Half-Baked TV Show Ideas, Miss Excel Making Millions, The Adventure Challenge, and More

Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@theSamParr) discuss half-baked TV show ideas that they think could be popular, how Miss Excel is making millions, the unexpected rise of The Adventure Challenge, and much more. _____ * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Would you like to participate in our clips contest? Earn up to $10k by remixing My First Million episodes. To learn more, go to mfmpod.com/clips. * Want to win an hour of time with Sam and Shaan? Tap here to enter the contest. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. * Click here to find out if you won $1,000 from the review giveaway: https://youtu.be/xsaO0H-0wg0 * If you won, please contact [email protected] _____ Show Notes: (03:22) - Miss Excel (20:15) - Monthly.com & Descript (27:20) - Genetic testing and GEDMatch.com (34:00) - The Adventure Challenge & The Adventure Book (44:05) - Half-baked TV show ideas

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

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  I have just straight fire. We might need to split it up into multiple segments or multiple episodes because I just got too much fire for one day.

• 0:20Shaan Puri?

  All right, we got a bunch of ideas today. If you like ideas, this is, this is going to be one of the podcasts you like. I promise you, I didn't bring in any frameworks or life advice. We just went straight business, cool businesses and ideas you probably never heard of. At the end, we just brainstormed TV show ideas, ideas that could be made into TV shows. So I think you'll like this episode. It's a classic. It's a, it's a Sam and Sean classic brainstorm. All right. Enjoy. Welcome everybody to the show. I hope we have the new intro music by the time this airs, but we may not. I don't know about you, but I've been jamming out to the new intro song pretty excessively and it's been great.

• 0:56Sam Parr?

  It's good. It's good. The guy who made it has a wonderful name. Can you say his name?

• 1:01Shaan Puri?

  Young Spielberg. That's his name.

• 1:03Sam Parr?

  That's a good name. I really like that. But young without an O. Y U N G.

• 1:09Sam Parr?

  All right. We have to mention the clip contest. So we're doing this contest. I think if people want to learn about it, I think they go, so if they go to mfm pod.com, they'll see it. If you go to mfm pod.com slash clips, you'll for sure see it. MFM pod and you'll see like a link. Did you see, so these kids, it's mostly like younger, like kids that are making videos where basically the contest, by the way, is you chop up these videos. So just go to our YouTube page and like download the videos and chop it up and put it on Tik Tok, Instagram, Twitter, whatever. And if you use a certain hashtag, MFM clips, you're, we'll find you and we're going to give five grand to some of our favorite clips.

• 1:43Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, there's already some amazing things. So I saw a few Tik toks that were already past, I think a hundred thousand views. So

• 1:50Sam Parr?

  It's crazy.

• 1:51Shaan Puri?

  So their Tik toks are, their Tik Tok account is blowing up just by taking our content and just chopping it up. And then the guy who did the like South Park looking cartoon thing, that was amazing.

• 2:02Sam Parr?

  Amazing. This is a young guy named Corey who's I followed his account and he's got like hundreds of thousands of views on a handful of videos and he launched the videos and like within a day or two, he had all these views. It's wild. And then the guy who does the cartoon thing, I think he's launching a business and we are his first.

• 2:19Shaan Puri?

  Right, right.

• 2:20Sam Parr?

  Because I followed his Twitter account and he had zero, it was like zero zero.

• 2:24Sam Parr?

  So that's amazing.

• 2:24Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, anyways, five grand, go, go take our content, turn it into clips, let it go viral. And yeah, everybody wins.

• 2:33Sam Parr?

  All right, I've got a few interesting things. You've got many interesting things. You should go first.

• 2:37Shaan Puri?

  I have just straight fire. We might need to split it up into multiple segments or multiple episodes because I just got too much fire for one day myself.

• 2:46Sam Parr?

  I know what the first one is and I think we should start with that.

• 2:49Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so I wanted to bring this up. There's, we had talked about this in the past, but this is a story about Miss Excel. So her name, she calls herself Miss Excel and I don't know if you've ever seen her. I don't think you're a big TikTok guy, but I am. I had seen this person going viral on TikTok and basically it's a woman who puts out like Microsoft Excel tips and tricks, like little hacks, like, oh, you know how your things are always like poorly formatted, just put pushed like, you know, Command G when you're hovering over the column and look at auto formats everything perfectly. Or like, do you know what a V lookup is? You do this, this and this and boom, you can find anything. So she basically puts out these little

• 3:31Shaan Puri?

  clips on TikTok, but it's not just the content, like the way she does it. It's like, what works on TikTok? It's like cute, cute girls, dancing, humor, like these are the things that like work on TikTok. And so she does that. She's like, she'll put a song like that's like a trending song on TikTok. She'll dress up, she'll be, she'll have the screen share behind her and she's kind of overlaid on top of it. And then she's showing something funny that's like something that's happening. She's explaining it quickly and in an entertaining way. So. She's, uh, she's, here's her story. She's a consultant, um, kind of a boring job. She was a consultant. And she decide, and you know, there's a lot of consultants and bankers that if you watch them use Excel, they won't touch a mouse.

• 4:15Shaan Puri?

  Like they just use a keyboard like a wizard and like they could just do everything just by hitting like shortcuts and macros on their, on the keyboard in Excel. There's actually a lot of people that can do this.

• 4:24Sam Parr?

  My friend who, who used to work at BCG, basically they had a mouse with like a wired mouse that was clearly cut. The cord was cut and they like, it was like in a frame on the wall and they're like, that's what you're going to do here. The mouse is cut.

• 4:36Shaan Puri?

  That's what this needs to look like.

• 4:37Sam Parr?

  You don't use the mouse.

• 4:39Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. Uh, and I don't know how any of this works, but, uh, I've definitely seen a bunch of friends who can do this. They, it's kind of amazing when they're doing it. So she basically took that idea and started turning it into interesting clips. So she starts off and she tells a story where she's like, you know, um, I wanted to like try making some content and, uh, you know, Tik Tok, I felt embarrassed because like, isn't Tik Tok like for kids and like, it's just like the silly thing to do. I shouldn't, I shouldn't make a Tik Tok account. I'm a consultant. And then her gut was like, you should do a Tik Tok. And so she listens to her gut. She makes a Tik Tok and pretty quickly, I think like within the first week or so, she goes viral with one or two clips and she gets over like a hundred thousand views and she's like, holy shit, this is awesome. And so she does it again and she does it again. And then she starts in, she's like buys a little ring light

• 5:23Shaan Puri?

  and gets a green screen so that it looks a little bit better. And she does it again. She gets a video that gets a million views and it's like, wow, this is amazing. And so she starts branding herself, amazing branding, by the way, Miss Excel. Like she is the one, she is the Excel woman. And, um, and so I thought that was great. And so she, she starts doing this and she, she's getting popular, but she's not making any money. And, uh, she reaches or who, what happened? Morning Brew reaches out. They're going to do a feature story on her. And they're like, oh, we want to feature you. And at the same time, a business coach reached out to her. And it was like, hey, I saw you have this like really great following. I think your, your content is super unique.

• 6:02Shaan Puri?

  You know, and she was like, yeah, it's great. I'm going to be featured on Morning Brew. They're like, awesome. Like, what do you have to sell? And she's like, I don't sell anything. It's all free content. And they're like, if you're going to get featured, you should have something to sell. And she's like, okay, challenge accepted. You're right. Uh, I'm going to make a course. And so she decides to make a course. She'd never done it before, and I think she had like something like two weeks or something to like pull this whole thing off. And she rushes to do it. Now let's fast forward to today. She is making courses and she is making six figures a month off this thing. So she's making single digit millions a year. She has a few days of the year where she's made six over a hundred thousand dollars

• 6:41Shaan Puri?

  on a day in course sales. That's kind of like her Black Friday, um, or Black Friday special or whatever where she where she sold her course. And so she's doing millions of dollars a year and she's working towards million, a million dollar month. That's like her goal. I want to hit a million dollars a month as Miss Excel. And she is like, Microsoft loves her. They're like pumping her up. You know, she's featured in Business Insider. She's featured in like BuzzFeed. She's featured in a whole bunch of places because it's this great story. She's featured on this podcast right now. And so she is doing amazing. What I love about this is she quits her job as a consultant. She now works 15 hours a week unless she's making a course like, but just like a normal thing. She's, she's doing 50 hours a week. She has one employee, which is an overseas virtual assistant.

• 7:25Shaan Puri?

