 23:45Sam Parr?

  Maybe. The difference between those things is that like you would only buy a special diamond if it were as convenient or as cheap or as good as another one, like. People who say they care about like, is this ethically sourced? I don't actually think that that many people would let their wallets. Like if something costs $5,000 more, I don't think they would actually do that. So I don't think that it's like that cool of a thing. And I think that everyone says, don't buy a big fancy diamond for your girlfriend or your fiance or whatever. And it's usually bullshit. You're like, oh, whatever, whatever makes her happy, I'll do.

• 24:21Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, also they wear it every single day, uh, which gets a lot of value. So I think it's a little different than buying like a jacket or like a shirt or whatever.

• 24:28Sam Parr?

  I was gonna buy one, like a cheap, like, well, I had a budget and then I talked to Ramit. My friend Ramit from I Will Teach You To Be Rich, he's those, dude, this is the whole point of having money is to make your loved ones happy. Whatever they want, just get it. And so my budget ended up six X-ing.

• 24:45Shaan Puri?

  Okay, well, what was it?

• 24:46Sam Parr?

  Tens of thousands of dollars.

• 24:51Shaan Puri?

  They say it's supposed to be what, three months salary, something like that?

• 24:54Sam Parr?

  Three years salary.

• 24:55Shaan Puri?

  Three years of salary? I heard three, three months of salary. Okay, I'm gonna stick with months. Um, I'm not, I'm not trying to do three years.

• 25:01Sam Parr?

  All right, what do you got?

• 25:02Shaan Puri?

  Okay, a couple other, um, random things. Okay, so I saw this, um, article about this idea of productivity tracking by your employer. Okay, so everybody's going remote. And, you know, one of the reasons people didn't want to allow work from home was this question of like, are people really gonna be working? Are they just gonna open up their laptop and then go watch The Simpsons? And so some companies have started installing on their like employee laptops, you know, productivity trackers, which are really kind of like spyware for, um, you know, you know, it's your boss over your shoulder at all times. And so there's a bunch of these that are out there. They all say that they're growing like crazy. So there's one called Transparent Business, which is, they said they grew 500% so far through COVID.

• 25:47Shaan Puri?

  Uh, there's one called Proto Score. I haven't looked into how big these businesses are or how they're doing, but they're sort of like, I never heard of them because I think it's not, like, this is very anti-Silicon Valley, um, where like, I think if a tech, if a tech company tried to do this, I think there would be like mass backlash. And they basically, you know, they track your, you know, when were you online, when were you offline, when were you idle, when were you typing? When were you mouse moving? What websites did you visit? Like all these types of things. And so I'm curious, what is your opinion of this? So I want your opinion in two ways. One is as a boss who's going to have a widely wrote team, would you ever consider doing this? That's question one. Question two is, what do you think of these as like business spaces or ideas to build in?

• 26:27Sam Parr?

  Okay, so I don't know how I feel. Let me tell you this. We talked about, I just pulled it up while you were talking about. We talked about Joe Lamont. You remember Joe Lamont?

• 26:36Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 26:36Sam Parr?

  Joe Lamont, the guy in Austin who buys companies and then outsources a lot of-

• 26:40Shaan Puri?

  What was the name of his company thing?

• 26:42Sam Parr?

  Trilogy Software and Trilogy Capital. He's a multi-billionaire likely. He owns dozens of different-

• 26:49Shaan Puri?

  Former Billy of the Week, which is his number one.

• 26:51Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Yeah, that's his number one. That's what he's known for. And anyway, he buys companies and he outsources a lot of the the simple programming work to India for $15 an hour. And he developed software that tracks keystrokes and takes a picture of the person's screen every 10 minutes.

• 27:11Shaan Puri?

  Right. That's what this does as well. It does screenshots every X minutes.

• 27:16Sam Parr?

  So what do I think of this? I don't know. I don't know. I will tell you that as a boss, like, that is one of my fears is that we're not like achieving, we're not getting done what we want to get done. What do you think about this? Like, do you, do you, I don't even know if you want to talk about this. Do you feel more productive as remote or not?

