#144 - Shaan's Giving Away A Company, A Mysterious, Anonymous New App and The Most Gimmicky Marketing Thing The Guys Have Done

MFM Apex: https://joinapex.com/i/pwr8nk Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) discuss: - DTC smelling salts? - A mysterious, anonymous new app - Should you hide your real opinions? - The amazing story of Katalin Kariko - Should you focus on legacy or fun? - MFM embraces the banter - Shaan's giving away a company - The world of affiliates links and adtech - Improving ad managers and the origin story of Wish - Jacked techies - What's the most gimmicky thing you've ever done? Thank you to our sponsor this episode, Flatfile! Spend less time on Excel and more time building your business by easily importing data using Flatfile. Check them out at flatfile.io/hustle. Have you joined our private FB group yet? It's a page where people share each others million dollar ideas or what they're already working on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion. Editing thanks to Jonathan Gallegos (@jjonthan) See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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

• 0:17Shaan Puri?

  All right, well, um, what do you want to talk about, Sam?

• 0:21Sam Parr?

  Did you see I lined up? You have like a little crush on Mr. Beast, I think, right?

• 0:26Shaan Puri?

  Uh, I do not have a little crush on Mr. Beast, but I think he's doing interesting stuff.

• 0:32Sam Parr?

  So his manager's coming and I think we lined up, did we line up one or two more people?

• 0:37Shaan Puri?

  Uh, yeah, his manager's coming.

• 0:39Sam Parr?

  Next, uh, next podcast, the podcast that comes out Friday. And then, um, that Deep Senadel, you know, those guys there reached out to me. I'll, I will hope to set something up with them. But, uh, no more guests or we don't have a lot of guests planned.

• 0:52Shaan Puri?

  Our friend Sully's coming on in a couple of weeks.

• 0:55Sam Parr?

  Oh, is he all right? That's cool.

• 0:57Shaan Puri?

  Sam, you seem, uh, you seem out of it. Are you okay?

• 1:00Sam Parr?

  I'm tired. I just, I'm tired. That's all.

• 1:02Shaan Puri?

  Do I need to crack open a Topo Chico for you?

• 1:06Sam Parr?

  No, I'm, I'm, I'm good. I'm good, man. It, uh, it snowed in Austin yesterday. I was freezing my ass off and I stayed inside and like slept and didn't exercise that much and it still wore me out.

• 1:17Shaan Puri?

  So I'll give you, uh, I'll do an idea that's based on the way you're feeling right now. So are you familiar with smelling salts?

• 1:24Sam Parr?

  Yeah. I mean, originally they're meant for like waking someone up after an injury.

• 1:28Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Like after a knock, knockout?

• 1:29Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Like Barstool Sports uses them as a joke where they like go and find someone whose eyes are closed and they put them under their nose to make them throw up.

• 1:38Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So basically, um, I've been looking into smelling salts and I originally wasn't going to even talk about this idea on here because I, I gave it to a friend of mine to execute. So nobody copied this idea, but if you can help out or you got ideas, feel free to, uh, to, to chime in. But I like this idea. So smelling salts traditionally, I only knew them because, okay, boxer gets knocked out. You wave the smelling salts in front of their nose and they wake up. The other option is you, uh, or the other people that use them are like, uh, weightlifters. So before a body, like any weightlifting competition, you'll see a lot of weightlifters, you know, crack a smelling salt open and, uh, and basically just, you know, use it to get kind of amped up before they do their lift.

• 2:20Shaan Puri?

  And it's a stimulant. And so same thing with football players. There's a whole bunch of videos of Peyton Manning and a bunch of NFL players before games using smelling salts to sort of get amped up and get ready to go. So I thought that's interesting. And I'm somebody who I never drink coffee. I don't drink any coffee. I don't drink any soda. So I basically never do like caffeine as stimulants. But I'm really into this idea of being able to quickly snap into like, I don't know, like a peak state of mind. All right. I treat like, I treat my workday like an athlete treats their pregame, you know, routine, like, you know, I don't just get up and start, start working like, in the same way, an athlete doesn't just kind of roll out of bed and go play a game like they have a warm up and they have a routine they do beforehand to get themselves ready to go.

• 3:05Sam Parr?

  Do you take smelling salts?

• 3:06Shaan Puri?

  I don't. And I don't because smelling salts are not that good for you, right? Smelling salts have ammonia. It's not terrible for you, but over a long term basis, it's known to like irritate the lining of the nose and the skin, the interior of your nasal passageway. And it's not great for you, but it's effective. And so, and it's more effective than most than like coffee or, you know, like drinking a shitty energy drink. And so I thought, okay, what if I can create a smelling salt that's not bad for you? So a smelling salt that doesn't have the same harsh chemical, but still has the same stimulating effect. And idea would be to sell this to two groups of people potentially. One is like the pre-workout crowd. So pre-workout is a big supplement category.

• 3:50Shaan Puri?

  So like no explode was one, but there's a whole bunch of these pre-workout powders you take, basically just something to get you amped up before you work out. And it's not a protein powder. It's a pre-workout powder. And then there's another group of people that I think would be good for this, which is just people who work at a desk who are kind of like productivity nerds and they want to, to like optimize themselves. They want to do a little bit of biohacking slash like productivity nerdery to make this happen.

• 4:12Sam Parr?

  Did you look at the, have you looked at this stuff on Amazon?

• 4:14Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 4:15Sam Parr?

  So I typed in smelling salt. So there's this, the leading company looks like is called Atomic Rhino.

• 4:20Shaan Puri?

  And there's another one called like uh something sport ammonia sport. They all look like that on the cover is like a guy exploding with steroids. Basically, it just looks like a meathead product because it is a meathead product today.

• 4:33Sam Parr?

  Oh, my God, this is crazy. I'm gonna buy this. The reviews are really good. They're probably all fake, but it's how interesting. How about this one asylum smelling salts?

• 4:42Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 4:42Sam Parr?

  So good, you go crazy.

• 4:44Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. So that's the all the existing products in the market are branded like this. Uh, and then you have a whole other batch of like people that that buy products that are, uh, you know, like essential oils and whatnot. They're kind of like a different brand. And so what I, and so I talked to my.

• 4:58Sam Parr?

  Listen to this one. It's called nose torque. The most potent, long lasting smelling salts available. Number one choice of powerlifters worldwide.

• 5:08Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. I don't want nose torque, but I'm down to get like amped up and in the zone. So I saw here's what I did. So I I called my friend. Uh, one of my best friends from college is this guy Tofik and he's a uh ear, nose and throat surgeon. Um, now, and he's like, you know, probably one of the smartest guys I know on balance. And I asked him, I said, hey, uh, how bad are smelling salts for you? And like, are there alternatives? And he basically said two things. He goes, well, you know, a smelling salt is just a really, really strong odor. In fact, it's ammonia. Basically, it smells like piss. And like a really strong concentrated form of piss. It's a stimulant, yes, but it's not like it makes you, you know, stronger in any way. It doesn't like actually do anything to you, but like he's like, it's sort of like a placebo effect.

• 5:49Shaan Puri?

