Lessons From Sam's New Business Venture, High Stakes Gambling, and More

Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) talk about lessons learned from Sam's new business venture, the money makers of online high stakes gambling and so much more. Also, want $5,000? Check out the My First Million Clips contest. ----- Links: * My First Million Clips contest * Mugshawtys * Stake.com * Primedice.com * Easygo * Scale * Marketbeat * Worldwide Systems * Workshop * Cloud Kidz Online Preschool * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. ----- Show Notes: (01:20) - Mugshawtys (04:35) - Cryptocurrency online gambling site owners (17:20) - Youngest billionaire (20:40) - Marketbeat (34:25) - What is a systems integrator? (46:35) - Why you should be investing more now (50:00) - Sam's new business venture (58:05) - Shaan's sister's business (01:07:40) - Ben's LDS mission ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto * #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

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

• 0:06Sam Parr?

  Okay, I just sent you something hilarious. I've been following this Twitter called mug shotties and it's like a play on mug shots.

• 0:15Shaan Puri?

  We talked about this.

• 0:17Sam Parr?

  Did we talk about mug shotties? It's so funny and the tagline is, uh, the tagline is, uh, Hope Bay Gets Bail. And it's mug shotties and it's all like good looking girls who have a mug shot. It's hilarious. It's so funny.

• 0:34Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, we talked about that because there was the guy who his mug shot went viral because he's got like, he's just like really stunningly good looking and he became like a model after afterwards or whatever.

• 0:44Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I remember that guy. People still talk about him.

• 0:47Shaan Puri?

  Can I tell you crazy stories?

• 0:50Shaan Puri?

  So have you ever seen, I think this is probably outside of your, your like kind of orbit of what you pay attention to, but have you seen these gambling live streams where Drake will go on Twitch and he'll gamble like $20 million live on stream?

• 1:04Sam Parr?

  No, really?

• 1:05Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 1:06Sam Parr?

  Like a, like a real $20 million?

• 1:08Shaan Puri?

  A real $20 million, like he lost like, I think $17 million on roulette one night last, like two weeks ago or something like that.

• 1:14Sam Parr?

  It seemed really that rich that, I mean, like if you're $200 million rich, that's 10% of your net worth.

• 1:21Shaan Puri?

  In a night. Okay.

• 1:22Sam Parr?

  That's a substantial amount.

• 1:24Shaan Puri?

  Good question. I had the same question, which led me to some pretty interesting findings. Okay. So, um, so I saw Drake doing this and I've seen other popular streamers like XQC and these guys, they do these gambling streams from time to time. People love to see it because they're playing kind of like high stakes online, uh, you know, gambling and they're reacting to the highs and lows or whatever. Uh, Ben, have you seen this? I think it's probably also outside of your, you know, Mormon orbit. You don't watch these kinds of sins. Yeah, so exactly. So

• 1:54Sam Parr?

  This is all, uh, this is all on Twitch?

• 1:56Shaan Puri?

  It's happening on, it was happening on Twitch. Maybe some people do it on YouTube as well, but it got me curious. I was like, there's no way this guy's gambling $25 million, $20 million of his own money on these things. And I was like, the, these streams get so popular. I'm like, this is actually great marketing for the website that it's on. So he's, he's gambling on something called stake.com, S T A K E. And, um, so I was like, I bet this is house money that they're giving him in order to just promote the site. And sure enough, that's what it is. So get this.

• 2:26Sam Parr?

  But is he, is he losing it again? When you play blackjack, you lose against the dealer, right?

• 2:30Shaan Puri?

  House. Yeah. So they're just, like, if I gave you $20 million to come play my rigged game, I gave you 20 million, you lose it right back to me. I get not, you know, I'm back hole. Um, they don't even lose the vig because they're the house. So they would take that, you know, 4% edge or whatever that they would have, they keep that as well. Um, and if you win, maybe they have some deal where like, hey, if you win, you keep the winnings. Uh, I would assume they have some deal like that with them.

