The TikTok strategy that’s printing MILLIONS right now… (ft. Rob The Bank)

Episode 679: Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) sits down with Robert Oliver ( https://x.com/thegeniusceo ) to break down his $100M TikTok strategy. — Show Notes: (0:00) TikTok Gold Rush (13:00) The Playbook (23:00) Brands crushing it (36:00) Trends: Lookmaxing, pet luxuries, niche communities (51:30) Mistakes to avoid (1:03:00) Character design — Links: • Rob The Bank on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@robthebankmotion • Rob The Bank on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thegeniusceo • KaloData - https://www.kalodata.com/ — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents. • Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies! Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N. A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  The point of this conversation is this is a gold rush and who knows how often these come around.

• 0:04Shaan Puri?

  How much revenue will your brands do using this TikTok model this year?

• 0:08Speaker 00

  Hundred plus.

• 0:10Shaan Puri?

  So five brands, you're going to do over a hundred million this year. And this is the playbook you're running across all of them.

• 0:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 0:16Shaan Puri?

  So what's an example of one of these videos?

• 0:17Speaker 00

  I think this video had made this kid close to $50,000. The single video.

• 0:22Shaan Puri?

  What you said in this video will make people millions of dollars. All they did was just try to act on it.

• 0:27Speaker 00

  Millions are being printed on TikTok shop.

• 0:29Shaan Puri?

  What are the mistakes people make?

• 0:30Speaker 00

  My advice is be an observer, not a consumer. That's the best thing you can do.

• 0:35Shaan Puri?

  Let's brainstorm live. A hundred million dollar TikTok.

• 0:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm gonna show you something that the world was never gonna see, but I'm gonna show how serious I take this.

• 0:53Speaker 00

  Has anyone ever wore a cutoff like this before?

• 0:55Shaan Puri?

  The first one to bring the gun show to MFM?

• 0:59Speaker 00

  So I was just thinking like, I've watched a lot of these and I've seen a lot of guests and I was like, fuck, I'm different in a lot of ways, so I might as well visually capture that, you know? Make a statement.

• 1:07Shaan Puri?

  You were early to the Amazon trend and you took $5,000, you turned it into a $30 million company, you sold. And what you told me was basically that this now is the first and biggest thing you've seen since that Amazon opportunity. Is that right?

• 1:23Speaker 00

  It is, it is. And I've looked for these, I didn't appreciate it in the Amazon era, but I look for these moments in time where you don't need a ton of startup capital, you don't need to raise money, and you can basically just find something that works. A system, a platform, latch on to that and create something of substantial enterprise value. And TikTok represents that.

• 1:43Shaan Puri?

  So what I want to do is I want to go through the big idea. So why, why people should be caring about TikTok right now? What you see as the like, the big opportunity? And then specifically, what are some examples of people that are crushing it? How are they crushing it? What's the playbook? And then where are the opportunities that you see that are still open that anyone could go do? So that's my game plan.

• 2:02Speaker 00

  Absolutely. So top of the funnel here, fundamentally, people don't appreciate what's actually happening with TikTok. Like shop is a component. opponent of that, that's the center of their model. But you think about even restaurants, you think about Google, you think about Facebook, Meta Ads, like all of the, there's a paradigm shift. So a good example, my now ex-wife and I went to Tokyo like a year and a half ago. And if we went five years ago, she would have gone to Google to search for restaurants. She would have yelped. Now she goes on TikTok and wants to visually see what is going on, right? The shopping is turning more live. All of these things are fundamentally changing, even the creators of this last generation, the influencers, they're coming up off short form content.

• 2:45Speaker 00

  We all know how important, you know, clipping and all of that stuff is.

• 2:48Shaan Puri?

  By the way, I read that 30% of Gen Z gets primary news source is TikTok.

• 2:54Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 2:54Shaan Puri?

  Uh, and so, and then same thing, uh, certain primary search engines. So in my company, we did a little poll there that we were trying to work on our Google like search result.

• 3:03Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 3:04Shaan Puri?

  And I was asking our employees, I was like, so when you Google for this, what do you do? They go, I don't really Google for that. I just go to TikTok and type in the name and then I, whatever comes up on TikTok is what I use.

• 3:14Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 3:14Shaan Puri?

  That blew my mind because I wasn't using TikTok as a search engine.

• 3:17Speaker 00

  Yep, and that, that's the paradigm shift and that's, that's the opportunity because it's so early. And it's, I don't like the word like gamifiable, but when you just think through these new models and like how information is being shared, that's where the brands of the future are being created. That's where the artists of the future are being created. That's where like fashion, design, it's all happening through this new means of distribution.

• 3:37Shaan Puri?

  Right. By the way, this happens in everything. So I don't know if you ever heard the story of why Obama was so successful when he did his first presidential run. Do you know this story?

• 3:45Speaker 00

  Just tapping into the social media and all that.

• 3:47Shaan Puri?

  It was kind of social media, but he got this big grassroots movement going from two reasons. One, he was one of the first presidents to build a huge email list. At the time, president, the people who were running, they were doing, you know, fundraisers, they were doing TV. They were doing, you know, traditional interviews, but they weren't building an email list. And he built a giant email machine before anybody else. And then he started using social media on top and he basically hired people. Trump did the same thing. When Trump won in 2016, even this year, when he, when he won, he raised way less money than his opponent, right? He, the first time, way less than Hillary, this time, way less than Kamala slash Biden. And in both cases, it was because he was using a different marketing strategy. His, his was all Facebook and, and online. And the others are doing all like traditional TV buys, commercials, stuff like that.

• 4:30Shaan Puri?

  And so when you see this, like you said, paradigm shift, it's like the new marketing opportunity. If you can pounce on that, that's where you can get rich. Can you quickly just say like what you saw in Amazon and when that was back in 20, what was it 14 or so?

• 4:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I'll go from that to now, like the numbers we're seeing, the difference in terms of like ROAS, right? Um, and it's challenging for people because it's happening so fast. Like, I think a lot of people still think that, you know, digital marketing is the new paradigm. And like, actually, it's like all the way over here now. And so Amazon's a great example. I remember seeing brands like billboards were of huge strategy back then. I'm like, I started by working with brands. That's how I got my start is like a consultant, helping them sell on Amazon. And I'm going, guys, you're spending $50,000 on a billboard campaign. And when you give me five grand to spend on Amazon, you're, you're having trouble tracking that. But right here, we're making $5 for every dollar spent. And this is me as a 22 year old kid. They're like, no, this is the way it is, or like, you know, we're going to double.

• 5:29Speaker 00

  Bodybuilding.com needs these or, or, or, you know, GNC needs these. And by the time I finally, it probably took me like a year, I'm going, these guys are slow.

• 5:38Shaan Puri?

  At first you think you're dumb. And eventually you realize they're dumb. You're like, yo, I keep putting a dollar into this magic money machine and $5 are coming out, which is a 5X.

• 5:45Speaker 00

  This is cool.

• 5:46Shaan Puri?

  ROAS, for people to know, ROAS is return on ad spend. So it's for every dollar I spend on marketing, how many dollars do I get back out in revenue?

• 5:52Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 5:52Shaan Puri?

  TV, billboards, you don't really know, right? The famous advertising saying is half of our advertising doesn't work. Problem is we just don't know which half. And like, and actually for a while, CMOs didn't mind that because if you can't track it, you can't be held accountable. But then Facebook and all these guys came and all of a sudden, every dollar you put in, you get a like verified amount of how much revenue you're getting out of it. Now you're held accountable, but that also presents an opportunity.

• 6:16Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 6:17Shaan Puri?

  Just for a kid like you, you're like, all right. If, if this works, it's inarguable. This is working and I'm getting 5X for return on my money.

• 6:23Speaker 00

  And so now what we're seeing, what happens over time is that compresses, right? Enough guys like me do podcasts like this, Facebook ads are great.

• 6:31Shaan Puri?

  Goddamn podcasting.

• 6:32Speaker 00

  It shrinks the margin. And so like you look at like an Amazon now, which has been my, you know, I've been doing ads on there for 10 years now. And like a, like a one to one and a half ROAS is like good in a hot category, which is not profitable, but you're, you know, that's where you're like, okay, repeat customers, building the brand. And so you have that modeled as like that was the last couple of years. And then TikTok comes along. And that organic algorithm is so damn good. And then if you, this is where now it almost goes back to the billboard era of like actually tracking becomes a little more difficult. But we're seeing just money spent on this, this system, which we can get into a little bit later, but this system is like seven, eight X

• 7:13Speaker 00

  minimum return versus a one X ROAS and upwards of like, when I first did this with, you know, Jimmy, 18 months ago, it was like 30 X. And then the question was, how can we spend more?

• 7:25Shaan Puri?

  I mean, it's like PEDs for marketing, right? It's like, if you're gonna get, I can use this channel that not everybody understands, this playbook that not everybody understands and get seven X, or I go to Facebook and Amazon, I get a one X, 1.5 X. I mean, that's like cheat codes in the game of business. Can you give people a sense? How much revenue will your brands do using this TikTok model this year?

• 7:45Speaker 00

  So directly attributable to like TikTok shop, we modeled probably like 40 ish million.

• 7:51Shaan Puri?

  And overall, the halo effect of all that?

• 7:53Speaker 00

  Hundred plus.

• 7:54Shaan Puri?

  So your brands, which is what you have three, four roughly brands, or how many, how many are you running right now?

• 7:58Speaker 00

  Five that I either own, you know, majority of, or a meaningful, yeah.

• 8:03Shaan Puri?

  So five brands, you're gonna do over a hundred million this year. And this is the playbook you're running across all of them?

• 8:09Speaker 00

  Yep. Yep. And

• 8:11Shaan Puri?

  And by the way, how old are these brands?

• 8:12Speaker 00

  One or two years old. It's actually, it's unreal. And it, I don't want to say things stress or scare me at this point, but it's one of those things where it's like, all right, we gotta see this through. Because the point of this conversation is this is a gold rush. And who knows how often these come around, right? And so I feel like I'm getting to go back to my 22 year old self and saying, hey, like, this is gonna be really big, you know, focus right now. Do the right things, execute, you know, and, and that's where we're at.

• 8:38Shaan Puri?

  Is that a conversation you had with yourself back when you were 22 and the Amazon gold rush was happening?

• 8:42Speaker 00

  I took it really seriously, but you don't know what you don't know, right? And just, I didn't appreciate like, who knew private equity was gonna come in and value all these brands? And who knew that Amazon was gonna grow to that extent? It was still kind of a discount site when I was first on there. That's why brands didn't want to do it.

• 8:58Shaan Puri?

  You were in the supplements category and you said the way the supplement game worked was you had GNC or these like retail stores. If you wanted to be, if you wanted to win in supplements, you had to win in retail.

• 9:07Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 9:08Shaan Puri?

  And then you're like, Amazon came around and changed the game because now you have this online retailer. And suddenly new supplement brands could win there where you couldn't get on the shelf at GNC.

• 9:17Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 9:17Shaan Puri?

  And you were saying now the same thing's happening to Amazon.

• 9:19Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 9:20Shaan Puri?

  There's a new ones coming in and sweeping the rug and creating the opportunity where maybe you weren't going to win on Amazon, but now you can win in this new way. Is that right?

• 9:27Speaker 00

  No, that's exactly right. It's these continual paradigm shifts like Amazon. It was, you know, there's this brand BPI Sports who was number one in GNC. And then I just remember seeing that flip where Amazon all of a sudden was like 50% of their revenue. And then they didn't focus on Amazon and then there were brands passing them up, right? And so the brands of the future were born on that digital platform and Amazon was, you know, their Facebook ads, there are other digital means, but we'll call it the e-commerce era. And now it's happening again with like the short form discovery era. So it's much less about, what does your website look like or this and that? It's like, how are you optimizing for this means of information dissemination?