• 27:33Shaan Puri?

  Well, like, for example, I'm recording this on my non-Amazon laptop because I, I assume that Amazon knows everything that's going on on my laptop. I just sort of assume that, you know, the employer can access anything that I do on my laptop. So I, I use my personal laptop for personal stuff. I use my work one for work stuff. I would not implement this at all because I think it backfires. So first is like the context. So there's, there's this game of leverage, right? For most companies in America, the employer has all the leverage. Uh, when I talk to my cousins and aunts and they live in Texas or, you know, North Carolina or wherever. They're constantly worried that they're gonna lose their job, get laid off, get, you know, in trouble by their boss and like, you know, it's like, oh, I have this many vacation days.

• 28:18Shaan Puri?

  I have to give this much notice beforehand. I have to clock in at this time, have to clock out at this time. And to them, the sort of Silicon Valley way of working where like, literally, we have an unlimited vacation policy, which is controversial, but like, in theory, means you could do whatever the hell you want. I can work whatever hours I want, from wherever I want. If I want to change jobs, they're like, okay, you know, we just want to retain you as talent. So yeah, sure, if you want to switch, you know, how can I help? You know, if I say I want to go leave and start a startup, I will have their backing because they, in tech companies, the leverage is with the employee, especially with engineers, but other employees as well. So the leverage here is way off, which is why companies here will do your laundry and, you know, feed you food and have, there's

• 29:00Shaan Puri?

  perks war because the companies want to retain talent and it's so easy for talent to just, at the snap of a finger, go work for your competitor and earn more money and have a better job title. You know, you can hop around so easily here. So I think in Silicon Valley, the ship won't fly. Outside-

• 29:17Sam Parr?

  Well, hold on. Do you think that that leverage still exists remotely? Because with this environment, I think it doesn't. I think people don't want to get fired. I think we have just switched to we are now an employer company.

• 29:28Shaan Puri?

  I don't think it's binary, but I think on the spectrum, it's definitely, the pendulum is swinging back the other way because now the pendulum, now the change is, oh, you're the Silicon Valley sort of like diva engineer who's not happy with their 500K a year salary? Well, guess what? Like, I can hire your replacement in Canada tomorrow because you're working remotely anyways. What do I care? I'm just gonna hire the best talent. Now my talent pool is the whole world. So that's gonna take power away from the sort of diva culture of Silicon Valley. Like today, literally in Slack, I had a conversation with somebody who goes- Yeah, you know, after, after this next stock grant, I'm only gonna be making 700K a year. So, so it's fucked. I'm out. And I was like,

• 30:07Sam Parr?

  Wait, what? They, they really said that?

• 30:08Shaan Puri?

  Only here can they go, can you say, I'm only making 700K a year. God, it's so fucked. I'm out. Because it's all relative.

• 30:16Sam Parr?

  They really think that they're like broke then?

• 30:18Shaan Puri?

  It's not that they're broke. It's that they were making more before with their stock grants. And now the company's not giving out a big fat stock grant anymore. Cause like, company's more mature. It doesn't need you to do that anymore.

• 30:28Sam Parr?

  Did anyone say anything to that person?

• 30:30Shaan Puri?

  I did. I was like, I was like, yeah, you know, sorry, sorry for your, sorry for your loss. And then I said like, you know, um, only in Silicon Valley can you say, my comp will just be 700K. It's fucked. I'm out. And so, you know, he, it was just like a joke, I guess. I don't know. It was crazy.

• 30:48Sam Parr?

  Did they realize how douche they sounded?