  Because if you do it all the time, so if you keep taking it, if you have a really strong odor before you do something and your body starts to act a certain way, it will anchor that connection. And so like, if you want to get into that state of mind, that mood faster, the smell could just become an anchor for it. And so he's like, yeah, and he gave me a couple of compounds. He's like, these would be superior alternatives to the ammonia blend that, you know, the ammonia formula that these guys use. Use this instead. This won't have the damaging effects, but will still have the strong uh stimulant. And so I think this is a little fun, little D to C idea. I'm gonna do it. I have an operator now who's who's who's doing it uh for me because I don't have the time. And uh, I can't wait to see where this goes because I think nose torque and you know, like nasal blaster are not the way to do this.

• 6:34Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I'm looking this up. This is something. I can't believe this. Will be interesting to watch. I would never bet my money on it, but I would love to pay the entry fee just to watch you fuck it up.

• 6:47Shaan Puri?

  So I'm gonna build this one in public. So everything from sourcing to whatever. So I'm having the guy who's who's working on it.

• 6:54Sam Parr?

  Who's working on it?

• 6:55Shaan Puri?

  Blog about it. I'll announce that a little bit, you know, when he, when he writes his first thing, we'll, we'll, we'll kind of introduce.

• 7:00Sam Parr?

  Anyone I know?

• 7:02Shaan Puri?

  Yes, someone you know, someone who in fact has even been on the podcast once in a small way. So we'll, we'll leave it as a teaser for now, but.

• 7:10Sam Parr?

  Oh.

• 7:10Shaan Puri?

  Smell like salts.

• 7:11Sam Parr?

  Are they the same ethnicity as you?

• 7:14Shaan Puri?

  They're not the same ethnicity as me. No.

• 7:16Sam Parr?

  Hmm hmm.

• 7:17Shaan Puri?

  So that's one idea. Uh, let's do another idea. So actually I'll tell you about something pretty interesting. Since you didn't really have too many topics, I'm just gonna kind of monologue. Half this podcast and you react to these things that are going on. All right. So I've been. What's the right way to introduce this? Okay. So something cool happened to me last week or two weeks ago where I got a DM from somebody, can't say who, but it's like a very well-known person in the kind of like tech world. Somebody who I kind of like, look up to, consider like awesome. I don't know this person, so I was surprised to get a DM from them. And they basically said, hey, join this, uh, like kind of private community on Apex. I said, I never heard of Apex. Don't know what that is.

• 7:57Shaan Puri?

  So join this private community on Apex. A bunch of us are on there. I think you'll like it. And I just thought this was spam. I was like, oh, someone's account got hacked and they're just trying to like, they're just spamming everybody using this person's account, uh, to try to grow their thing, I guess. So I wrote back, I like kind of, actually kind of rudely, I was like, okay, like, did you get hacked? Like, you know, what is this? And the person was like, no, uh, did not get hacked. Why? I don't know what you mean. Um, I'm inviting you to this. And I was like, but you don't even know me. And it's like, person's like, well, actually I've seen you on Twitter, you know, followed you kind of for a little while. You know, just Twitter respect. So thought I'd invite you to this. And I was like, oh shit, this might be real. Okay. So I go and click on it. I was like, what's Apex? So Apex is a new app. So anybody can create their own Apex. They can create their own little island.

• 8:42Shaan Puri?

  Right? So you can create an island. So this person had created one. You can invite whoever you want to it. You invite a real person, but once they join, you can make it anonymous or Sedanis where you can pick a random username. So it's like, the idea is like a digital masquerade party. So you invite all your friends, but everybody comes with a mask on. So nobody knows who's who, but everybody knows we're all kind of like, we've all been curated here. It's not just randos of the internet.

• 9:06Sam Parr?

  What's it called?

• 9:07Shaan Puri?

  The app is called Apex and it's out. It's not a test flight. So it's actually in the, in the app store. And I really like this idea. I've actually myself wanted to create something like this. I wanted to create a version of this that was like a public, like I wanted to invite a bunch of badass people. Let them all be anonymous, but everybody in the thing is badass. And so they feel free to say whatever they want. But it's not just like random anonymous egg accounts on Twitter or YouTube comments.

• 9:33Sam Parr?

  How would I find this? Private groups, Apex private groups. It's like two arrows up.

• 9:38Shaan Puri?

  Two arrows up. Yeah, exactly.

• 9:39Sam Parr?

  Interesting.

• 9:40Shaan Puri?

  So, uh, you know, like there's a bunch of Apexes, right? Like I'm, you know, I'm in one. I just created another and I'm like, okay. So I created one.

• 9:47Sam Parr?

  Oh my gosh, dude. This is so weird. The, why would they do this? The, if you go to the Apex screen, like the, um, the app screen.

• 9:58Shaan Puri?

  The app store?

• 9:59Sam Parr?

  Like the app store preview in their demo picture, the username is called Effery Jepstein.

• 10:06Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Well, I don't know which one you're looking at. I see one that says Kill Blinton and, uh, Beth Jezos. Those are the ones that I.

• 10:14Sam Parr?

  Effery Jepstein.

• 10:16Shaan Puri?

  Uh, and then the, you know, the group is called the Illuminati. Uh, and so they're like, they're like leaning into, they're leaning into like, this is a place where you can say what you want, which is like timely, right? Like, you know, the president just got deplatformed and banned off of like every social network. Um, this has been a ongoing issue. Like I've gotten in, you know, hot waters for this. You've gotten in hot waters for this where you say something on Twitter. It's a toast associated with your real name. You get kind of like a lot of backlash for it. And then the next time you tweet, you sort of think twice before you do it. Cause hey, I, you know, I don't want to ruin my reputation just if, if people disagree with me or if I say something kind of without thinking about it. Or I have employees, I got a company. I don't want, I don't want advertisers to pull out if I say something that's just my personal opinion.

• 11:00Shaan Puri?

  So I like this. I think this is the way the world is going, which is a retreat away from social media to private media. I think people are leaving the town square and they're going to their favorite pub and they're going to close the door and they're going to basically, people are going to hang out in private groups more and more and more. It's already happening. And this is, I think, an app that is well-designed to

• 11:22Sam Parr?

  Who made it?

• 11:23Shaan Puri?

  Do, uh, do well there. There's just two guys behind it that I've seen on Twitter, a designer and a developer. And, uh, it's very cool. So I created a new, a new little one. I'm going to invite some people to it, let the masquerade go. And it's cool because I can invite people. And then to like, to get in, you have to like authorize your Twitter or your, your, I can set it where I can say, they have to like prove they are who they say they are on the, at the door. And then they create their account and their username and whatever else after that. And then you could

• 11:51Sam Parr?

  But who can verify that they are somebody?

• 11:53Shaan Puri?

  The creator of the group, of the private group, like the host of the party, basically.

• 11:56Sam Parr?

  So can I tell you my prediction on this?

• 11:58Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 11:58Sam Parr?

  It's gonna get quite popular.

• 11:59Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 12:00Sam Parr?

  If it raises seed funding early on, it's ruined.

• 12:04Shaan Puri?

  Because what?

• 12:04Sam Parr?

  If it stays independent for a while and gets a huge user base and then raises money, then there's a shot.

• 12:10Shaan Puri?

  Okay, gotcha. So it's not, not, it's not the raising that's gonna, it's not the raising that kills them. You're saying it's a signal. Like if they get a bunch of money before they get hot, I think I'm gonna bet that they die. Is that it?

• 12:21Sam Parr?

