#34 - CES Highlights, Cloning US Startups & Compliance Education

The Hustle's My First Million presents: Million Dollar Brainstorm is back. Host Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and The Hustle CEO Sam Parr (@theSamParr) sit down and discuss what side hustles, trends and big business ideas that's keeping them up at night. We're going to try and keep these consistent -- about every Thursday and even maybe even 2 a week. Today Sam kicks it off by telling some of the most promising technologies he found at CES 2020, meeting some D2C guys and being astounded by their insane growth rates, the 3 bro's shamelessly knocking off US startups and getting rich, how lucrative trade shows/membership programs/courses can be, why compliance education packages could sell for $$$ to large companies & Shaan reflects on his decade goals and talks about what he wants accomplished by 2030. 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.

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. What's up, dude? How are you?

• 0:01Sam Parr?

  Hey.

• 0:01Shaan Puri?

  Happy New Year, all that good stuff. How was CES?

• 0:04Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I'm pulling up my notes now. It was amazing. They had-

• 0:07Shaan Puri?

  Had you been before?

• 0:08Sam Parr?

  No, 200,000 people. I'd never been to Vegas.

• 0:11Shaan Puri?

  Okay, alright.

• 0:11Sam Parr?

  You went for that fight. Had you been before?

• 0:14Shaan Puri?

  I'd been, I've been to Vegas many, many times because I'm a degenerate gambler, but-

• 0:17Sam Parr?

  Wait, are you really?

• 0:18Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, like poker, craps.

• 0:20Sam Parr?

  I played with $500 and lost it. What did you play with?

• 0:23Shaan Puri?

  Uh, like, when I used to go to Vegas a lot was when I was in college and I was like stupidly trying to like make money by gambling, which is like the dumbest thing you could do, but I was, I'm good at poker and craps you can't really be good at, you can just kind of break even at.

• 0:37Sam Parr?

  Is poker blackjack too? Or is poker like-

• 0:39Shaan Puri?

  Poker, you're playing against other people and you just pay a table rake. Blackjack, you're playing the house, you just have a defined disadvantage. Anyways, I love gambling. I went to Vegas a lot. Uh, like when I was younger, I used to play like, I'd bring like 500 bucks. And, uh, now even though I make more money, I still play with like a thousand dollars and I've only 2Xed because now the thrill of winning that money has gone down.

• 1:03Sam Parr?

  Right.

• 1:03Shaan Puri?

  But the agony of losing money when I know I could have spent it in other ways, or like just the time that it takes, like just being there for eight hours gambling, I'm like, this was a shitty use of time now.

• 1:13Sam Parr?

  I was with a friend, my friend, I don't know how to play. I was with my friend and he was showing me and he had 20 grand out.

• 1:17Shaan Puri?

  Wow.

• 1:18Sam Parr?

  And I played with him. He was aggressive and I lost all my money in an hour.

• 1:24Shaan Puri?

  It sucks to play with a friend who's playing different stakes because you don't feel the win together. If, if you're both winning, that guy just won eight grand and you won $80 and you feel like a schmuck when you get up from the table. You don't feel like you won, you feel like you lost. And even when you lose, like it just doesn't feel the same because you're like, damn, I feel kind of awkward because you just lost a car. And I lost a hundred dollars. I don't feel too bad, but like you lost a car and I don't know how to treat you now.

• 1:46Sam Parr?

  Well, the good news is he has a host or whatever at the casino. So we went with the dinner and I pulled out my credit card to pay for dinner. He's like, oh no, no, it's handled.

• 1:53Shaan Puri?

  Have you ever played credit card roulette?

• 1:55Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he wanted to do that there. That's just where you have a really fancy dinner and you pull out one card, right?

• 2:01Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, basically, instead of split the check, everybody puts their card in and then the waiter comes at the end. And the waiter starts pulling out cards. If a card gets pulled out, you're safe. Last card in pays the whole bill. And so I've only played it once and I lost and paid the whole like $350.

• 2:14Sam Parr?

  I did not want to do it. You know, it's Vegas, everything's expensive and we went hard. And so like a three person dinner was like $500.

• 2:19Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 2:20Sam Parr?

  So I didn't want to do that.

• 2:21Shaan Puri?

  So he just paid for it. Even better.

• 2:23Sam Parr?

  The other host did. Do you want to hear highlights?

• 2:25Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, please.

• 2:26Sam Parr?

  All right. So there was 180,000 people there. It was very overwhelming. I sit at the MGM Grand. Huge, mind boggling. So I'm writing a report actually on the hotel industry because it's really fascinating.

• 2:36Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 2:36Sam Parr?

  Takeaways, the Chinese are ridiculously amazing. And so what I would do is we would go, I had a friend who was interested in the sleep industry. He goes, let's go find sleep products that I want to launch. We saw, uh, Withings, you know Withings?

• 2:49Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 2:50Sam Parr?

  They make fancy scales. I think they're owned by Nokia. Beautiful products. He found one that he loved. It was a hundred dollars. It looked awesome. They go, we think it's going to be big. It comes with an app. He goes, okay, sounds good. Walked next door, there was the Chinese knockoff making the exact same thing. And he would, he said, white label? And they go, yeah. And they go, how much? And he goes, $20. And he goes, great, found it. Got my thing.

• 3:12Shaan Puri?

  Done.

• 3:13Sam Parr?

  Versus a hundred dollars. Amazing. So very impressed with Chinese. Remote work. I've talked about remote work a lot. Amazon had a huge booth and they had four target customers and it was like the home cook.

• 3:24Shaan Puri?

  Home cook, okay, kitchen.

• 3:25Sam Parr?

  Kitchen, the busy parent.

• 3:27Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 3:28Sam Parr?

  And there was one other one that I don't remember. And then the at home office worker.

• 3:31Shaan Puri?

  Interesting.

• 3:32Sam Parr?

  And.

• 3:32Shaan Puri?

  So if this is one of Amazon's four that they chose as personas, this is, they know.

• 3:38Sam Parr?

  None of the products were impressive. I didn't, I didn't see one remote thing that I thought was awesome.

• 3:42Shaan Puri?

  Interesting. What did they even try to do? Like your desk, your, what, what is, what does remote work even have?

• 3:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So it was basically a good setup for doing calls. So a nice big widescreen that was affordable. The Alexa camera.

• 3:56Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 3:56Sam Parr?

  And then the Alexa speaker and that's it. Nothing fancy.

• 3:59Shaan Puri?

  Gotcha.

• 4:00Sam Parr?

  But they're going after it. There was nothing fancy. What were some more? Oh Neon, have you heard of Neon?

• 4:05Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 4:06Sam Parr?

  Mind boggling. So they had twelve to fifteen TVs that were six to seven feet tall, so life size. And they had people there talking on the TV. They looked like real people. There was a park ranger who was giving directions. He was talking to the camera. He's like, hey, welcome to the park. And he showed his map.

• 4:21Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 4:21Sam Parr?

  They are one hundred percent fake. They weren't real people.

• 4:24Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 4:25Sam Parr?

  No, I mean, they weren't actors, like they were.

• 4:26Shaan Puri?

  Avatars.

• 4:27Sam Parr?

  Oh.

• 4:27Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 4:28Sam Parr?

  They look totally real. You look at it, you're like, oh.

• 4:30Shaan Puri?

  So Neon makes the characters or they make the screen or both?

• 4:34Sam Parr?

  The screen's just a TV.

• 4:35Shaan Puri?

  Okay, screen's just TV.

• 4:36Sam Parr?

  And that was amazing.

• 4:37Shaan Puri?

  They want to do what? Sort of like virtual front desk people? What are they trying to do with that?

• 4:40Sam Parr?

  I mean, look, the obvious thing is gonna be porn. Cause porn rules everything.

• 4:45Shaan Puri?

  West world, real world.

• 4:46Sam Parr?

  We'll get past that. I don't know what it's used for, to be honest, but it was cool.

• 4:49Shaan Puri?

  It was cool in that how believable it was.

• 4:52Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it looked real.

• 4:53Shaan Puri?