  Her cost structure is that overseas virtual assistant, which I'm guessing is making something like six to $10 an hour. So, you know, probably paying them like $500 a month ballpark.

• 7:36Shaan Puri?

  Plus she pays $97 for Thinkific, uh, which is the course platform. And she pays a video editor to, um, to edit the videos for the course. So like all in all, her expenses are probably like sub $1,500, maybe sub $2,000 at the time. And, um, she's making six figures a month. So she's profiting.

• 7:57Shaan Puri?

  You know, at least a hundred thousand dollars a month, uh, doing this thing. And, um, there was a whole bunch of like different little nuggets in there that I liked, but that's the, the overall story. Quick, quick reaction to that.

• 8:08Sam Parr?

  Amazing. I don't think it's gonna, maybe it will last. Maybe.

• 8:12Shaan Puri?

  That was, that was my initial instinct. I was like, awesome, awesome run. But like, you know, who knows if this is here two years from now. And then I changed my mind when I kind of read her, read a little bit more about her. Here's what I liked. Okay, so we had talked about Excel way back, maybe a year ago. When I, when we were talking about, I was going to create a course and we had done a deep dive of what are the best courses?

• 8:33Sam Parr?

  It's always Excel.

• 8:35Shaan Puri?

  Microsoft Excel is always in the top. If you go to Teachables top courses, Udemy's top courses, learning to master Excel is always in the top, like 10 earning courses. And it's hard to be the one, but it's a topic people will pay for.

• 8:48Sam Parr?

  Anchor from Teachable, he's got a, he's a good Twitter follow. He tweets out some of the biggest earners. He won't explicitly say who they are, but he'll say one earner, we just paid their, you know, they just crossed 20 million in revenue or in like earnings. And then he'll also say like, the top course is this Excel thing. So you can kind of like triangulate.

• 9:09Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. And on Udemy, I think I was able to do this as well. I was able to search and sort for the top bestselling courses and Excel was in the top as well.

• 9:18Sam Parr?

  That's amazing.

• 9:19Shaan Puri?

  And so I think Excel has real demand. Then the question is, who's going to be the best brand in the Excel space? And she's the horse I would pick. So why do I think that? First is her content is fundamentally better. She took the most, she has the best top of funnel. So what's her top of funnel strategy? It's highly exciting, quick hitting, snack sized TikTok videos. TikTok itself is like the crack cocaine of content, right? Like 10 seconds video with music overlaid. That is crack cocaine for content. And she's using that for Excel when all the other Excel creators are like bloggers and shit like that. It's like a stale old thing.

• 10:03Shaan Puri?

  Then her brand and her personality, Miss Excel, good looking woman who understands how to do content. And, and she, I know she understands the content. She, so she's a little bit, when I was researching her. She is really into some of the shit I'm into. That's really like, kind of like off the beaten path. So she was like, yeah, she's like, most people, when they think of content strategy, like especially for, for, for this space, B to B type of content. She's like, it's always like strategic, intellectual, trying to figure it out. She goes, I spend most of my time just getting into a certain state of mind. I just, she's like, I just get into a, she goes, she goes, this is her exact quote. She goes, the way I run my structure for my business is

• 10:46Shaan Puri?

  through energetics. Most people don't even know what the fuck that means. She goes, I get my energy to a place where my presence is truly magnetic. I get a vision of what's going to go viral. Then I run to my computer and I create that. And sure enough, it goes viral. She goes, because most content, people, people don't understand content is just energy transmission. Yeah, I'm having a great time. I'm excited about this topic. And so I'm going to push that through the phone into you. And sure enough, you're going to learn something, but you're also going to smile while you're watching my shit. You're also going to laugh while you're watching my thing. And nobody else is doing that. And I've read that and I go, she gets it. She gets like, one of the most important things about business and life, which is just like, maybe able to manage your own energy. But the second part is she gets the content strategy in a way that I don't think anybody else is going to really get in this, in this space. Did you say another thing?

• 11:32Shaan Puri?

  Oh, go ahead, go ahead. She now has scale. So at first I was like, okay, but she's just like an individual creator on TikTok and like, who knows, maybe TikTok algorithm changes. No. So here's what she's doing. She basically is like, I'm going to scale in two ways. First, she's expanding into the whole Microsoft suite. So it's not just Excel. She's doing PowerPoint and Word and Outlook and like, everything that like, you know, a billion people on earth have to use professionally. And so, and Microsoft is helping her. And every time they're releasing a new thing, she's getting first look at it. And she gets to come out right away with the content that's going to highlight this new function or this new feature that you get to be able to use. So. That expansion gives it more legs than just Excel. The second thing is she now hired a performance marketing agency. And she's like, yeah, get my brand to grow.

• 12:16Shaan Puri?

  And she's like, the beautiful thing is I don't sell my course. I just put one of my most viral thing and I put ad spend behind it. And people love it like they love that content. And so they like it, they comment on it. So Facebook's algorithm promotes it. And so I was like, oh, that's kind of an unstoppable like flywheel. She's going to keep creating this like juicy, like quick life hack type content. Um, then she's promoting it, uh, that's already inherently viral. Then she's putting a paid ad spend behind it. She's growing her following on Instagram now, plus Tik Tok, plus YouTube, plus all these different places. Um, and she's like, oh yeah, reels came out. So then I just like jumped on reels and I became like one of the most viral reels creators on Instagram. And, um, so I'm like, okay, now she's diversifying the audience and she's got the courses behind it.

• 13:01Shaan Puri?

  And she's going into more, more parts of the suite. I like that formula.

• 13:04Sam Parr?

  I was wrong. She's gonna, she's gonna crush it.

• 13:06Shaan Puri?

  I think she's gonna get to my bold prediction. She's gonna get to a hundred million dollars in sales. And that sounds outrageous.

• 13:13Sam Parr?

  I was about to say a hundred million. I think she could, I think you could do, I think a hundred million a year or lifetime.

• 13:18Shaan Puri?

  A year.

• 13:19Sam Parr?

  Uh, yeah, I actually agree with you. I think that's bold. I think likely she'll get to like 25 million dollars a year in revenue and could probably actually do that for many years.

• 13:29Shaan Puri?

  Right. Uh, so I'm on board. It's crazy. Um, so I loved, I loved her thing. Uh, there was also these other little nuggets. So she basically, she's working 15 hours a week. So then she's like, oh, cool. Quit my job. I'm going to be a digital nomad, something you kind of did this last year. She's like, every month, me and my boyfriend, we just moved to a different state. We just want to experience it. So they'll just move to a different state in America and just like hang out there for the month and then they hop around. And, uh, the other thing that she's, uh, the other nuggets I like, I liked was she does these like webinars because she understands there's like a top of funnel. So top of funnel, if you don't know, is basically like how you get new customers to even like get in touch with you, get in, get into your orbit.

• 14:05Sam Parr?

  In this case is it's just going viral on TikTok.

• 14:08Shaan Puri?

  Going viral on TikTok or Instagram or YouTube. Great. Then she has the middle of funnel, which is where a lot of people fall out, which is, okay, you've touched base with me once. You're not ready to buy something just yet, but how do I actually get you to participate in a deeper way, to invest in a deeper way. And for her, she runs these webinars and she calls them high energy Excel parties. And so she, she invites people to these and what happens is it's of course, it's like someone from BCG and then they go and they're like, oh, this is amazing. Then they're like, hey, we'd like to buy like 1500 seats for our, for your course for our company, you know, like, or hey, I work for Target corporate training and yeah, we have 25,000 employees that we think would be benefit from this. How do, could you create something custom

• 14:50Shaan Puri?

  for us? And it's gonna be like, yeah, here's the same thing. But now I say the word target at the beginning and I charge you, you know, $5 million for it. I have a buddy who's doing this, which basically is like his top, he does top of funnel newsletters. Then he does these like webinars and workshops and podcasts that go deeper. And then at the bottom is somebody from, you know, Procter and Gamble will reach out and just be like, hey, cool. Like, yeah, we got 50,000 global employees. We would love to have you come speak at our headquarters once a month and like, you know, we'll pay you basically like $100,000 retainer per month. How's that? And he's like, whoa, okay. That's like way easier than like trying to.

• 15:28Sam Parr?

  What's he teach?

• 15:30Shaan Puri?