• 10:04Shaan Puri?

  And you know, I think when most people say gold rush, if you call 10 things a gold rush, then what's really a gold rush? But I feel like you genuinely believe you're like, yo, this, I'm not fucking around. I'm serious. Right now there is a window where something can happen. Could you like, make your pitch not to me, but to like the next Rob who's, who is 23, 24, 25, 30 years old. It doesn't matter what age, but like, to be like, yo, take this. You can even just direct to camera. Like what's your message to that person about this opportunity?

• 10:30Speaker 00

  Honestly, I'm going to hijack, I'm going to hijack your, your friend here. How many, how many businesses a day do you think Ben looks at? Just in general?

• 10:37Shaan Puri?

  10 to 15 a day.

• 10:38Speaker 00

  A day.

• 10:39Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 10:39Speaker 00

  A day. So he's constantly looking at opportunities and he sent me a text and he goes, oh, this TikTok thing really does seem to be the best opportunity to go from like no net worth to like one to five million with no skills, no background, no tech, whatever. And when he sent me that, because obviously I accept my opinion is going to be biased. I do this every day, but when Ben sent me that, I was like, oh. Okay, yeah, no, this is for real. And then you look at our own, you know, like, we're doing this. Our company growth, even though we have skills, we've been doing this a while, but to go from zero to, you know, a hundred plus million run rate is actually insane with no, you know, we're not raising, it's more profitable. It's super profitable.

• 11:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you've bootstrapped these, right? Uh, like, you know, I'm a small investor in it, but you didn't take our money for the money. You just.

• 11:22Speaker 00

  No, we love you.

• 11:23Shaan Puri?

  You just want, yeah, you just want us to be on board. Uh, all right. So let's, let's stop teasing. What are the brands? Like, tell me some stories. Like, I don't live in this world. You do. Tell me some stories of some brands that are crushing it. What are some examples that make this real?

• 11:36Speaker 00

  One that I think we can start with is this company, Roost Research. And this guy had a little Amazon experience. He's 27 and this is like a nine-figure play and I just couldn't be more excited for him. And so I'm like, you know, hyping it up here, but he reaches out to me two and a half years ago before TikTok's even taken off. And he's like, hey, I'm thinking about starting a supplement brand on Amazon. He picked the right category. He's like, longevity is getting bigger. He gets on Amazon. He's doing all right. And then TikTok comes around and he pours all in on it. And two years later, I believe this month, you know, he'll do, he'll do north of like $15 million between all online.

• 12:11Shaan Puri?

  This month?

• 12:12Speaker 00

  This month.

• 12:13Shaan Puri?

  So what is the product? What do they do? Something like research?

• 12:16Speaker 00

  NAD, Roost Research. And it's that like, you know, it's that every couple of years, a new supplement category comes along. We're like, this might have long-term staying power. Collagen was the last huge one, you know, $4 billion exit vital proteins to Nestle. And he's betting on that. And then he went all in, all bootstrapped, no raised money, not even like, he hasn't revamped the brand yet. If you go look at it, you're like, no, this looks a little like, you know, it doesn't look like a multi-hundred-million-dollar thing. But that's what he's building. So I'd say that one.

• 12:45Shaan Puri?

  So he spotted the health trend early, early enough, not like the first guy, but early enough.

• 12:51Shaan Puri?

  Built a good product in that space. You said he went all in on TikTok, you know, figured out TikTok. What did he actually do to make it work on TikTok?

• 12:57Speaker 00

  He tapped into this creator model. So should we go in detail?

• 13:00Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, what's the playbook?

• 13:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:02Shaan Puri?

  If I, for all these ideas, they have a playbook.

• 13:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:04Shaan Puri?

  What's the TikTok playbook?

• 13:06Speaker 00

  So it's important to preface it with this. Everyone is used to YouTube, Instagram, like where your followers matter, right? Like you have an Instagram following of a million people. That's valuable. TikTok shattered that and you have to look at everything through the lens of views. You start a brand new TikTok account. I do. We walk out of here. We start a new TikTok account together. We start a video of dancing in the street. That could get 10 million views, right? And so that's the center of this whole model. Swings at bat. Screw your, your brand page. Like Roost doesn't have a brand page.

• 13:37Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 13:38Speaker 00

  They might run ads, but the key part of the model is how many people can we get creating product specific content for the brand?

• 13:46Shaan Puri?

  Like an army, instead of one influencer becoming Kim Kardashian or The Rock or whatever. Instead of, I will become famous and get a lot of followers and then sell product.

• 13:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:54Shaan Puri?

  What you're saying is the new model is an army of people need to create content and then it's just the content wins. One of those pieces of content needs to pop in order for this to work.

• 14:04Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 14:04Shaan Puri?

  Is that it?

• 14:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. And the first big use case of this before product was Andrew Tate. Like that's how he, can we say that?

• 14:11Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, of course.

• 14:12Speaker 00

  That's how he, he broke the internet, not even like intentionally, but he had affiliates making Tate content.

• 14:17Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 14:18Speaker 00

  And so he's not, Tate's not on TikTok, but he has 500 hungry little minions who love him.

• 14:23Shaan Puri?

  And he was paying them or they were just inspired? What was going on?

• 14:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, there was an affiliate commission back to make more videos for him. So like, like you could get people paying $50 a month by making this content.

• 14:32Shaan Puri?

  He created basically like a content MLM almost.

• 14:34Speaker 00

  Pretty much. Yeah. No, exactly.

• 14:36Shaan Puri?

  So he, and what was his, I mean, that's kind of genius of him to do that because no other, you know, we were content creators, podcasters, whatever. But if we created content, we just put it on our channel.

• 14:46Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 14:46Shaan Puri?

  And it was just us or like we would hire people to create clips for us. What, but on our one channel.

• 14:51Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 14:52Shaan Puri?

  What he did was different. He's like, yo, here's a bunch of raw material.

• 14:55Speaker 00

  Run it.

• 14:56Shaan Puri?

  You figure out how to go viral and if you do, I'll pay you what per view or what was he, what was he doing?

• 15:00Speaker 00

  Per signup, they got back to the community that would teach you how to do that. So I mean, and the end result was most Googled man on the on the planet, right? And so now you see that everywhere, streamers like Aiden Ross and those guys, they spend six figures a month paying on a CPM metric, paying people to chop up their streams and put it out on new TikTok. I do that, right? With my, my stuff, like someone from my team will chop this up and you might see it.

• 15:28Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 15:29Speaker 00

  Swings it back. And so now take that same idea.

• 15:31Shaan Puri?

  When you say my team, do you literally mean like my employees or you're like, I just like?

• 15:35Speaker 00

  Both. We're trying to hit it from everywhere. And brands are too. Like this is the fundamental thing. How can you get as much good quality swings at bat as humanly possible? And sometimes it's freelance people. And then sometimes it's internally, it's a little harder on shop so beautiful because the model itself incentivizes it without us having to change hands. You know, like internally, I'm trying to figure out metrics, like, you know, like all that, right? Whereas if you have talented creators, they just go. And that was Tate's too. It worked, it fed itself. The economics fed itself. So shop feeds itself.

• 16:09Shaan Puri?

  So just to explain, instead of just sending it to famous people, influencers, or random people, what happened was certain people realized, oh shit, I can make money doing this. So instead of just doing it once, what if I made five videos a day?

• 16:22Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 16:22Shaan Puri?

  What if I started picking brands that I thought would perform well? And they started making $500 a month and $5,000 a month. You have creators that make, how much does like the most successful creators make per month? Just creators? They don't own the brand, they don't buy inventory, they don't have to run the operations, they're just making TikToks.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  What do you think? What do you think?

• 16:40Shaan Puri?

  I think I've heard that like, there's like 20 year olds that are able to make 100 grand a month.

• 16:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, yeah, like a lot, and way more than you'd think. I was at an event for one of our, you know, the group that I own a little piece of, and we've had 27 people make over $100,000 in a month as freelance creators. And the important part is, these are not influencers. Like Jacqueline, I have a YouTube video with, she was working as a server eight months ago, making 20 bucks an hour. And she made like 180 grand last month.

• 17:12Shaan Puri?

  And what they did?

• 17:14Shaan Puri?

  They go in the lab and they're basically like, all right, I have to figure out what content can I create that will make this product, you know, interesting, appealing to other people. And then they get like, they're making like 30, 40, 50 videos a month. Most of them don't do well, but a few of them start to well, and they're studying and learning, oh, if I do this hook, that grabs people, but it's not converting. Okay. What can make it convert better? And they're just specializing in the craft of short form content. No, not too dissimilar than David Ogilvy in the past, figuring out how to do print ads that are going to convert, right? All the great marketers in the past. It's just instead of going to an ad agency, you're going to these creator armies where young people are specializing in how to create short form content.

• 17:52Speaker 00

  And direct response marketing, who this means. That's exactly what it is. And, and there's varying degrees of it. There's like the innovators who can sit down, the algorithm's the algorithm. You have to capture attention. You have to keep them watching and then, you know, something to, to convert. And then there's the second wave of that, whereas, you know, one of the innovators hits what's works. And then there's literally 500 kids that are going to copy that same idea, only make 20% of it, but then what does that do for the brand? Right? Then all of a sudden you have all these videos going nuclear. I bet you.

• 18:22Shaan Puri?

  Show me a video. So what's an example of one of these videos that?

• 18:25Speaker 00

  This is a great one. I think this video, last I checked, I think this video had made this kid close to $50,000.

• 18:31Shaan Puri?

  The creator.

• 18:32Speaker 00

  The single video, and he paired, you know, a modern thing, Trump, like getting elected with conspiracy and all this, whatever.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  Just got into office one day ago and is already going after one of the most predatory industries in the world. Watch this. We have a public health system that does.

• 18:49Shaan Puri?

  So that was the hook. So the hook was, first he's writing the news trend, Trump, instead of saying, hey, I have a product I'd like to tell you about. No, no, no. Starts by talking about Trump and then he has this curiosity. What would you call it?

• 19:00Speaker 00

  It's that information gap, right? Where all of a sudden he went after one of the biggest industries in the world. What did, what did he do?

• 19:05Shaan Puri?

  Which one? What's that industry and what did he do?

• 19:08Speaker 00

  And then you hear in the background, it's that mysterious, it's the trending sound, you know?

• 19:12Speaker 02

  Starting today, but you know what's crazy? His buddy, Donald White was coming after.

• 19:17Shaan Puri?

  By the way, even how raw this is, he's taking a video of like an Android phone.

• 19:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:22Shaan Puri?

  So if, does, you don't think this is an advertisement?

• 19:24Speaker 00

  No, exactly. And, and everything nowadays is shifting to that just raw, organic, like you don't want to feel like an influencer's selling you. And that's not what he is, you know? Like this is like, this is a random dude making.

• 19:37Shaan Puri?

  Telling you a story.

• 19:37Speaker 00

  Yeah. Okay. What's he?

• 19:41Speaker 00

  I just skip ahead a little bit here, you know, it's the Trump bit and then

• 19:45Shaan Puri?

  Got Dana White, more social proof.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  This is where it all gets interesting because around the same time they were trying to silence this doctor.

• 19:51Shaan Puri?

  Is this the scientist now?

• 19:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, Berg is another famous scientist. So they're building, he's building this case for, for something.

• 19:59Shaan Puri?

  Still hasn't told you about the product, right?