  It's kind of like a, uh, like a WhatsApp type of deal where like, or something that like, it's already successful and it's already big. We're just gonna make it bigger and more successful. If you do like a, a thing where they raise money early on and they get too much of the wrong hype, I think it's gonna die.

• 12:37Shaan Puri?

  Okay, I can see that. I can see

• 12:38Sam Parr?

  Like, uh, like, you know, there's three apps that I'm referring of that are the same thing, like the secret thing.

• 12:43Shaan Puri?

  So like, okay, here's what we'll do. I will create one for listeners of this podcast. We'll just try it out. We'll see what happens. So the way to get it is the app is called Apex. If you search the app, sort of Apex, private groups. And, uh, the symbol is like two little arrows going up. And I created a group just now. I'm calling it Platform Nine and Three Quarters, just like, uh, Harry Potter. And I'm

• 13:07Sam Parr?

  Oh, don't do that. Just call it My First Million. How do you do my, I don't even know how to type in three quarters. It's three quarters, it's point seven five.

• 13:14Shaan Puri?

  I did point seven five. Okay, I can rename it. So I'll rename it to my first mail. I'll put the link in the description of this podcast episode. That's the private link to join. And it's a masquerade party. Now, I don't know. I don't know if that group particularly is going to be that interesting. I think this is interesting when you kind of like curate the set of people, but we'll try it and we'll see.

• 13:33Sam Parr?

  But so you, you can see who they are.

• 13:36Shaan Puri?

  I can see when they join who they are. I don't think, once they join, I don't think I know what they set their name to and who's who. I don't think that would be.

• 13:43Sam Parr?

  You just know that this person is in the room and they're one of the five here.

• 13:47Shaan Puri?

  I just know at the door, I can say yes or no to the person. And once they're in, I don't know who's saying what. I don't know who's who. I hope that's the way it works. If I can just always see everybody, that's kind of lame. Let me see. Yeah, I don't think I could. Yeah, I cannot see. Once you join, I don't know. I don't know. I can't tie your real identity to your, to your username.

• 14:05Sam Parr?

  I'm excited to try this. I don't have my phone on me, but I'll use it.

• 14:08Shaan Puri?

  And by the way, here's the other interesting thing. The group I'm in, you know, you have like what you see on Facebook and Twitter every day. Like, okay, I go check social media. Everybody says X. Everybody's kind of in agreement. This is good. This is bad. These guys are evil. These guys are heroes. And then I do, I'd go into the apex and it's like the, not the opposite opinions, but you hear people say things there that they're, that you just don't hear people saying in public social media. And that's why it's quite addictive to keep checking it because.

• 14:36Sam Parr?

  It is interesting. There's this, there's this.

• 14:39Shaan Puri?

  And they're not idiots because like they were invited in or curated in. It's not just like randos, you know?

• 14:44Sam Parr?

  There's this firm who you and I know well. It started as a two-person VC company. They were associated with me and they say they have this very public presence. And when they talk about stuff, I'm like, oh, okay. You feel that way. In private, one time I've brought a few things up and I'm like, well, you know, you believe this. And they've just been like, oh no, that's, I mean, no. That's way too woke. We don't believe it. Like that's no, just like we want to get, we're just here to get rich. And like they just, well, how do you feel about that? My opinion is that is the week of the week and I want nothing to do with you.

• 15:21Shaan Puri?

  For people that are kind of two-faced, you mean?

• 15:23Sam Parr?

  Yeah, or, but another perspective on this is fair, which is like, yeah, but they're, so like you and I have a couple of friends that maybe have this persona of being this nice person. And in real life, they're just cutthroat ruthless and they'll destroy you. Maybe you could, one justification is, yeah, they're playing the game. I mean, this is just how it's played and they're just trying to get yours. You can't be mad at them. But then the other side is like, no, you're a punk. You don't have any integrity, just like sit caught like it is and be you 24/7. Where do you come out on that of like people in this app not talking like that?

• 15:55Shaan Puri?

  I think two things. One is we're all guilty of it. So we are all guilty of, you know, signaling one thing to the public. And, uh, you know, there being a gap between like reality and what we signal. So like the innocent version of this is, you know, you go post on Instagram, pictures of yourself, you know, at a brunch cafe with avocado toast and a mimosa. And you're saying how great life is. And then, you know, you go home and you're lonely and miserable, right? Like, uh, we don't post that part of our lives. And so there's a silent like lie that happens there, which is, you know, you, you lie through omission, right? You only say the good things that make you look good and you don't share any of the things that don't make you look good.

• 16:37Shaan Puri?

  And so there is sort of a false presentation of yourself. Then that's level one. Level two is what you talked about where it's like, or sorry, level two is you think something, but you decide not to say it because you don't know how other people are going to feel about it. Right? You let their, their opinions of you matter. You care what other people think, and so you censor yourself.

• 16:58Sam Parr?

  You're afraid.

• 16:59Shaan Puri?

  That's level two. Yeah. Fear and self censorship, uh, you know, take you out. And then there's level three, which is what you talked about, which is just a straight up lie, where you say one thing and you actually mean another or believe another. And, uh, yeah, if you're level three, I also consider you kind of like a punk. And, uh, you know, you lose some respect points there. And I, you know, I try not to do that ever myself, but maybe I've done it, uh, at some point in my life. I'm definitely guilty of levels one and two, where like, you know, only post the good shit, leave out the bad shit. And also think something, but don't know how other people are going to react to it. So I might as well just like not say it, don't cause a fuss.

• 17:37Sam Parr?

  Well, that's different. That's a little different.

• 17:39Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 17:40Sam Parr?

  Can we talk about this guy who you have listed? The best segments that I get from you are the Billy of the day.

• 17:45Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Which one do you want me to do?

• 17:47Sam Parr?

  There's only one up there, the guy that starts with a K, right?

• 17:49Shaan Puri?

  It's not a guy, that's a woman. So, um, the woman's name is Catalin Carrico. I have this person as Billy of the week. In reality, not a billionaire, but just a fucking baller. And this story is incredible. So do you know who this person is? Like, who, did you know them before this?

• 18:06Sam Parr?

  Never heard of that name.

• 18:07Shaan Puri?

  I didn't know them before this either. So Catalin Carrico, and I hope I'm saying the name right. I've never heard it said, I've just read it.

• 18:14Sam Parr?

  By the way, in one of the most recent reviews, someone said that even though I butcher everyone's name, they're happy that I try really hard.

• 18:22Shaan Puri?

  Hey, for sure.

• 18:25Shaan Puri?

  Uh, all right. So this person is kind of the key person for why we have the COVID vaccine. So a little bit of science. So normal vaccine is you get injected with like a dead or weakened version of the virus. Right? So you send in a version of the virus with its, you know, legs tied together and hands cuffed. It's dead, it's weak, and your body creates an immune response to the virus. Right? Those take a long time to develop and you can't always develop them for all different types of viruses. The reason we were able to get this vaccine done faster was obviously A, the whole world decided this is a big problem. But B, they used a different technique, a technique called mRNA vaccines. If you just take out all the science jargon, in simple terms, what it is, is mRNA is a little messenger.

• 19:09Shaan Puri?