  So he teaches basically, I don't want to give away too much because I can't say the numbers in, but he teaches like a version of like, you know, growth, growth mindset. Are you familiar with that? So he's like kind of one of the thought leaders in growth mindset. And so big company, like sports teams, like have them on retainer as well as, you know, big companies like whoever, you know, Coca-Cola or whatever will, will pay him and they, they're just like, look, we think your stuff is great and we have 50,000 employees. How do we just like package this up for all those employees? And then like, guess what? We want to do this every year. And so that turned out to be a very big business for him. And he's just trying to figure out like, what do you charge a company like this? And he'll just name a number and, you know, sure enough, they'll pay it. And he's like,

• 16:14Shaan Puri?

  oh man, maybe I should have said a higher number. I thought that was a crazy high number, but I guess for them, it's like, they didn't even blink. They just like said, yes. So shit.

• 16:21Sam Parr?

  Did you see this weekend, the world Excel financial modeling championships happened?

• 16:27Shaan Puri?

  No, but that is amazing. I love that.

• 16:30Sam Parr?

  It went viral. Ben, look this up. It's like, look up like financial modeling world championship.

• 16:36Shaan Puri?

  Dude, why did I think of that idea? That's such a me idea to think of.

• 16:40Sam Parr?

  It went viral and there is like, and you see these guys. It's like, oh, you know, no disrespect. It's all nerds doing it, obviously. And you see pictures of them and you see memes like this is what peak male performance looks like.

• 16:53Shaan Puri?

  Dude, that's so funny. Okay. What, what do they actually do? What is the competition?

• 16:57Sam Parr?

  So they're all like, you can, uh, it was, they did it like Twitch. So like, you could like, uh, they like were streaming their screens and they were asked to do certain things. And then they had to like, in real time, like make this model. And I don't actually know how they judged it. I didn't pay attention. I just paid attention to the memes. I think Seth Smith tweeted something funny, like this is a gift from God. It like, she showed a picture of them on there. It's amazing. It was hilarious. And, uh, all my Indian friends were sharing it this weekend and like making Indian jokes and it was awesome. It was so funny.

• 17:30Sam Parr?

  But

• 17:35Sam Parr?

  who, who owns that? Who, didn't you see?

• 17:39Shaan Puri?

  It's probably like, you know, Deloitte.

• 17:42Sam Parr?

  But anyway, so that was amazing. So I'm on board with this. That's awesome. I love Miss Excel. When this article on The Verge, I think it was, went live. I had so many people DM me's and say, you guys got to cover this. So I was going to do it. And so happy you did. Baller, I think that, um, I've talked to a couple of friends that have course businesses and my friend Neville, my best friend Neville, he had a course called Copywriting Course. It honestly changed my life and he made this one course like 12 years ago, maybe. And it's been paying his bills every single year since then. And he does other stuff.

• 18:15Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I took it as well.

• 18:16Sam Parr?

  He like updates it and now he has like a membership thing, but this one thing that he filmed years ago, it's like, it's, that's been his career.

• 18:26Shaan Puri?

  By the way, in terms of transferring energy, Neville is exactly like that. If you watch in the course, he does, he's like, like most courses are like, here's an hour long session about X. His is like, it's almost like a blog post and it's like one minute where he's teaching one concept. And he'll like, the camera will be on and then he'll pop out from under the table. He'd be like, yo! And then he'll like, say the thing. And then the next one, he's got a guitar in his hand. He's like, he's like, if I'm writing an email and I wanna get a reply. And he's like singing a song and he's like, he, he makes it entertaining and you could just, there's something that makes you smile and it keeps you engaged. It keeps you involved with it. And, um, you know, people will forget the content, but they won't forget how they felt

• 19:08Shaan Puri?

  taking your course. And so they'll still recommend it and refer it and, and be happy with their purchase.

• 19:13Sam Parr?

  Can I, I'm, I'm gonna tell you about, uh, one or two really quick things. And I, I think we should spend most of the episode on your stuff. Cause it's actually pretty good. This adventure book thing looks amazing. Uh, one very quick thing, monthly.com. Uh, did you know what that is?

• 19:27Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 19:27Sam Parr?

  You see they-

• 19:28Shaan Puri?

  But explain it.

• 19:29Sam Parr?

  So it's just like-

• 19:30Shaan Puri?

  Cause I think it's pretty under the radar.

• 19:31Sam Parr?

  It's pretty much the exact same thing as MasterClass, but only for creators. It's kinda cool. I just signed up for my first one. Casey Neistat-

• 19:38Shaan Puri?

  Which one?

• 19:38Sam Parr?

  Is launching a YouTube-ing and storytelling class. Do you see it?

• 19:43Shaan Puri?

  Amazing.

• 19:43Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So I signed up for it. So that's like a cool find. So it's-

• 19:47Shaan Puri?

  Dude, how is he not at the fucking top of this screen right now? I'm, he's like, just in the middle of this long list. What are they doing?

• 19:52Sam Parr?

  It's-

• 19:53Shaan Puri?

  Monthly, you know, founders of monthly, I think I've talked to them before. They were, they were cool. Uh, they were like, they were cool and they knew they were cool.

• 20:00Sam Parr?

  That's alright.

• 20:01Shaan Puri?

  I was like, hey, this is awesome. They're like, yeah, it's awesome. I was like, I'd love to invest. Like, yeah, a lot of people wanna invest.

• 20:05Sam Parr?

  That's alright. I, I appreciate that. So I just-

• 20:08Shaan Puri?

  I respect that.

• 20:08Sam Parr?

  I just signed up for that. I'm so excited to, to do it. Uh, like I bought it full price and everything. I'm pumped. Uh, the second thing, another cool product that I've been fooling around with. Well, we'll do it actually through you. The, the second one is Descript. Have you seen Descript?

• 20:23Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, we've talked about it. So D-Script is kind of like editing software for like you. You record something, audio or video, and then it like transcribes it automatically. And then if you, if you delete a piece of text from the transcription, it deletes that part of the video, which is like magic.

• 20:39Sam Parr?

  It's amazing. I've been playing with this for my YouTube stuff.

• 20:41Shaan Puri?

  What do you do with it?

• 20:42Sam Parr?

  All right. So you film a video. Let's say I film a 10 minute video. It uploads the video and automatically transcribes it. And so I edit the video by editing the transcription like a Google Doc. And so I could copy and paste and move stuff around and that edits the video. It's amazing. It's, it's, it's almost transformative because it change, when I think about what I'm going to film, I think about like the, the narrative, like a story is just a long narrative and it's harder to think in video clips. It's much easier to think in transcript and text. It's super cool. And so I actually think this company, they raised money recently at a $200 million valuation. I actually think this is a company that's going to be significantly larger than it is now.

• 21:23Sam Parr?

  And it like, it's going to be pretty epic. The guy who started it also started with Groupon.

• 21:28Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Was it Andrew Mason? Mason. Uh, he's dope. Also, the best part about Andrew Mason that I respect is he, he starts Groupon. Groupon goes on this crazy run where it's like, at that point in time, it was like the hottest startup in the world, copied by like every fucking, you know, every Joe Schmo was copying Groupon. Groupon like raises all this money. It ends up going public. Then it kind of like, you know, then the world turns against Groupon. It's like, this is not, not a good business. It's not going to work. People are pulling out. It's, it's still, I think, like a billion dollar company, but like, you know, it lost its, its shine. And he was in Chicago, I think. And then he quits or whatever.

• 22:04Sam Parr?

  He gets fired.

• 22:05Shaan Puri?

  I think he, he got fired. I think he wrote something really hilarious. Didn't he write something really funny on the way out?

• 22:10Sam Parr?

  He wrote like an email. He goes,

• 22:11Shaan Puri?

  Ben, pull that up.

• 22:12Sam Parr?

  He goes, today, I'm paraphrasing. He's like, today's my last day. I've been fired. You probably know why. Like it.

• 22:20Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. You know the, the video I made making fun of that CEO who botched the, uh, the, the layoffs? This was the opposite. This is the CEO who like, who got it, who gets it. Um, and so he, yeah, he wrote this like letter, I was fired today. Then he takes a year off and he creates an album, a music album, like a rap album of him just, and he's not good, but it's hilarious. We should pull up one of the, one of the, the videos of his, uh, his like rap album or whatever.

• 22:46Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 22:47Shaan Puri?

  And, um, he releases that and then he like came back with D-Script and it started off as this like walking tour thing.

• 22:52Sam Parr?

  Which was amazing by the way. The walking tours were amazing. I bought a lot of them. It was really cool, but like not that good of a business because how, I mean, I was a super fan, but like most people, you're never going to do this. And if you do, you're going to do one in your life. Uh, but.