• 20:01Speaker 02

  Fungus problem that lives up in through here and oil of oregano is the absolute best remedy for that. It's antimicrobial, antibacterial, antifungal, anti-candida, antiviral, anti-parasites and anti-mold. Now I did some research and not only is oil of oregano

• 20:20Speaker 00

  You get the idea, right? And then he still hasn't sold you. He's, he's building this idea of oil oregano. And then at the end, I believe he

• 20:27Speaker 02

  But I've been taking two of these pearls anytime I feel like I'm coming down with something and it knocks that shit right out. The only bad thing about this product is how fast they sell out, especially around this season. So if you're sick of being sick and you want to try these out for yourself and you see that orange cart right there, that means they are still in stock and the flash sale is still live.

• 20:46Shaan Puri?

  Masterful TikTok shop video. That's a masterful TikTok shop video.

• 20:49Speaker 00

  And like if you know marketing, you see it and you go, yeah, but you forget like the average person sees that and they're like, you know, that they're going to the coffee table at work the next day and talking about, man, you know, like mold and fungus is everywhere. But here you take this oil of oregano.

• 21:02Shaan Puri?

  Dude, I got cousins that will send me this.

• 21:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:04Shaan Puri?

  And they'll be like, yeah, you gotta start taking this. Yeah, the government's out to get you. Yeah, whatever. They have these like, that conspiracy combined with, you know, in ancient times, this used to be the way we do things.

• 21:14Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 21:14Shaan Puri?

  And then, you know, his last like scarcity call to action where he's like, the only downside is they sell out so fast. So if you see the button is orange, that means they still have it. Just get it while I'm still there.

• 21:24Speaker 00

  You better go. And it's on, it's on flash sale right now, you know, it's like, did you see, um, you know, the, the brand you're invested in, did you have anyone send you content from that at any point? Like just

• 21:34Shaan Puri?

  Not only did I have people send me content from that brand, which we were, the, the founder of it doesn't want us talking about it. All right. But then also he sent me a video of other people creating videos being like, I'm tired of hearing about this, which is like the ultimate sign of respect. It means it dominated TikTok so much, which is like the video was like, if I see one more video telling me about this, I'm not going to buy your thing. But like, even that video had seven million views of the person complaining about seeing this so much, which means mission accomplished.

• 22:04Speaker 00

  We got 600 million views in a month. Like, that is an insane, insane number. And that was before Shop.

• 22:11Shaan Puri?

  How much did you spend that month to get 600 million?

• 22:13Speaker 00

  It was a little over a hundred grand. That was before Shop. So Shop now is changing the unit economics. I'd say like not in the favor of the brands, but at the end of the day, it adds a level of scale. But now with commissions and stuff, that was when we were like sending it to Amazon and just, we're not even tracking it. We're just like, if we can get 600 million views, we're gonna be all right.

• 22:33Shaan Puri?

  For a hundred grand. Well, it creates this amazing flywheel, right? Because you hear about a brand a bunch on TikTok. You go then Google it and click the link, or you go to Amazon and you search on Amazon. It tells Google, it tells Amazon, people are searching for this brand name. It ups your rank there. So now you get organic ranking off of this social in addition to the direct conversions on social.

• 22:54Speaker 00

  Yep, no, exactly.

• 22:55Shaan Puri?

  Where do you go to find these brands that are crushing it?

• 22:57Speaker 00

  This tool, and this is the other crazy thing. Kalo Data is directly plugged in to TikTok's API. Kalo Data, K A L O data, D A T A. Like, so they, if you go to the homepage here, you're seeing top products, top videos. So you can go look at like,

• 23:15Shaan Puri?

  You could study.

• 23:16Speaker 00

  You can study, that's, that's, that kid's video, I know him, he's in our, in our group. But that was like the, one of the top videos from last week.

• 23:22Shaan Puri?

  So if you go right now to like the top products, what do you see?

• 23:27Shaan Puri?

  And they just, it's like rankings weekly or how do they do this?

• 23:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, so like beauty, beauty and personal care, you can filter it however you want. So this is last,

• 23:35Shaan Puri?

  Are you, are you in this list?

• 23:36Speaker 00

  This is last 30 days. We are in this list. We're top five and we're not three, four, five.

• 23:48Speaker 00

  And then I think if you expand it, like we have a couple of products in the in the top 10.

• 23:52Shaan Puri?

  Can you talk about what your products are? Which products can you talk about?

• 23:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, like a really good example has been.

• 23:57Shaan Puri?

  Are we gatekeeping here or are you?

• 23:58Speaker 00

  No, no, I don't. I mean, I yap about stuff on Instagram all the time. So Evil Goods has been a really good case study of beef tallow in the, you know, skincare section.

• 24:08Shaan Puri?

  How'd you decide to do beef tallow?

• 24:10Speaker 00

  That was an investment. And so one of our students or whatever, like, saw that category as similar to longevity. Like, okay, holistic wellness is obviously becoming huge. People don't like toxic skincare. This seems to have some good supporting. Like, it has this like grassroots Twitter movement. Let's bet on that. And so, you know, that's what we did. And pretty much whenever you see the ability to market to fear, like that Big Pharma, or whatever it might be, or insecurities for an individual.

• 24:40Shaan Puri?

  Microplastics, whatever.

• 24:42Speaker 00

  That that will do well on this platform. Like, just just period, because people feel like they're learning something. And so it checked all those boxes. He came out with a crazy aggressive name. Evil Goods is like,

• 24:53Speaker 00

  you know, we'll see, because that could disrupt the ability to like go to retail and stuff like that. But at the same time.

• 24:58Shaan Puri?

  Liquid Death.

• 24:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, so.

• 25:00Shaan Puri?

  Could be a Liquid Death.

• 25:00Speaker 00

  Exactly, exactly. So hopefully plant a flag on that. But this thing has gone just nuclear.

• 25:06Shaan Puri?

  What's your cologne brand?

• 25:08Speaker 00

  Top Shelf. And so this ties back to my thesis that massive industries are overturned, like in these eras. I want Top Shelf, it's like a passion project of mine, but I want to build a creed for Gen Z, you know, creed like fragrance. And it presents the opportunity to do that.

• 25:27Shaan Puri?

  So the way that cologne, like, I don't know much about cologne, but it seems like it's kind of luxury, sold through retail traditionally, super high margin, like crazy margins, because it's basically, you know, water and a little bit of essential oil or whatever. And so, how do you sell that? How do you make a popular, how did you make a popular cologne brand? And could you say, like, revenue wise, what that's going to do this year?

• 25:51Speaker 00

  We've been doing, we've been doing close to a million bucks a month. So it's been, it's been, but it's, it's a unique challenge for me that I like. This ties back to, I mean, seriously, everyone in this world, if you're venturing into it, pick something you like and see some area of disruption and make stuff for yourself. Like that, that's really what I see. And as I've gravitated more towards, you know, we talked about offline, but I like high fashion. I like design. And so this seems like the perfect segue for me to go from consumable to something that can play in that world, right?

• 26:19Shaan Puri?

  Fashion, culture.

• 26:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so like Creed is relevant at like these big um fragrance houses are relevant in, in Paris and stuff like that. And so for me, it's been a

• 26:31Shaan Puri?

  I know it's luxury because I have never heard of what you're saying.

• 26:33Speaker 00

  Must be, must be good. Have you seen Creed or no?

• 26:35Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 26:36Speaker 00

  You probably see a Creed Aventis. It's like a, you know, popular fragrance that sells for $250 a bottle. And so when I'm seeing that, I'm going, I can, there's a lot of

• 26:45Shaan Puri?

  All right, so let's walk through it. So you're like, all right, I want to go into Cologne. You get it made how? Where'd you go to make it?

• 26:51Speaker 00

  So I, I had to hire a, he's like, he calls himself a professional nose, you know, and has been like designing fragrances for God knows how long. And so I'm learning

• 27:01Shaan Puri?

  You just Googled this guy or how'd you find him?

• 27:02Speaker 00

  Um, relationship through other business partner. He had done skincare before and this guy was like a known guy in the industry, charges an arm and a leg, made one good product. Don't think I like it, right? So I'm like, how can we build this out internally? And I've learned more about the industry, like, you know, what smells actually fascinating, like, like how it makes people feel.

• 27:21Shaan Puri?

  What's fascinating about it?

• 27:22Speaker 00

  Just all the different, you know, mechanisms and mixes and like, like you go to Abercrombie, you know exactly what it smells like. It's like, it can be a signature of branding. It can be a signature of a, of a person. You know, like

• 27:35Shaan Puri?

  It's probably like the least used sense in marketing.

• 27:37Speaker 00

  A thousand percent, but you think about like a, a fresh pair of Nikes, like that, that's intentional.

• 27:42Shaan Puri?

  Right. And like new car smell.

• 27:43Speaker 00

  New car smell. And, and, and uh, so it's just been a fun avenue to learn more. And I'm far from a expert in it, just to be honest. Like we have the one product we're moving well with, and then we're trying to build out.

• 27:53Shaan Puri?

  Oh, wait, so tell me, so you say you went to the nose, nose makes something for you. That's what you use or you say you didn't like it?

• 27:58Speaker 00

  So he, he actually made us eight different samples. We

• 28:03Speaker 00

  We chose the one he wanted to use. We blow it up. We did 700 grand our first month. It just gets murdered with bad reviews. People hate it, like hate it. And so now all of a sudden I got all

• 28:14Shaan Puri?

  You liked it or no?

• 28:15Speaker 00

  No.

• 28:17Shaan Puri?

  You yourself were like one star?

• 28:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I'm kinda, I didn't hate it. I didn't hate it, but I wasn't like, oh, I would, I would wear this. And, um, and, and at the time with Genius, I was really big on making products for yourself and like being all in on that. And then we have all these things going nuclear and so I'm like, money.

• 28:34Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 28:34Speaker 00

  Who has some money?

• 28:36Shaan Puri?

  $90 bottle. I'm trying to make something for myself, but this time it's money instead of a product.

• 28:40Speaker 00

  And, uh, and honestly, that blew up in my face a little bit. And so we revamped on the, the second one and, and had a, you know, it's a, it's a winner. And like, it was very methodical. And so that's the one doing like a million bucks a month.

• 28:50Shaan Puri?

  But before we made a billion a month, they must have made a dollar a month. So how did it, what, what did you do initially to get that to work? So you go to the creators.

• 28:56Speaker 00

  That, that was the nice part. The, the first fragrance, we got the playbook, like the angles that worked and.

• 29:02Shaan Puri?

  So good marketing, bad product.

• 29:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:04Shaan Puri?

  And then you, so what was the angles that work? Give us an example for that.

• 29:07Speaker 00

  That's another one. It's, it's huge in this, this Gen Z era. And I don't like saying Gen Z actually, it's TikTok person and, and male. There's a billion users on there, right? So it's, it's a disservice to the app to say it's just Gen Z. Although that's where a lot of these ideas percolate from, but like the self-improvement and dating and all these little boxes that this generation is trying to check are hyper relevant to smell. Like, like that's a thing in their world. Like, how do you smell around the girl you're trying to, to talk to? Very easy fear.

• 29:40Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. What, what's the name of your thing? It's like her loss?

• 29:42Speaker 00

  Her loss. Uh huh.

• 29:43Shaan Puri?

  Where did that come from? That's genius.

• 29:45Speaker 00

  It's actually, I went through this whole like Drake era on my personal brand and he has an album called Her Loss. It's like, don't reinvent the wheel. They succeeded.

• 29:54Shaan Puri?

  What would be like a killer hook to sell that cologne on?