• 2:54Sam Parr?

  But it's electronic, right? Like, it's like, the cards are digital. It's not like a camera. So then they could just be like, oh, shoot, Drake has 20. We have to make ourselves have 21.

• 3:05Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Well, that's, yeah, that's a little bit, that's illegal for sure, but they wouldn't need to do that. Like, I guess that's kind of my point is that they'll, they'll already have a house edge and over time, like they will win. And so, and even if they don't, like this is as a marketing campaign, like, uh, this is like kind of genius. And so what they're doing is stake.com is this website and it is the largest cryptocurrency based online gambling site in the world. And nobody knew who was behind it until recently, some guy in Australia bought like a $36 million home. And they were like, who, who is this? Well, you're in your twenties. How did you buy a $36 million home all cash? Like, what's?

• 3:45Sam Parr?

  Was he, he was, he was in his twenties?

• 3:47Shaan Puri?

  So these guys, they're in their mid twenties. I think one guy's 25 or 26, the other guy's 28. And, um, and so there's this guy, Ed, you can just search Ed Craven, uh, Ed Craven steak, and you'll see, uh, the secret origins, uh, secret Australian origins of the world's biggest crypto casino. And so get this. So basically they have a- There's these guys in in Australia and they've got this office and it's just like and they the office is under this name called Easy Go Gaming. It's like we build online games and the office is super nice and people would see it on social media. They would see like, wow, these guys got like a chef and they got all these perks and they got like, they're always going on these trips and like, what's going on with easy go gaming? You guys must be an awesome gaming company. So

• 4:33Sam Parr?

  It must just be like a couple of people and they're just hanging out at someone's house.

• 4:37Shaan Puri?

  And so, well, no, no. So this is a legit company, but basically Easy Go Gaming is the licensed gaming provider, like they provide the games to the casino company Stake, which is based in someplace called Curacao or something like that, which is like some Dutch Caribbean island where the actual casino is based. And these guys own both. So they were kind of known as only the owners of Easy Go, but they actually own Stake. And so it all got kind of like, revealed when the guy bought this home for whatever you can see even there's like a Daily Mail article. He buys it.

• 5:09Sam Parr?

  I'm reading it right now.

• 5:10Shaan Puri?

  Casino.org, yeah. Thirty eight and a half million dollar mansion he buys and they're like, who is this kid? He's 26 years old or whatever. And that's kind of how people figured out like, oh, he owns stake.com. Now, I believe these are kind of like my predictions and my guesses. So stake.com I think is pretty clearly clearing like billions of dollars in revenue. I think both of these guys are now self-made billionaires, possibly even 10 billion plus is what they've made off of stake.com because this thing is a absolute cash cow. And you can kind of back into this by looking at like, they do these like, Sunday raffle, whatever lottery type thing. And it's like you pay, it's like, oh, wow. You

• 5:55Shaan Puri?

  know, 250,000 people bought this like $10 ticket. It's like, oh, wow, they just, you know, that was just like a two, two and a half million dollar Sunday for them. And then they pay out this much and they keep 26 million or 50 million. Like, that's just a week for them. And so, and so you can kind of see, you could kind of back into it. I did some, some calculations on it, but, but I'm pretty sure that these guys are both self-made. Billionaires, if not 10 billion at this point in equity value of of stake.com. And it's just kind of crazy to me like that this exists, that these guys are so young, able to do this. And and people who are just willing to like live on the edge. It's like, yeah, I'm gonna go set up a company at the Dutch Caribbean island of Curacao,

• 6:37Shaan Puri?

  which gives out like online gambling licenses, like, you know, my neighborhood gives out candy on Halloween. And these guys have amassed this absolute fortune, kind of anonymously building this. Isn't this just like, isn't this kind of crazy to you?

• 6:53Sam Parr?

  Yeah, this is I'm researching and I know how I recognize this. They're a sponsor of the UFC.

• 6:58Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 6:59Sam Parr?

  And so they're big UFC sponsors.