• 23:06Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. Like that, by the way, what a great lesson. The walking tour was like, uh, what people should do and like makes them like be, be more active and like learn things in the world. And then D-Script is like, hey, it's like products that make, make you, make it easier to be lazier. It's like, hey, you know, editing videos hard. Let's make it easier for you.

• 23:23Sam Parr?

  So D-Script, I've been playing with it. I think it's called D-Script. I've been calling it D-Script unless it's D-Script. So sorry. Uh, awesome. Under the radar. Cool. And then the last thing I'm going to tell you about that's kind of interesting. So Story Worth. So Sean or Ben, go to storyworth.com. This is a crazy fascinating thing. Very simple product. I actually knew the guy, Nick. He started it. I shared an office with him and it, he's still, I believe, the only employee. And it's kind of cool. It's very simple. When I logged in or when I used it years ago, all it was is you pay like a hundred dollars a year or $200 a year and it sends emails to family members that you sign up and it asks them about certain memories and it asks them so much over the course of a year that at the end of the year, if a lot of your family members have answered some of your prompts,

• 24:08Sam Parr?

  you now have a book describing their childhood. So it'll be like my, I sent it to my aunt Debbie and she was like, it was a question. I, I don't remember all the questions, but it was something like, what's the best memory of your father before you were 10? And she was like, you know, on Halloween, we did this thing and, and it's like, oh my gosh, I'm learning about my family. And at the end, I printed out this book, super fascinating and it's super fascinating, um, because. It's a one person business. It's just him.

• 24:35Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 24:35Sam Parr?

  And it's really simple. It's very easy. And I love that ancestry stuff so much. Like, I'm a big fan of that.

• 24:42Sam Parr?

  Anyway, that's all.

• 24:43Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's cool. That's really cool. I um, I've never used something like this. So isn't it kind of a lot of work for the other person to like write an answer?

• 24:50Sam Parr?

  Yes.

• 24:50Shaan Puri?

  I feel like people don't like to do stuff like that.

• 24:53Sam Parr?

  But if you get, well, you get one a week and you spend like 10 minutes journaling. Yeah, it's work. But I like told my aunt, I was like, hey, this is important to me. And she, after a while, she was like, oh, I kind of like doing this. I'm remembering a bunch of stuff. It's a lot of work.

• 25:06Shaan Puri?

  We had done a version of this, or there's a version of this that's like, I think a little easier, which was, um, I don't know if you remember, I, when I, I had my mom over.

• 25:16Sam Parr?

  And you did like a podcast with her.

• 25:18Shaan Puri?

  And I recorded a podcast with her. And the podcast was so much easier because really all they had to come into was like one time, hey, let's sit down and talk. And you get this hour long thing with their voice and they don't have to, like, people will get pretty intimidated having to write something. There's this pressure internally to like, do good writing. I think school like traumatizes the shit out of people. And this podcast thing worked great. I did, I had an amazing podcast with my mom. I recommend anybody, you don't need to be a podcaster, by the way, like this, I don't publish this anywhere. But it's just a memory I'll always have. And it was a conversation that I wouldn't have otherwise had. More importantly, like, I don't even know if I'll ever go back and listen to this.

• 25:55Sam Parr?

  But you'll give it to your daughter.

• 25:56Shaan Puri?

  On that really horrible day. Yeah, like, you know, when she, she passes away, like, I'll, I'll be happy I have this. But more importantly, it was like, so much of life is so surface level and like, we're just talking, A, like, we're just talking about me and my life all the time. B, like, if I'm talking to her, it's about like what we're doing today or whatever. I realized I knew very, very little about, like, her and her family and what made her her and like her upbringing. Um, because, you know, I don't know, that's just shit in the past. And so. And even she forgot a lot of these things. And in the conversation, it all was coming flooding back to her. So I recommend everybody do that with their parents, like just sit them down and record one hour thing. And I can share like the questions I asked or whatever, but it really doesn't matter, to be honest with you.

• 26:39Sam Parr?

  Have you done Ancestry or 23andMe?

• 26:42Shaan Puri?

  I've never done it. No.

• 26:43Sam Parr?

  They're awesome. So 23andMe is awesome. Ancestry is, I think, cooler because I've spent hours on it, like building up my family tree. 23andMe, I've thought about getting it for, I have it, and I thought about buying it this Christmas for my family members. The reason I'm not, I may not do it. Have you heard of this thing called GED Match?

• 27:02Shaan Puri?

  No, what's that?

• 27:02Sam Parr?

  Have you heard of the Golden State Killer?

• 27:06Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 27:06Sam Parr?

  Okay, so in the 1970s, there was this guy who-

• 27:09Shaan Puri?

  I thought that's what they call you.

• 27:10Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that was my nickname in high school, Golden State Killer. In the 1960s, 70s, and I think 80s, there was this guy who basically raped like 50 women, and then he murdered eventually like 20 of them. Like, he was a serial killer. And he got away with it for years. No one knew who it was. And Patton Oswalt's wife, Patton Oswalt, the comedian, his wife, who recently died, right before she died, published her like master work, her life's work, and it was about the Golden State Killer and how he's never been caught. And it renewed interest. And then the FBI got all into it because of all the press. And they eventually used this website called GE, it's public, like it's like, anyone can use it. It's like an open

• 27:50Sam Parr?

  source website. And it analyzes all of the information for 23andMe, Ancestry, and like all that stuff, all the database stuff. And they found, they put his DNA, the Golden State Killer's DNA, which they had, into this GED match thing. And they realized that the daughter of the killer, or like, they were like, well, this is so aligned, it must be like the daughter or the granddaughter of the killer recently signed up for 23andMe. And so they stake out this guy's house, they dig through his garbage, they find, they go boom, got him. And that's how they arrest him. And they arrested him when he was like 80 and dying. And if you Google Golden State Killer, you'll see like these pictures of this old man. And they got him because he got away with it for so long. But eventually, they brought him to justice.

• 28:32Sam Parr?

  And now, they've caught many dozens, maybe even hundreds of killers or rapists this way, which is good, but- It's kinda scary. And so you could-

• 28:44Shaan Puri?

  So I was gonna say, so you're worried about this? Why is this worrying?

• 28:48Sam Parr?

  Um, because it's being used for-

• 28:50Shaan Puri?

  I don't wanna get grandpa in trouble?

• 28:51Sam Parr?

  It's being used for good now, but like, you could see like-

• 28:57Shaan Puri?

  Do I wanna be in this database?

• 28:57Sam Parr?

  Do I wanna be in this database? And so this is one thing I'm a bit worried about. So you can go to GED match and you could upload your results and it could tell you all types of stuff about your results. You could see a lot of interesting stuff. And you could like, if you can somehow get the DNA from an FBI case, which I believe in some cases you can, you can like upload it and there's like thousands of like these internet detectives using this database to solve crimes. It's kinda fascinating. It's kind of interesting and it's definitely a little scary.

• 29:28Shaan Puri?

  Wow. Is there like a subreddit for these, you know, like sort of like public crime solvers?

• 29:32Sam Parr?

  Yes, there is. And it's very, very interesting. And most of the time they're wrong. So like, if you remember when the Boston, like the Boston Marathon bombing, they like named like these like three guys and they kinda fucked with these guys' lives. They didn't end up doing it, but everyone was certain on that subreddit and they're uploading pictures and they go, this guy works at this place. It wasn't them. They were wrong. No one guessed it that it was the two actual guys. But this is a little bit different because it's DNA, but DNA isn't perfect. So it's like, there's a, it'll say like, there's a, um, this person is 5% related to this person. So it's like, alright, let's see what that is. That could be like a distant cousin. And so you like track your way down to that and you build these family trees to figure out, oh, you know, it's kinda weird that like this matches this person and they're, they also lived in the same area.

• 30:17Sam Parr?

  And so it's not perfect, but it's like pretty good. So anyway, I thought that's why I may not get 23 and me.

• 30:25Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I also know people who have gotten it and realized like their dad is not their real dad. Um, and I think that-

• 30:32Sam Parr?

  That happened to a family member of mine.

• 30:33Shaan Puri?

  I think that's a, you know, uh, you know, side effect to be aware of. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

• 30:39Sam Parr?

  A family member of mine- A family member of mine found out that their parent had a base, their parent cheated on the spouse and had a, a, a kid. And so they logged on and they go, oh, man, I've got a second brother, you know, like a stepbrother or whatever, half brother. And it changes shit.

• 30:59Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, without getting too personal, that, that, that has, like, they went public with it? Or they just kind of kept that information to themselves?