  There was a version of this at the Cowboys stadium that went viral on Twitter. Did you ever see this? So if you go to Dallas Cowboys, the football team stadium, and there's like a screen that looks like a mirror, it just looks like a camera of you. And if you stand there for a second, out will walk in the screen, a bunch of Cowboys players. And they know where you're standing, so you can go with a group, you can just be one person. And the Cowboys players will come pose for a photo with your group. They'll walk around, they'll basically move around you to pose for the photo. And it'll take a photo for you and you can share that out. And I was like, this is a really cool, interactive display.

• 5:24Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that's amazing. And the final thing was Delta, the best booth there probably. For real.

• 5:30Shaan Puri?

  Delta Airlines?

• 5:30Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 5:31Shaan Puri?

  What are they doing?

• 5:32Sam Parr?

  Okay, so they give you a ticket and you put it in your pocket. You gotta sign up to do this. And so they would like have five people stand and look at a screen. I would stand here, someone would stand four feet to the right, and then four feet to the right, another person. And each person would look at the screen, which was supposed to be like the ticketing thing, like when your flight leaves. And they look at the same screen, they each see different things. So it would say, Sean, your flight leaves at four o'clock. And then I would stand next to you and it, and they would say, Sam, your flight is thirty minutes late.

• 5:58Shaan Puri?

  Okay, that sounds like magic.

• 5:59Sam Parr?

  And, well, do you remember when you're a kid and like those books would have these things where you like?

• 6:03Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, the angle changes.

• 6:04Sam Parr?

  Angle changes and you see, I think that's what it is, but it had like dozens and dozens of them.

• 6:08Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 6:09Sam Parr?

  And it follows your ticket and it knows where you're standing.

• 6:12Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 6:13Sam Parr?

  Amazing.

• 6:13Shaan Puri?

  I like that.

• 6:14Sam Parr?

  That was the most impressive thing.

• 6:16Shaan Puri?

  And why did you go to CES? You just wanted to check it out or you had like a purpose?

• 6:20Sam Parr?

  I wanted to go to, so I had stories for this stuff.

• 6:24Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, okay.

• 6:24Sam Parr?

  A couple of our investors were there and I had a free ticket and a free hotel.

• 6:29Shaan Puri?

  Okay, gotcha. Can't lose.

• 6:31Sam Parr?

  You know what I've never done? I've never exploited the whole media pass thing. Not once have I ever signed up for a media pass. So I would have gone free probably anyway, had I signed up for a media, exploited it in a good way, not a bad way, but I didn't sign up for that.

• 6:41Shaan Puri?

  Super Bowl's coming up. Not too late.

• 6:43Sam Parr?

  Yeah, well, I went to the UFC fight and I tried to sneak in with the media pass and they're like, oh, you didn't sign up. But then I realized, wait a minute.

• 6:49Shaan Puri?

  I could have just.

• 6:50Sam Parr?

  I'm not a liar. I am a media.

• 6:52Shaan Puri?

  Right. I'm so used to just lying and sneaking in.

• 6:55Sam Parr?

  I'm like trying to like scheme. I'm like, wait a minute, I'm legitimate. So that's why I went, but I'm not going to name names, but we talk about D to C all the time.

• 7:02Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 7:03Sam Parr?

  I cannot get over how fast some of these things grow and I want to know what your opinion is. I was with one guy, first year of sale, about 40 million.

• 7:12Shaan Puri?

  Forty million.

• 7:13Sam Parr?

  Revenue.

• 7:13Shaan Puri?

  Year one.

• 7:14Sam Parr?

  Yes. Second year, they're trying to get 150.

• 7:18Shaan Puri?

  Jesus.

• 7:19Sam Parr?

  Bootstrapped, break even.

• 7:21Shaan Puri?

  Can you say the product category or no?

• 7:23Sam Parr?

  No, I'm not going to say anything other than that.

• 7:25Shaan Puri?

  Okay, let me ask you this. Were you surprised that this would do so well? Or that this, there's even a market for this or that?

• 7:31Sam Parr?

  No.

• 7:31Shaan Puri?

  Opportunity.

• 7:32Sam Parr?

  It's a common item.

• 7:33Shaan Puri?

  It's a common item.

• 7:34Sam Parr?

  That a lot of people use all the time, but it was only an okay product.

• 7:37Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 7:38Sam Parr?

  Just all marketing. And then Mois, this is public, he tweeted that last month, either last month in December or November. So at HustleCon, he said he had 20 employees. On Twitter, he said last month, they did $800,000 per employee in revenue for that month.

• 7:54Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 7:55Sam Parr?

  Which comes out to be $10 million in annual sales per employee.

• 8:00Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 8:00Sam Parr?

  Crazy.

• 8:01Shaan Puri?

  Right. 200 million a year.

• 8:03Sam Parr?

  That according to his tweet.

• 8:05Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 8:06Sam Parr?

  Crazy, right? And so what do you think?

• 8:09Shaan Puri?

  But they now have the target boom behind them too, because now after the acquisition, they got into normal retail also in addition to.

• 8:16Sam Parr?

  Yes, but he was doing similar numbers when they, I mean, he was doing 200 million dollars, the same revenue, similar revenue per head, I imagine.

• 8:23Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 8:23Sam Parr?

  Or at least per non customer service head.

• 8:26Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 8:26Sam Parr?

  And so whenever I hear this, I like, I'm like, oh, man, I gotta do this. I don't know, but then I have this thing in the back of my head. I'm like, this is a bubble. This like, so I don't know.

• 8:34Shaan Puri?

  But the cost of entry is so low. So yeah, maybe you're wrong. Maybe, maybe it is a bubble. Maybe the Facebook ad prices are going too high.

• 8:41Sam Parr?

  But who cares?

• 8:42Shaan Puri?

  It's not as easy as it sounds. But you gotta ask yourself, what's the cost of entry? So is it a high capex commitment?

• 8:48Sam Parr?

  It's a month worth of time.

• 8:49Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 8:50Sam Parr?

  At most fifty grand.

• 8:51Shaan Puri?

  A month worth of time, and then you gotta ask yourself, what's a month worth of my time worth? And for most people, that equation will say, give it a shot.

• 8:58Sam Parr?

  It's amazing.

• 8:59Shaan Puri?

  I have a story to tell there, but I have to wait five months to tell it. This is a bad teaser because it's too far away, but we will clip this part of the audio.

• 9:07Sam Parr?

  Is it about someone failing or winning?

• 9:09Shaan Puri?

  I will tell the story in five months.

• 9:10Sam Parr?

  Okay, that's interesting.

• 9:11Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 9:12Sam Parr?

  And one of the folks I was with was telling me about Rocket Internet. You know about Rocket Internet?

• 9:16Shaan Puri?

  I know about Rocket. So Rocket, for those who don't know, two brothers, basically.

• 9:20Sam Parr?

  Three.

• 9:20Shaan Puri?

  Three brothers, yeah. And they're in Germany, is that right?

• 9:23Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 9:23Shaan Puri?

  And they basically clone US internet companies typically and launch them in Europe or Brazil or different countries. And they're like, not ashamed to be like, oh, Airbnb, good idea. Here's ours. Here's our Airbnb. It's called whatever, HomeAway or whatever it is. And they've created actually like quite a bit of success doing this. And Silicon Valley loves to hate on them.

• 9:43Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and the more specific story is Ali, the boss, the middle brother, when he was 21, he went to Stanford for a month or something and hung out and like saw Silicon Valley startups. When he was 22, he cloned eBay. In 90 days, they sold it for $50 million, I believe. They used that money to clone a ringtone company, sold that after three years, maybe, for $200 million or $300 million. And then they used all their winnings to turn it into a clone factory called Rocket Internet.

• 10:14Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 10:14Sam Parr?

  And their HQ is in Berlin, and they have a chief scientist, I don't know what they call him, and he studies all of their clones. And he's like, emails the CEOs. He emails the Amazon of the Philippines or Amazon of Africa. It says, hey, Amazon changed the color of their buttons. Go.

• 10:28Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 10:28Sam Parr?