• 7:01Shaan Puri?

  And they also sponsor Watford, the like, the English soccer team. So they like pay 10 million a year as their like lead, lead sponsor for that, too.

• 7:10Sam Parr?

  So I'm doing research just as as you're talking. On LinkedIn, there's. I don't well, here, one guy says he's the CEO, but that seemed, I don't know if that's legit. This is, this is crazy. This is one of those amazing companies, this just like VPN and a few other things. That's completely under the radar and is totally crushing. And I've said this to you before, I actually think that people's personal homes, the price of it, you know, like a rich person can live in a low priced home. But if you purchase a high priced home, the likelihood that you're rich is like it's indicative of what you have. Because it's hard to, it's not impossible, but it's hard to give a bank to give you a loan.

• 7:52Sam Parr?

  If you don't have a significant amount of income, not just assets, but income. So if he bought a 30 and if he bought a $37 million home in cash, is that really what it said?

• 8:01Shaan Puri?

  Then. Yeah, I don't know if it was all cash, but it was like three times more. The house sold in 2018 for three times less. And then the guy renovated it and he, this guy bought it for for whatever, almost 40 million.

• 8:12Sam Parr?

  To buy a $40 million home, I would think you'd want to be worth like at least 250 million dollars in at least some type of liquid situation as well, not just privately held company.

• 8:22Shaan Puri?

  So here's my notes on this thing. So I'm just gonna read you my raw notes from last night. It says, uh, small company in Australia in Melbourne called Easy Go. Looks like your typical successful startup. You got ping pong tables. You got a chef. You got perks. You're going on, on, on boat trips with the, with the team, but they're hiding a massive secret. They're also the founders of steak, which I believe might be the world's largest casino ever. It's crypto only, which is a massive growth lever.

• 8:47Sam Parr?

  Does that mean that it, that it's legal?

• 8:51Shaan Puri?

  You mean illegal? I don't know the legality of it. That's like probably a pretty complicated thing.

• 8:55Sam Parr?

  Like, like full tilt went away in America. I used to play tilt.

• 8:58Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Like you can't go, if you're on stake.com in the U S, you can't go to it. It's like, no, this is not available to U S citizens. But it, but internationally it is, and they, they based out of a cure account, which gives out the online gambling. So I think they are fully licensed, but they use crypto, which I think lets them do things like know. As I say, KYC AML, like know your customer. So basically I think you could just transfer in Bitcoin or whatever, and you could just gamble it on the site. Uh, you just put an email in and you start gambling. And, uh, so they got like all these games or whatever. I think that they're paying Drake like $20 million a month to be the like sponsor of this thing.

• 9:33Sam Parr?

  Which is ways. Do you really think that much?

• 9:35Shaan Puri?

  Cause he's gambling at those stakes and I'm pretty sure that's all house money. I don't think Drake is promoting this company for, by, by putting in $20 million of his own money and losing it every month.

• 9:44Sam Parr?

  They're not, they're not giving him $20 million. They're saying you can win up to 20 mil or you could.

• 9:49Shaan Puri?

  No, they're giving him house money. They're giving him a chip or a credit line. That basically says, here's $20 million to go play on the site. You probably can't just cash that out. You have to gamble it here. Um, but, but I'm pretty sure that's how it's working.

• 10:00Sam Parr?

  That would be crazy. I mean, I, I like, okay. So the private, some of, some of the private equity guys like, um, Steve Schwartzman and, uh, a few other folks who founded Carlyle and BlackRock and Blackstone and all that. There, there's, there's some years where they'll get paid like 800 million dollars or 500 million dollars because of performance. But, um,

• 10:20Sam Parr?

  20 million a month is $240 million a year. That would, they're probably, I can't imagine there's more than 100 people in the whole world that earn that much income. I mean, of course, there's a lot of people who earn like paper gains, but who earn that much income in a given year. That would be absolutely astounding.

• 10:37Shaan Puri?