• 31:06Sam Parr?

  No, no, no, they did not go public with it, but it like, was very, it was, I don't know, they haven't talked about it with me too much, but it was, it seems like, it was like somewhat earth shattered.

• 31:16Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, there's a, there's a thing that I've heard that goes on, which is people who, people who use sperm banks, so like a sperm donor, will take the, or sorry, people who didn't realize that their parent had used a sperm donor, whatever. They will get the sequencing done or whatever, and they'll find out like, oh my God, I have 42 like half brothers or sisters out there. It's like, oh, this was a person who, you know, this is a person who donated a bunch. And then, so yeah, you actually do genetically share with all these different people. Like, wow, that's really crazy. So there's all kinds of like interesting stuff. And I think 23andMe, their business model is to sell your data, right?

• 31:59Shaan Puri?

  Like, I think that is the core business model is they sell it to pharmaceutical companies for, you know, like the research or whatever. Like, I don't know if it's fucked up, or if it's like, this is for the good of science, but I don't think you really know or opt, it's not clear that, hey, like.

• 32:13Sam Parr?

  It's not clear.

• 32:14Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's probably, it's definitely in the terms, you know, but nobody's reading the terms. And so that's the problem.

• 32:19Sam Parr?

  It's like, it's like a benevolent dictator. It's like, it's cool when they're making the trains run on time. It's not cool when they start killing people. You know what I mean?

• 32:28Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 32:28Sam Parr?

  It's like, it's good when it's good, but it could go bad really easily.

• 32:33Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. All right, what else we got?

• 32:35Sam Parr?

  Do adventure book.

• 32:37Shaan Puri?

  All right, so this is another, so to me, the Miss Excel thing was one. This other thing I think is really interesting, so the adventure book. Let me tell you about this story. Have you heard, do you know what this is, this product, the adventure book?

• 32:49Sam Parr?

  I have no idea what it is.

• 32:50Shaan Puri?

  Ben, have you ever heard of this thing?

• 32:57Shaan Puri?

  Okay, alright, so you guys are also not on TikTok enough. This is like the number one ad on TikTok that I see. I don't know if I'm just in the market or they just run a shit ton of ads, but I've been seeing it for like a year. So basically, it's a, it's kind of, it's a book you buy. And it's like a high quality big book. And what it is, is like, there's a bunch of, imagine like a scratch off, like a lottery. So there's a bunch of things, a bunch of adventures that you could scratch off. So you open the book to a random adventure, you scratch it off, and it reveals a thing you're gonna go do. Like, it might be, like, I don't know, I've never bought the book, so like, you know, bad example, but like, you know, you're gonna go into a store today and you give out 10 compliments to people in the store. Or you're gonna go streaking around your neighborhood or whatever, like, an adventure, a thing you can go do.

• 33:41Shaan Puri?

  And so this idea, and, and, and they pair with it like a camera. So you, you're supposed to take a Polaroid of you doing it, so it becomes a scrapbook. So on one side, it triggers you to go do something that you've never done, or that's like, you know, get you out of your comfort zone. And then it gives you the ability to capture it and paste, you glue the photo in, and it becomes this memory book of all your adventures. Like, cool kind of novel idea. So I hadn't seen this, and I was like, ah, that's a cute idea, that's a novel idea. What I didn't realize is that this is a hundred million dollar business that was created in the last like two years. So how do I know this? You know, like, for the podcast, I don't know if you get these emails, but I definitely do. There's a bunch of people that have like booking agents.

• 34:25Shaan Puri?

  And we get all these emails, which is like, hey Sean, love my first million. Have you thought about having, you know, Joe, Joe on? And you're like, you know, it's like, oh, first, they're, they're complimenting me, so I like, open it, and I'm like, it's like, I don't want to be a member of any club that will have me. So it's like, that's how I feel about the guest thing. So normally I write all these off, but this one caught my eye, which was, they said, would you like to have Brian Ellis on? He is a high school dropout, now owns a hundred million dollar business called The Adventure Challenge. And I was like, is like, that, that adventure book thing? And, and so I replied, I go, hundred million dollars, no way, that sounds high. And she goes, yeah, like, it's been incredible, they've grown, blah, blah, blah. And I said,

• 35:09Shaan Puri?

  Hundred, I just to clarify, I'm like 100 million cumulative revenue, annual revenue. What are you saying here? And, uh, and so she goes, yeah, like the, the, they'll do 85 million in revenue this year. And they have a few big, bigger partnerships, the distribution partnerships that will get them over a hundred. Um, like in the next year. And, you know, so the business is valued over a hundred million dollars. But with 85 million in revenue. And I was like, what the fuck? And so I go and I start researching this. And so here's the story. So this guy Bryant, he's, um, I, so I couldn't confirm the high school dropout part. I don't know if that was just like some post fact shit, like, like to make this sound better, but like, let's assume it's true. So, uh, high school dropout.

• 35:51Shaan Puri?

  I think his job was he had some job, which was like, he was a skyscraper inspector. So he was like, you know, some low man on the totem pole doing a job he didn't love. And he's like, all right, I'm just doing this for the money. He wanted to make a business like he just, he's like, my whole life, I just always been, I always have ideas. And, and, um, you know, I wanted to come create a product. It's like, so I'm doing this job and I had this idea to do, um, to do this like adventure box. So his original idea was take a machine, uh, create a box, like a machine. And, um, you push a button and it's like, like prints out a receipt. The receipt is like the adventure you're going to go on. So you get like a random adventure that comes out. Cool idea, right? And, um, and so that was the original idea. And he's like, ah, just tells a couple of people about it. They're like, oh, yeah, that's, that's cool.

• 36:33Shaan Puri?

  And he's like, great, but he's just doing his job and he hasn't really, you know, figured out exactly how to do it or whatever. And he's like, he's like, okay, what he's, he's, he, everything's like on hold until he gets fired from his job. And he like, uh, he, he makes a mistake. They think he committed fraud. His boss is like, no, no, no, this honest mistake. But either way, he gets fired. He's like, all right, shit. What do I want to do? So he decides, I want to go to acting school. So he's like, I'm going to go to acting school, but I need to pay for life. So he's like, I need to create a side hustle. That's going to make me $2,000 a month. That's my goal. And he's like, he's like, what about that adventure box challenge thing? And he's like, the idea over the course of a few months had, had like evolved. And he's like, all right, what if it was actually like a book that you could scratch off the adventure?

• 37:19Shaan Puri?

  And so he tells a couple of people about it and they're like, that's actually a really cool idea. You should do it. And so he goes to Hobby Lobby and he buys some paper, some of the scratch off material. And he, and he's like buys a, he goes to a different store, buys a camera. And he's like, starts coming up with this idea and he basically spends six to eight months prototyping this idea. Cause nobody had really done a like, kind of like, um, an adventure style scratch off book before. So he's like creating an actual physical product.

• 37:48Shaan Puri?

  And so he's like, um, he has this idea and he, um, he just keeps telling people about it. And so he, um, he gets to the point where he's prototyped the idea several times. And there's videos I found online of like, he's creating a vlog while he's doing, he's like, all right, it's 11:00 PM, April 1st. Uh, I just caught this really cool material for the scratch off. I really like this one, but I'm having trouble with the bindings, you know? And he's like, so maybe I'll try this other thing tomorrow. And then like, he has the next video, you know, a week later, he's like, okay, I figured out the bindings part. And now I need to figure out this other thing. I love seeing the, the start, the early stages of these ideas. So he creates a Kickstarter. He's like, I'm going to do a Kickstarter. It's going to be great. I want to raise $10,000 for this book. And Kickstarter goes live. He makes $1,300 the first day.

• 38:31Shaan Puri?

  And he's like, fuck yeah, I'm the man. He, you know, goes to a coffee shop. He's strutting in. He's like, I made $1,300 today. I don't know about you guys. I'll take, you know, your best, give me your finest coffee. And he's like, all right, we're, you know, we're already 13% of the way to the goal. Let's keep going. But day two, $400. Day three, $0. And like the Kickstarter like runs out of steam. And he's like, shit, I was kind of just banking on this going viral. And now it's not viral. So what now? And so he's like, all right, basically he's going to throw in the towel. Cause like for, for only $1,700, I can't even get the quality of book made that I want. Uh, maybe I'll just quit. So he's like, I need to get a job to pay for life. Um, you know, like I'm, I'm out of money.

• 39:15Shaan Puri?