• 30:51Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. I mean, he was saying it in private. He wasn't trying to like, you know, flex or anything, but he, you know, yeah, it was, I, I think he realizes it cause it's insane. If you, if you say it out loud, it sounds insane. But anyways, I guess my point is, I don't think in a situation where the talent has leverage, you can get away with stuff like this. I also don't think this is actually the best way to help people be productive. I think a better way would be to go to some like OKR system where you say, look, you're accountable for this key result. And you gotta hit it. I don't care what hours you work. I don't care where, where you work from. I don't care. What, if you use Google Docs or if you use Microsoft Word, I don't care about any of your how. You just have to deliver outcomes. And, um, you're responsible for those outcomes. And if you're consistently hitting outcomes, cool. Uh, you, you, you get more freedom, more trust.

• 31:36Shaan Puri?

  And if you're consistently not hitting your outcomes, you're out of here and I'm gonna get somebody in who is. So I think that's how you make sure that people work when they're remote. Is you set the outcomes and then you measure, are they hitting them consistently or not? I don't think screenshotting the screen is the way to do it.

• 31:49Sam Parr?

  Let me ask you two questions. The first is, do you think that people in Silicon Valley are just pussies?

• 31:56Shaan Puri?

  Pussies, yes, but I think it's not what you mean. So when I say that, I mean, they don't have courage. Courage to take risks, to do what they believe in, to do what they want, to do what they say they believe in. I, I often find discrepancies, a lot of discrepancies. But you're talking about for like, spoiled is kinda what you're talking about.

• 32:16Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so tell me what you mean. You obviously do think that.

• 32:19Sam Parr?

  Well, it's like I meet these nerds who like don't know anything, but they're like autistic and smart. And I'm like, I fucking love those people. Like, one of my best friends is like this autistic kid who is like a genius and he's like my soulmate. Like, I love him because he's like, just like, he's like, well, it's just like logically, it makes sense to do this. I'm like, fuck, you speak to me. Um, and then there's other people who are like, we need to have a discussion about this. We all need to vote. Um, you know, like if, if we don't get a diversity coach in, like we're quitting. If, uh, this, this is all this, but it's like, dude, you got to understand that like you are, this is a J O B, baby.

• 33:01Sam Parr?

  You gotta like, you, you have, you don't really have that many rights other than the agreement that you guys, you're, you and your employer have had, like you don't get to vote on shit. You know what I mean? And that kind of, and that frustrates me and it makes people soft.

• 33:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I definitely think that people are soft. Um, but and myself included because I don't go through hard times. And so if you don't go through hard times, you're gonna get soft over time. And the hard times are like super relative. It's like, like the guy who's like, I'm only making seven hundred K a year, I'm out of here. Like, that's hard times to him or, you know, if hard times for people would be like, you know, they, they took away the kombucha in the, in the company fridge, like this sucks. Like, life got worse, quality of life got worse. And so I do think that Silicon Valley, or I'll say tech companies in general have it so good. We have it so good that it's easy to become spoiled. It's easy to lose sight of like what real work looks like, you know? Uh, or how hard work can be.

• 34:03Shaan Puri?

  I shouldn't say real work looks, I should say how hard work can be. Because there's people out there who literally work in a sand mine and they just shovel sand all day. And like, that's part, that could be you if the genetic lottery worked out slightly differently. If you were born somewhere else or with one different gene, you know, like, so, so I think that I would agree with you that Silicon Valley has gone very soft. I also think it makes it very hard to lead a company because if you, like, I don't know. I don't know if you experienced this at the hustle, but like. I'm guessing some of the things you mentioned or some of the things you've heard like, oh, we need a diversity coach or like, hey, we need to, like this month, you know, we need to install a third bathroom that is gender neutral or whatever the thing of the day is, right? Whatever the new expectation of what the work environment should be.

• 34:48Shaan Puri?

  I need to be fully remote. I need unlimited vacation. I need, you know, career track progression, whatever it is. Expectations rise.

• 34:56Sam Parr?