• 29:57Speaker 00

  They do actual skits. So actually, actually one that, that worked really well is we had female creators do it and they started calling it like pussy magnet juice. If you gotta believe that.

• 30:09Speaker 00

  My boyfriend came home in this or whatever, you know, and, and, um, really high converting stuff.

• 30:14Shaan Puri?

  There's a story. So I just did a podcast with this guy Craig Clemens. Do you know Craig? So he

• 30:18Speaker 00

  Monster.

• 30:19Shaan Puri?

  He told the story of like OG marketing. That's super relevant for this. So I'm going to retell it because his episode is going to come out too, but he talks about like one of the greatest headlines he's ever read in marketing. He goes, he goes, I have four for you. And the first one he told was he talked about this headline. He goes, here's the story. This guy's a famous marketer. He's one of the best. He's known as one of the best marketers on earth. And this Hollywood actor hits him up and he says, my wife wants to launch her own perfume brand. Will you come and help us with the marketing of it? So he goes, he meets the wife. Wife says, I want to do this. He goes, say no more. I'll make this happen. And he goes, and he starts studying fragrances and he goes to a mall and you know, the guys at the mall who are like, you know, is it they had like a make your own fragrance thing or like, you know, you have all these oils, you can mix your own.

• 31:03Shaan Puri?

  And he just asked the guy, he goes, what's the number one fragrance that women love? And he goes, oh, sir, easy. China Musk. And he goes, China Musk? He goes, yes, China Musk. It smells, it smells good. So he takes it and this is like, you know, he's only a couple of weeks in, but he doesn't go back to the Hollywood wife. He sits on it. He's like, I need to make her wait for her to value this. I need to make it feel more important. So after three months, he comes back to her and he goes, I'd like to meet you. I have something for you. She goes, okay, what you got? He goes, I've traveled the world. I've tested, you know, thousands of things. I've studied. I've talked to everybody and I found it. I found the greatest fragrance for you. She smells the China Musk. She's like, this is perfect.

• 31:42Shaan Puri?

  In the meantime, he goes to a jeweler and he goes, I need you to make me the fanciest bottle you can come up with for this thing. It's like this, like whatever diamond shape or whatever. And so he comes up with this beautiful bottle. He's got China Musk. And then he tells her, we're going to do a launch. And she goes, yeah, we could do it at this like small place. And he goes, no, no, no, we need to do it somewhere bigger. Um, how about the Crown Plaza Hotel? And she's like, that's huge. Like we would need thousands, you know, a few thousand people to show up. He goes, that's my job. So she, she bakes the bet. She books the hotel and she's like, you better not embarrass me. So he goes home. He's like, I gotta figure out a way to get thousands of people to come to this grand launch. And he goes home and he writes this headline that says, wife of famous Hollywood star swears under oath

• 32:28Shaan Puri?

  that her new perfume does not contain illegal sexual stimulants.

• 32:33Shaan Puri?

  And he goes, she is, and then the sub, the sub is, he's like, um, to prove its safety. And that it is not made of, not, not, uh, not what people are claiming. She is doing a live testing where she will prove without a shadow of a doubt. Um, that this, uh, that this fragrance works and is safe. Um, at the Crown Plaza Hotel on this date. And like 10,000 people show up to this thing. It's like pack, he cut, he hires like armed security guards to walk in with handcuffs to a briefcase. That contains the perfume. So people see them walking in, they're like, holy shit. What is this thing that's being presented in this way? And there's this whole story and it ends up becoming this best seller. And he's like, that headline, but he's like, you know, he broke down the elements.

• 33:16Shaan Puri?

  He's like, life of Hollywood star, curiosity gap, which, which Hollywood star? Um, swears under oath, right? That's kind of like the conspiracy, the seriousness, the drama, the stakes of the situation. And then doesn't contain sexual stimulants. So like, how good is it? People think it's, it's so good it should be illegal. And, you know, evil goods or the stuff you're talking about with like your, your cologne is like, hits those same notes. Now that was back in the, I don't know, like the seventies or something like that. It was a long time ago, but same playbook, just redone today in 2025.

• 33:46Speaker 00

  And then Craig took it and put it in Facebook ads and I'm taking it and putting it on TikTok. Quick, quick side note too, for anyone, I know there's like a vast internet world of gurus and people that talk about stuff. And if a guru or like talking head in the marketing space doesn't know Craig, they're, they're not really tapped in on the world. Yeah, like actually that's simple, very, like anyone that like, I don't know Craig personally. I don't know if he knows me, but I know that operation is run like fucking skunk works. And like he is, he has popularized a lot of things. Like actually that framework has been seen on a Facebook ad from him that his name's, you know, that he's, you don't, you don't see him. Exactly.

• 34:25Shaan Puri?

  He's a madman.

• 34:26Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 34:27Shaan Puri?

  Um, what else could you show me? So give me a couple of other stories that you think are, are pretty badass that we should know about. The stuff that's working on TikTok.

• 34:32Speaker 00

  Underbrush gum is another example of really startup scrappy entrepreneur that's doing millions a month now. Who makes this gum himself and they, they built their own factory. And he's had a crazy rush over the last month, but, uh, Like brands will go like this and then down. You gotta find the new angles, right? Like this, that Trump video I just showed you will work for a month and then it'll go away. Underbrush just hit a huge one this last month playing into TikTok's going away. My small family business is gonna get crushed. And it was the founder doing like some ASMR video of like how he's making it.

• 35:09Shaan Puri?

  Right. While talking about that.

• 35:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, no, and then he just gave that out and then the army picked it up and all put their own play on it.

• 35:16Shaan Puri?

  Gotcha.

• 35:16Speaker 00

  So it was the same angle over and over again with different voices and some claiming this their business. But that, that did millions for him over the last like 30 days.

• 35:25Shaan Puri?

  Can I put you on the spot?

• 35:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:27Shaan Puri?

  Let's do a little magic trick. So let's brainstorm live.

• 35:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:32Shaan Puri?

  A hundred million dollar TikTok brand.

• 35:33Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 35:34Shaan Puri?

  So where do we start? I'm, I'll be your, your wingman. I'll be your brainstorming partner.

• 35:38Speaker 00

  Let's go right into Gen Z and this younger generation that there's so much change. Like if you, we've talked about looks maxing, right?

• 35:44Shaan Puri?

  Explain what that is. So.

• 35:46Speaker 00

  Looks maxing. It's a, it's interesting, to say the least. But there's this subset of like young men that are hyper focused on looks, almost to the point of like it being super feminine, but like.

• 35:59Shaan Puri?

  They're optimizing it.

• 36:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. And it's like their, their, again, their heart's in a good place. Most things can be boiled down to basic human desires of like, they want to reproduce, right? But, but how they're going about it is all of a sudden like, have you seen those funny videos on morning routines now? It's almost like Patrick Bateman-esque, but.

• 36:17Shaan Puri?

  It's just like so elaborate, you mean?

• 36:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Trim each, like that, that's, so that, but there's a market there. There's not enough products there, like the, um.

• 36:25Shaan Puri?

  So it's kind of like a community. It sounds silly, right? When you say it, it sounds superficial, but you know, how different is that than, you know, maybe the bodybuilding movement in the early days? Where it's like these guys who take it really seriously and they're counting the reps and the sets and they're figuring out, you know, um, what type of training is going to lead to like, you know, this muscle right back here, the lower head of the tricep. And it's to anyone else, it sounds like overkill, but they got into it. They got passionate about it and they wanted to like, what if we took this to the nth degree? Brian Johnson doing that with longevity right now. Yeah, it sounds crazy. It's easy to make fun of him, but he's, he's like, I'm gonna take it to the full monty.

• 36:58Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 36:59Shaan Puri?

  And there's people who like rallied behind that and they think that that's cool. And you're saying look maxing is this early wave where people are doing that. They're, they're taking the guys taking their looks as seriously as women take their looks.

• 37:10Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 37:10Shaan Puri?

  Cause there's, we all know women have this huge, you know, like. Tutorials on eyelash extensions and every little, you know, nook and cranny. Now you're saying guys are doing it.

• 37:19Speaker 00

  It's happening exactly for guys. And there's no, it's an underserved market. You've seen products like, there's a product called jaw size. Have you seen that?

• 37:26Shaan Puri?

  Oh, jaw size, like your jaw, your jawline?

• 37:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. That's like the, one of the core foundations of looks maxing. And so that product blew up.

• 37:33Shaan Puri?

  Right. It's like a jaw exercising thing, right?

• 37:36Speaker 00

  Literally just that you just, you just bite it each day. Does it work? Does it not? I don't know, but then, you know, kids are.

• 37:40Shaan Puri?

  Right, right.

• 37:41Speaker 00

  Mewing.

• 37:42Shaan Puri?

  And so you're just studying culture, it seems like. You're just watching. And I want to point out one thing, which is I had a really early friend in Silicon Valley teach me this. I never forgot it. He was the first product manager at Twitter. And if you remember, Twitter at the time was really like made fun of when it came out. Cause it was, you would text a phone number. There was no app. You just text a phone number, whatever you wanted. And anybody who was subscribed to your phone number would get a message that says like, Sean's eating. Just like, it was just saying, I'm eating a ham sandwich. And so it got made fun of. If you go look up old TechCrunch articles, people make fun of it. It's this like frivolous, stupid thing.

• 38:17Speaker 00

  But it's not.

• 38:18Shaan Puri?

  But it turns out, you know, now it's like the beacon of free speech. Like that's what happens in the world, right? And so at the time I go, why'd you take the job at Twitter? Did it's, you know, like, did it seem like the next big thing? He goes, no, but he goes, I had figured out that anytime there's a phenomenon of behavior that you see as weird, you don't even understand why they're doing it, but they are in the, undeniably, they are doing it. You should lean in as an investor or like a, like an entrepreneur. That's your signal to lean in, whereas most people use that same signal and they, they point, they laugh or they push away.

• 38:48Speaker 00

  Yep. And it gets, it gets harder the older you get. But I, but staying tapped in on that and, and not being oblivious to like the change in the future. Like, cause that was my dad with Instagram. Like what a stupid platform and people posting pictures. And now everyone knows you have to have a, an Instagram. And so that's happening again. And I think it's great advice.

• 39:08Shaan Puri?

  Like, uh, we were hanging out with Mr. Beast last week and he has this thing he says, which is, You're crazy until you're successful, then you're a genius.

• 39:15Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 39:16Shaan Puri?

  And he goes, I've been doing the same thing the whole time. You know, I used to sit in my bedroom and make ridiculous videos. At the time I had no money. So his ridiculous videos back then were me counting to 100,000. And it's like a 19 hour video or something. Or him taking a plastic knife and cutting through a plastic table. Uh, with just like a knife. And he's like, it was just a stunt. Now it's like taking a bulldozer and cutting through the Eiffel Tower, right? Like he just scaled it up. But he's like, at that time I was seen as stupid and crazy. And why are you wasting all your time on this YouTube thing? Go to school, get a degree, get a good job. And now I'm this, you know, I used to be weird. Now they call me passionate. I used to be, you know, I used to be kind of like, you know, uh, crazy. Now I'm obsessed. And he's like, it's, he's like, I didn't change the whole time.

• 40:01Shaan Puri?

  And so kind of what you're saying is you see the culture doing something that seems novel, seems new. Instinct as somebody who's a little bit older is.

• 40:10Speaker 00

  That's stupid.

• 40:11Shaan Puri?

  That's stupid.

• 40:11Speaker 00

  That's this.

• 40:12Shaan Puri?

  And now you're like, get curious instead.