  The messenger has a little envelope. The envelope is like, here's the genetic code of the protein that's on top of the virus. Right? Like a virus is just like a little cell that has a protein on top. It's kind of like that's its face or its hat. If you want to recognize the virus, look at the protein. That'll tell you which one's the virus. So the messenger RNA goes in with the envelope. The envelope says, this is what the hat looks like. It goes into your cell, the cell opens up the envelope and says, oh, this is what the protein looks like. Cool, let's make some of this protein. And your ribosomes make the protein and the protein goes in your bloodstream. So you get the protein of the virus, so your body can start to recognize it and fight it. But it's just a protein, it's not the actual virus, so you can't get sick from it. Uh, so that's the breakthrough in, in the way this vaccine works.

• 19:50Shaan Puri?

  And so this woman has been working on this technology for like, I don't know, 30 years or something like that. She's like, you know, came from, I don't know, somewhere in Eastern Europe, Germany, Ukraine, something like that. And, um, She was working on this and then everybody initially was really excited about mRNA vaccines. It was like, like most things, it's like, there's the initial hype, like with VR or crypto or whatever. And then there's like the trough of sorrow where people give up on it and they're like, ah, this will never happen. And so in the nineties, everybody in the scientific community gave up on mRNA vaccines. This woman basically like threw away her career because she believed in it. She was like, all right, I know there's no funding for this. Nobody will hire me to work on mRNA vaccines. There's, there's just no money in this space, but I believe.

• 20:34Shaan Puri?

  And so she just kept working on it and kept persisting all the way through the nineties, a decade plus. And eventually she published a paper that kind of like showed that like what the power of mRNA can be for various use cases. And that paper was read by three different groups of people. One was this guy at Stanford and he, uh, he was like a kind of a postgraduate PhD person at, at Stanford. He reads this paper that she put out and goes, holy shit, this is going to be big. And, um, starts working on mRNA. He ends up, uh, inventing a company called Moderna. Moderna is one of the vaccine creators, uh, one of the people who, one of the companies that has the vaccine for COVID. Wow, Moderna is only 10 years old. Exactly. So this guy leaves Stanford. He partners up with two scientists.

• 21:18Shaan Puri?

  There's a guy, there's a badass guy. This guy is actually like, you know, somebody who should be Billy of the week. He is at like MIT or somewhere and this guy's got like 250 kind of patents that he sold to pharmaceutical companies. So he's like the man when it comes to commercializing this stuff. And so these three guys co-found Moderna and Moderna is now like a, I don't know how many 10 billion dollar ish company off of this woman's work. They like, you know, they kind of license her work. So another company gets started called BioNTech. They also read this paper. So imagine how cool this is. It's like Satoshi with the Bitcoin white paper. She just publishes this scientific paper and then people all around the world are reading this. And the light bulb is going off simultaneously with three different companies at once to say, oh my God, this is going to change everything.

• 22:01Shaan Puri?

  And so BioNTech gets formed, they basically bring her on as like, they licensed her tech. So she got paid as a licensee of the, of the technology. And then now she's like a. The vice president or whatever of their science division. So she's kind of like a co-founder of one of the companies that's also doing very well.

• 22:15Sam Parr?

  She looks exactly like I would expect her to look.

• 22:17Shaan Puri?

  She looks like a hardened person.

• 22:19Sam Parr?

  A hardened Hungarian biochemist. This is.

• 22:22Shaan Puri?

  Correct.

• 22:23Sam Parr?

  She looks like she.

• 22:23Shaan Puri?

  And her daughter is like an Olympian, like a gold medalist. Like she, you know, like this whole family is probably just badasses.

• 22:30Sam Parr?

  Yes, this woman looks like she will solve like, she looks like the female version of James Bond.

• 22:35Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, like she's, she's a badass. If you just read like, kind of what she went through as an immigrant, working on this thing, nobody believed in, and now she's going to win the Nobel Prize for this, like 20 years later, the payoff happened. That to me is like so admirable to, to believe in your thing, when everybody all stops believing and you just say fuck it, and you just keep going for two decades. That's like three decades. That's, that is badass. So she's 66 years old. So she's part of one of the companies. And then there's another company doing this. And now Pfizer and others are using the same technique to, to cure COVID. But this is not just going to cure COVID. So like, this idea of mRNA vaccines is actually the most promising path we have to curing cancer also. And I'm not saying it's going

• 23:17Shaan Puri?

  to, because like, there's a lot of false hope when it comes to these things. But, um, you know, the way we, we try to cure cancer today is we're like, oh, you have cancer cells in your body? Let's just nuke your whole body with radiation. Uh, let's kill the good cells, the bad cells, you'll lose your hair, you'll throw up. Like, let's just kill you. And like, when, right when you're on the brink of death, we'll stop giving you radiation. And like, hopefully we've killed the cancer cells in that time. And what this instead will do is it's going to allow for what's called like, a designer vaccine for cancer, which is, people are going to figure out what cancer you have. Oh, here's the cells that you have that are cancerous. What proteins do they have? And then let's create the vaccine, just like we did for COVID with mRNA, to get your body to produce those proteins and start to build

• 24:00Shaan Puri?

  immunodefenses for it. So it's like immunotherapy.

• 24:03Sam Parr?

  When you hear these stories, do you think that, well, I'm just, I'm working on this clothing company, or I'm looking on this video, video game platform. And then you read this and you just, do you say to yourself? I'm worthless.

• 24:17Shaan Puri?

  No, I say to myself, I'm gonna tell everybody how awesome this person is so that, you know, the five people that listen to this, that are capable of doing this are gonna be inspired by this person. They're gonna go do something like this themselves.

• 24:28Sam Parr?

  Okay, that's such an easy out.

• 24:29Shaan Puri?

  I'm the messenger, baby.

• 24:31Sam Parr?

  Okay, that's a, that's a good answer. Yeah, correct. Fine. You could say, yep.

• 24:35Shaan Puri?

  Honesty, my, my true answer is something like that. Like, when I took a step back after we sold, and I was like, alright, what do I do with the next 10, 20 years of my life? Like, what do I want to work on? I was lucky that the thing I like to do, which is like, learn stuff and teach stuff through things like this podcast, or whatever, I think genuinely that is the highest leveraged thing any one person can do.

• 24:55Sam Parr?

  Well, I think that's silly to compare, but it's undeniably interesting that if you can have a mad, a large audience and tell them of cool people who deserve to be well-known. You're right. That is, that's noble.

• 25:07Shaan Puri?

  Tell them of cool people. I'm just saying in general, teaching, I believe, is like a multiplier, it's a force multiplier.

• 25:12Sam Parr?

  I agree with you.

• 25:12Shaan Puri?

  If I go try to do something myself, right, I'm one operator, I can be the greatest operator in the world, I'm Elon Musk, or somebody like that. That's like the pinnacle of that.

• 25:20Sam Parr?

  I agree with you.

• 25:21Shaan Puri?

  On the other hand, you could be a teacher. A teacher basically is gonna now have N number of students, right? So I could reach a million students. I could unlock them as operators to be better. And now that's leveraged what I have in my head.

• 25:33Sam Parr?