  It does make it hard. And I think that the way that I'm gonna solve this in the future is, when I started my company, I was 23, which meant I didn't know like what I stood for. Or I did know, but my opinion has evolved and my opinion will continue to evolve. But now I, a little bit more confidently, know what I stand for, which is, treat people fairly, don't take a lot of bullshit, like just get done, do what you're saying gonna do, just shut the fuck up, like, don't complain to me about meaningless stuff. Like, talk to me about like how we can actually make a difference, like, eh, what I think are important things. And anyway, I think that I will make that clear early on, what we stand for.

• 35:31Shaan Puri?

  Right. And then you'll attract, hopefully, the people who resonate with that and they want to work in that environment. And you will deter people who do not want that environment. And then you wouldn't be happy and they wouldn't be happy. So I think that's part of it. But I think you're more old school than what's allowed now. So how are you gonna adjust?

• 35:47Sam Parr?

  Well, I don't think I am. I don't know if I am that. I just don't know if people are saying it like, but for example, well, I'm gonna, the way I'm gonna adjust is I just have to face the pain. I'm gonna, I'm doing it now. I just have to deal with the repercussions of people not agreeing with me. I'm like, I'm sorry, but tough. This is just how it is. So I gotta deal with the fallout. But like what I stand for, I guess, is like, treat people fairly, be respectful, focus on making a lot of money and building a huge business. Whereas before it was like, we're gonna change the way X. It's like, no dude, I just wanna build a huge company. And I don't care like how we do it, as long as it's like ethical and legal, I wanna build a big business. And I think like, so I'm just like unabashed. I'm not like nervous to say that.

• 36:26Shaan Puri?

  Nobody disagrees with that. So the controversial part will be where you're like, this is a J O B baby. And like, we got, and like, yeah, shit's gonna be hard and shut the fuck up. You're not gonna always agree, blah, blah, blah, right? That's the part where, like, nobody, nobody disagrees with. Let's be legal, let's be ethical, let's build a big business, let's make a lot of money. Nobody would shake their head no at that. It's what trade offs are required to do that sometimes.

• 36:50Sam Parr?

  Well, like, let me clarify, when I say shut the fuck up, what I'm, I didn't actually mean that. I mean, I listen to everyone. I'm like, all right, let's talk. What do you want to talk about now?

• 36:59Shaan Puri?

  I can vouch for that, yeah.

• 37:01Sam Parr?

  There's a difference between listening and saying, I agree with you, let's do it.

• 37:04Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, listen versus obey.

• 37:06Sam Parr?

  Right.

• 37:06Shaan Puri?

  I always listen, I rarely obey.

• 37:09Sam Parr?

  Exactly. And so I'll have people, I'm like, look, we can have a discussion and I'm going to explain my opinion. And I welcome you to explain your opinion. It doesn't mean we're going to agree though, but we can like hash it out and try to change each other's minds. But at the end of the day, if I'm the decision maker, we're doing it my way. And sometimes someone else is a decision maker. It's like, I think you're fucking crazy, but I, I will follow your opinion.

• 37:28Shaan Puri?

  Right, right. If you're the decision maker on that, it's your call. You took all the inputs and I've said that I trust your judgment after you take inputs. And as long as you keep taking inputs and you're operating with, with clear intent, I'm, I'm cool. Even if we, you know, Amazon has this value that I really like, which is called disagree and commit. And I think that that should be like, in every team I work on now, I'm going to be like, by the way, this is one of the values is that we can disagree, but we can still need to be able to commit to going and doing the thing, even if you disagree. And that doesn't mean always disagree and never listen. No, it just means disagree and commit sometimes.

• 38:00Shaan Puri?

  Okay, I like that. The, the other thing that I think is important there is like, I think some people in their job, they think that the company's job is to, I would say they act entitled in a way that makes me feel like they think the company's job is to make a happy workplace, that all the employees are happy as the number one priority. And the thing is, every person who runs a company would want that, of course. But it is not the number one priority. Sometimes it's not even the number two priority, but it's usually, you know, somewhere in the top three, depending on what the fate, what the season of the business is. And so for you, it's like, hey, you know, the number one priority is to grow this into a really big business. Number two is to, let's say, I don't know, whatever it may be. And number three might be to get really great people and give them a great environment to work in so that they're happy

• 38:44Shaan Puri?

  and they're able to feel like they're making progress personally in us, in, in the projects. Right. And it's like, but it must be clear, it's number three, it's not number one. Now that I've worked at a larger tech company, it's very clear to me that. Many people feel like the number one priority should be to have a great workplace where employees are happy. Sometimes at the cost of the other priorities.