  And so he's like, he's like, oh, maybe I'll contact my buddy. I don't know if I've got his name, but Ben, my, my buddy Ben to, uh, to get a sales job. He has like this company. I can do sales. Uh, so he calls him up. He gets a sales, he's like, I want to do a sales job. I want to do it for one year and I'm just saving up money. So I can go back out there and build a product. And the guy's like, all right, cool. That's fine. Like you're upfront about it. Like I'm down with that. Let's do it. So he gets a sales job there. And while he's there, he's telling people at work this idea. He can't shut up about the idea. And, um, And the guy there was like, you know, have you tried ads? He's like, oh dude, nobody clicks ads. Like ads, like ads are scams, basically. Like that was his mentality at the time. And the guy's like, no, like that's how we grow our business. Like, you know, you should try. So he puts a little money into ads.

• 39:57Shaan Puri?

  He's like, I don't know if it worked or not, but like, you know, I got this like 10x ROAS. And the guy's like, what? Like, no way. And he's like, yeah, like people really like the ad or whatever. And so the guy, he partners with his buddy, the guy who hired him. And I'm fast forwarding some parts of the story, but basically he ends up leaving, that guy partners with him. That guy's like, look, we're going to grow this thing through ads. And, um, and they basically run a shit ton of TikTok ads, Facebook ads, whatever. And they've grown this thing to now 85, if this is true, $85 million in sales. They've sold about 2 million copies of this book. It's like a $40 book. Which is like, you know, something 70 something million dollars in sales, if you do the math. And, um, and yeah, what an adventure. And now they have like a couples book. So you're like 50 fun adventures to go on with your date.

• 40:41Shaan Puri?

  They have a family book. Here's some things to do with your family, a friends book, and then a by yourself book. And, um, yeah, it's kind of amazing.

• 40:49Sam Parr?

  I am into these notebooks. I told you I use one of these best self-co, right?

• 40:53Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, but that's different. That doesn't have like a, it doesn't get you to go do things in the real world.

• 40:59Sam Parr?

  It does. It does. The, the one I use, I use like a relation, we use like a marriage one. And so I'm into this. This guy's amazing. How old is he?

• 41:06Shaan Puri?

  Uh, he seems very young, so I don't know how old he is. Um, he looks like he might be 25, 30, max. I don't know.

• 41:14Sam Parr?

  I think these box things are cool. We talked about one that was doing like a hundred million in revenue and it was, um, remember it was that like catch a, catch a criminal box. You remember that?

• 41:24Shaan Puri?

  Oh, what was that? What is that one? That's a, is it a true crime?

• 41:28Sam Parr?

  That was amazing. It was, it was a true crime thing. It was $30 a month and they send you a box and you solve a crime with your friends. It's so good. It was so fun. And this is in that same world. I think it's cool to like, it feels special to me to order something and to like see a physical, get a physical thing and, uh, I'm into it. I think this is badass. This is so awesome.

• 41:48Shaan Puri?

  True crime one better than this because that's a repeat, uh, that's like a recurring one. Where it'll have more repeat purchase than this.

• 41:55Sam Parr?

  It's so fun.

• 41:57Shaan Puri?

  And I do one, I buy this thing called Kiwi for my niece, which is like, it sends her like, kind of like a science fair project, basically. It's like, here's a kit, you're gonna build a like, a little like mini tractor. It's sort of like Legos or whatever, but it's not like one specific thing. Oh, sorry. It is one specific thing. It's like, here's, you learn about electricity through this little like, box every month. And it's not great, but it's good enough. And like, she loves it. So now if I cancel, I have the guilt of like, her not getting the toy she wants. And so I'm like, I'm gonna just keep this $20 subscription forever, I guess.

• 42:31Sam Parr?

  I'm on board with this. I think this is awesome. I think, who, by the way, whoever's making clips, this should be the clip that you make. This guy's story is like, I was enthralled. This is amazing.

• 42:41Shaan Puri?

  All right. What else, what else you want to do? I have a

• 42:43Sam Parr?

  Keep going.

• 42:44Shaan Puri?

  Okay, I have a segment. It's not even a full segment. It's just the start of a segment. I think this one might be bad, but let's try it. I basically pretend I'm drunk and then this will be like, ah, it's pretty good for a drunk guy. I have a bunch of half baked TV show ideas.

• 43:01Sam Parr?

  Do you even drink?

• 43:02Shaan Puri?

  I'll drink, you know, if the occasion calls for it, I'll drink, but not regularly, no. But I want to pretend I was drunk when I came up with this list, because it's kind of just like a random ass list of weird ideas. So these are half baked TV show ideas. Okay. This is for the, you know, the producer who listens to the show, the Netflix guy who listens to the show. You're welcome in advance. I want to get your reaction to my concept. Okay, I'm gonna pitch you three ideas. I don't know if you have any, any TV show ideas, but I'll pitch you three. Okay.

• 43:32Sam Parr?

  Okay, go.

• 43:33Shaan Puri?

  The first one is called Frat U.

• 43:37Shaan Puri?

  I love, I don't know if you've seen the football one, that's on, oh my God, what's it called? There's like a football one called something on Netflix. It's like one of their original shows that basically follows a junior college football team around. And

• 43:54Shaan Puri?

  It's like, here's the coach, here's the players, and it like picks six players. And it's like, you kind of get emotionally invested in their story. There's a Formula One show that's just like this. It's like, here's these six drivers you get invested in their.

• 44:05Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's amazing.

• 44:06Shaan Puri?

  Their, their story. There's a cheerleading version of this that I watched. I think it's called Cheer. I don't know what it's called exactly, but it's like, here's this, the, the best cheer college.

• 44:14Sam Parr?

  You know that that was like, you know that that was like the most popular show and it's not like some thing you discovered.

• 44:19Shaan Puri?

  I'm, I'm a pretty, you know, a good curator here. So you, so I don't know, but a lot of people have been watching the show because it's like, why would I watch a cheer?

• 44:26Sam Parr?

  Have you heard of this thing called Squid Games?

• 44:29Shaan Puri?

  So I signed up for this service called Netflix. It's pretty great. All right, so this same model, I think it'll be applied to a whole bunch more topics. The one I'm surprised at is why is there not a reality show just inside one of the craziest frats in America? Because you know that they would basically go all out, sell out to make the show entertaining because they want the fame.

• 44:51Sam Parr?

  Well, I think it's a faux pas. Have you ever talked to like an 18 year old man? They're woke.

• 44:55Shaan Puri?

  No, dude, no, that's.

• 44:56Sam Parr?

  Are they into frats?

• 44:57Shaan Puri?

  Just like the, that's like the 18 year old who's like talking to old people like us. Most 18 year olds don't interact with people like us and they're like very normal and just trying to have a good time in college. They're not like.

• 45:09Sam Parr?

  Are frats even, are frats popular, you think? I would think they're going down like significantly.

• 45:13Shaan Puri?

  Super popular because it's a bubble. Like when you go to a college, it's like in such a little bubble, it's not really affected by like the way the world is changing.

• 45:22Sam Parr?

  You don't have to, you're not, you're not, you're not convincing me. I understand the value, but I, I didn't even, I just thought that like with everything going on that it was like a faux pas.

• 45:29Shaan Puri?

  Nah dude, I bet if you go to Arizona State or you go to like, you know, wherever, you know, Georgia. Do you think they give a shit about like, you know, wokeism and they're disbanding the frats? Hell no, they are doubling down.

• 45:41Sam Parr?

  There's, there's these, there's these girls on Tik Tok that do this challenge or not this challenge, but I forget what it's called. If you're a Tik Tok guy, you probably know, but Sarah showed it to me. It's these girls who are like pledging, I think, is that what it's called? I, I wasn't part of that, uh, where you, I don't know what you do is like you, it's like a tryout and they always talk about what they're wearing. I'm an, I'm a, I'm an old man and I was a dork. I wasn't part of a frat, but they like talk about the clothes that they're wearing to their, their like pledge ceremony, things like that. And it's gone very viral video.

• 46:11Shaan Puri?

  What's so notable about the clothes they're wearing?

• 46:15Sam Parr?

  I don't know, but it's just funny. It's just hilarious. Cause like, don't you know how like in the south and like at Ole Miss and stuff like that, the, the sororities do these, uh, like

• 46:22Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah. Like I went to a southern college. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Like,

• 46:26Sam Parr?

  Like they all like, it's all like the blonde haired girls. They all look exactly alike and they dress exactly alike. And that's like the joke is they like show like what they're wearing.