  And they cloned Groupon, and they got so big that they actually beat Groupon to the point of saying, oh, this business model is not going to work. Groupon, come buy us.

• 10:38Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 10:39Sam Parr?

  And then they got so big that their Zappos clone got too big and they couldn't sell it. So now they're.

• 10:44Shaan Puri?

  They have to operate them.

• 10:44Sam Parr?

  And they're, a lot of them are publicly traded.

• 10:47Shaan Puri?

  Right. They have a big one in Latin America. It's like Amazon for their, I forgot what it's called exactly, but.

• 10:51Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And I was with a friend who started one of their companies. So they have CEOs.

• 10:55Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 10:55Sam Parr?

  And they went from no, from him to 10,000 employees in three years.

• 10:59Shaan Puri?

  And what did he say? He liked it? He hated it? Cause they're known to have a pretty brutal culture.

• 11:03Sam Parr?

  It's both good and bad. There's a lot that can be learned and there's a lot to avoid.

• 11:06Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 11:07Sam Parr?

  He said that it was like operational excellence and they demanded it and they made him exceed expectations. The downside side is they burned a ton of capital to start their companies. A lot of them didn't work. Apparently they've burned a couple of their investors. And I think they've done it in a rather unethical way as opposed to like, and we're in good faith, trying to grow big fast. And that's okay, actually. But so good and bad to learn from him.

• 11:33Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 11:33Sam Parr?

  I heard a story about one of the CEOs or one of the brothers flew to Asia and he got 20 of the CEOs in a room of their companies and goes, you guys gotta work harder. You gotta be more aggressive. You see that guy in that room? Every company has A, B and C players. I have them firing on the phone, every C player right now. And then the guy who's in the other room making the phone calls gets done firing the people, walks in the room. And the guy goes, all right, now you're fired. And so there's like dozens of stories like that.

• 12:01Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 12:03Sam Parr?

  And it's just really fascinating.

• 12:04Shaan Puri?

  That's some Scarface shit. I like it. Okay. And so CES also, you're interested in these like trade show conferences also, right?

• 12:11Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 12:12Shaan Puri?

  You like study these things.

• 12:13Sam Parr?

  I wrote a big report on trends about trade shows. I didn't include CES. I included other ones. They're huge. I mean, the guy who started CES, he originally called it Comdex in the 1980s. And then he sold it to SoftBank for a billion dollars. And that guy, his name's Sheldon Adelson. He's worth 15 billion dollars in, is one of the richest men in the world because.

• 12:32Shaan Puri?

  He's a hotel guy, right?

• 12:34Sam Parr?

  Because during his conference time, he goes, we need bigger space. So we started, I think the Sands Hotel Corporation, which is now huge.

• 12:41Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 12:41Sam Parr?

  Super fascinating. If you told me that this conference did 500 million dollars in revenue, I wouldn't be surprised.

• 12:46Shaan Puri?

  Right. And so what do you think about that? Cause you run a conference. Do you think that, you know, this is a model? Do you guys think about applying this model as you guys?

• 12:55Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So the way our conference setup is like a conference, the big bucks is in trade shows. That's the big money because you're selling.

• 13:02Shaan Puri?

  So what's a trade show that we think could exist, you know?

• 13:05Sam Parr?

  Remote work.

• 13:06Shaan Puri?

  Okay. Remote work trade show. Like it?

• 13:08Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 13:08Shaan Puri?

  What else?

• 13:09Sam Parr?

  Construction, the construction industry. So I read a whole bunch of publicly traded annual letters from the biggest trade show businesses in the world and a few markets that are consolidated and there's not a clear winner is the construction industry.

• 13:19Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 13:20Sam Parr?

  And I wrote about that in the report. Yeah.

• 13:21Shaan Puri?

  Okay. Cool. If you're listening to this and you had a trade show idea, email us. I want to hear your trade show ideas, or if you're working on one, even better, because you're not.

• 13:28Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And Blackstone, the biggest private equity firm in the world, just bought a bunch of trade shows that for huge multiples. They bought one in the digital marketing space for nearly $50 million and they only did 6 million in revenue. That's a, that's an outlandish multiple, but it's a, they're really good cash flow companies.

• 13:45Shaan Puri?

  I like it. Okay. So that's CES. I figure you're going to have a couple of things. So it's a new year. Do you do resolutions?

• 13:51Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 13:52Shaan Puri?

  What'd you do? What are your resolutions?

• 13:54Sam Parr?

  I have three traits that I want to embrace more of.

• 13:58Shaan Puri?

  Okay. I like that you said that rather than resolution.

• 14:00Sam Parr?

  And I haven't done like income goals or anything like that.

• 14:04Shaan Puri?

  What are the three traits?

• 14:06Sam Parr?

  To be a better leader, to be more bold, and I'm not going to say the last one.

• 14:12Shaan Puri?

  Okay. Why bold? I feel like you're bold. I feel like you're very bold.

• 14:15Sam Parr?

  I don't think I'm bold enough. Do you?

• 14:16Shaan Puri?

  I think you're bold. Yeah. I think you're bold in the sense that you take action very quickly. So when something comes into your head, you will like instantly begin the action that's required, massive action to take that thing. I don't think you're bold in the like range of things that you do. So you could probably do more things, but the things you decide to do, I, you take like very bold action on them.

• 14:34Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 14:35Shaan Puri?

  Like this podcast room we're in right now, like we will be talking, like we should do podcasts and it'll be like, you're on the phone, you're still talking to me and then you're like on the phone with somebody being like, buy everything you need for a podcast. Email Sean, buy everything you need and let's set this up. And like, it needs to be where you walk in, push a button and it's a podcast.

• 14:52Sam Parr?

  I don't think that's boldness. That's impatience.

• 14:54Shaan Puri?

  Uh, okay. Fair enough. That's a, that's another way of looking at it, but I like it because I think

• 14:58Sam Parr?

  It's just that

• 14:58Shaan Puri?

  most people get held up on action.

• 15:01Sam Parr?

  The people that we roll with, I think are like crazy bold. Like they tell me the stories about what they're doing and I'm like, God.

• 15:09Shaan Puri?

  Well, there's different kinds, right? There's just insane risk. So like our buddy Suli.

• 15:12Sam Parr?

  Suli is who I'm thinking about.

• 15:14Shaan Puri?

  He said, he, he take, he's very bold, but he takes also like some insane risks. Like on the, he's the very first episode of this podcast and he tells the story of like, when they ran out of money and then they take a loan and then they run out of the loan. He takes his entire net worth, a million bucks and secretly puts it into the company to buy them like two more months to try to see if this thing can survive. And he was just willing to wipe out totally, but he was not willing to live with like not seeing the product launch.

• 15:41Sam Parr?

  He's

• 15:41Shaan Puri?

  That was a big ass risk to the point where he was like, I will never see this money again. He's also good with taking action quickly. So.

• 15:47Sam Parr?

  And so is Ramon.

• 15:49Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 15:49Sam Parr?

  Crazy bold.

• 15:50Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 15:51Sam Parr?

  They're all immigrants.

• 15:51Shaan Puri?

  Do you think I'm bold?

• 15:52Sam Parr?

  Well, I think that you have a good way of thinking like, well, why can't I? So in a sense that is, yes, that is boldness. I think that a lot of people, they have ideas and they're like, but I can't do it. I'm like, well, why not? And you do a really good job of like, well, I'm going to do this and then this and then this.

• 16:07Shaan Puri?

  And where

• 16:08Sam Parr?

  Well, why wouldn't that work?

• 16:09Shaan Puri?

  Where, where do I lack in boldness from what you've seen?

• 16:12Sam Parr?

  Sticking with something.

• 16:13Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 16:13Sam Parr?

  Sticking through it, even if it sucks at first.

• 16:16Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 16:17Sam Parr?

  And I've told you that.

• 16:17Shaan Puri?

  Totally agree. And you have told me that. Okay.

• 16:19Sam Parr?

  I think that that is the, that's, that's the only part I think where you lack in boldness, but you have very bold ideas. I think we could talk about this. You did a deal. You, you sold the company. The way you went about that I felt was very bold.