• 39:06Sam Parr?

  Like they complain about stuff?

• 39:08Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, they complain about stuff, but it's more like it's not the complaint is very valid. It's the underlying angst of the complaint where it's like, oh, you're very upset that this hasn't been resolved. Because you think this should be resolved as the top priority. This should be like resolving this should be the top priority and whatever trade offs are necessary we make so that employees are happy and the workplace is happy. And it's like, well, sometimes we're going to do things that makes the workplace less happy or makes employees less happy temporarily because it's in service of this, you know, company objective that we have.

• 39:41Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and I don't use the word happy with our team. I like to use the word fulfilled, which is like, I definitely like my logic is or what I tell people and what I believe is I want to work on cool stuff that wins and succeeds and I don't want to do it with cool and interesting people. It doesn't mean I'm because I'm not happy all the time. I hate what I have to do every once in a while, but I also hate like working out sometimes, but it's like, I like looking good naked. So it's like, that's the challenge that you that's the trade off you make, right?

• 40:15Sam Parr?

  Which is like, you want to make $700,000 a year and provide for your family? That's great. We're going to do that. That doesn't mean you're going to enjoy every second of it.

• 40:24Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 40:24Sam Parr?

  And so to me, it's not happy. It's a little bit more about fulfillment.

• 40:27Shaan Puri?

  And in other industries, that trade is very well known and understood by all parties in consulting and investment banking. This trade is understood. We know what's going on. All right, I'm going to be highly paid. Cool, I'm going to have to work my ass off. Okay, you're going to kind of treat me like a, you know, a replaceable part and I have to I have to sort of hustle to stay a cream of the crop. Yeah, like I don't expect anything more than that. Whereas I think in tech companies, there's so much abundance that that has changed. But I don't know, I should stop speaking now because we're going to both get it canceled. Like real quick, you know, in fact, Dave Portnoy, I think had a pretty interesting thing happen where somebody came out and was like, the sketch you guys did a couple of years ago was like racist.

• 41:08Sam Parr?

  Well, he did. I think he also said the N word.

• 41:10Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I don't know. I didn't actually watch. I don't know what it was, but there was like admittedly, it was not like not in good taste. And so he comes out and he's he does this video where he's like, You know, to all the haters who are trying to go through five-year-old footage and find stuff that we did wrong and try to cancel us, it's not gonna work, baby. They've been trying to cancel me for 20 years. It's not gonna work. That was a joke. Back then, that was kosher. Now, that wouldn't be kosher, but we didn't do it now. We did it back then. And for you to be... And he was basically like, "You're a loser for trying to go dig this up." Like, "I'm the Teflon Don. You can't cancel me." And then like, two days later, he comes back and he's just like, "I'm sorry. You know, I said that. I was trying to address the haters, and I was unapologetic to the haters.

• 41:53Shaan Puri?

  But I realized to my own employees, that was very callous. And to, you know, my black employees who felt uncomfortable and felt like I didn't own up and apologize to it, I'm sorry." And so I thought that was a pretty interesting one, where he sort of broke character in a way. And again, had to service...

• 42:07Sam Parr?

  I don't think he broke character. I think that what he meant was, he goes, "I agree. It was a dumb joke. And I... Yeah, it was really stupid of me. But also, fuck the kids or all people."

• 42:20Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I guess, maybe he stayed in it. But, you know, I was surprised to see that. And I think that that's the wave. That's the way things are going. And I think overall, for the better. I think it's holding more people accountable to not do fucked-up stuff. But sometimes I do feel like it goes too far, and people have to sort of censor, watch themselves apologize for 20-year-old things quite a bit. And I'm not sure that that's right either.