  So get this, so they, so the guy buys this house for 40 million. They also own multiple penthouses, like the top floor of the Eureka Tower in Melbourne, which was the largest skyscraper. But here's what's even more interesting. When they were 18, when one of them was 18, the other guy's 20, they started something called primedice.com. It's still up if you go to primedice.com. It's basically a crypto gambling site where you just bet, is it gonna be like, what, what's gonna happen? It's like heads or tails. It's like a roll of the dice and you could just wager on it. And like, you know, here you go. And you could just see people just betting constantly on what the dice is gonna roll out to, right? And like what they're gonna, what they're gonna win for it. So they created this when they were back in, I don't know, 2013.

• 11:21Shaan Puri?

  It says, I think on the site says largest crypto gambling site since 2013. So they're pretty early on that.

• 11:29Sam Parr?

  This site is wild. Do you see all the live users betting money?

• 11:34Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's crazy. And it's, I mean, just look at this one guy, Shane Recover, he's just betting over and over again.

• 11:40Sam Parr?

  This company, this is, this is such an amazing five, fine. This company alone, this primedice thing is awesome.

• 11:46Shaan Puri?

  So then let me tell you some of the, the other things that, that come into it. So, so basically, I think one of the YouTubers that they pay, or maybe Twitchy Murray, this guy, Aiden Ross, I think is getting paid a few million bucks per month to, to do it. That, that I think there's pretty good authority on.

• 12:03Sam Parr?

  $3 million a month.

• 12:04Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. I don't know, I think two, 2 million a month. Okay, now let me go into more. Okay, so all of that was like, you know, this is all like not confirmed, but like these are now like some rumors. So, or I guess this part's not a rumor. Like if you go to their website, you could see that there's a company called Medium Rare NV, which is incorporated in Curacao. That's the company that holds the gaming license. If you Google map the address, it's just like a shitty warehouse building that you'll find of like where this company is based. So I don't know what's going on there. It's like, you know, when you incorporate in Delaware and they give you like a P O box as your address.

• 12:41Shaan Puri?

  So, okay, then a couple of other, you know, random rumors are like, they had, they added Dogecoin to their site as like a way to deposit back in the day. And like when Elon, when all the Elon stuff was happening, I think they dumped like hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Doge. They like sold it all when the Elon pump was happening to Dogecoin.

• 13:03Shaan Puri?

  And yeah, it's crazy. So, so anyways, this is just like a crazy thing. Well, what like, okay, let's say you even had the idea for this.

• 13:09Sam Parr?

  I Googled, I Googled, I'm Googling these guys as you're talking. There's very, very, very little information on these folks. There's, there's almost nothing. Do you think, could I change my browser to Australia and maybe get better results? Because I'm Googling their names now and there is like, there's one picture on them on the whole, on everything.

• 13:28Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I like found their Instagrams. Both their Instagrams are private, but like, yeah, like I know somebody who, who falls over whatever. So I like stalked their Instagram too, just to see like what's going on and it's like.

• 13:38Sam Parr?

  Are they jacked? Are they jacked bros now? Or are they still nerds?

• 13:41Shaan Puri?

  They're, they're, I wouldn't say they're jacked, but they're fit and they're bros for sure. Like.

• 13:47Sam Parr?

  Damn, they're breaking the stereotype.

• 13:48Shaan Puri?

  You know, like here's the like, I'm just going to describe to you, I'll send this photo. We can put this in.

• 13:53Sam Parr?

  Are there Ferrari pictures?

• 13:54Shaan Puri?

  Okay. So one, okay. Picture number one. You would have guessed Ferrari, but here's a close second. Picture of a Range Rover with a giant bow and somebody hugging them because they just gave them a Range Rover. Okay, that's a classic. You gotta love that one. Another classic, you know, the like influencer balloons you get when you cross like a million followers or whatever, the yellow giant inflatable balloon of a number. They have that. And it's like some guy, you know, hugging him during that. Another one like courtside at the Lakers game, courtside at the French Open. Like I could see in the doll's calf, like, you know, right behind this guy's head in this picture. So they're definitely living it up. And as they should, this is what I, this is exactly what I want

• 14:35Shaan Puri?

  my online casino dealer guys life to be. This is who I want it to be. And this is how I want them to live. And I'm glad that they are doing exactly what they're doing.