• 16:29Shaan Puri?

  Yes. I told the story at Hulsocon, actually. I told it and, and what I feel is the closest version of truth that I can tell it where you can't tell all the details always, but I told like most of the details.

• 16:39Sam Parr?

  I felt that when you told me about that, my jaw dropped a little. I was like, what? You had the confidence to make that happen. So yes, I do think you're bold.

• 16:45Shaan Puri?

  Okay. So I want to share something with you. That's.

• 16:47Sam Parr?

  And by the way, in two years, if you have a company that is a unicorn or some like bullshit where it's like popular and like a, I 100% expect that.

• 16:56Shaan Puri?

  You're not surprised. So.

• 16:58Sam Parr?

  You're going to be a CEO. You're the CEO type, I think.

• 17:00Shaan Puri?

  So, so it's end of the decade, right? And I went back and looked. So I'm thirty one now. I was twenty one at the start of the decade. And so I did a look back and I was like,

• 17:10Sam Parr?

  In Denver?

• 17:11Shaan Puri?

  I was like, yeah, I was, I was living in Boulder at the time. I just, just graduated from college. And so I was like, what were my goals when I, what were my decade goals back then? And I didn't really write these down, but I know what I kept saying over and over again. And so I did a check in on those and be like, how did I do? So I'm going to read you my, what I thought I was going to do in my twenties and what actually happened. So here's how I did. Okay. So I had, number one, I said, I want a million bucks in the bank, like, available to me.

• 17:37Sam Parr?

  Investable assets.

• 17:38Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. Like liquid. I can liquidate it instantly, or it's already liquid cash. So that one is a check. Number two was marry a girl who rocks my world. So that one's a check. Then comes some cringey ones that I feel like, looking back, I'm like, fuck, I, I really want, this was my goal. So one was Forbes thirty under thirty, which,

• 17:55Sam Parr?

  Which, by the way, anyone who's not on the inside track or like, like on the, that's total bullshit.

• 18:00Shaan Puri?

  Totally.

• 18:00Sam Parr?

  It's one hundred percent bullshit.

• 18:02Shaan Puri?

  At the time, I didn't know. I thought Forbes, that's where, you know, Forbes was, Forbes had such a big brand that they like,

• 18:07Sam Parr?

  It's all a who you know game and a lot of the people on there are fucking idiots.

• 18:11Shaan Puri?

  I referred somebody this year who made it and no knock on this guy. He's a great guy. He's my friend. But like, the fact that I could just refer this guy and he just made thirty under thirty for nothing, it shows how much,

• 18:20Sam Parr?

  They asked me to do it.

• 18:21Shaan Puri?

  Insider game. Yeah. So anyways,

• 18:23Sam Parr?

  It's bullshit.

• 18:24Shaan Puri?

  That was on my list.

• 18:24Sam Parr?

  I, it was on my list too.

• 18:26Shaan Puri?

  Given epic Ted talk. So that was a fail.

• 18:28Sam Parr?

  You gave an epic HustleCon talk.

• 18:29Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, but I always liked Ted growing up. So Ted was one there. Uh, do a ten minute standup comedy set in front of a hundred people. Forgot about it. Didn't even attempt it. Could have done it, but didn't, didn't.

• 18:39Sam Parr?

  You kinda, but you gave a talk. You kinda,

• 18:42Shaan Puri?

  The HustleCon talk counts.

• 18:44Sam Parr?

  Well, you're an entertainer.

• 18:45Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I know. But like, I'm just going through, here's what the goals were. It's actually more interesting what the hell I thought was important back then versus what I think is important now. So my other ones were, go play and win a season of Survivor. I tried out, I auditioned, didn't make it on, but CBS, I'm still out there. Play the World Series of Poker main event. So the ten grand big buy in tournament, didn't do that either. Find an excuse to live in Australia again. I did that. And then my last one, what, because I kind of, back then even, I kind of knew like, is this what I should be trying for? My last one was come up with better checkpoints for the next decade. Right? So I'll tell you the story. So I, I have this hack, which is, I'm at Twitch now and I'm on this like exec team, which is basically like, I don't know. The top eighteen people of the company are on this like, What they call the ET team, the extended Twitch team.

• 19:28Sam Parr?

  Are you the only blab guy on there?

• 19:30Shaan Puri?

  I'm the only Bebo guy on there, yeah.

• 19:31Sam Parr?

  Bebo.

• 19:32Shaan Puri?

  And so, uh, these are all really great, smart people and, and so I have this networking hack that I recommend to anybody, which is, these are all cool people and one of the things I want out of my time at Twitch is to meet awesome people and have them respect me and, and maybe we can cross paths again in the future. But with all these people, everyone's so busy because they're all an executive managing their part of the business. And so we barely interact. So what I do now is every Sunday I just send an email out to just the exec team. And it's just me rambling about like, whatever the hell I want. I just sit down for an hour and I do it in this format. I stole this from James Clear. James Clear, do you know who he is? He's the habits guy. So he sends out this email called three, two, one. So mine's one, two, three. It's basically one photo, two thoughts and three links that I find interesting. And I send this out and it's kind of funny because when I first started doing this, it felt a little bit awkward, but now that I do it.

• 20:16Sam Parr?

  People love it.

• 20:17Shaan Puri?

  People love it and they have something to talk to me about. All these people who I'd never interact with, you could tell they're like, hey, this guy's actually pretty interesting. He's pretty smart. I like this guy. And so one of the people on this list is this guy, Ethan. And so Ethan is actually not even at Twitch. He's the VP of Amazon Prime. And so he's just on this list because when Amazon acquired Twitch, he was part, he was like the adult that they put into Twitch essentially.

• 20:40Sam Parr?

  And now he knows you.

• 20:41Shaan Puri?

  And so he reached out at one point and was like, hey, by the way, I love these emails. Uh, like I wish we had gotten to work together. And I was like, I didn't even know he was on this list.

• 20:48Sam Parr?

  Does he work, not work anymore?

• 20:50Shaan Puri?

  He, he runs, he's like VP of Amazon Prime. So he's at Amazon Prime now. And so, so anyways, he replied to my deck. I, I sent this out. I said, hey, by the way, here's what my decade list was and here's how I did. And so he was like, I got mine lying around here somewhere. So he sent his back to me and, and he also said, what are yours for this next decade? So I don't know how much I should go into this, but is this interesting? Should I continue? Should I tell you the, this decade once and what? He said, because I think he's pretty wise and his feedback was pretty wise. So mine for this decade is total financial freedom. So that's six million bucks in the bank that is working for me. So I think if six million buck is out there, working at market rates, so like seven, seven percent a year.

• 21:29Sam Parr?

  Yeah, $400,000 and.

• 21:31Shaan Puri?

  $400,000 a year of just the interest. My life burn is not that high, so I will, I'll, I'll only be going up.

• 21:36Sam Parr?

  You'll have a 10 year old.

• 21:37Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I don't, I don't think it'll be that expensive. Uh, like I live as extravagantly in a very expensive city right now and we're not close to 400K a year, but. Okay, so that's one. Number two is 70 million people, which is 1% of the of humanity, considers me like one of their favorite teachers through things like the podcast, or books, or anything else. The next one is like have a healthy lifestyle that's not using willpower. So like just find food I like, that's also healthy. Find exercise I like, that's also good for me. I don't have that today. I brought back the stand up comedy set, so that's back on there. And then, or the last two, one is live in walking distance of five households that I love.

• 22:13Sam Parr?

  Great one.

• 22:15Shaan Puri?

  That I think is the most important.

• 22:16Sam Parr?

  That's the hardest one.

• 22:17Shaan Puri?

  And the hardest one.

• 22:18Sam Parr?

  I completely agree with that. I can.

• 22:21Shaan Puri?

  So that's why I'm trying to go move next to Ramon, and then I'll try to drag you there, and I'll try to drag five of us together.

• 22:27Sam Parr?

  I think that's a great idea. Well, I remember when I was poor in Nashville, I lived in a predominantly black neighborhood in the projects. And it was the happiest I was ever been, because I would go on my front porch and see my neighbors, and we would chill and kick it, and I was way happier. Because I had that cul-de-sac.