• 40:14Speaker 00

  Be, my advice is be an observer, not a consumer on all of these platforms. And so observe what's actually happening. Like, hold your opinion to yourself, just be super matter of fact and observe. Cause if, if looks maxing views are going up month over month, that just is. I don't really care what your opinion on it is. Like that just is, that's, that's, that's fact, right? And work backwards from that. But so, so looks maxing. I mean, with that, all of a sudden it's literally, this is how broad it becomes. Just like when pet supplements became a thing on Amazon. It's a category that becomes potential billions overnight with nothing in it. And so men, like who makes men's skincare products well? Like two or three brands that aren't even focused on it. And so, I mean, right there you can build a, anything.

• 40:59Shaan Puri?

  So you would be like, look maxing trend, go, and then you would brainstorm maybe like skincare.

• 41:04Speaker 00

  Mastic gum, like.

• 41:06Shaan Puri?

  Jawline stuff.

• 41:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. I, I like to look at exploding topics and I like to still look at Amazon data. Like there's different tools you can use and, and you'll see searches for those.

• 41:15Shaan Puri?

  And do you get afraid, oh, somebody's already doing this or whatever? No, it's like more validation of the idea. And then you're going to try to out, you know, out horsepower them on the marketing. And then you come up with the hooks. So like, what would be like an example of a hook? Let's say, let's just go looks maxing. Now, what's, what's an example of the product? It would be like a gum or like a jaw thing, or you think skincare? Which one would you go into?

• 41:36Speaker 00

  Let's just say a gum.

• 41:37Shaan Puri?

  Because what? Consumable, novel?

• 41:40Speaker 00

  Repeat buys, probably relatively straightforward to do.

• 41:43Shaan Puri?

  Okay, and now you have a gum, right? We got our product. You want to name it as part of our improv here?

• 41:49Speaker 00

  Ooh.

• 41:51Speaker 00

  Chat GPT.

• 41:52Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. What would you prompt? Because you use AI for a lot.

• 41:54Speaker 00

  A ton. I actually do.

• 41:56Shaan Puri?

  And that's. Yeah, let's do it. Let's, let's go on. Yeah.

• 42:00Speaker 00

  It's, it's actually gotten so, so good.

• 42:04Shaan Puri?

  Do you think the jaw angle is the trick with the gum? Or would it be breath? Or would it, what, what do you think?

• 42:07Speaker 00

  No, it would be, it would be jaw. You'd call them feminine in some capacity for not having a, a strong.

• 42:14Shaan Puri?

  I like how your brain went there. Like, I have this phrase that I say, which is the only positioning is counter positioning.

• 42:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:20Shaan Puri?

  Like, a lot of people just want to say their position. Oh, we're healthy, we're good for you, we don't. And it's like, everybody is saying those same things. So you gotta be counter, you gotta have something you're, is the enemy? Or you gotta call, you know, diagnose the problem and then sell the solution. So the only positioning is counter positioning. So what you're saying is if you're not working on your jaw, you probably have a feminine jaw.

• 42:38Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 42:38Shaan Puri?

  And if you can live with that, if you could sleep at night with that, that's on you.

• 42:41Speaker 00

  Okay, yeah. Okay, so I start by asking Chad GPT, like, do you understand looks maxing? Yes, it's about small, natural tweaks. The goal is to maximize aesthetic appeal, emphasis on facial harmony, symmetry and overall attractiveness.

• 42:57Speaker 00

  I'm creating a product for a jawline, jawline enhancement gum, some, every day. And I like, I like dual meanings and stuff too. I love when names have like, you know, like I like double entendres. I like, I like stuff like that. So that's where I would probably go with this. I would say, uh, that would consume every day. I'm looking for a clever, powerful name that has, you know, dual meaning. Chisel. So Chisel's a, a nice, I feel like that's a nice name.

• 43:28Shaan Puri?

  Is that what it gave you?

• 43:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, Chisel's the first one. Uh, masticate is chewing, but also sounds intense. And Chad chew. These are all great names, you know?

• 43:36Shaan Puri?

  I like Chisel though. Chisel's good.

• 43:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, Chisel's my favorite so far.

• 43:39Shaan Puri?

  All right, so we got Chisel gum.

• 43:41Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 43:41Shaan Puri?

  And now you gotta come up with how we're gonna market this. So you're gonna go to your creator army. You tell them what you want them to do? You just let them go?

• 43:47Speaker 00

  No, I let them go. And this has been part of.

• 43:51Speaker 00

  Respecting the future, but understanding that I'm not the person in that anymore.

• 43:55Shaan Puri?

  Letting go.

• 43:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 43:57Shaan Puri?

  So let's pretend we're those creators. We're not. So we're like, we're gonna be, you know, white belts at this. Whereas there's, there's black belts. But like, I see videos trending on TikTok all the time about transformation. So it's like weight loss, whatever. And so you could almost make it where you're not talking about a gum, obviously. It's like, you know, somebody being like my, you know, they use the trending music that people are using.

• 44:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, they would take a fitness influencer and they would put them up there and they would like highlight the different things on the facial symmetry and this and that. And then like, look at his jawline.

• 44:24Shaan Puri?

  Right. Why this, what you're saying, why this person is attracted? The human mind is attracted to symmetry, the golden ratio, stuff like that.

• 44:31Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 44:32Shaan Puri?

  You'd use like, oh, I'm kind of teaching you a science about why. Or, or you could even do like, why guys don't think this guy's attractive, but girls do.

• 44:40Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 44:41Shaan Puri?

  And you're like, oh, okay. What's the difference there? Or you could do a transformation and be like, I did five things. I took creatine. I did this.

• 44:48Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 44:49Shaan Puri?

  The, the third thing is I started chewing this gum daily. Honestly, I, I didn't believe it, but look at this. Boom, boom. And then you're like, it's available on Amazon. Back to my story about like, you know, my transformation. To be a video like that.

• 45:01Speaker 00

  Yep. That was one of the first ones that blew up on evil goods was, was literally that this girl had like hormonal acne. And it was like, it was the three things that helped with that. And she showed a before picture and after. And that was part of it. And it just went nuclear.

• 45:15Shaan Puri?

  All right. So we got our, our, our hooks there. Uh, we got our brand chisel. So what was the other one you said you're like? They say we can fund a startup right now. We can find an operator. It's a request for operator.

• 45:26Speaker 00

  Yes. Luxury Pet is screaming at me. Like Louis Vuitton is doing full pop-ups of $500 dog bowls. And it just shows again, it's like luxury is such an interesting world, right? Cause it's just like, signaling and status and what are people willing to pay? There's no luxury pet brands yet.

• 45:45Shaan Puri?

  Dude, you hit it again where my initial reaction is, oh my God, that's so stupid. What a waste. How, I can't believe people are doing this. But you're saying people are doing this. Period.

• 45:53Speaker 00

  Lu- Louis Vuitton.

• 45:54Shaan Puri?

  That's the important part.

• 45:55Speaker 00

  Louis Vuitton validated it.

• 45:56Shaan Puri?

  This is stupid. It's the, the second part of the sentence. People are doing this. That's a fact, Jack. You can't deny that.

• 46:02Speaker 00

  Well, I've just seen, so I had this idea probably like 18 months ago when I was just hearing what people spend on their pets. Like it's actually insane from a, like even the pet supplements, you know, it's like they're paying more for pet supplements than human supplements. And so I'm like, okay, there's something here. I wonder if you could ever do anything luxury. And then Louis Vuitton rolls out, literally like, you know, it's like lovers, like pet lovers. And they're doing $500 dog bowls and, you know, $300, you know, high-end leather collars. I'm just like, oh, validated.

• 46:34Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 46:34Speaker 00

  And how many do you have to sell in that area too, to have a successful business, you know?

• 46:38Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:38Speaker 00

  Oh, yes.

• 46:39Shaan Puri?

  Would you, so my initial hesitation would have been, can you build luxury on TikTok? Like, isn't TikTok kind of a little like, you know, it's more like a Walmart than it is like a luxury, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's just there's a billion people on it and so you can't generalize like that.

• 46:54Speaker 00

  That, and that's why I love, that's why I said, let's not do a disservice to the app and the, and the platform they build. That's why I did on Amazon with Genius. Genius is a, is a very high-end supplement brand. Like we were selling, um, you know, we had, we had a hundred and thirty dollar product. That was by all intensive purposes, like luxury. And I go, that would never work on Amazon. It's a discount site. And, and TikTok has a lot of those components in it now too. But again, you tie back to a billion people and you tie back to, I mean, my cologne's $90. So it's, that, that's not, that's not cheap, right? It's not a $30 cologne. $30 colognes outsell us, but I only need to sell one of those for every three. And, um, and it's done well. So I, I think it's, it's there.

• 47:34Shaan Puri?

  And how would you, if you did this luxury thing, like what, what would you do to make it, to build a brand? Cause I think you study high fashion, you study like kind of the, the cool stuff in culture. What would you do if you were translating that to the TikTok world? What would you do for, for luxury pet brand?

• 47:50Speaker 00

  Do you know Rene Girard? Like Peter Thiel's?

• 47:52Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, like memetic theory.

• 47:53Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm. I love that. And so I think-

• 47:56Shaan Puri?

  Explain the simple explanation of that.

• 47:58Speaker 00

  I mean, people don't know what they want, so they want what others want. And so from our perspective as brand owners influencing influencers and finding, you know, those names. I think the most straightforward way to run this one is, is find- One of these streamers or, you know, if I could get a clip of Drake using my cologne and then give it to the creator army, we would do millions of dollars. And I think you can do that in pet where I don't know if Kim Kardashian has a freaking poodle or whatever.

• 48:26Shaan Puri?

  Sure she does.

• 48:28Speaker 00

  But not even that, you don't even need that big of name, just someone in that space. And then you feed it to the army. And I think that's the most straightforward thing. And I think it would go overnight.

• 48:38Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I almost wonder if you could even just use the outrage. Um, so like.

• 48:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, of the cost of it.

• 48:44Shaan Puri?

  Of the cost.

• 48:44Speaker 00

  I was thinking that too.

• 48:45Shaan Puri?

  I can't believe people are doing this. This is the craziest thing I've seen. Celebrities are doing this. It, it makes me sick, whatever. And some people in the, like, it'll get to so many people and most of the comments will be negative about the idea, but it's just gonna get so much reach that some people are gonna either just, it'll plant the seed that this exists.

• 49:02Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 49:02Shaan Puri?

  That I'm not doing it, that other people are doing it, that hey, maybe I would do that. I do love my pet.

• 49:06Speaker 00

  Yep. Or even like, you could even play into Louis Vuitton doing it, like with the, you know, there's, I think there's a lot of different ways to approach it. And I just like those areas where there's, there's that much margin to play. There's just more, and, and again, it ties back to like human nature. We, we exist in a culture, in a world where we've created so much abundance, like bottom line, like, like we, we could afford things like universal basic income. And we're automating the hell out of everything and anything and everything is, is freaking possible. And so with that mind, there's really no shortage. Like you see some of the services that exist for billionaires. Like it is just the most absurd, hyper, but, but it exists and the people providing those do well. Isn't that like a Hormozzy thing? He says, sell to, I want to sell to people with more money or, or whatever.

• 49:50Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:51Speaker 00

  Something like that.

• 49:52Shaan Puri?