• 14:45Sam Parr?

  And one of them's only 26 is what you're saying?

• 14:48Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. And this article might be a little out of date, but yeah.

• 14:50Sam Parr?

  That is wild.

• 14:51Shaan Puri?

  They definitely hit this scale when they were in their twenties.

• 14:54Sam Parr?

  Like the youngest, rich, the richest young person in the world, like richer than, what's his name? The Sam Bankman Fried guy?

• 15:01Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, and younger.

• 15:02Sam Parr?

  Or on par with it and, and younger. That is outstanding. That is crazy. What a good find.

• 15:08Shaan Puri?

  Speaking of young billionaires, I think the world's youngest self billionaire now is this guy Alexander Wang. Do you know this guy? I don't really know him. I think I was in a group chat with him.

• 15:20Sam Parr?

  Is that from that company, startup? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 15:24Shaan Puri?

  So what they do is pretty cool. They basically saw the kind of like machine learning trend, you know, like this is going to keep growing. And they were like, well, you know, one, one thing that's really hard is like, when you're doing machine learning, you need like the data to be labeled, right? So if you're trying to teach a computer how to recognize a, you know, a kitten or something like that, it's like you first have to train it in some ways or be able to like, teach it when it's wrong and correct it. And so that labeling process is quite like time consuming. And so what they did was they created like, I think a giant workforce of overseas people that will label your images for you. And so like, if you're a self-driving car company, if you're Waymo or Tesla or whatever,

• 16:09Shaan Puri?

  you get like tons and tons of footage. And then now those need to be labeled as like, yep, that was a dog crossing the street. Yep, that's a stop sign, even though it's partially obstructed. And so how does that happen? That's like a human intervention. Humans go and do that. And so Scale started off as like a, it was labeling as a service. I'm sure they do a lot more stuff now, but it's pretty crazy. That's like a $10 billion company now. And this guy, I think he started it when he was 19 or something.

• 16:34Sam Parr?

  What? Is he cool?

• 16:37Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he was cool. I didn't know him for long because as soon as there, it's pretty funny. It's like, I'm in this group chat that's like for founders. Yeah, for a bunch of founders, it's like, oh, it's kind of like the underground founders hang out. Like we chill here. Everybody's trying to do big things, but then when one guy actually started doing big things, he's like, I'm busy. I need to leave this now. And so it's like the ultimate signal. It's like, oh, and it really takes off. You don't stay in these chats. You just sort of like, go do your billionaire thing now, meaning you go do your like, I'm actually on a rocket ship. I don't have time to socialize anymore. Which, you know, respect to him.

• 17:14Sam Parr?

  Dude, I was going to show you something that I thought was like a major good find. And now it seems like achievable, given that you just set the baseline at to 26 year olds who are now worth $10 billion. This one's a little, this one's much smaller, but still oddly interesting. Go to the MFM or the Million Dollar Brainstorm document that we have.

• 17:38Sam Parr?

  And scroll down. And so you can kind of see that like this is truthful. The guy sent me a picture of his QuickBooks.

• 17:45Sam Parr?

  So you see that?

• 17:46Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I'm looking at it.

• 17:48Sam Parr?

  All right. So this guy named Matt Paulson. So you remember when my Twitter got hacked?

• 17:52Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 17:53Sam Parr?

  So there was basically people hacked my Twitter and they tweeted out like, I'm giving away a PS5 or whatever the number is. And just like, send me $400 and I'm donating the money to St. Jude's. And this guy, Matt, when I got back in my Twitter, I saw that he sent two times the asked amount. He was like, he's like, I just want to said it went ahead and sent you a thousand dollars. Just, you know, so St. Jude's has a little extra money. And I was like, oh, my God, dude, that sucks. I'm so sorry about this. And he was like, oh, no big deal. And I was like, all right, well, who are you that you're this nice? And I clicked out and he runs this website called Marketbeat. Have you ever heard of Marketbeat?