• 22:43Shaan Puri?

  And walking is a key thing here, because when it's walkable, you don't have to plan. You can spontaneously hang out, you can dip right back to your house. There's no obligation.

• 22:51Sam Parr?

  That's why college is fun.

• 22:52Shaan Puri?

  That's why college is fun, exactly. I think I'm just chasing college, really, in many, many ways of my life.

• 22:57Sam Parr?

  So I, mine in 2011 was like earn a hundred grand a year.

• 23:02Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 23:03Sam Parr?

  Buy a Rolex, have a certain pair of jeans that I wanted, a leather jacket.

• 23:07Shaan Puri?

  What was the jeans?

• 23:07Sam Parr?

  I'm a jean and wheelie jeans, because I was really poor when I did this.

• 23:10Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 23:11Sam Parr?

  And I achieved all of them, unfortunately, which is like not.

• 23:15Shaan Puri?

  So at Twitch, they have this goal setting thing, because I'm always like, they ask for a goal, and I'm like, well, do you want me to say the super aggressive thing?

• 23:20Sam Parr?

  You want like a seven out of 10, right?

• 23:21Shaan Puri?

  Or do I do what other people do and just sandbag it? Because then you look good, because you hit your goals? And they, the seven out of 10 rule is what they said too, which is like.

• 23:28Sam Parr?

  Seven out of 10.

• 23:29Shaan Puri?

  You want, if you're hitting seven out of 10, you're appropriately aggressive, but not unrealistic.

• 23:33Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I agree with that. Can we talk about one idea I have?

• 23:36Shaan Puri?

  Yes, go for it.

• 23:37Sam Parr?

  I've been looking into membership programs. I'm very interested in those, so like group buying. So we've talked about it, where you pay a fee and you get access to discounts.

• 23:48Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 23:49Sam Parr?

  AARP is an example of one, huge business. AAA is an example of one.

• 23:53Shaan Puri?

  ARP you said has like three million members or something, I believe you said.

• 23:57Sam Parr?

  No, I think forty mil. I mean, I think that like the majority of Americans who are fifty years and above have a membership. I bought a membership just to test it out.

• 24:06Shaan Puri?

  ARP?

• 24:07Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's only seven or eight dollars a year. The majority of the revenue comes from people who use their insurance premiums or insurance policy.

• 24:13Shaan Puri?

  Gotcha.

• 24:13Sam Parr?

  Huge business, huge, huge, huge. It was kind of scammy, actually. And so I investigated Founder's Card.

• 24:20Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 24:20Sam Parr?

  This thing called the Select Card. Have you seen it? They have billboards. Not huge businesses. From what I, what I gathered, this is all public. I think if I, I guess that Founder's Card is ten million in revenue. Select is two million in sales. But other than people, one hundred percent profit. Cause you don't have any costs.

• 24:38Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 24:39Sam Parr?

  And I talked to the founder of WeWork about this. Uh, when he spoke at HustleCon and he told me that they had that as well for their members and no one used the perks.

• 24:47Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 24:48Sam Parr?

  Why do you think that is?

• 24:49Shaan Puri?

  Why do people not use it? Or why are these not bigger businesses?

• 24:52Sam Parr?

  Why? Both. I was, I'm shocked at how little they are. Now, the angle that you could do is if your Founder's Card, they claim to have thirty thousand members. You have to clone or steal from Brex and launch your own lines of credit.

• 25:02Shaan Puri?

  Right. I think the problem is you get these like non-compelling discounts. So you, uh, the people who are incentivized to give, to partner up with these are people who want users. So by definition, they don't have a lot of traction. Which probably means they're not as attractive.

• 25:17Sam Parr?

  I don't think that's true necessarily. You have Shopify discounts. If you use the discounts, they will make, like, why wouldn't Zoom give you a discount? They just say that we're gonna spend this money to acquire a customer anyway. We'll just give you the CPA.

• 25:30Shaan Puri?

  Right, but like, is a fifteen percent discount

• 25:32Sam Parr?

  New.

• 25:32Shaan Puri?

  As exciting to me for like signing up for this card, for this membership, right? Like.

• 25:37Sam Parr?

  I don't know. I'm still trying to think about it.

• 25:39Shaan Puri?

  The thing I was telling you was if I went to your site and you just said, what do you use? And then, yeah, I use MailChimp, I use Shopify.

• 25:46Sam Parr?

  And they say, boom, you'll save this much money.

• 25:48Shaan Puri?

  You're guaranteed to save this much money and therefore we'll offer you a membership at, you know, fifteen percent less than that. So would you like free money? And you've offered a variable membership rate depending on the products that you use. But you guarantee upfront those savings? Cause you're making your money on the backend. You're making it from the companies anyways who want customers.

• 26:07Sam Parr?

  No.

• 26:08Shaan Puri?

  You don't make it from them.

• 26:09Sam Parr?

  Founder's Card makes one hundred percent of their revenue from the membership fees.

• 26:13Shaan Puri?

  Why?

• 26:14Sam Parr?

  I don't know. It's a weird business. I'm trying to understand it. If I was founder's card, I would launch a bank. So I would do it Brex. What Brex does is the care, what's it called? The, the fee that credit card companies, the 4%.

• 26:25Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 26:26Sam Parr?

  They probably go to Mastercard and they go, give us 2%.

• 26:28Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 26:29Sam Parr?

  And you get the other two.

• 26:30Shaan Puri?

  And so.

• 26:31Sam Parr?

  That's what I would do.

• 26:31Shaan Puri?

  You're interested in doing this for the hustle or you're dabbling. And so if you're out there and you, what types of products would you offer the discounts to? Things like Shopify?

• 26:38Sam Parr?

  Software.

• 26:39Shaan Puri?

  Software. And what are you curious about? Why, why don't you just do this? What's the, what's the risk?

• 26:44Sam Parr?

  Likely will.

• 26:46Shaan Puri?

  Likely will. And so if people are listening to this and they want that, how do they, how do they signal that to you?

• 26:51Sam Parr?

  Tweet at me, at the Sam Parr.

• 26:54Shaan Puri?

  At the Sam Parr. Just tweet the word yes. And he'll, he'll know what you're talking about.

• 26:58Sam Parr?

  Yes.

• 26:59Shaan Puri?

  Okay. I like that. All right.

• 27:01Sam Parr?

  Do you want to talk about Casper?

• 27:03Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. You were researching Casper when I walked in.

• 27:05Sam Parr?

  The S1 came out an hour ago. So everything I'm saying is kind of summary that may not be accurate, but the gist is close. Cause I couldn't read all of it. From what it appears, they've got $50 million in cash, a $50 million loan that is 25 million drawn out. And they lost $70 million last year in cash.

• 27:23Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 27:23Sam Parr?

  So they're going to run out of money in six or 12 months. The valuation is 1.2 billion dollars. They're trying to go public right now. Typically, I think, I just did a quick search. I think these companies trade for 15 to 20 time earnings. I don't see how on earth this is ever going to work.

• 27:39Shaan Puri?

  Right. When I walked in, you just kept saying bad, bad.

• 27:42Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 27:42Shaan Puri?

  I was like, how is it bad?

• 27:43Sam Parr?

  I don't, I, this is like, people, I hope people don't judge too much. I've only looked at it for 20 minutes. I don't understand how this will work.

• 27:50Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 27:51Sam Parr?

  Horrible. That's what I would say. Horrible.

• 27:53Shaan Puri?

  And what, okay, if you were taking the other side of it, what do you think is the most promising part of the business?

• 27:58Sam Parr?

  They spend $1 in marketing and they make $3. They have well over a million customers. So this whole own the sleep category, it could work. I think that could work. They should not be located in New York. They should not have raised all that money. They should be in, in.

• 28:13Shaan Puri?

  How much did they raise?

• 28:14Sam Parr?

  Two or 300. Many hundreds, they should, all their customer service should be located in Hoboken, New Jersey. And the company headquarters should be there and or like somewhere else. And it should not be run like it's being run. But what the fuck do I know? They are, they built it. They probably know.