  One of his genius insights, sell to the people with money. But there is a, there is a like a actual like business framework here, which is if you take what the rich have, but you find a way to democratize it, you can build a huge business. So Uber is a classic example of this. Rich people had private drivers where, you know, when they're done with it, when they're done with the meeting, they send a text, done, driver pulls up, they get in, they get out. They don't have to go worry about parking and gas. Some, there's a guy who does that. Uber democratized that private driver experience and it literally, that was their homepage. A private driver for everyone. Um, and so like that became, that was the start of Uber, black cars. Um, you know, even Airbnb's, what is Airbnb? It's having a vacation home.

• 50:31Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 50:31Shaan Puri?

  It's being able to go and stay in a home in, you know, Tahoe or in all these different places. Airbnb became a thing that rich people have vacation homes in different cities, but now everybody gets access to that in a, in a different way. Marquee jets was private, private flight.

• 50:45Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 50:45Shaan Puri?

  So instead of buying a private jet, you know, 50 million, a hundred million dollars, you would instead, uh, buy a fractional share and get to ride certain hours. And there was a huge market of people that wanted to do that.

• 50:56Speaker 00

  Even JSX now probably to some extent.

• 50:58Shaan Puri?

  Dude, JSX is exactly like that. So, so you know, that's a bit, if you can find a way to drop the cost and that, you know, even Duolingo, like we have rich people who will hire a Mandarin tutor for their, for their kid. But then if you have an app that can teach your kid, you know, a foreign language, in a, in a way it's doing the same thing. And so I think that's, um, that is just generally a business model. What, what are the mistakes people make? So like, if somebody was to go into this, what are the common pitfalls someone could fall into that you could just like save them?

• 51:27Speaker 00

  Super top of the funnel here, how they treat those affiliates. It's very culture based. It's, I've seen brands, there's so much money being made right now. Brand owners need to be super generous because, you know, a market's a market and right now people are paying, you talked about the goalie challenge.

• 51:43Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Explain this because that was in an old episode. So explain what they were doing.

• 51:46Speaker 00

  This brand comes in and, and in an effort to get as many creators as possible, put together all these prizes with like the number one, if you did a million dollars in sales for them in a month, I believe they'd give you a condo in Brickell or the cash equivalent, which was like 600 grand or something like that.

• 52:02Shaan Puri?

  Like Lamborghini was the next one. It was like this, like rewards tier list.

• 52:06Speaker 00

  Rolex's left and right.

• 52:07Shaan Puri?

  And you're selling goalie gummies. Like they just make these like apple cider vinegar gummies, basically, which also was a health, kind of like a holistic health wellness things. Apple cider vinegar has benefits in your gut and whatever.

• 52:17Speaker 00

  Maybe.

• 52:18Shaan Puri?

  Maybe. Yeah. That will, that at the time was the narrative.

• 52:20Speaker 00

  Creator said so.

• 52:22Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. This, this 22 year old who's trying, trying to win a condo and told me that that's how this, the world works.

• 52:28Speaker 00

  Oh man.

• 52:29Shaan Puri?

  Do you believe any advertising at this point?

• 52:31Speaker 00

  No.

• 52:32Shaan Puri?

  Once you've seen how the sausage is made.

• 52:34Speaker 00

  There's a reason I hate supplements too. I'm not launching new supplements. I mean, there, there's some good stuff out there, but overall, when you really peel back all the, like it really, like a decent amount of health advice online nowadays is coming from 18 year olds making conspiracy videos.

• 52:52Shaan Puri?

  That's pretty wild.

• 52:53Speaker 00

  It's reality. So a good brand like Golay comes in though, and they they set the stage for how creators are being treated. And obviously they have a lot of money and they're trying to mess the game up for everyone else, right? They can afford that, maybe lose some money. But then if you're this startup brand owner and you're coming in and you're, no, man, I don't want to give you 25% commission. I'm going to give you 20. And and that that can be super off putting. And so in this current era, I would say, and even the culture from like the group we own part of, it's like abundance. It's like, put it out there, it's going to come back. And I think as an owner of a brand, like bringing that not, you know, accepting that we are a different generation and not, not infringing on them. I think that's the best thing you can do.

• 53:37Shaan Puri?

  Right. All right, well, give me your like, just summarize if I if I tuned out and I just need to hear one thing to summarize what your thoughts are on this kind of TikTok opportunity. Give me the summary, then I want to ask you about some other stuff.

• 53:48Speaker 00

  Millions are being printed on TikTok shop.

• 53:50Shaan Puri?

  Like, what are you doing?

• 53:53Speaker 00

  Just starting brands and and trying to get as many. I'm trying to perfect short form content and short form content distribution. Like, period, from a from a brand.

• 54:03Shaan Puri?

  Why do you believe so much in short form content? Because it's.

• 54:05Speaker 00

  It's changing the world in front of our eyes. Like, it's from personalities we know to songs we know, like it's so like music even. We're hearing songs that are blowing up from this world. And that's just, it's the future.

• 54:21Shaan Puri?

  Do we have this friend Connor Price? Have you seen what he does on TikTok?

• 54:24Speaker 00

  Who's he again?

• 54:25Shaan Puri?

  He's rapper, white guy rapper.

• 54:26Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

• 54:27Shaan Puri?

  He used to work in Ramon's warehouse, like moving boxes.

• 54:32Speaker 00

  No shit.

• 54:32Shaan Puri?

  And he was like, and then during COVID warehouse shuts down. He goes home, his wife's like, you should put your music out there, let's do something. Right, we're just sitting at home. Um, and he was really shy about it and she's like, you got to start making content. He puts out a YouTube video and it gets like, you know, 11 views like most YouTube videos do. And then she had this genius, she's like, she's the real mastermind behind it because she was like, let's make a TikTok. And he was like, he had the same reaction, TikTok, that's stupid, that's that's not serious. Like, I'm an artist, I'm a musician, I'm not just one of these kids dancing.

• 55:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:05Shaan Puri?

  And what he did was he started making these videos. We'll put one on the screen here so people can watch it. But he created a little skit. So instead of just saying, what I would have done, like a boomer, is I would have been like, hey, guys, I got a new song here. Or I would just make a video of like playing the song.

• 55:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:20Shaan Puri?

  And guess what happens when you're scrolling through TikTok, you're swiping every three seconds, and a song starts to play that you've never heard before, you just keep swiping. Like, it doesn't grab you right away.

• 55:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:30Shaan Puri?

  So instead, he started doing these funny skits where he would, he was three characters, almost like an Eddie Murphy movie. He would open the door, like every skit starts with him opening the door, and there's, that's the rapper coming into the studio. He's got the guy with the headphones on, that's him, him as the producer. And then you have the weird brother, and the weird brother is kind of the key to make the whole thing work. So he would walk in and he'd be like,

• 55:51Shaan Puri?

  yo, you ready for a session? Whoa, what's he doing? And just immediately you want to know, well, what's he doing? Why is he surprised? And the weird brother is doing, like, he has one where he's taking a carrot and he's drilling holes in a carrot. And you're like, and it's like the sound of a drill, it's the carrots visually weird. And they're both like, well, like, he's being weird again. And then he's like, let's get down to work. Um, you want to play that song? And then you hear this flute playing, and they both look at the brother and he's playing the carrot flute, but it's the beat of the song, like it just, he overlaid it that way as if that was the beat. And the producer's like, go with it, go with it. And then he starts rapping, and then the song hits, and the song is almost the punchline of the skit.

• 56:29Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 56:29Shaan Puri?

  And dude, he became like independently, no record label, billion streams on Spotify, doing no marketing on Spotify, only on TikTok.

• 56:39Speaker 00

  Off that. If I want to summarize all of this, it almost seems dark for a second, but like one of my favorite, you know, quotes is, you know, if you tell a lie enough times, it becomes truth. And that was obviously war propaganda back in the day, but you take that idea, and then you just think purely in terms of views and more specifically, cost of acquisition of views. So you have like a,

• 57:03Speaker 00

  You know, if you're a tobacco company, whenever and you're getting doctors to promote it, like you have the money to get the views and the net and control the narrative, right? And the more you can do that, it's usually a pay to play game, except in these windows. When all of a sudden an Andrew Tate bursts on the scene, it doesn't matter what he's saying is real or not, he's getting seen a billion times a month. And so all of a sudden that become, there's some narrative there being formed that he has serious impact on. And these gold rush windows are when there's the ability for normal people without, you know, multinational level marketing budgets to form a mainstream narrative or get a billion views on a Spotify and, you know, become something because of these windows. We couldn't have done that. He couldn't have done

• 57:48Speaker 00

  that without TikTok. Like he just, the old Instagram, you wouldn't have gone viral on, there's no means of connecting.

• 57:53Shaan Puri?

  Yes, this amazing circle, like 12 years ago, Instagram comes out and imagine if you were like, what are you doing all day today? It's like, oh, I'm filming myself. I'm making, I'm cooking at home and taking pictures of it or making videos of it.

• 58:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're a weirdo.

• 58:08Shaan Puri?

  Dude, get a job. What are you doing? So you go from weirdo wasting his time, but you were early on the platform to now, let's say you wanted to go become a food creator. It's like, dude, it's too saturated, man. It's impossible to win. It's like, but now everybody's accepted that influencers are a thing and that they have, they can, they can move product. They can, they can become rich. They can become famous doing this. And what you're saying is kind of like on TikTok, it's the same model, but instead of you becoming a famous creator, it's your product can become famous by putting it in the hands of talented people who are going to make all kinds of videos, taking literally like a thousand shots on goal a month. And if they get the right story or the right premise and they keep innovating on that, your product gets famous that way.

• 58:52Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 58:52Shaan Puri?

  Whereas dude, you weren't going to be able to walk into Walmart or Target and get on the shelf.

• 58:55Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 58:56Shaan Puri?

  You're not even going to be able to really go onto Amazon and just rank number one in these categories because they're so competitive.

• 59:01Speaker 00

  Not anymore, right?

• 59:01Shaan Puri?

  You're not going to become an influencer, influential creator on Instagram. It's harder. This is where the green field is.

• 59:07Speaker 00

  My, my dad called me an idiot when I was pouring into Amazon. Like actually, like, you know, like, like questioned my sanity as like, as a human, right? Like it was like a crazy experience. Now in hindsight, it's like, God, thank God.

• 59:18Shaan Puri?

  Thirty million dollars later.

• 59:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, thank God I didn't listen to my parents, you know, and, and. It's just, it's just, that's why I admire guys. Elon's a good example. I think when you look through things, look at things from like a very ground up perspective and don't take the common, there's so much arbitrage everywhere because humans are narrative machines and we live off that. So it's like, common knowledge becomes whatever and yet, technology is reshaping everything. That's why I just want to keep leaning into that and be, I think more people that aren't afraid to just send it with like that in mind in some capacity, the more it gives others the confidence to stand up on their own right and do their own thing, you know?

• 59:57Shaan Puri?

  Right. I like that you said, send it. You have this phrase I like. So we talked about looks maxing. You have said this phrase before, life maxing.

• 1:00:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:06Shaan Puri?

  And I kind of like the philosophy, but I don't really fully know it because we've only hung out in group settings a bunch of times. What is the life maxing philosophy? Is this something that you think more people should be kind of taken as a mantra?

• 1:00:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think, I think so. I think there's a lot of existential dread in today's world. And there's also a lot of us trying to ascribe-

• 1:00:28Shaan Puri?

  Even amongst successful people, you mean?

• 1:00:30Speaker 00

  Especially amongst successful people. Especially amongst successful people. And it manifests in all, all sorts of weird ways, you know? Look at Ryan Johnson. Um, I'm kidding. Crazy take. But-

• 1:00:42Shaan Puri?

  Love you, Brian.

• 1:00:43Speaker 00

  No, he's awesome. He really is. He really is. And I think he's a good example of someone that's all in on life maxing. Cause everyone, my thing is we have this-

• 1:00:52Shaan Puri?