• 46:32Shaan Puri?

  At Duke, you weren't even allowed to throw a party if you weren't a frat or sorority. Like they literally were like, you better join this shit or, uh, you don't get to have a social life.

• 46:40Sam Parr?

  Dude, it's, it's weird. It's so weird to me. That's so weird. Also, whenever I go to one of these frats, I'm like, this is disgusting. I don't want to live with like a bunch of dudes or alcoholics. And there's like 80 of them in this crappy house and there's beer shit like taped on the wall.

• 46:54Shaan Puri?

  How about you when you were like getting drunk all the time?

• 46:56Sam Parr?

  Even back then, but even back then, I'm like, this is filthy. I want to be the filthy one. I don't want to,

• 47:03Sam Parr?

  I just don't want to be around a bunch of like degenerates all the time.

• 47:05Shaan Puri?

  Oh, okay. Well, you're alone in that. I would love to, uh, go back and experience college again. I think it was a great time. And living in one of these houses was yes, messy, but fun. Anyways, point is you go to a party school. You go to Ole Miss, you go to Georgia, you go to, you know, Santa Barbara or whatever. And it's frat U and you basically just follow around with a king alpha frat. You go inside the house and you pick the five characters who are the, you know, they got, they're going to have all the elements of a great TV show. They're going to have relationship drama. They're going to have infighting. They're going to have camaraderie with the boys. They're going to have a hazing and a, a pledge process that's going to be controversial and get them to do all kinds of outrageous stunts. It's all baked in. The show basically writes itself.

• 47:48Sam Parr?

  You gotta have like, like one guy questioning his sexuality and coming out.

• 47:50Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. Comes out and he's,

• 47:52Sam Parr?

  Another guy who only grew up around white people.

• 47:53Shaan Puri?

  They're not going to accept him, but they accept him. There's the, the person who gets canceled for doing something racist or sexist or something like that. It's got all the elements and then you could just hop from school to school and the schools will be excited. Oh shit, frat U is coming. We gotta represent because you know, Georgia looked like they had a good time. So now all of a sudden Clemson is like, oh, you think Georgia was hardcore? Look how we party. Look how we do our thing. I think this is a no brainer franchise that somebody needs to create. And, uh, you could put me down as executive producer.

• 48:25Sam Parr?

  All right, next, back basic to baller.

• 48:27Shaan Puri?

  Basic to baller. Okay, what is this?

• 48:30Shaan Puri?

  I recently met somebody, I'm gonna do a separate episode of this, but I recently met somebody who was completely

• 48:37Shaan Puri?

  like, middle-class or a little lower-middle-class, like, didn't have any money. All their, all their tastes were that of a basic person, right? They, they didn't shop at Whole Foods, they shopped at Kroger, right? They didn't, they didn't eat like fancy stuff, they, you know, like McDonald's and stuff like that. They, they didn't drive a fancy car, they drove like a Camry, and like, okay, so that was their, like, taste buds. So I thought, what if you had a show where you just give a really basic person? Fuck you, money. And they get to go ball out, and you get to see their reaction, because already, shows where people ball out, like, like, you know, whether it's, like, kind of like, uh, Million Dollar Listing, or it's like, uh, Selling Sunset, or it's like Kardashians, it's like, it's nice to see the lifestyles of the rich and famous.

• 49:21Shaan Puri?

  People like that. But those people also, that genre of lifestyles of the rich and famous, from people who are already rich and famous, and sort of like, you know, snobby and materialistic. Okay, that already exists. What about some, what if you transformed somebody? You gave them the Cinderella treatment. They went from the, you know, the bottom to the top suddenly? And they're now just discovering all these things for the first time? Hilarity ensues. Okay, that's my second pitch.

• 49:47Sam Parr?

  Let me make a, let me put a twist on it. I actually think that you could do this, or someone listening could actually do this immediately via a YouTube series. So in 2005, there was a documentary called Reversal of Fortune. It was on Showtime, it was amazing. And the question was, what would a homeless person do if they were given a hundred thousand dollars? And so they found this homeless guy, they gave him a hundred thousand dollars. And they show him going to like a hotel for the first time, and sleeping in a bed for the first time, and he's like, I don't like this. And he sleeps on the floor of the hotel, because he's like, it's not comfortable sleeping on this bed. And they give him a hundred thousand dollars, and it ends not good. So, he spends all of his money on women, he buys a thirty-five thousand dollar truck, and this is like thirty-five thousand of the hundred grand.

• 50:27Sam Parr?

  And basically blows through all the money, and he does get a job, but he, like, all the money is gone on basically partying. And, uh, at the end of the movie, he's only got five grand left, and he's sleeping at his sister's house. But, I actually think-

• 50:42Shaan Puri?

  Ends not great for him, but sounds like great TV to me.

• 50:45Sam Parr?

  It was great TV. I was watching it the whole time. So I think what could be, what you should do is just get a hundred thousand dollars and do a YouTube series on this. You, I think you can make your money back in ad revenue.

• 50:56Shaan Puri?

  That's hilarious. I think, I think if you did it with a homeless person, you might get some blowback now. So, you know.

• 51:01Sam Parr?

  Yeah, not with a homeless person, but like, you know, like what would happen if like, you know, a, a, someone who's in need or doesn't have much is given a month, given a lot.

• 51:09Shaan Puri?

  And I think it kinda needs to be temporary, like, you know, so, you know, with like pimp my ride, you know, exhibit shows up at the door and then like your life just sort of changes overnight. Or like, you know, wife swap or whatever, where it's a very short period of, it's like a month or something like that. I think you need to let them ball out and then let them return back to reality. And, and you see that, that sort of the yo-yo of emotions between them. Okay. So that's my, my second one. Okay. Third one, very easy show. I just need to show that's background noise. Are you a background noise kinda guy? Do you just have something on? Cause it just feels better to have something on?

• 51:45Sam Parr?

  In our, when we had a physical office, we had, we had white noise machines throughout the office and I enjoyed that.

• 51:50Shaan Puri?

  Putting babies to sleep or what were you doing?

• 51:53Sam Parr?

  It was so you could have like hard, like if you wanted to have a conversation in a conference room and for it not to bleed through the walls.

• 51:59Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 52:00Sam Parr?

  And it was for like.

• 52:01Shaan Puri?

  Newsletter conversations?

• 52:03Sam Parr?

  Yes. Or like when you have like an open office plan, you put it in like pods of desks. So then like the people eating lunch don't bother you. Uh, now I keep the fan on.

• 52:11Shaan Puri?

  Well, you, you're also like a music video guy, right? I remember we were at your house. You were just throwing up like on Apple TV, like a bunch of music videos.

• 52:17Sam Parr?

  I have music videos playing, uh, throughout the day.

• 52:20Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Okay. So that's the behavior I'm talking about. I think that Netflix does not.

• 52:24Sam Parr?

  Does anyone else do that? You don't do that? You don't have?

• 52:26Shaan Puri?

  Okay. So I don't personally do that, but my wife, she'll always put like friends on. I'm like, dude, you're watching friends? And she's like, no, I'm not like, I'm not watching. I'm like, why do you have it on? I can't, can I turn it off? No, no, no. I like, I like having it on. And it's like, yeah, she doesn't like if there's like, kind of like an empty home feeling. And also it's this comfort safety blanket where it's like, I already have seen all the episodes. And this is why the office and friends are such valuable catalogs. Because people just put them on and they can only pay 10% or 20% attention to it. And 80% could be on the thing they're trying to do. And they could just glance up and, you know, see certain parts, but then they just don't. It's a low maintenance show. And when you go on Netflix today, so much of it is high maintenance attention.

• 53:08Shaan Puri?

  Uh, it's like, oh, here's this intense story about this bank heist. And that's great when you want like a Friday night intense drama. But I think they're underserving the background noise. And I also learned this at Twitch, because when I was at Twitch, we had looked at some of the data and about the usage data. And somebody was pointing out like, oh yeah, like X percent, I can't say the exact percent, but like a significant percent of the viewing time is, um, when it's not the tab that's in the forefront on people's computer. And I was like, oh, so we should just like throw that out, right? Like they're not even watching. They just like accidentally left it open. And I was like, why is it such a high percentage? Do we have some bug that like it stays open in the background in some weird way? They're like, no, this is actually the use it by like, all the developers are like, what are you talking about?

• 53:53Shaan Puri?