• 42:45Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it is a confusing time. I think that your intent matters a lot, though. We're talking about this cancel shit, so we might as well just wrap it up with this.

• 42:54Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 42:55Sam Parr?

  On Friday... Okay, so, there's a background, which is, a lot of tech people, which, whatever. A lot of tech people, particularly Silicon Valley, San Francisco tech people, are really mad at media companies, including New York Times, for being like, anti-business, anti-tech. And it's been brewing. They're also angry because this one in VC named Biology... Is that his name?

• 43:17Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 43:18Sam Parr?

  Tweeted in December about how Corona was gonna be a huge thing, and people at Vox laughed at him, kind of laughed at him, and said like, "These rich VCs are now wearing masks and not meeting with Chinese people and are scared of this weird virus. Aren't they crazy?" Turns out, Corona was real, so there's this animosity. Well, on... Thursday, the CEO of Away Travel, Away, the suitcase company, did a Instagram thing where she explained how she thinks that tech media people are biased and love to create outrage in order to get more clicks. And a journalist named Taylor at the New York Times said this, tweeted out something like,

• 44:00Sam Parr?

  "The delusional CEO of Away is tweeting about how bad the journalists are. She sounds incoherent and she's being crazy." Something, she said something like that. A very prominent venture capitalist tweeted out the exact same thing right back to her, but replaced the name Away Travel CEO with Taylor, the journalist from New York Times.

• 44:22Shaan Puri?

  Right. He, he kind of mocked her, basically saying, she had said like, talking about something that she doesn't, she doesn't even know, she doesn't even know about, right? When, when the Away CEO was talking about journalism, she's like, look at her rambling and being incoherent about something that she's, she really doesn't know the first thing about. And he said the same thing about her, where, because she talks about tech all the time. And he was basically saying she doesn't know it. So she comes out, she's like, she's just like, you know, "What is this? Why do I keep getting attacked?" She, first she quotes only half of it, so she doesn't show that he was mocking what she said. He was repeating the same words that she said about someone else, he was saying about her. She just took it out of context and made it look like he was just saying it about her out of the blue, which wasn't true. But she's like, "Look at this. I'm getting attacked for no reason. This guy won't stop."

• 45:07Shaan Puri?

  And then she tweets Ben Horowitz, which is like his former boss at Andreessen Horowitz. And she's like, "Can you please help here?" And she kind of like played the like victim in that, that moment. And she, I think she felt like the victim of like being bullied, essentially. Then it escalated into this like weird thing on Clubhouse.

• 45:23Sam Parr?

  Which I listened to it. I was there.

• 45:24Shaan Puri?

  I wasn't there. So what happened?

• 45:26Sam Parr?

  So there's a stupid app. It's not stupid, but it's kind of a circle jerk called Clubhouse where roughly 1,500 people are invited. And most of them are like elite elitist people type people. I guess you could throw me in that category, even though I don't want to be that, I mean, but maybe some people think I am. I, I was there and Taylor and this biology guy a little bit got into it. She said something like, "I don't feel safe here." And he goes, "Oh, you don't feel safe when a brown guy comes in? You're racist." And, uh, because biology is some type of brown Indian or something. I don't know what he is, but he's not a white guy or he doesn't look like a white guy. So now that made it even worse. So. It was wild. I think my

• 46:04Shaan Puri?

  They're going back and forth. People are picking sides. Half the people are like, this guy's a jerk and an asshole. And I'm sorry you had to deal with this, Taylor. And then the other half of the Twitter replies are, dude, she gets what's coming to her and she's trying to play the victim. And she's the one who's been on the attack the whole time. Um, and now she's trying to play the victim.

• 46:22Sam Parr?

  My opinion is both are true.

• 46:24Shaan Puri?