  He took it literally.

• 1:00:53Speaker 00

  He did.

• 1:00:54Shaan Puri?

  Lifespan maxing.

• 1:00:55Speaker 00

  Lifespan maxing. But we have this blank, you know, scorecard, right? And, and we have this finite time here on the earth. And I think the more you can fill it up with things that you thoroughly enjoy and then kind of like maxing out those stats, so to speak, we're capable of so much. And instead, we fall into this like, oh, I'm only going to chase money or oh, I'm only going to do this, where living a well-rounded life-

• 1:01:23Shaan Puri?

  What's the difference between just being well-rounded and life-maxing? Are they the same thing with just a cool name? Or is there a difference?

• 1:01:31Speaker 00

  I don't see many people, it ties back to that full sending it thing. I don't see many people that are really like, yo, I'm living for this. Like, what was your shower thoughts this morning?

• 1:01:41Shaan Puri?

  My shower thought was, I realized that the- The optimal way in terms of how the optimal mindset for me is to be ignorant of the past, realistic about the present and delusional about the future.

• 1:01:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:56Shaan Puri?

  Too many people are living in their past or they vacation there all the time. They just keep going to visit and they tell themselves it's for all kinds of reasons. Maybe it's therapies, telling them to go think about their childhood. Maybe it's they're saying, I'm going to go learn lessons. Reality is the more you live in your past, the less happy you are.

• 1:02:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:14Shaan Puri?

  You want to be delusional about the future. Why not? Why be realistic about the future? Cause you can be only when you're a little bit delusional about the future. Do you actually like kind of blow your own mind? You get to, you get to do more than what you thought was reasonable. But then you gotta be realistic about the present. If you're just delusional about the present, you're like, no, I am the best dad, but you're not.

• 1:02:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:33Shaan Puri?

  Then you go nowhere, right? Oh, I'm already uber duper successful. Like, bro, you're banking accounts, you know, three digits right now. It's like, you gotta be realistic, but just say like, all right, that's where I am. That's not where I'm always going to be. Forget the past. It don't matter if I failed 10 times. Like most, the most successful people, when you talk to them, they're like, yeah, 10 years you grind it. If you ask them, be like, what was that like? What were you doing? It's almost hard for them to even remember.

• 1:02:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:56Shaan Puri?

  And it's not because it was so long ago. It's because there's actually like a, a useful part of your brain that just blocks it out.

• 1:03:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:03Shaan Puri?

  It's like my wife, she did like natural delivery of birth like three times. And if I ask her about it, it's like, her body has like a mechanism that's like,

• 1:03:11Speaker 00

  You never forgot that though, did you?

• 1:03:13Shaan Puri?

  I never forgot. I'm traumatized. I'm like, how could you do this to me?

• 1:03:17Speaker 00

  The things dads gotta go through, man. I'm with you.

• 1:03:19Shaan Puri?

  I'm fainting, right? And then she's, and she's like, forgot about it. She's like, only remembers the good. And it's like, wow.

• 1:03:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:25Shaan Puri?

  Your brain gave you a survival mechanism that was actually really good for you, that you don't remember how bad it was, how hard it was. And I think ignorant of the past, realistic about the present, delusional about the future. I think that's a good motto to live by.

• 1:03:36Speaker 00

  So I take that, there's two things. I'm obsessed with this idea of character design and that that's what I'm living real time. I think we have the ability, when you zoom out long enough to create literally whatever type of thing you want to be. Like you can, you can truly design that. And so you have that. And then you have another idea I'm obsessed with, which is Bezos's 80 year regret minimization framework, where he wants to like that view of his deathbed, you know, how he wants as few regrets as possible. And so when you work through those two avenues, you can quite literally like do anything.

• 1:04:07Shaan Puri?

  So explain the character design, because I've heard the regret minimization, which is basically like, If I'm dying, I want to have the least regrets possible. So therefore today, which if I have a fork in the road,

• 1:04:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:17Shaan Puri?

  You know, do the one that will lead to the least regrets when I'm 80, when I'm 90,

• 1:04:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, and that ties back to your piece. Be relatively delusional about the future while being very aware of where you're at today, while pretty much disregarding everything.

• 1:04:30Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:04:30Speaker 00

  And so like when I look at like, like this, you know, like I, this is music I've been working on, right? And I remember going to a show in Puerto Rico, John Summit. And I was like, you know, in the booth right next to the DJ thing and just watching him command that crowd and the energy and like the impact. And I was like, you know, if I'm 80 years old and I didn't at least try to send it in this space, I'll regret it. And, and then I start thinking through the character lens of what does an artist look like? And what is this? Like things I have in me. So I'm not like completely disconnected from reality, but now taking all of the, hey, this is a business. Hey, now the product's music. Hey, this is streaming. Hey, you know, marketing and, and that's, that's where I'm at with it.

• 1:05:12Shaan Puri?

  One of the things that you're reminding me of when you're talking about, let's say the music production or getting people to remember is you were talking about whether it's marketing or music, or if you have something good to say, you almost owe it to yourself. It's like, do you believe in the thing you made? The thing you have to say? Because people are very bashful about marketing. They're bashful about putting it out there. I know this. I would write things. I wouldn't even send it to my own friends and family. I wouldn't post on social media. I wouldn't promote my product. I just kind of wanted it to be organic. And I, when I look back at that, I'm like, damn, I did myself a disservice. Like, did I think the thing I did was good or not? If I think it was good, then I owe it to that, to do marketing.

• 1:05:53Speaker 00

  Just to send it.

• 1:05:54Shaan Puri?

  To fully send it.

• 1:05:55Speaker 00

  To send it.

• 1:05:55Shaan Puri?

  And you know, when you, uh, when you talk about storytelling, music, you gotta study the art of how do you get your, your stuff out there?

• 1:06:03Speaker 00

  It's a phenomenal skill. It's like a crazy, crazy.

• 1:06:06Shaan Puri?

  Like that's the vehicle. You put the package in the trunk, but you need the vehicle that's going to actually get it out there to the masses. It's crazy, dude. We're going to watch this video. This, this YouTube video right now. You just said it yourself.

• 1:06:18Shaan Puri?

  What you said in this video will make people millions of dollars. If they, all they did was just try to act on it. Give it two years, try to act on it. You will become a millionaire if you just follow what you just said. And if I go look at the YouTube video stats, the retention chart is gonna look like it's just a downhill slope. Most people are gonna click off within 30 seconds. And then by the end of this, there's only gonna be, you know, 25% of people are still watching this at the end. I mean, 75% of people clicked on this because they wanted something out of their life and then are not gonna even stick with it enough to watch the video.

• 1:06:48Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:06:48Shaan Puri?

  But that's just the laws of nature.

• 1:06:50Speaker 00

  And don't be that guy. But with that in mind, I think this last chunk of the video where we're talking about these stories and the ability, like, the model is becoming less important the more I understand people. And tapping into whatever that innate thing in all of us is, is way more important. And I want to bring that out of more people because I've been through like a [__] kind of stuff in a, in a short period of time. And I think the more I can bring that forward, the more general impact there'll be. There, there's, one of my other favorite internet clips, you know, for, for the Elon Musks and like Brett Hancock. Did you have him on or like?

• 1:07:22Shaan Puri?

  Adcock, yeah.

• 1:07:23Speaker 00

  Adcock, sorry. There's those minds that are just like obviously incredible in their own space. But then there's that Elon interview and it's like, Elon, you inspire everyone in this room. Da, da, da. Who inspires you? It's like Kanye West, of course.

• 1:07:37Shaan Puri?

  You know, it's just like. Is that what he said?

• 1:07:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's hilarious. And it's, it's, it's, that's the opposite side of that. Like, yeah, okay, Kanye is nuts in every way, but just that ability and desire to create and stand up for new things and, and like have that confidence in yourself, regardless of what people say, is nothing short of, not only incredible, but necessary for, for people.

• 1:08:03Shaan Puri?

  I love the send it attitude. I mean, I want to make merch with the send it thing. And also I think you, you made me realize there's probably the way I used to think about it, which is well-rounded. You know, Mike Posner came on the podcast, the famous musician. He wrote like, "Took a pill of Ibiza" and all those songs. First song went viral and he tells the story. He's like, first song went viral. I'm like, of course, that's what I do, you know, like, uh, I guess that's what I do. I put out a song, I go triple platinum. And then the second song went double platinum, then single platinum, then no platinum. And then he was on the shelf, the record label was like, it's not even worth. Paying to produce your music because we don't think it'll sell. But also you can't go do something else. You're under contract. So he was like, dude, I'm shit out of luck. He like went back to school and started learning how to sing better. He's like, dude, I'll just work on my craft.

• 1:08:46Shaan Puri?

  And then he came back and now he's had, he's like had this resurgence, but he talked about, he goes, I had to look at my life and realize, yes, I was uber duper successful in my career, but I was a desert wasteland in relationships and health and whatever. He's like, that I realized was just not success for me. And so I was inspired by that. And I started thinking, yeah, you do want it to be well rounded. You want to be the, you want to be the dad, the husband. You also want to be having fun. You also want to be, you know, be creative and making cool shit, being successful, making money. But the well-rounded thing is more like a check the box. It's like, am I doing, you know, a sufficient amount of X, Y, and Z.

• 1:09:23Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:09:23Shaan Puri?

  Whereas life maxing is saying, what would it look, look like if I really sent it in terms of my fitness? Like, yeah, I'm going to work out anyways, but like, I know you, you do Muay Thai, right? You're like, I'm going to work out for an hour anyways. What could I do that makes me like, what would, what would be full send on this workout?

• 1:09:38Speaker 00

  Dramatically better. And that, that's the great example. It's like two years ago, I couldn't fight at all. And I feel pretty comfortable like in there with, with a lot of people.

• 1:09:46Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:09:46Speaker 00

  That aren't named John Jones, you know? But, but just taking things seriously and really putting that notch on your belt. It's like now music or even like learning Spanish is one that I'm like, gonna do and I'm gonna take it very seriously. And it's not going to be, I'm half learning Spanish. I'm going to be fluent in, you know?

• 1:10:02Shaan Puri?

  Do you do these one at a time? Or how do you, how do you like?

• 1:10:04Speaker 00

  That's what I'm discovering.

• 1:10:04Shaan Puri?

  How do you not stretch yourself?

• 1:10:05Speaker 00

  That's what I'm discovering. It's like, like how much, and I like that healthy balance of pushing yourself to, we're capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit for. I've already, I've already seen that. But there is some line. And so I don't have a good answer for that, but that's, I'm trying to also be an open book and show it all real time. Like I want you to look back at my fighting clips from two years ago and I want, you know, the meat, like all of it. I want to be an open story that, that is ongoing and constantly iterating.

• 1:10:33Shaan Puri?

  So this year I, um, Jesse Itzler came on the podcast and gave this idea of a misogi. He's like, oh, there's this Japanese tradition and way, kind of the American translation or the way he translated the Japanese idea is, Um, one grand challenge a year, but specifically like do something so grand that it changes you. Yeah. That it changes you. So then it's like, so he, for him, it was like, he ran this hundred mile race like, and he, every year he picks a different one. One year was write a book. Uh, another year, so he's done this for like 15 years or so. And I was like, damn, I never really do something like that, right? Like I have like New Year's resolutions, things I want to improve about myself, but I never really like, put out the Masogi, the grand challenge for the year. And so I made one. I was like, all right, I want to,

• 1:11:16Shaan Puri?

  and I like that it's one, cause I was like, oh, I want to do this and this and this. And all that was going to do was guarantee none of them happen. Yep. So all right, what's the one for this year? And I was like, I would love to be, I was like, I want to have more fun in my life. I have fun playing basketball. I have fun doing the podcast. I have fun, you know, in business, my kids. Where can I, where can I dial up fun? And I was like, I want to be able to jam out with music. Cause music is like its own little like magic potion. Music makes you feel good in 13 seconds. I can play a song and change your mood in 13 seconds. There's not much I could say to you that's going to do that, like to change your mood for the better. Um, and so I was like, all right, I want to be able to jam out on a, on a piano. But then I was like, all right, what's the life maxing version of this?