  The developers who actually like use Twitch all the time. They're like, this is how I use Twitch all the time. Like I'm coding, I just have it on in the back. I'm just listening to it. Like you're listening to somebody play video games? Like if there's one thing weirder than watching somebody play video games, it's listening to somebody play video games. Like, no, I just like it as like a ongoing background stream. It's kind of my favorite streamer and I don't really need to pay attention to it, but I'll hop in if something, if I hear something cool happening. I was like, holy shit. So there's this big genre of background entertainment that I think you, if you specifically tried to make, make, um, background entertainment, you could create some really successful franchises.

• 54:27Sam Parr?

  So can I, can I, can I tell you something that validates this? So you know Chive, chive.com?

• 54:32Shaan Puri?

  Um, I think it's just like a news website or something. I don't really know much about it.

• 54:35Sam Parr?

  A little bit. It's like basically Barstool, but a slightly different demographic, but mostly the same. And they created this thing called Chive TV. And so what they did was they, uh, would. And they're based in Austin. They basically gave a little Amazon fire stick to a bunch of bars in Austin. And they said, you can have this stick for free. And on this stick is basically, we're gonna put loads and loads of different clips of basically like America's Funniest Home Videos. Basically guys getting hit in the balls and like funny bar stuff that you don't actually need any sound to understand or to get like pleasure from. And so it was like silly stunts, guys jumping off skyscrapers and like skydiving and stuff. And they eventually spun this off and they created this business called Atmosphere.

• 55:19Sam Parr?

  And this was making tens of millions of dollars in revenue pre pandemic, I believe. They raised tens of millions of dollars at like a $200 million valuation. And they would give these, these, these fire sticks to like loads of different people. And then eventually you could just download this app and they would fulfill the, uh, put content in the pipe and then put ads on it. And that's how they made all their money. And they go, look advertisers, you're reaching all of these bars.

• 55:42Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah, yeah. That's, uh, bars is a great one, right? That's like perfect background, background entertainment. Uh, all right. So those are my three TV show pitch ideas, half baked ideas. Do you have any ideas? Is there a show that you think could exist or would exist or should exist? I know I'm putting you on the spot here.

• 55:58Sam Parr?

  No, but level, so one that has caught my eye, YouTube, uh, on YouTube, CNBC is doing something that I think is actually amazing. It's called Millennial Money, stupid name, and the branding is really dumb, but what they do is they convince these. No, the guy, the guy, the idea is cool though. My friend Steve was on it the other day. They convince these people and they say like, and the titles are like, here's how we live on a million dollars a year in Silicon Valley. Here's how we live on $40,000. Here's how we live on $150,000.

• 56:25Shaan Puri?

  And I've also seen Kevin O'Leary reacts to them. Have you seen this? That's what they, that's how they double down on it.

• 56:31Sam Parr?

  I think it's a great series. I think they're missing the mark though, but even though they're missing the mark, it's still quite good. And so I've always thought that, uh, for different stuff, I was like, what you, what you should do is get, you could do it one of two ways. I've always thought what you could do is you could maybe have a podcast or get actors and they like, I bet you if I sent out a survey. And I've done this before. We did this at the hustle. We sent out a survey. We posted on Hacker News and we got like. 3,000 people to tell us how much money they have in their checking account, how much they have in investable assets, how much they spend each month, and then just like a comment box. And they like leave comments. And if you search like the hustle founder bank account, it like we did an article on it.

• 57:14Sam Parr?

  And people would give us all their information and it was all anonymous though. And it was pretty great. And I always thought it would be interesting to where we can do a podcast where I just ask these people questions and then I'll hire a voice actor just to read them.

• 57:26Shaan Puri?

  Right, right, right, right. I like that. I also really like that survey kind of idea because if people, people are very willing to share because they have no cost them. It's anonymized. It's, you know, it's not being publicly shared that it's their, their information. But people really benefit from seeing what the aggregate is doing. So we talked about this with salaries with levels FYI, as well as somebody heard the thing for levels and then they made it for, do you know about the story? Someone heard our podcast about levels. They made it for doctors.

• 57:55Sam Parr?

  Doctors.

• 57:55Shaan Puri?

  And then it got acquired by levels. And so they now work out.

• 57:58Sam Parr?

  Oh, it got acquired?

• 57:59Shaan Puri?

  It got acquired. They got aquihired, maybe is a better way to phrase it. Like those guys now are like, you know, like doing their thing at levels.

• 58:06Shaan Puri?

  He's like, dude, thanks for like that idea. It led me to like a, it got me off the path I was on. I built something cool. I got to learn from that. And then I got a sweet opportunity at levels through that. So, but there's another one that's going viral right now. That's like, I think 175,000 tech workers have put their stuff into this spreadsheet.

• 58:25Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I've seen that. What's that called? It's literally just a Google sheet.

• 58:28Shaan Puri?

  It's a Google sheet. It's like, it's broken because it has too many rows now. Like, nobody can like use it. They like, they're like asking for Excel experts to like help them, you know, like format this so that they, they don't lose the data, but like people can still put their stuff in.

• 58:42Sam Parr?

  I saw that they're basically doing it because they want to end like, like maybe if you're a minority or something at Facebook, you're like, I don't know if I'm getting fucked here. Can everyone please enter their salary anonymously? So I know like, is this fair or not fair?

• 58:55Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 58:55Sam Parr?

  And that's how it got started. And so people were like rallying behind it and it went viral. I saw that. That was pretty cool.

• 59:01Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. All right, that's all I got for today. I got a couple of other ideas, but I'm gonna save them.

• 59:08Sam Parr?

  All right, I think that was a good one.

• 59:10Shaan Puri?

  Benjamin, what do you, what do you think of this one?

• 59:15Shaan Puri?

  Give it a grade.

• 59:17Speaker 02

  This was an A. Um, this was an A minus.

• 59:24Shaan Puri?

  Okay, walk me through that. It was an A?

• 59:26Speaker 02

  It was an A because it was good, top to bottom. Like, all of it was good. And then I decided to add the minus at the end because it was missing, uh, like a hose water Sam moment. Like, I didn't have anything that I was like, rolling on the floor laughing or anything like that. So I docked it to a minus.

• 59:45Sam Parr?

  Dude, it's because my freaking camera's screwing up. It knocks me off my flow so much. I can't stand it.

• 59:54Sam Parr?

  Apparently, so I didn't, so I, some people say we're funny, which shocks me. And, uh, like the other day, Noah was like, you have to take notes about reading a book. And I'm like, dude, I just read a book about like the Navy SEALs. Like, am I supposed to take notes about how like Bin Laden was shot in the head? And, uh, like, apparently people wrote in the comments, they like when we say dumb stuff like that. And that shocks me.

• 1:00:17Sam Parr?

  When people say they listen, I'm like, I'm like, really?

• 1:00:21Shaan Puri?

  I don't know if you're just doing that thing where it's like fake, fake humble, like, oh, gosh, that shocks. I didn't know that guy. Like, cause I think it's funny. Like, I think it's funnier than most people.

• 1:00:30Sam Parr?

  Funny. I think you're funny. As a group, I would say we're like mildly funny, but I wouldn't say funny is an attribute that I would like give this show.

• 1:00:40Shaan Puri?

  I think it's funny. And I think you're way funnier also. I even texted you this because you had, you had sent me something that was so funny. And I was like, dude, you're funny.

• 1:00:51Sam Parr?

  No, you said a left-handed compliment. You're like, I don't think a lot of people understand this, but you're pretty funny. Like, I made a joke the other day. Someone posted a picture with them with their arm, or it was just like a headshot of them with Apollo Anton Ono, the ice skater. And I was like, I don't know who that is. It's, that's Apollo Anton Ono. I'm like, oh, sorry. I didn't recognize him without a skate. There's like little comments like that. And no one laughed at it. And I was like, guys, that's hilarious.

• 1:01:12Shaan Puri?

  That was funny. That was funny. I should have given you a laugh because that was, that was a good one.

• 1:01:17Shaan Puri?

  And, uh, yeah, so I think we're funny. You have a, you're blunt, which is, that's funny in itself, right? You just, you just say something and you don't hedge, which is like, makes it even funnier because everybody fucking hedges nowadays. So you don't hedge or apologize, which is hilarious. And, um, and then you have some good like kind of phrases or one-liners that that hit.

• 1:01:39Sam Parr?

  Well, I'll take it. So Ben, A-, but we'll try to get some hose water stuff. Yeah, but... People are still calling, people tweet at me and call me hose water. I love it.

• 1:01:49Shaan Puri?

  Alright, we're out of here.