  Both are true. Yeah, I totally agree. Both are true. And then he went further. I don't know if you saw this part where he put out a thousand dollar bounty, uh, Bitcoin bounty. And he said, I'll give a thousand dollars to the best meme of the situation. And I'll give a thousand dollars to the best legal breakdown of was it, uh, cause, cause people recorded, uh, without consent, the clubhouse conversation, posted, leaked it online. She then referenced it and wrote about it and asked people to write about it. And so he was like, thousand dollars for the legal breakdown of, can you, was this wiretapping? Can you actually record these private conversations and, and use them for your journalistic purposes or not? And then she was like, oh my God, that's ridiculous. And the whole situation is kind of ridiculous. So where do you fall on this?

• 47:08Sam Parr?

  So, and then I'll add one more thing. I got into the mix a little bit of it when Vice wrote an article and they're, because the whole premise of this is biology says, people, including the New York Times, media companies purposely like outrage because it drives revenues and it drives clicks.

• 47:24Shaan Puri?

  True.

• 47:24Sam Parr?

  And that is one premise of the argument about, of him against her. And a Vice guy wrote about this saying, the idea that clicks drives revenue is a fallacy. And I was, and I got into it. I'm like, I'm like, that's, that's not true, guys. Like, I'm not saying that, like, who's wrong or who's right, except for that person who said that. You are wrong. Clicks, clicks do drive revenue. It doesn't matter.

• 47:48Shaan Puri?

  I'm not gonna say who's wrong or right, except for you, that's

• 47:51Sam Parr?

  Yeah. I mean, that's just like, that's just factually incorrect. I mean, that's just like, you're, you're just, you're just so wrong. I mean, you're, you're Vice. You guys made $400 million last year off advertising revenue. And you have someone on, on your team whose sole job it is to see which gets the most clicks and tell you to do more of that. I mean, you're just wrong. And also outrage drives more subscriber revenue as well. So it doesn't matter what your business model is. So just, let's not. Say that because you're you're you're you're full of shit. But um, whose side am I on? So I think that they're both assholes. And I think that they're actually in the same group of people, which is like highly educated, very elite coastal people who like to smell their own farts and don't give a fuck about middle America. And like are totally in their own bubble. I think they're both fucking wrong and they're both right.

• 48:33Sam Parr?

  I think that the New York Times and people like that definitely is are very anti-business and very anti-capitalism, even though that they're they are in fact a tech company. They are owned partially by a billionaire named Carlos Slim. Like they are what they claim to hate. So I think they're hypocritical and bullshit. I also think that biology is like, he's also like just egging her on like, she's definitely not racist. I don't think this woman's racist.

• 48:58Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 48:59Sam Parr?

  And to call her that is like stupid. So I think that's dumb as well.

• 49:02Shaan Puri?

  Right, yeah, he's definitely, uh, I don't know what gaslighting means, but I think he's doing it. And he's definitely bullying her and he's getting the internet to bully her. Um, and you know, he he can feel justified in doing it, but he's definitely bullying her and he just, you know, that that's that.

• 49:17Sam Parr?

  What do they say in the Big Lebowski? They go, you're not wrong, you're just an asshole. And that's how I feel about about it was like, you're you're definitely not wrong, but you are an asshole.

• 49:26Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, and the other thing that he he kind of argued for, which was that he's like, look, these are, this is called, he keeps calling it corporate journalism. Because he's like, they make money based off of uh, people reading their articles. They're trying for profit, for profit company. They're trying to pretend they're this unbiased, you know, citizen journalism, uh, you know, they're they're trying to present that this voice for the citizens and justice and they're not, they're corporate journalism. That's true. But he sort of says it in a way where it's like, there's no place for that. Like, he's like, no, what we need is independent, uh, what he calls personal media companies or something like that, PMCs. Um, and we need personal media companies that will do, that will, you know, report. Yeah, that will report things that are less biased, less attacking, less whatever.

• 50:09Sam Parr?

  Well.

• 50:10Shaan Puri?