• 28:35Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, no, I think it's interesting. It feels to me like this is something that they should have sold to one incumbent, like some old school mattress company that has

• 28:42Sam Parr?

  Target should have bought them.

• 28:44Shaan Puri?

  And doesn't know, it's like, you know, digital is the way of the world and these guys have really pioneered the digital space for mattresses. Let's buy this company versus going public. You really have to have a really compelling story or financials in order to, to, to do well.

• 28:57Sam Parr?

  And I'm almost positive that there's five founders and not one of them owns more than 5% of the business.

• 29:02Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 29:03Sam Parr?

  Which, so if they do have a billion dollars, not one founder is going to get paid more than $50 million for creating billions of dollars worth of value.

• 29:10Shaan Puri?

  You wanted to talk about Gumroad too.

• 29:12Sam Parr?

  Gumroad, the thing about Gumroad is it's a cool service that lets you sell PDFs and other things like that, electronic files.

• 29:19Shaan Puri?

  Right. So if you make a little ebook, you can sell it for 10 bucks. Gumroad is a super easy way to do that.

• 29:24Sam Parr?

  I've made thousands of dollars of dollars off of Gumroad.

• 29:27Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 29:27Sam Parr?

  I love it. I think it's badass. I don't think that there's anything better. They raised 12 million dollars. The guy who started it was the second or third employee at Pinterest. He probably would have made money if he stayed there. He raised 12 million dollars. Four or five years in, fired everyone, moved to Utah and is running it way differently.

• 29:42Shaan Puri?

  Super lean now.

• 29:43Sam Parr?

  Very lean. In their eighth year business, he releases all their numbers. They did.

• 29:47Shaan Puri?

  If you want, if you want to see these numbers, he's on Twitter, his at handle is just S H L.

• 29:52Sam Parr?

  I don't know him, but he's, I kind of like him from his Twitter persona. They did 70 million in transactional volume. Five million in net revenue because they take a fee of the sales and only 250,000 in profit.

• 30:07Shaan Puri?

  15, 215.

• 30:09Sam Parr?

  Horrible.

• 30:10Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 30:10Sam Parr?

  Horrible.

• 30:12Shaan Puri?

  It's a great product and a horrible business.

• 30:15Sam Parr?

  It doesn't have to be maybe. He should be charging like a monthly subscription fee instead of a percentage. He should charge a, I actually don't know if they do this anymore, or if they do. He should charge a monthly fee of $20 a month for every creator and a percentage of sales.

• 30:28Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah, I don't know what it is. He's blogged a lot about like this journey of like, well, I was at Pinterest and financially that would have been a good move. And then I raised money and I thought I was the shit and then like shit hit the fan.

• 30:37Sam Parr?

  He raised $12 million at the age of 20.

• 30:39Shaan Puri?

  Right, exactly. And so he was doing really well. The product is really interesting. And then he kind of realized, look, this business is not going to live up to those expectations. I gotta like, you know, I gotta change this. So he radically changed it, which you gotta give him credit for. I mean, to be eight years in and at that level, you know, on one hand, the impact of the business.

• 30:53Sam Parr?

  We did that much revenue in our second year.

• 30:56Shaan Puri?

  Right. And I see this a lot. I see great products that are fun and useful and helpful, but they're not great businesses.

• 31:02Sam Parr?

  Reddit, Quora, Wikipedia and Gumroad.

• 31:05Shaan Puri?

  Well, I think Reddit's gonna be a great business, but for now.

• 31:08Sam Parr?

  I don't see it, but I hope it is.

• 31:09Shaan Puri?

  Right. The revenue is going, growing like crazy.

• 31:11Sam Parr?

  Is it?

• 31:11Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 31:12Sam Parr?

  Oh, thank God.

• 31:12Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 31:13Sam Parr?

  I just couldn't imagine advertising to that crowd.

• 31:15Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah, it's tough, but uh, the revenue is doing really well and their growth, their user growth and their engagement growth is like going through the roof because they finally built like mobile apps and they actually are working. And so uh,

• 31:26Sam Parr?

  I saw Steve Huffman at CES. I don't know him as a friend other than a brief conversation. I love Reddit.

• 31:32Shaan Puri?

  I love Reddit.

• 31:32Sam Parr?

  If it were a, a nonprofit, I would, I wouldn't mind. And I'm as capitalist as it gets.

• 31:38Shaan Puri?

  Right. Okay, so I have one which is uh, training and compliance. So now that I work at a co- a big company, they have so many like mandatory compliance things like anti bribery training, gender training, sexual harassment training, whatever. Mandatory things that you gotta do and the content is all really bad. And, and I've also seen this, my buddy works with a lot of schools and schools have to do, like the teachers have to do professional development. And so the government gives schools a budget to do professional development. And so they go out and they buy whatever's the best training and, and professional development stuff for these teachers. And he showed me some of the videos that they have to sit through and it is god awful. And so if you're a company that goes into an unsexy space.

• 32:19Shaan Puri?

  And you just committed to like, we're gonna make the training and compliance curriculum and content that doesn't suck. I think you did really well over time.

• 32:26Sam Parr?

  So you let me, I might be able to blow your mind here. I don't know the numbers off the top of my head. I'm Googling it as we speak. So there's a company in Nashville that does this for nurses. It's called HealthStream. I just pulled up their numbers. Market cap, eight hundred fifty-two million. PE ratio, fifty-seven.

• 32:41Shaan Puri?

  Wow.

• 32:42Sam Parr?

  Uh, yeah, wow. Uh, that's like half of, or I don't know what Facebook is. That's, that's up there. What do you think their revenue is? Let's see. Their revenue is, in fourth quarter, their revenue was sixty million dollars. So not huge revenues, but not small, but they're doing exactly what you're describing for nurses.

• 32:57Shaan Puri?

  Right. And I think each industry has their own. Like, I'm sure pilots have a whole set of compliance and training and whatnot.

• 33:02Sam Parr?

  And people don't realize how simple it is. I'm almost positive it's just a series of videos.

• 33:05Shaan Puri?

  It's just a series of videos. There's basically no technology involved. The hardest part is the sale. And like, you know, there are established incumbents that have been selling year after year the same content to this company.

• 33:15Sam Parr?

  What category is interesting? So sexual harassment is like.

• 33:18Shaan Puri?

  So the big one that's interesting to me is like all of the new, uh, social and moral things that like, I don't even personally like fully understand. So like at Twitch, all of a sudden, it's like, we have a gender neutral restroom. People put, when you sign in to come meet somebody, you have to say what your pronouns are. He, him, her, she, whatever, right? And I think for a lot of people, like for me, like this is like brand new. You do, you don't know the etiquette.

• 33:40Sam Parr?

  For everyone, that's brand new.

• 33:41Shaan Puri?

  You don't know the etiquette. And they're sort of like, you sort of feel dumb asking and you also don't want to like offend people by doing it wrong. And so I think that the sort of like social norm, like this new social etiquette is one that's there, but that's not as like.

• 33:54Sam Parr?

  Who's the provider for yours?

• 33:55Shaan Puri?

  I don't even know, because it comes through Amazon. So Amazon might have their own in-house for like a lot of the stuff. But like, you know, every company's gonna need this. Like a company, if you got fifty people, you need to have like a training and compliance stuff for your, for your employees. And so.

• 34:08Sam Parr?

  That's interesting. Yeah, my good friend used to work at HealthStream and they're in Nashville. I went to school and I think they only have like salespeople.

• 34:16Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 34:16Sam Parr?

  And it's like, I mean, it's a sales organization.

• 34:18Shaan Puri?

  There's a big business called LMS, which is Learning Management System.

• 34:21Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 34:21Shaan Puri?

  Companies, you buy this like crappy SAP learning management system and then the videos.

• 34:26Sam Parr?

  SAP makes that?

• 34:28Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, they bought the big LMS, uh, LMS system that was out there. I think SAP owns it now.

• 34:32Sam Parr?