  Okay, but think about it differently. We talk on here about boring businesses all the time. We talk about it. The reason we talk about it is like, well, we haven't heard about it before, but also they make a lot of money, and it's easy, and it's not a lot of work. Well, it's a lot of work, but it's simpler, and it's a surefire way. At the end of the day, and this isn't an insult, at the end of the day, that's a very hedonistic way of viewing life. That's a very much like, I'm gonna, I don't care what I'm doing, because I'm providing for me and my family. Which, you know, supplying for your, giving your family a good life, that's not quite hedonistic, but it's still like, if you include your family, it's quite selfish. And again, nothing wrong with that, but that's what it is. But, we go, like, whenever I go and like, get sick and meet a nurse practitioner who helps me, or hear about this woman, I'm like, There is, you know how people say like, you know, just because you're rich doesn't mean

• 26:18Sam Parr?

  you're like more valuable than someone else. I agree with that. But then I hear this woman, she could be poor. I have no idea. I'm like, oh, that woman's more valuable than me and more valuable than a lot of others.

• 26:28Shaan Puri?

  Yes. The people who are like the Catalin Carricos and the Elon Musks and the, um, forgot the guy who, you know, started microfinance or whatever, micro lending, the people who go and someone who's gonna go and fight climate change, let's be honest, they don't listen to this podcast for the most part. And if they do, the things they're hearing here are not really gonna help them do that thing, uh, right? Like the great scientists, scientist entrepreneurs, essentially, they are motivated and inspired by different things altogether. There's a different teacher for them, right? There's a different person out there who gives them information and inspiration, and it's not me, for the most part. If I do what I do, though, there's like a different argument, right? There's the hero argument, which says,

• 27:09Shaan Puri?

  the world needs Elon Musk and Catalin Carricos to like solve the big problems and like make us all better. That's what I'll call the top-down hero solution. Superman flies in, saves the day. And then there's the bottoms-up solution, which is like, well, if every single person got a little bit smarter, a little bit happier, a little bit healthier, a little bit more kind, and, you know, a little bit more, you know, motivated and inspired every day, rather than feeling that they're going through the motions, if you like solve it at the individual level for the masses, you make the world better in a different way, right? And so that's a bottoms-up approach to doing the same, to sort of having a same, same level of impact. So if I was gonna like be a little dreamy about what I'm doing, uh, or what not feel like a piece of shit, I should say, it's like, well, if I can help

• 27:53Shaan Puri?

  a whole bunch of people be a little bit healthier, a little bit happier, and a little bit like more free financially, so that they can like spend their time doing what they want, and not in some like kind of tedious, monotonous job every day, that's a different type of unlock versus these people who are gonna have these big breakthroughs and like solve big problems for humanity.

• 28:10Sam Parr?

  People talk about legacy fighters a lot, you know, athletes, particularly UFC guys. They're like, it's about legacy. And then business people also say that as well. They say, um, Like, all right, I have money now. It's all about legacy. And I'm like, okay, yeah, your legacy is making your name known, part of it. Your legacy is definitely leaving the world a better place. I think that's cool. But then I always try to look at the opposite of everything. And the opposite of that is like, just live a quiet existence. And this is like what I said about being hedonistic and selfish. Live a quiet existence, have a ton of fun and take care of your family and just seek pleasure. And part of me is like, legacy is cool, but why the hell do I care? I'm dead. Screw it. I'm having fun now.

• 28:55Sam Parr?

  Like, when I think of like Steve Jobs, he was like, yeah, but how are you going to change anything when you're like not working 80 hours a week? And I'm like, I'm not.

• 29:04Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah.

• 29:05Sam Parr?

  I don't want to.

• 29:06Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 29:06Sam Parr?

  Those things bother me because I'm like, we value these Elon Musk of the world. And I acknowledge that they need to exist, but then most of the time I'm like, I don't want to do that.

• 29:14Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 29:14Sam Parr?

  Fuck that guy.

• 29:15Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Well, there's a question of like, do I need to change the world, right? What, how do I want to live? That's fair. Like, okay, so I was listening to something interesting. I'll tell you about this conversation. So I don't know how randomly on YouTube I got onto this video that was Scott Adams, who's the creator of Dilbert and Naval Ravikant, who's like kind of the Silicon Valley, you know, the guy who created Angel List and a bunch of other cool things. They're at his house, they're at Scott Dilbert's house and they're just talking. They're doing a periscope and they just recorded the thing. And they agree about a bunch of things. And then one question came up, they go, what do we disagree on? Naval goes, you know, I think we disagree on like the importance of having kids. And Scott's like, what do you mean? I got kids. He's like, well, yeah, but like you adopted or like, you know, biological kids. And he's like, and Scott's like, well, like, and then they kind of laughed.

• 29:58Shaan Puri?

  And it's like, Naval's like, look, look, look, I'm not saying adoption is bad. I'm not saying foster care is bad. I'm just saying like, for me, it was really important to like biologically have my own biological kids and like reproduce. Basically like at its core, he's a scientist and he's basically like at a evolutionary, from an evolutionary point of view, you know, we are reproducing machines. All that we're doing, those of us who made it this far is because in our genes, there is a desire to replicate, to reproduce. And that's how we stayed on and other people who didn't care about reproducing didn't reproduce. And their genes are now dead. And so Scott goes, well, I would say I'm reproducing, but just in a more efficient way. He goes, I put out ideas into the world through my blog, through this, you know, live streams, through my comics with Dilbert.

• 30:40Shaan Puri?

  If my ideas go live on, uh, they'll live on far longer than any child of mine will like they, an idea can live forever. An idea can get into like thousands of people where I'm only getting able to have a couple of kids. So like for me, my replication is what I'll call memetic and not genetic. And I thought that was interesting. I've always found this interesting and I think I've brought this up before, but like, part of your legacy, it doesn't have to be what you did. It can be like, an idea or philosophy you put in the world that lives on far beyond your kind of like flesh and bones, your, you know, your little meat sack that you live in. And so like, do you think about that? Like, forget about legacy, like, oh, I'm the guy who built the railroads, but like, do you care about your, about like your ideas spreading? I mean, to some extent you

• 31:25Shaan Puri?

  do, otherwise, why do this podcast?

• 31:27Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, definitely. I do. But I ask myself, why? And is that really important? Like, okay, so there's like the fun factor of like, yeah, it's awesome. You're powerful, you're rich, you do whatever you want. That's cool. What's the opposite look like? Well, you're not that. Is it a significant difference in happiness and fulfillment?

• 31:43Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 31:43Sam Parr?

  Maybe not. I don't know, but I do question this.

• 31:46Shaan Puri?

  All right. So of those three paths that we just talked about, and maybe there's more. Path one, the point of your life, you're optimizing for enjoyment of your life. Number two is you're optimizing for legacy or some kind of impact on the world. And then three is you're trying to have your kind of ideas spread and your ideas are your legacy, not your accomplishments. Which one resonates the most to you or none of them?

• 32:09Sam Parr?

  As of now, I think I'm a three, either a three or a one. And then someday-

• 32:14Shaan Puri?

  I thought for sure you'd say one.

• 32:15Sam Parr?

  I think I'm more of a one of enjoyment. But in the future, I think I'll be a number two, an impact. But as of today, right now, I have a feeling, I don't know this yet. I have a feeling when I have children, it changes a little. Does it?

• 32:29Shaan Puri?

  Not really. I guess it changes, but like maybe for different people in different ways. When I'm with my daughter, like, I kind of like- I guess I'm in one of two modes. Either I'm like, oh my God, I just wanna go do something else. This is so boring. I've read this book forty five times in a row, like bubbles, bubbles everywhere, bubbles, bubbles in my hair. Like, I'm just tired of this. I wanna go do something more fun. Do you know how fun the internet is? I'm tired of like this babysitting that I'm doing right now. And then other times I'm with her and I'm just like, dude, who cares about like success? Like, all I need to do is just hang out with her. She's awesome. And like, you know, I don't really need to go be like super ambitious. Like, what a waste of energy to go sit in my room on my computer. And I'm literally like in one of those two camps at all times.