• 18:30Shaan Puri?

  Only when you, you, you shared this in the Treads group. So I did a little bit of stalking at that time because I was like, what is that? Your tweet was intriguing you because you had said something like, I met a guy who runs a company that does 25 million a year in revenue, only 13 employees. And it was like 17 million of the 25 was profit. And I was like, all right, I'm fully aroused. Tell me more. What is this company?

• 18:57Sam Parr?

  Got him. Yeah. And so he sent me a picture of his QuickBooks and he was like, here's the profit. And then keep in mind, this doesn't include my huge salary. My huge salary is a part of the expenses, but we actually do 17 million in profit. The P and L that he sent me, it's like, I think 13 million in profit. So it's called Marketbeat, marketbeat.com. And for the first two years, it was just him. And you go to Marketbeat.

• 19:19Shaan Puri?

  Explain what it is. Yeah. Like, what is this?

• 19:20Sam Parr?

  Yeah, you, you go to marketbeat.com. Like, I always Google like HubSpot price targets. Because I'm curious what Hubspots, what analysts think the, the, the stock might be in one year. And he shows up early in Google, one, two, three. If you Google Amazon price targets, target price targets, whatever, like any company. And it's, he calls it a web portal, but if you didn't know better, you would look at it and just call it a media company. So you, you see different headlines and different news. It's kind of like Wall Street Journal, but really even more niche and just for stocks, just for dividend stocks. And it's just a way to really quickly see headlines of what's coming up. So it's kind of like a, um, a portal or a data aggregator where you could just like see like,

• 20:01Sam Parr?

  all right, um, this stock has an earnings call on this date. So it's basically just a place to get information, but it's also part, um, media company because they have, they publish 250 articles a year, or sorry, a month, and they have contractors who they pay a hundred and fifty dollars per article to write these. But he told me, he goes, regardless, if the articles don't actually add to any of our revenue, people come to the website mostly just to see like the stock prices and things like that. And so right now the guy, uh, has 11 employees and I actually have a list of, sorry, 13 employees. I have a list of what they all do. He's got, he's got four developers, four support people, one ad guy, one accountant, one content manager, one marketing assistant and him.

• 20:42Sam Parr?

  And, uh, they make money through subscription and through advertising, most of which comes through advertising. They've got 15,000 subscribers who pay between 20 and 40,000, 20 and 40 dollars a month. And, uh, one ad guy selling all these ads and it's mostly direct marketing. And he's got, uh, a bunch of different brands, like he's got, um,

• 21:03Shaan Puri?

  So you're going faster. So the, the, just to break down that revenue, it sounded like subscriptions is something like four or five million dollars a year out of the 25. Is that right?

• 21:13Sam Parr?

  Uh, he told me 15,000 premium subscribers and they pay either 20 or 40 dollars a month, depending on whichever one they get.

• 21:20Shaan Puri?

  So let's call it 30. So that's five and a, five and a half million, uh, from the subscription, from the premium.

• 21:25Sam Parr?

  And then the rest being ad revenue.

• 21:27Shaan Puri?

  20 billion of ads. Okay. Wow.

• 21:29Sam Parr?

  Crazy, right? And there's only one ad salesperson. He doesn't have a team of ad sales guys. And they'll sell directly to large, like, maybe like The Motley Fool, or some other like, stock picking newsletter, or some other financial brand, or some company looking to promote their stock, or different financial brokers, financial products like wealth advisors, things like that. But if an advertiser is too small, they just work with an agency and they just say, hey, agency, you know, we've got some leftover inventory. You want to put your ads in here? And it's just one guy doing the whole thing.

• 22:02Shaan Puri?

  Unbelievable. So it seems like the trick for them, and by trick, I mean hard work and strategy.

• 22:08Sam Parr?