  That's crazy, man. This is the benefits of working at a big company. You see so much opportunity that I have no idea exists.

• 34:37Shaan Puri?

  Correct. And what I have to do is just catch myself because it's always the annoying thing. And then I just have to reframe it. It's like, no, this is the opportunity thing, right? Like whenever there's something that's like a real pain point. That we have to do, or it's really hard for us to do, but we have to check these boxes. I'm like, oh, that's where we would buy a solution to this problem. And, um, so yeah, I think.

• 34:57Sam Parr?

  What budget do you have that you don't have to ask for permission?

• 34:59Shaan Puri?

  Sales tools, honestly, which is why Salesforce, I think, does extremely well. And then anything around trust, safety, compliance, like.

• 35:05Sam Parr?

  You have to ask?

• 35:06Shaan Puri?

  You don't have to ask.

• 35:07Sam Parr?

  Just buy it.

• 35:08Shaan Puri?

  Well, like, you have to ask above a certain number for everything, but like, you're likely to get it when it comes to, you know, security, trust, safety.

• 35:15Sam Parr?

  This is why I don't want to do e-comm is because I hear about this and I'm like, why would I waste time when like, this is like predictable? You have a company that makes $200 million in revenue and they're valued at way higher on revenue than.

• 35:26Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 35:26Sam Parr?

  Casper is gonna.

• 35:28Shaan Puri?

  So have you, so have you heard like this zone of genius term?

• 35:31Sam Parr?

  You find your flow in this particular category.

• 35:34Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So it's basically the intersection of like, uh, what you're really good at.

• 35:37Sam Parr?

  And what you enjoy.

• 35:38Shaan Puri?

  What you enjoy and what the market wants and is willing to like pay you for.

• 35:41Sam Parr?

  Right.

• 35:41Shaan Puri?

  And that's the zone of genius. Zone of excellence is just what you enjoy and what you're good at. But not necessarily what the market wants badly. And so that's kind of how I think of all opportunities now is like, there's so many opportunities. Might as well pick the one that ticks all three of those boxes. Like I'm really good at, I enjoy doing, and the market really wants. And then let the, let the chips fall where they may.

• 36:03Sam Parr?

  Good point. What else you got? Anything else? What we need to do is just make a list of all these big corporate needs.

• 36:08Shaan Puri?

  I have such a list.

• 36:09Sam Parr?

  Yeah, you told me. You never share it with me.

• 36:11Shaan Puri?

  I need to share that with you.

• 36:12Sam Parr?

  I've never worked at a company, so I'm envious.

• 36:15Shaan Puri?

  The simplest version of this that made me make this list is when I saw the like, the iPad at the front. Everybody has this now. The iPad at the front.

• 36:22Sam Parr?

  Huge company.

• 36:23Shaan Puri?

  Huge company with the simplest goddamn product in the world. It's a iPad, which they didn't make. It's a form, which is like the first thing you make when you learn how to like, if you make a website, you can make a form. And then all it does is just ping the employee and is like, hey, your guest is here. And you sign an NDA and they can print your name badge, right? So they added on a couple of things, but like. Trivial, trivial product.

• 36:45Sam Parr?

  You could have a team of 10 developers.

• 36:46Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. Less, even if you wanted to.

• 36:48Sam Parr?

  Oh, sorry. I meant like 10 devs with like multiple customers.

• 36:51Shaan Puri?

  Right, right. I was saying to, to start with, you could start this with zero. And it's something every business actually wants and will pay for. So that's where I was like, oh my God, the needs of a big company, you just need to write them down. There, there's some that already exist and then there's, there's so many more that don't.

• 37:05Sam Parr?

  You know, you had a guy on here named Keith, real estate.

• 37:08Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, Keith Wasserman.

• 37:09Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I messaged him and I was like, dude, can I just come and sit in your office for like four days?

• 37:14Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 37:15Sam Parr?

  I won't say anything. I'm just gonna sit there. I'll do whatever you want. I'll clean the floors.

• 37:18Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 37:19Sam Parr?

  But just let me sit.

• 37:19Shaan Puri?

  I think more people should do this. I actually reached out to several people to do this early on, uh, in my career, which was, I did it to CEOs who I thought were badass. I was like, hey, can I just come shadow you for two weeks? I just want to literally go room to room with you. And, uh, I will shut the fuck up and listen and I'm just gonna, I want to absorb you because they don't teach what you do in school.

• 37:37Sam Parr?

  Right.

• 37:38Shaan Puri?

  So like, and they were like, yeah, sure.

• 37:39Sam Parr?

  Well, that's exactly what I'm gonna do.

• 37:41Shaan Puri?

  So that's one. And then the other one is to, I think kind of where you're going was less like, hey Keith, you're a badass. How do you lead? Yours is more like, what problems do you have in the real estate world that I know I could solve?

• 37:51Sam Parr?

  But I didn't tell him that.

• 37:52Shaan Puri?

  Right. But that's your motive.

• 37:53Sam Parr?

  I said, I'll sit there. I won't say a word. If you want my opinion, I'll give it.

• 37:57Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 37:57Sam Parr?

  And if you want like an errand run, I'll handle it.

• 38:00Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think this type of like rotation should be like a staple of, of what people do.

• 38:05Sam Parr?

  I was like, I won't say, I won't say shit and I'm not even remotely a big deal, but I certainly don't need to go work for someone. And I 100% would do that.

• 38:13Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 38:14Sam Parr?

  Without a doubt. And I, I'm going to do it. I'm gonna go down there. I'm gonna, uh, he said, yeah.

• 38:18Shaan Puri?

  I'm sure he'd say yes, yeah.

• 38:19Sam Parr?

  He said, yeah. I go, dude, I won't say a word. If, if you want me to say something, I will, but other than that, I'll, you just tell you want coffee, I'll get it for you. And I have a feeling I'm gonna learn more in those five days about multifamily real estate investing than I would reading for months.

• 38:34Shaan Puri?

  One last idea that's kind of like that. So I've been on a bigger learning kick because I got a little more time on my hands to learn things. And so I'm, I'm learning all these things that like you read a book, you watch some YouTube videos, whatever, but I more and more I this I'll frame it as a business opportunity, which is there are so many great books out there that should just be online courses that are more actionable. You know, they teach you the principle, they give you the worksheet to like, do the thing yourself.

• 38:58Sam Parr?

  Have you seen MasterClass's new business courses?

• 39:01Shaan Puri?

  No, what is this?

• 39:02Sam Parr?

  Bob Iger, Howard Schultz are MasterClass. I'm buying them.

• 39:05Shaan Puri?

  Oh, nice. Yeah. So that was a, that was one of the ideas I had when I was thinking about business was MasterClass for the enterprise. Which is kind of like what they're doing now where they take CEOs and they, they make MasterClass out of it. But I'm just thinking for the average person. So the book I was actually thinking about was The Game. Did you read The Game when you were like?

• 39:21Sam Parr?

  Everyone read The Game.

• 39:21Shaan Puri?

  Everyone read The Game. Except for people who didn't read The Game. So The Game is like a book about, it's like a guy who became a pickup artist.

• 39:27Sam Parr?

  But we were like 15 when it came out. So of course all of us would have read it.

• 39:30Shaan Puri?

  Someone, my girlfriend gave it to me when I was 18 and I was like, oh, this is a sign. If my girlfriend gives me a book called The Game and says you need to read this.

• 39:36Sam Parr?

  No, even girls read it because it's entertaining.

• 39:38Shaan Puri?

  It is entertaining, very entertaining. You should read it for the entertainment. You'll also learn some things about human psychology and people that are applicable. But if you take The Game and you, if you created the sort of pickup artist version of a, of a course right now, I think that would do really well through Facebook. I think that other things that are like, like I'm, I'm learning one thing about like writing jokes right now, like the craft of writing jokes.

• 40:00Sam Parr?

  Does MasterClass have that? I think they do actually.

• 40:02Shaan Puri?

  I took the one they have where it's like Steve Martin teaches stand up comedy. No, I hated it because it's very surface level. And you know, he just does like a three minute video where he's like, you know, the thing about comedy is you gotta be authentic. It's like, that doesn't help me. Like what I need is like.