• 33:09Sam Parr?

  I think this is normal, but maybe not. I think that for the people who are extremely successful, they don't waver.

• 33:15Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 33:15Sam Parr?

  But maybe I'm wrong. I don't know.

• 33:17Shaan Puri?

  I have a, I have another idea for you, cuz I think we got philosophical for a bit. So which idea do I wanna do? This kind of seem anticlimactic when we're talking about like, what's the purpose of your life? And I'm like, oh, here's an idea.

• 33:27Sam Parr?

  That's okay. By the way, Sean, people have been telling me they like listening to us because it's not always strictly business. They listen to us on a regular basis cuz they need, uh, someone was comparing us to All In, that podcast, and then Morning Brew's thing. I don't know what it's called. Apparently, they both talk about politics a lot. And someone was like, oh, I hate that. I just wanna like turn my, like, they say they wanna turn their brain off, but at the same time, they turn it on with us, but we don't ever talk about.

• 33:51Shaan Puri?

  Well, it's an escape, right? Like.

• 33:53Sam Parr?

  We have, we, yes, it's a very good escape.

• 33:55Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, and, and like, I, I always wanted to rename the podcast, what was it, like Idea Porn or something like that? Because porn itself is also kind of like an escape, it's a sound of a pleasure thing. It's not like a long-term commitment. Like, I think a lot of people listen to these ideas not to go do them all, but just cuz it's like interesting and entertaining, and then they can like be done with the podcast and be done with it.

• 34:13Sam Parr?

  Embrace the banter, embrace the escape. Are you gonna talk about micro biz?

• 34:17Shaan Puri?

  Uh, yeah. All right. Did you see what I did with this? This is funny.

• 34:19Sam Parr?

  No, I looked, I like the sound of that, though.

• 34:22Shaan Puri?

  All right, so you actually missed this opportunity. I pounced, uh, before because you didn't reply, so.

• 34:28Sam Parr?

  Wait, how did I not reply?

• 34:29Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so this guy Andrew runs this company called MicroAcquire.com.

• 34:32Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he's in the trends group.

• 34:34Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, and so he emailed you and me, and he emailed us both and was just like, hey, kind of a fun idea. There's a bunch of small micro businesses, like a five thousand dollar, a little business that's, you know, could buy for five thousand dollars. What if we just gave it away to somebody like in the community? And then I guess like you didn't reply or whatever. And so he DM'd me, he was like, you know, what do you think? You wanna do this? And I was like, yeah, let's, and so then like literally, I didn't even like really reply to him. I just tweeted it out. I was like. You know, people don't really know this, but like buying businesses is like most awesome ways to go as an entrepreneur. Like instead of building from scratch, you could buy. And like, you know, if you want to just like learn about business, don't go to business school. Like, let me save you the time and money. I'll just give you one of these micro businesses and go like learn by doing.

• 35:18Shaan Puri?

  I'll just give you this $5,000 business. And I said, you know, Andrew, what do you say? Were you in on this? You know, you want to do this? And he was like, so I kind of made it public, like what he was doing in the DM. And he's like, hell, yeah, like I'm in and I'll, I'll provide some coaching and we'll waive the fees of the transaction or whatever. And then other people started chiming in like, dude, this is awesome. I'll chip in 5K too for free. And so we ended up with $57,000 in the bank of people who are willing to just let us basically now we have a 57. It was a $5,000 bankroll to go buy a business. Now it's $57,000 bankroll to go buy a business. Cause people were just like, yeah, just pick a cool operator. Let them like take one of these businesses and run with it. And let them like build it in public and like talk about it as they go. Like this is a cool experiment for science.

• 36:01Shaan Puri?

  So who, who, what, what business are you guys going to get? So then I said, all right. So then a bunch of people replied as like, pick me as the operator. Cause like, hey, who doesn't want to just get a gift, a business gifted to them? We found a couple of people and I think we're just going to like, do like a 30 minute phone call with the final two or three people and just pick one from there. Give it to Henry Johnson. Henry Johnson, okay. I don't know if he replied to it, but I'll, I'll check him out. I know who you're talking about. He's very active in our community. And so then I went through all the businesses and was like, okay, which one is good to buy? And you know, most of them, I would say like are bad, like to the point where I was like, okay, if you, if I gave someone this business, I'm giving them kind of a shitty job to go to. So like, I want to avoid that. You know, this experiment will be fun if the business has enough potential where like this can actually like grow into something.

• 36:45Shaan Puri?

  So picking a good operator or a good business are important here. So anyways, I'm curious of what's going to happen. We're going to finalize the, the whole thing this week. And I think what we're doing is going to finalize, we finalize the money. We finalize who the operator is this week. And then we're going to take a 60 day window and we're going to say, all right. In the next 60 days, it's like a little tiny micro speck. It's like, you have 60 days to find a company to acquire with this blank check. And we're going to publish the whole thing on my newsletter about like, okay, here's what they're doing. Here's how it's going, so on and so forth. So I'm excited. How do you have time to do all that? Well, I'm not doing it. I'm just picking it. I just tweeted it out and I picked the operator.

• 37:18Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but even like organizing that stuff is.

• 37:19Shaan Puri?

  Andrew from MicroAcquire is like more of the guy who's gonna like make it happen because for them, this is like the best fucking advertising. Like, he was showing me the stats from the tw- just from the tweet alone, I think he got like, you know, four or 5,000 followers on Twitter, which like, I don't know, probably doubled his Twitter following. And then he showed me the Google Analytics of the site. And there was like, you know, 1,000 plus concurrent view users on the site at that very second. And so, you know, I'm sure he got, he already kind of like made his money back just in terms of people buying the membership or finding out about it. But it's, you know, credit to him of like, it was his idea to do something cool like this, like give away a business. That's a way better marketing push than just saying, hey, um,

• 37:58Shaan Puri?

  did you know, like, I, my site exists, come, come visit it, right? Like, I think he deserves the additional traffic he's gonna get out of it, but he's gotta do the work now to like, make it all go. I'm not gonna do the work.

• 38:07Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I'm looking it all up now. This is a, it's a great site. I, he's been doing it for a minute. And now it's, it was okay at first. Now it's really getting cool.

• 38:15Shaan Puri?

  I really like the concept of the site. I would say, like, just in full, you know, transparency, uh, most of the deals on there, I think are very bad deals. But, you know, whatever, that's any marketplace has a bunch of junk and has some really good stuff. That's where all the value is. So, don't be like, oh, Sean said MicroAcquire is great. I'm gonna go buy some business on here. Like, I would not advise that as just like a, like, do your homework.

• 38:36Sam Parr?

  Okay, your shoulders, are they tired from carrying the weight this whole time?

• 38:40Shaan Puri?

  No, dude, I just get stronger as the hour goes on.

• 38:43Sam Parr?

  Okay, what, well, let's do one more. Last one, maybe Eureka surveys.

• 38:47Shaan Puri?