  By the way, they've been around, I think they've been around for 15 years.

• 22:11Shaan Puri?

  Right. And it was SEO. It's SEO that drives the bulk of the traffic. Is that the idea?

• 22:16Sam Parr?

  I think early on, now it has a little bit of a brand. Before I even knew the guy, I would actually go to it all the time, just to look, because their interfaces-

• 22:23Shaan Puri?

  It's really nicely organized. Like, I'm on like the Amazon one right now, and it's basically, like, it has just like a bunch of stuff put together. It's like, oh, here's the execs. Here's the CEO. Here's their age. Here's their pay. It's like, here's the, you know, here's the percent shareholding, you know, amongst these different groups.

• 22:37Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 22:38Shaan Puri?

  Here's the analyst targets, etc.

• 22:39Sam Parr?

  It's kind of ugly by traditional web, you know, 2.0 standards. Like, it doesn't meet any of the design requirements that like Airbnb would approve of, but in my mind, it's perfect. It actually is designed beautifully, like, it works wonderfully. And so it's like a cluttered website. It kind of looks like Drudge Report, or Craigslist, or something, or eBay. Like, it's this messy website, but I think it's quite good.

• 22:58Shaan Puri?

  We need to put together a compilation of what I'm calling Sam's Ugly Ducklings. And this is an example of Sam's Ugly Ducklings, which is a website that like, who the fuck even heard of this? It doesn't look super fancy. It's kind of been around for a while. It's got this like niche passionate audience. Drudge Report is one. This is another. You've showed me like 10 of these in the last year. And I think people are, I think people really dig these. And so we should do an episode. That just highlights each one of these and it doesn't have to be like a podcast. It's almost like a screen share. Uh, maybe it's just for YouTube or like, there's this guy reaching out. He's trying to turn our podcast into like a ebook or whatever, like a really nicely designed PDF. We should have him do it on your ugly duck legs because he's got extensive notes on what you talk about in each episode.

• 23:44Sam Parr?

  Really? Who?

• 23:45Shaan Puri?

  Uh, this guy in India. I, I forgot his name, but I'm talking to him right now, uh, to get one of these made for us because I think it'd be dope, right? Like

• 23:51Sam Parr?

  That'd be sick.

• 23:52Shaan Puri?

  Dude, it's embarrassing. Like I, I get some people who are like, now there's people who are like, I would say kind of like a little more successful in the tech industry that are getting into our podcast. Whereas I feel like before we were kind of like a different audience for whatever reason, like

• 24:07Sam Parr?

  Like kids, almost like kids.

• 24:09Shaan Puri?

  It was not, not kids. It was more like, just like entrepreneurial, I would say is definitely a big component of it. Uh, which might be kids, but might be like somebody in their thirties that wants to make a change or whatever. Or it's just like, yeah, I own this awesome business. I'm based out of, you know, Peoria, Illinois. And it's like, what the fuck? Who are you and how did you find us? And but like, that was more of our main target. And now I'm getting people that are like, kind of in the heart of Silicon Valley that are like, dude, I kind of got hooked to the podcast and I'm like, dude, I've been telling you about this for like two years. And they're like, yeah, it's actually good. And they're like, what are like the best episodes? You got like 200? And I was like, ah, I don't really know. He's like, well, what's like a place to find the most popular ones? I was like, ah, I don't have it. He's like, is there a place with summaries? I was like, nah, not really. He's like, well, you have all these ideas. Is there a compilation of all the ideas? It's like, ah, there should be someone, I think.

• 24:55Shaan Puri?

  All the obvious, like, kind of like growth things that you would do or like onboarding things you would do. We've done none of. And so I'm like, kind of embarrassed about that, but

• 25:03Sam Parr?

  I'm not embarrassed. It's working.

• 25:06Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I know. I just think it'd help us. Like, I think, I think I would want that if I was getting into a podcast.

• 25:11Sam Parr?