• 40:15Sam Parr?

  My authentically self is not funny.

• 40:17Shaan Puri?

  Right. There's this great YouTube channel called Casually Explained. Have you ever seen this guy?

• 40:20Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he's funny. He's just like a nerd, right?

• 40:22Shaan Puri?

  He's a nerd. He's just a very monotone voice and he does stick figure like stories about stuff.

• 40:27Sam Parr?

  And it's like better than.

• 40:28Shaan Puri?

  So he has one that says how to be funny or like how to write a joke and it's way better. If there was a course version of that, I think you could sell that at like a very low price to a lot of people. So this is a few broad skills that people want to know, like. A lot of guys want to know how to how to pick up pick up women. A lot of people want to know how to be funnier. A lot of people want to know how to write better. And nobody teaches those practically.

• 40:48Sam Parr?

  I'm not convinced that a course business, the way most people think about it, I don't think they can be

• 40:53Shaan Puri?

  They're not big.

• 40:53Sam Parr?

  Big, big, but I can tell you, I've got my very best friend. He makes a wonderful living.

• 40:58Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 40:58Sam Parr?

  And then I've got two other friends that probably make eight figures.

• 41:02Shaan Puri?

  On courses?

• 41:02Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 41:02Shaan Puri?

  Eight.

• 41:03Sam Parr?

  But they have companies.

• 41:04Shaan Puri?

  Eight figures is more than I would expect for a course. I looked at like the top teachable courses and the top like earners on Udacity.

• 41:10Sam Parr?

  Those are just guys.

• 41:11Shaan Puri?

  Right, just individuals. They make like

• 41:12Sam Parr?

  I know companies.

• 41:13Shaan Puri?

  Low millions, like one to two million.

• 41:15Sam Parr?

  Like that guy Grant Cardone, he probably makes thirty million dollars a year selling education.

• 41:20Shaan Puri?

  Right, but he's got like a blended model where he's like.

• 41:23Sam Parr?

  You know Ramit, Ramit Sethi?

• 41:24Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 41:25Sam Parr?

  He's one of my investors. He's never told me his revenue. I have no idea what it is. If I had a guess, I would say it was north of ten million dollars.

• 41:30Shaan Puri?

  Okay, that's pretty good.

• 41:32Sam Parr?

  Well, no, I it has to be north of ten, because I think at one point he had sixty employees.

• 41:36Shaan Puri?

  Oh, wow. And that's for and his business is free content, books, and a course?

• 41:41Sam Parr?

  Yep. And I don't know this for a fact. He's I never asked him, but like he has a blog post on the Tim Ferriss blog where it's called like how a five million dollar launch week.

• 41:51Shaan Puri?

  So this is not like a revolutionary idea. I just personally think it's underexploited. And again, something that you can do if you're passionate about and you know about a niche topic or a skill. And there's enough people who want to know about that, who want to develop that skill for themselves. And school doesn't teach you most of the skills that you want to know to have like a good, enjoyable life.

• 42:10Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I buy courses all the time. I bought Ramit's course, even though he's my friend and investor.

• 42:14Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 42:14Sam Parr?

  That's a tip, by the way. If you have friends who have businesses, don't ask for discounts. Buy their shit.

• 42:18Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 42:19Sam Parr?

  I bought his thing, got so much value. Course, I bought it, so much value.

• 42:23Shaan Puri?

  I just bought it two weeks ago and I started going through. So I've gone through about half of it.

• 42:27Sam Parr?

  It's awesome.

• 42:28Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's pretty good. The thing is, I with his, what I like that he does is his thing is about And as you're doing the course, you know, you just see him doing it so well that you're like inspired. You're like, yeah, this is so engaging. Okay. I believe that this works. And I think that's awesome. Whenever you can sort of like embody the product while you're doing it.

• 42:46Sam Parr?

  It's amazing. I don't know what he charges for it now. Dollars.

• 42:49Shaan Puri?

  I got it in like a Black Friday sale type of thing for like, I want to say like bucks. It was, you know, it was pretty pricey, but like if you're doing a business, you're going to make that money back one day.

• 42:57Sam Parr?

  And by the way, our company, I buy courses. I don't even think, I don't care how much it is.

• 43:01Shaan Puri?

  That's just the policy.

• 43:02Sam Parr?

  Yep.

• 43:02Shaan Puri?

  That's how I'm with books.

• 43:03Sam Parr?

  Same.

• 43:04Shaan Puri?

  I have an unlimited book budget.

• 43:05Sam Parr?

  I don't care. The most expensive course has been five grand. Don't even think about it. And I think a lot of more people are like that than you think.

• 43:12Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. My uncle who is, I'm going to bring him on because he's big in real estate. And I asked him, you know, how did you start it?

• 43:17Sam Parr?

  The gyms?

• 43:18Shaan Puri?

  No, this is my uncle. He owns multifamily real estate. And so.

• 43:21Sam Parr?

  Oh, he was at Hustle.

• 43:22Shaan Puri?

  He was at HustleCon. He was like, yeah, the way I learned, I, I paid, I spent a hundred and eighty grand for myself and four people who I wanted to be on my team to come to this real estate, like workshop. It was like 30 grand per person. And he's like, uh, four of those were basically flushing money down the drain. Like they didn't do anything with it. They didn't like, they walked away and it's like the information left their head. And he's like, I learned a lesson there, which is like, uh, if you're the type of person who will get the value from it, no price is, is too high. And he's like, I knew that I would like make something out of this course. And I did. He's built like a, you know, a hundred million dollar plus real estate portfolio off of what he learned in that first course.

• 44:01Sam Parr?

  And I think this is the difference between broke people and not broke people. Or I won't say broke because money isn't correlated to success a lot of times. People who achieve what they want and people who don't, which is they think, oh, that's way too expensive. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. That's not how you look at it. Look at what's the value that you derive from it? And is that an ROI positive thing?

• 44:18Shaan Puri?

  Right. Okay. Cool. We should wrap up. Good stuff. So we're going to do this every week.

• 44:21Sam Parr?

  Every Thursday.

• 44:22Shaan Puri?

  All right, great. If you've got ideas, send them to us. If you don't have trends, get trends. The best part of trends is the Facebook group, by the way. I've been meaning to tell you this.

• 44:29Sam Parr?

  Everyone says that.

• 44:29Shaan Puri?

  The info is cool and it's like good because the group has stuff to talk about. But you know, you've built a badass Facebook group and that's what it is.

• 44:38Sam Parr?

  For the record, when we said we were going to launch it on Facebook group, everyone at the company, I wanted to do it. They were saying it's a horrible idea. I'm like, I don't think.

• 44:45Shaan Puri?

  No, that is the best idea. Uh, cause I check Facebook every day and I would not go to trends.co and just go click your forum. I would not do that.

• 44:54Sam Parr?

  Yeah, the Facebook group's awesome.

• 44:55Shaan Puri?

  But the, the, the ideas in that group are so high quality or there's just a conversation is so high quality. It's like, this is a paid membership Facebook group that I do not regret buying.

• 45:04Sam Parr?

  So hopefully when we get 30,000 people, it will also still be good.

• 45:08Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. How many people are in it today?

• 45:09Sam Parr?

  In the group?

• 45:10Shaan Puri?

  In the group, yeah.

• 45:10Sam Parr?

  Maybe 4,000?

• 45:11Shaan Puri?

  It's doing well for like, like normally as things get bigger, yeah, it degrades.

• 45:14Sam Parr?

  And by the way, there's no community manager. It's me.

• 45:17Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 45:18Sam Parr?

  So there's no one, there's zero self-regulation other than the employees who work here, but no one's job.

• 45:23Shaan Puri?

  I think the filter is the price because the people who come in, they are like somewhat legit and people who are legit, like they behave well and they like say smart and interesting things and like, or they say nothing.

• 45:35Sam Parr?

  Well, thank you and sign up trends.co.

• 45:38Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, cool. All right. See ya.

• 45:39Sam Parr?

  Boom.