• 1:11:56Shaan Puri?

  So I was like, all right, not only am I going to learn to, not only just going to learn piano, like I'm going to get good. I'm going to be able to jam out to any song I want on the piano. That's going to be my mission. Two, what if I could also teach my daughter, she's five. I was like, what if she could do it with me? Now I'm getting dad points while I'm getting piano points at the same time. Finding those synergies to weave it all together. Oh, it's integration. I'm not choosing family or my piano hobby. It's both. So she comes with me to every single lesson. She begs me to do piano now every night. I'm like, okay, that's cool. Then I was like, all right, what would be like, the max out, the full send version of this? If I really was to send it, what would I do? And at first I was like, what, would I make a song? Would I perform at a theater? And I felt like, that's kind of playing somebody else's game. So I think a key part is like pick. What's real for you?

• 1:12:40Shaan Puri?

  Uh, don't just like take somebody else's scorecard and be like, that's now how I'm gonna judge myself. So I had this idea from my cousin of um, go play, go play a recital at an old folks home.

• 1:12:51Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:12:52Shaan Puri?

  I was like, oh, that'd be just like more fun. Like that would just be more fun for me, more meaningful for me versus like post it online and get a bunch of views or performing in front of other people. It's like, dude, go to this place where I've been to a bunch of like senior centers. Uh, not a lot is happening there. Like I could go be there Kanye, because there's nobody else there.

• 1:13:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:13:08Shaan Puri?

  And for me, that would be meaningful. Like I made other people's day brighter if I did that. Um, so I was like, to me, that was a real learning lesson of like, how to choose these side quests? How to choose these misogies, these one-year challenges in a way that I'm gonna use now going forward.

• 1:13:23Speaker 00

  Absolutely. I think you hit the nail on the head with being hyper individualized. Like my, my life maxing scorecard is not, is not yours and it shouldn't be. We're all drawn to different things and, and I think keeping it individual is important while keeping that. Like my main framework is like, don't let anyone else dictate it for you, or don't let anyone tells, tell you what you can't be or can't do.

• 1:13:44Shaan Puri?

  Right. What's your, what's yours? Like what do you, what does that scorecard look like for you?

• 1:13:49Speaker 00

  Uh, so I'm like, Muay Thai is starting to take like a, a back burner thing. I'm putting, you know, being a dad at the, the top of that, which has been, so that, that's like reshuffling everything. Cause I'm learning what it means to be present as an individual. And that means like, you know, way less phone, which inherently means like it starts to crumble some of the other pieces. But the beautiful part of this is when you put your priorities in, in place, things start to handle themselves. Like then all of a sudden you start thinking smarter just naturally. Like, okay, like that's still has to get done. So I have to trust, you know, my team for that and this and that. And so that, that's at the top of it. Um, the, the, the music is the second, second piece and then still the other. Uh, you know, it's like I'm, I'm taking content as one of these things now, like just from a storytelling.

• 1:14:34Speaker 00

  Some of the stuff I'm gonna do on YouTube, I think is gonna, is gonna.

• 1:14:37Shaan Puri?

  Well, let's talk about content real quick, because when I first met you, um, through a mutual friend, you showed up and you had this like, again, you always have a different like crazy outfit on.

• 1:14:49Shaan Puri?

  And somebody was like, oh, you gotta check out his Instagram. And I go and I was like, bro, like, I was having a great conversation with you. And then I went to your Instagram.

• 1:14:55Speaker 00

  That's not this guy.

• 1:14:56Shaan Puri?

  I was like, I would never talk to this guy. Your brand name was like, the genius CEO. Every video was like Dan Bilzerian meets like Instagram meets like a drop shipper. It was like, it was like, oh, man, this guy's selling courses and every video was like over the top. He's talking about how you can make millions instantly. It was a get rich quick vibes. But I met you. I was like, dude, you, you, yeah. And you and you were like, I'm like, you're like, it's like experiment. Like, I'm being intention. I'm intentionally turning that knob up that way because I want to see what happens. And you were into that at the time. I think now you're making a shift, but like, could you just describe what you did there? Because I almost was, once I met you and I was like, oh, that's, he created a character. So my, my, that's actually respectable in a way.

• 1:15:40Speaker 00

  I'm huge. Like, one of my core things is obviously intense ownership of like oneself. And one of my problems, after I sold that business with Genius, I had my first daughter. I was really frustrated with the world. Like, I just was. And it started to become like a cope and like a, you know, other people have weird ways of ducking ownership and responsibility and like disconnecting from their own unhappiness. And I remember just thinking like, I don't like where the world's headed. And so I could sit there and keep crying about it, or I could try to have some influence or some dent on it. And that's what kind of drew me to intentional social media. I had tried to do like this cool health content and like, I was doing not, not full Brian Johnson,

• 1:16:21Speaker 00

  but like Dave Asprey level stuff, like seven, eight years ago, like hyperbaric chamber, red light. And like, literally, nobody cared. Nobody cared. And now in hindsight.

• 1:16:32Shaan Puri?

  The nice guy was finishing last.

• 1:16:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then hindsight, I didn't know how to make the content yet, right? But I saw this like clear formula of, oh, my God, if I post a car, like I am actually rich. I sold a business and if you post a car or watch or whatever, people respond. And so as that started to work, I started doubling down on those, those things. And it wasn't until like, you kind of got to play the game to change the game a little bit. It was, was my opinion. And that's when you met me, kind of in that wave where like.

• 1:17:07Speaker 00

  Pseudo-relevant, even if maybe not in the right, right lens. But until you have learned those skills and learn to kinda, you know, develop a platform, then, then literally nobody cares. Like Nice Guy does finish last, and so I guess that's just been my personal evolution. Like, it's been fun, because I, I got, I'll be the first to say, I got way too far in that stuff. Like, I got lost in it. Like, that actually does happen. Ben, your, your partner flagged that for me like seven or eight months ago in a really casual Ben way, but like,

• 1:17:33Shaan Puri?

  Ben's non-confrontational. What did he say to you?

• 1:17:35Speaker 00

  It, it was just something along the lines of like, well, if you, if you do that stuff enough, don't you start to kinda believe it or, or become it? And, and that stuck with me, and like, I don't think he knows that stuck with me. I don't even know if he remembers he said that, but there were a lot of little things like that that prompted me to go.

• 1:17:48Shaan Puri?

  It's like an actor. You stay in character because you're doing it for the role, but then at some point.

• 1:17:52Speaker 00

  It's method acting.

• 1:17:53Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you, you lose yourself in this, you get lost in the sauce.

• 1:17:55Speaker 00

  And actually, that happened to me, and, and unfortunately, like, a lot of the things I was leaning into do make you like cool or whatever, so now there's this, this audience that looks up to you in a very specific light. So you have two choices. You keep down the same path, or you say, whoops, you know, like, this is what I actually am. And so I feel like I've separated a lot of the negative parts, whilst like, I love fashion. I love design. Like, I, I genuinely do. I think it's individualism. I think there's like, you know, um.

• 1:18:20Shaan Puri?

  Can we do the fashion? Uh, okay, so, so here's me. I have Nike shoes. It should have been just New Balance to go full dad mode. I'm wearing sweatpants and a plain black shirt.

• 1:18:30Speaker 00

  Those Kobe's though?

• 1:18:31Shaan Puri?

  The, no, these are not Kobe's. These are ninety dollar Nikes. I just like this color of green. So, let's go head to toe. Teach me what you, what you got on here.

• 1:18:38Speaker 00

  Full San Francisco. And I love it.

• 1:18:40Shaan Puri?

  I got matching socks today. That's only because I knew I had to step my game up for you. Normally, it'd be mismatched socks. It'd be more sweat jeans, these are Lulu's at least. And then like, this, this might be my daughter's, but I was like, oh, hold on, he's gonna have hella accessories. Let me come strong with the.

• 1:18:54Speaker 00

  I got less accessories than usually. So start with the wrist. How much you think this is?

• 1:18:57Shaan Puri?

  You start with the wrist. Is that like part of the fashion? You build around this?

• 1:19:00Speaker 00

  I don't wanna talk about Louis Vuitton, so.

• 1:19:01Shaan Puri?

  Okay. Uh, that looks, it looks fancy to me. All right, my honest guess would have been that that's a twenty thousand dollar watch.

• 1:19:08Speaker 00

  This is a vintage Oakley from like the nineties, and it was like thirty-five hundred dollars.

• 1:19:13Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 1:19:13Speaker 00

  So, so I, I don't believe that like expense. And costs. I have some expensive stuff, but I think like it's way cooler to put together like unique kind of stuff. This shirt is uh this this gentleman, the brand's E R L. I can't pronounce his name, but he's like the head photographer for Vogue and like he did all of Kendrick Lamar's stuff. And again, not super expensive, but like very on the come up. The jeans were from Kanye's. Like this was probably like he's not cheap, but probably three, three hundred bucks or something, but not mind blowing. Um Kanye's Free Larry Hoover tour with with Drake. These were probably like a hundred fifty bucks, like thirty bucks, not expensive. Louis Vuitton boots, which were expensive.

• 1:19:54Speaker 00

  They're twenty five hundred dollars. I love what Pharrell is one of my business idols. I think there's a huge gap between um like artistry, culture and actual business. Pharrell has that quote. It's uh creativity without business is victimization and business without creativity is just dumb. And I think he stepping into the head of Louis Vuitton, like a brand I would typically never wear or care about, is the perfect example of those two things merging creativity with meaningful enterprise. Bernardo knows top three richest people because of that.

• 1:20:30Shaan Puri?

  All right. I got a little bit. I got a little bit cooler. I don't think I could pull it off.

• 1:20:34Speaker 00

  I think you pull it off.

• 1:20:35Shaan Puri?

  But maybe, I don't know. You gotta give me like the uh the dad baby steps version of these. I'm gonna start just, I'm gonna start at the wrist. Take it, take it simple and then we'll go from there. Actually, I should just show up for um, we should have done a thing where it's like, I don't know if you've seen Rick Glassman. He does these interviews where he does a podcast, but he'll go and then it'll cut and they'll switch outfits. It's so funny when they do shit like that. But we'll just pretend I did that.

• 1:20:59Speaker 00

  That's awesome.

• 1:21:00Shaan Puri?

  Uh, Rob, thanks for coming on, man. You uh, everybody should find you Rob the Bank, which is one of the greatest handles of all time.

• 1:21:07Speaker 00

  Thank you for that.

• 1:21:08Shaan Puri?

  Well, you were already saying it. I didn't come up with it, but I was like, dude, that should be your handle. That should be your brand. What is this? The Genius CEO? No, no, no. You should be Rob the Bank.

• 1:21:17Speaker 00

  And and just wait, full disclaimer before we, you know, my last company was the Genius brand. So I didn't just, you know, it just looked bad. It looked bad. But no, thank you for having me. Seriously, like this means the world. No, I really appreciate it.

• 1:21:28Shaan Puri?

  Thanks for doing it.