  I wanna save that one. The guys, the guys, uh, so we talked about user testing. And these guys are doing something dope with, uh, in that vein. And he DM'd me and he shared the numbers, but I think they wanted to like, like, they're just like, they wanna push out of private beta into public beta. So he's like, wait one week to talk about it. I was like, alright, fine, no problem.

• 39:06Sam Parr?

  Well, you want to do one more?

• 39:07Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, let's do one more. Um, okay, here's like, okay, I'll give you two really dumb, simple ideas. Maybe something like this exists, but I ran into these pain points and maybe somebody could build a simple tool that solves these. So the first one is Amazon affiliate links. So you, Sam, on your blog, you used to sell Amazon affiliate, right? I used to have affiliate links.

• 39:25Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I would make about four or five grand a month.

• 39:27Shaan Puri?

  And to do that, you have to become a like official affiliate or something like that, correct?

• 39:31Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and I've been banned many times for doing stuff that I didn't think was bannable.

• 39:35Shaan Puri?

  There's kind of a process you have to go through to do that, because like, for example, a bunch of people were asking me about like, you know, my setup of like a podcast and stuff like that. I was like, okay, cool. Why don't I just publish this?

• 39:44Sam Parr?

  You gotta have a blog, but like, for example, I didn't know that you, so there's rules. You cannot, there's like many rules, but one of the rules is you cannot email people a link.

• 39:55Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, which is crazy.

• 39:55Sam Parr?

  newsletter.

• 39:56Shaan Puri?

  That's why I was gonna do it in a newsletter. And I was like, how do you do this?

• 39:58Sam Parr?

  They banned me. It's a big pain in the butt. Or the other day, it used to be like four and a half percent commission. They just said, all right, for most all these categories, now it's 2%. Like, they just change it whenever.

• 40:08Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so this idea might not actually be viable. It might not work with the terms of service, but basically, like a one-off, like, you know, like link shorteners, like Bitly and shit like that, like, why not just like a one-off way to generate an affiliate link for Amazon products? Because I don't want to go become a merchant and a long-term affiliate and become a blogger, like, none of that stuff, but like, why can't I just like affiliateize my link once?

• 40:31Sam Parr?

  Well, there's this, there's this company called Skimlinks. Have you heard of Skimlinks?

• 40:34Shaan Puri?

  No. Is that what that is?

• 40:35Sam Parr?

  It's an e- yeah, a little bit. They, uh, they're about 12 years old. They, in 2017, they did a hundred, uh, they did a billion dollars in gross margin, or what's it called?

• 40:45Shaan Puri?

  GMV, yeah.

• 40:45Sam Parr?

  GMV. So let's say they took a 30 or 40% cut. That's $300 million, which I don't know if it's that high.

• 40:53Shaan Puri?

  Probably way less, is my guess.

• 40:55Sam Parr?

  What?

• 40:55Shaan Puri?

  Even 2% of a billion is not, not, nothing.

• 40:58Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's actually probably. Thirty, forty million they do, but that's what they do and they've been around for a while, twelve years. It's a pretty reputable company, pretty big. They've raised tens of millions, maybe close to a hundred million in revenue, and it is kind of similar and it's quite effective. You ever heard of SkimLinks?

• 41:15Shaan Puri?

  I've heard of it once before, but I didn't know if it works for, does it work for, for Amazon products or no?

• 41:20Sam Parr?

  I don't know exactly how it works, but I know that they cold email me on a regular basis to sign up, but I guess you're saying something valid.

• 41:28Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, so basically, like, I just think there should be like a disposable, simple way to affiliateize my link to whatever product it is, and somebody should make like a bit.ly that just does that easily. Maybe SkimLinks is kind of already this.

• 41:41Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and it's, it's actually owned by another company. Have you ever studied like ad tech?

• 41:47Shaan Puri?

  I mean, not studied it, no, but.

• 41:48Sam Parr?

  Man, these ad tech companies like, like, okay, so the company that owns SkimLinks is called Contextity. The company that owns Contextity is called Symphony Tech Group, founded in 2012. Its total portfolio includes $2.5 billion in revenue and 15,000 employees. There's ad tech companies that you, unless you're in the, in the world of ad tech, have no idea exists, that are just massive, massive, massive, massive. It's amazing. Oh, wait, sorry, Symphony Tech Group is PE. I was wrong, but you get the idea. Like, some of these ad tech games or ad tech businesses are freaking nuts.

• 42:25Shaan Puri?

  Right, and I don't really understand how most of ad tech truly works because it's like such a complicated machine of like cookie swaps and data transfers. It's like, it's all kinds of like, oh, the pixel is hashed and then the hashed user is passed to here. It's like, what's going on? Like, how do these businesses work and who, who the hell thinks of this stuff? And, you know, obviously, you know, there's a lot of money to be made, so, so good on them. Okay, here's another kind of simple idea. I think I've kind of said this before, but Facebook advertising is like one of the like, you know, big industry, you know, there's probably like nine to 10 million advertisers on Facebook. Let's say even half of them are, are active or, you know, whatever. Let's say four million active advertisers on Facebook. Make up some round numbers and um.

• 43:07Shaan Puri?

  The ad manager is just like such a pain in the ass to work with.

• 43:11Sam Parr?

  It's a horrible thing.

• 43:12Shaan Puri?

  And uh, one of the biggest problems with it is just visual, just going and checking, how are my ads doing? And you know, they present it in this like very like sterile table kind of way. And I think that somebody, I think that there should be this like somebody who just says, all right. How do I build a layer on top of Facebook ads that is useful to some of the four to 10 million advertisers of Facebook? Like, what should they look at every morning? How do I make this presentation more visual, right? Like, how do I take all your ad creatives and then like layer on the data on top? Or how do I show you, you and your competitors ads and how like just layer on top of the Facebook ad manager is.

• 43:53Sam Parr?

  Have you seen Adespresso?

• 43:55Shaan Puri?

  Yes, so I've used Adespresso before and I found it like, okay to use. Uh, it like kind of got outdated, right?

• 44:02Sam Parr?

  Like it was like kitty shit. The problem I I've found that if you get really complex, if you learn how to operate ad manager, it's quite complex and you need it to be complex.

• 44:13Shaan Puri?

  Right, I'm not saying replace that manager, I'm saying build things using that as the data source. There is certainly going to be some value add thing you can do that just uses that as the data source. And people are going to be willing to pay you monthly to get X extra value or alternative view or, you know, different, different level of insights.

• 44:33Sam Parr?

  You want to hear a crazy story about this? So there was this company called contextual or context logic. You know what that is? You ever heard of that?

• 44:41Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 44:41Sam Parr?

  Chris Redlett's, one of my seed investors and a good friend and mentor of mine. He was telling me about this company started 10 years ago in his office. He had a small font and he had a few extra offices and he let this young guy named Pete, who formerly worked at Google and his partner Dan, I think his name was, both worked at Google, both build up AdWords. And they started tinkering around and they built this thing called contextual logic, I think it was called. And it was a new ad network that was doing exactly what you've described, but for Facebook. And they started using it and they're like, well, we need to test it, let's sell some stuff on it. And they started selling some stuff on it and they just went to Alibaba and just sold crap. And they're like, wait a minute, we can't give this away. And so they pivoted and they started selling other people's stuff and then let merchants get on there.

• 45:25Sam Parr?

  And they used their advertising prowess to do it and they eventually renamed that company Wish.

• 45:32Sam Parr?