  Reality, it's gonna be the same thing. And anybody who's a media.

• 50:12Sam Parr?

  It is the same thing.

• 50:13Shaan Puri?

  Whether you're personal or a company, you're gonna be trying to get attention, and you're gonna be trying to monetize it, and then you're gonna do what what does both those things.

• 50:20Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and what pisses me off, I think, is that people say like, it is corporate journalism, this and that. I'm like, yeah, it is. I don't think that's wrong, though, because at the end of the day, they forget that a company is just made up of people organized of certain thoughts. So whether they're corporate or they're on their own, like, it's the same person, and you're gonna try and do the same stuff.

• 50:39Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 50:39Sam Parr?

  And that stuff, people act like this is new. This is not new. This, we used to call this Hearst Media, they Randolph Hearst, they say it was one of the, one of the first guys to do it. In reality, again, he's not, he wasn't the first guy to do it either. They used to call it yellow journalism, which was outrage. Rupert Murdoch used to own, well, the way that he started in Australia was, this is what he did, was bold headlines that would say outrageous stuff. And it started with the newsboys saying, read all about it, World War II, highest death toll ever, whatever.

• 51:09Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 51:09Sam Parr?

  Like, guys, this is not like something new. This is, I hate when people act like this is like this new thing. It's not new at all. This is human nature. It's like saying like racism is new or something. It's like, this will always exist and has always existed. It's just a matter of how we're gonna deal with it.

• 51:25Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah, I totally agree. I think that's 100% accurate. I do find the whole thing entertaining.

• 51:33Sam Parr?

  I love it, too. This is the point, guys. Look, Sean.

• 51:36Shaan Puri?

  It's working again. We're talking about it.

• 51:38Sam Parr?

  I love it.

• 51:39Shaan Puri?

  I had five topics that were like, you know, interesting little business ideas, but frankly, this is more interesting to me and probably more interesting to some of the listeners, even if you hate listen, even if you're like, ah, I hate listening about this, like, there's a part of us that craves the gossip, and that's why it works.

• 51:55Sam Parr?

  And here's my, my issue with this is. Guys, why are we afraid to admit this? Like, why are we, like, you, you, like, someone called you clickbait, someone called her clickbait, or, um, like, she loved outrage, and in my head, I'm like, that's not bad. Like, I don't understand, that's, that doesn't have to be an incident.

• 52:12Shaan Puri?

  If I have an ecommerce store, I'm also buy bait, and if I have, uh, you know, a sports team, I want to be fan bait, and like, yeah, the goal is to get people to use your product and to engage with you, and to become your customers.

• 52:24Sam Parr?

  Right, and I'm like, they seek outrage, I'm like, yeah, I seek outrage all the time, that's why I watch, like, fucking The Challenge on MTV, or, like, watch YouTube, like, watch fights on YouTube, or, like, that's why I love boxing and UFC, it's like, I love, like, people fighting. Like, whenever I see, like, a car wreck on the side of the road, I slow down and stare. Like, can we please just, like, act like this is human nature, and this doesn't have to be bad? There's a place for it all.

• 52:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, and, and either side acting like they're above it all, they're both lying, um, which is what's happening.

• 52:51Sam Parr?

  That's why I always say, they're just, they're two groups of the same people, who just like to smell their own farts, like, these guys are all, they're, they're all the, the elite of the elite, and, like, I listened to that clubhouse, there was a bunch of injuries and horror when it's venture capitalists, or owners, or wives of the owners, like, running, running the show, it's like, okay, like, you're, I get what you're saying, but like, you're, you're also out of touch.

• 53:15Shaan Puri?

  Right, right, uh, okay, this is good, uh, sorry, we didn't do more business, we got, we got carried away, but, what you gonna do? How about that suburban doorbell?

• 53:27Sam Parr?

  That's like a perfect sign off, that is a suburban doorbell.

• 53:30Shaan Puri?

  All right, I gotta go, Sam, I'll talk to you in a couple days.