  That is how wish.com started. It was started because they were cringing exactly what you're describing and it was so good. They say, no, this is our competitive advantage. And so now they're public, this is 10 years later, I think they're publicly traded with a $12 billion market cap. So if you look up wish, you'll see that they raised money under context. It's either context or contextual logic.

• 45:52Shaan Puri?

  And the founder is Jack. Have you seen this guy? Okay, I'm gonna send you.

• 45:57Sam Parr?

  Pete, the founder?

• 45:59Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 45:59Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I have. I've chatted with him via email once or twice. He's an oddball. He's a, he, uh, he's very quirky.

• 46:09Shaan Puri?

  You can see in his Instagram picture here. I love tech founders that are jacked, by the way. I find it hilarious. I remember one time there was the Facebook F8, like the annual conference Facebook does. Facebook is run by some of the smartest people in the world, but they're not like the most athletic or well-rounded or great public speakers necessarily, right? Like, yeah, there's a lot of dorks there. And for some reason, I was sitting there and I was watching this and I was like, I noticed every single exec that got up there was jacked this year. I was like, what? What kind of, who is the personal trader? What is the program that they all got on? You know, who's putting creatine in the milkshakes at, you know, in Menlo Park? What is going on? Because there was one year that literally everybody was jacked. I have nothing more to say in the story, but it

• 46:53Sam Parr?

  They probably have like a doctor who lives with them.

• 46:56Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, don't they have like in San Francisco, don't they just like own one of the buildings? Like where they own all like, all the, all the execs have like apartments in the same building in SF so that when they do need to come to San Francisco, they kind of have like an apartment there because their office is not in San, no, Facebook, the office is not in San Francisco. So like Cheryl and a bunch of the other execs, I think have like a bunch of penthouse condos in this one tower. So the tower is like 25% occupied by Facebook executives who are not there, except for like two days a month when they go to San Francisco and then they use this as their.

• 47:26Sam Parr?

  And it has like a Botox clinic and like a TRT clinic and like an HGH clinic.

• 47:31Shaan Puri?

  Did you ever watch the show on Netflix called Selling, Selling Sunset? I think it's called?

• 47:35Sam Parr?

  Oh yeah, those guys were the worst.

• 47:37Shaan Puri?

  Did you watch the show? Did you see the Botox thing that they did?

• 47:40Sam Parr?

  Yes, the worst. I can't stand it.

• 47:41Shaan Puri?

  I thought that was so funny.

• 47:43Sam Parr?

  That is everything I'm against.

• 47:44Shaan Puri?

  There are people who haven't seen it. They're real estate agents. They try to sell these like luxury properties. And they're always trying to drive foot traffic to their open houses and their open house, their, their tactic, their marketing tactic to, you know, most people it's like, oh, it's an open house. Okay, we'll have wine. Maybe we'll put some cold cut sandwiches out, some cheese, cheese board. And this one girl's like, fuck that. I'm gonna make, I'm gonna get all the real estate agents to come to this. I'm gonna do botox and burgers. So she had a doctor that are giving botox shots to the agents for free. He wanted to get botox at the, at the showing.

• 48:18Sam Parr?

  You.

• 48:19Shaan Puri?

  And I was like, wow, what a different world than I live in, that this is even a thing. I don't think I know a single person who has botox. Maybe, maybe I didn't. I'm just oblivious to it. But like, I've never heard anyone in my social circle ever speak about getting plastic surgery or botox.

• 48:34Sam Parr?

  They don't talk about it. I don't think they're gonna talk.

• 48:37Shaan Puri?

  Do you know anyone that gets botox?

• 48:38Sam Parr?

  Uh, my sister had Bell's palsy where that paralyzes your face. And so she had to get it. Uh, I almost.

• 48:43Shaan Puri?

  Okay, not, not for that. I'm saying for like, people who do it just for this like aesthetic, you know, just for the, the look.

• 48:49Sam Parr?

  I don't know. They don't tell me about it. No, I don't know anyone.

• 48:51Shaan Puri?

  What's the like most gimmicky marketing thing you've done that's like, you know, your equivalent of the, uh, the burgers and botox, uh, marketing stunt?

• 49:00Sam Parr?

  Well, when I ran Southern Sam's, wiener's as big as a baby's arm. If you put your baby's arm in a hot dog bun and put mustard on it and took a picture, you got a free wiener.

• 49:13Shaan Puri?

  I love that one. I have one that's like that. When we were doing the sushi restaurant thing, we, you know, it's all, it was a delivery only. So there's no, there was no, no storefront. It was a cloud kitchen. So how do you get people to hear about your restaurant? If there's no storefront. So I was like, all right, we gotta make a splash. So we were based in downtown Denver. I was like, okay. And I was just tired. I used to go in a, I would go into a skyscraper building. I would just kind of sneak past the concierge guy. I would go in the elevator and hit one. I'd get out and I'd start talking to the front desk lady of every floor of like a 80 floor building or whatever. And I got tired of that. So I was like, okay, what's a, what's a better technique than me going door to door, selling sushi essentially. And I was like, of course, I'm a huge idiot. Like, we didn't even try Facebook ads. This is like, Facebook was out. This is 2010, 2011.

• 49:56Shaan Puri?

  Like, we could have done Facebook ads. We just didn't even know. And so what I did was, there was a nearby beauty school, you know, like where you learn to like, cut hair and like, do stuff like that, I guess. I forgot what they're called, cosmetology schools. And I went in and I said, hey, do you, do any of you girls like sushi? And they're like, oh, my God, we love sushi. You know, it's like bringing candy to a, to a four year old's birthday party. And I was like, I will give you guys free sushi for life. If you put these shirts on of ours and you go downtown and you basically like, you know, the free hugs campaign, do the free hugs campaign and then tell, like, just basically like, while you're wearing our stuff.

• 50:31Sam Parr?

  Did it work?

• 50:31Shaan Puri?

  And it worked. It was amazing. Like businessmen would come out of the thing and they'd be like, free hugs. And like, they would give these guys a hug. The guy would like, you know, start blushing and be like, did I just cheat on my wife? And then he's like, no, it was just a hug. What's the deal? And it's like, oh, we're doing this because we're part of this new sushi restaurant that's in town. You guys should totally order from it. The further away me and my ugly face got from that campaign, the better it worked. Like, these girls were amazing. And we had like, way more sales from that.

• 50:56Sam Parr?

  That's a pretty good one. Thank God it worked, though.

• 51:01Shaan Puri?

  All right, we're at the hour. So Abreu, how did we do? How did I do? Because I think I did that episode.

• 51:08Sam Parr?

  I know, I'm sorry.

• 51:09Shaan Puri?

  Be, be honest with me, Abreu. How did I do?

• 51:11Sam Parr?

  Sam did as much as I did this episode. Fuck, for real?

• 51:17Sam Parr?

  I feel horrible. I'm just not, I'm just, I hadn't, I just feel like I'm a little drunk, so tired. Sean, you were an A. Overall, the episode was like a B-ish. Fuck, that means I was a C, though.

• 51:28Shaan Puri?

  You coasted to a C. A C is a passing grade, man. You got through.

• 51:32Sam Parr?

  All right, I'll bring the heat next time, then.

• 51:34Shaan Puri?

  All right, sounds good. I gotta run.

• 51:35Sam Parr?

  All right, bye.

• 51:36Shaan Puri?

  See ya.