  And let me, this is funny. Let me tell you how I found out about MarketBeat. I was reading Starter Story. I like that website Starter Story. And one of the questions is, what books and podcasts do you read? And he said, on the podcast front, I really enjoy listening to My First Million, which breaks down unique ways that business owners are using, uh, unique ways business owners are generating massive profits. That's how I found out about, about this guy is because he said he listens to us. This is only podcast.

• 25:34Shaan Puri?

  Oh, nice. Uh, that's great.

• 25:37Sam Parr?

  Who told you that they're listening?

• 25:39Shaan Puri?

  Uh, I don't wanna say their name, but you know, someone cool.

• 25:44Sam Parr?

  That's cool. That's always funny when people listen. Dude, I was with my dad when I took, I took my parents to Europe and I brought my parents to this conference and my parents are like, you know, in their sixties from Missouri and they were walking around this conference and they were like, oh, we love schwag. They call it schwag. I think it's like, I think it's supposed to be swag. They go, we love schwag, which means free stuff. And they're like, oh, let's go to this company, get this. And it's like some like European sales marketing company. I'm like, you know, dad, like no one gives a shit about like, you know, sales.io. I don't know what they do. Yeah. Yeah. And he was like, he's like, oh, let's go talk to him. I'm like, dude, I don't like, you don't even know what that means. I could tell you what it, they go, what do they do? I'm like, I can use words to explain it, but you won't understand.

• 26:26Sam Parr?

  And so he's, well, let's go get some schwag. They're giving away like free bouncy ball, bouncy balls.

• 26:30Shaan Puri?

  It's like schwarma, but it's just.

• 26:33Sam Parr?

  And he's like, he's like, let's go get a ball. We're gonna bring it back for, for the kids, their grandkids. They go, let's go. Like, oh, they have envelope openers. Like, let's go get one for the kids. Oh, they got candy. I'm like, mom, this is a Snickers. Like, you could.

• 26:46Shaan Puri?

  That's awesome, dude. He's just gonna give it to you in the hotel. He's like, hey, kid, I got you this bouncy ball. And you're gonna be like, sweet.

• 26:52Sam Parr?

  And they're bringing like, they're bringing like Kinder chocolate, you know, like Kinder, like the eggs. I'm like, you guys realize that you can get that at 7-Eleven down the street from your house. Like this isn't special. And they're just grabbing all this stuff. And they brought an empty suitcase because they knew they were gonna find schwag and just the pile. And so like, I come home. I come home and my four-year-old nephew is like, wearing a T-shirt that says like, hi, we're here to help with customer solutions. Like, it is, and it's like, and the kids are bragging that they got that from Europe. I'm like, oh my God. Anyway.

• 27:21Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's European. It's European fashion.

• 27:27Sam Parr?

  They're like, what's this brand, Gideon?

• 27:31Sam Parr?

  It's just, it's just, yeah, they're just like crazy. And then they're at this conference and they're like, they're talking to people and they go to people, I hear like, I would, it was hard for me to stand next to him and I hear him talking to people. They go, "Hey, do you like podcasts?" And they just said, "Do you like podcasts?

• 27:48Sam Parr?

  Do you love podcasts?" And the guy would be like, "Yeah, you know, I listen," he goes, "My dad calls me, he goes, "Sam, he says he listens to eight podcasts. I'll tell him to listen to yours. What's the name of it again?"

• 28:00Sam Parr?

  And I'm like, "Uh, Dad, like, how do you, you don't know, you don't know the name. It's called, it's called My First Million." He goes, "Oh, okay, I'll tell him. Hey, so it's called My First Million." And then he'll come back and goes, "Hey, I got you another listener. I made him click subscribe."

• 28:13Sam Parr?

  And he's just going off to people saying like, "You like podcasts? Oh, great. I got you. I'll get you. I'm gonna have you subscribe." And he, and he doesn't know the name of the podcast. Every single time he goes, "What's it called? Million Dollar Podcast?" He's like, "I listen to it all the time. It's my favorite, but what's it called again?"

• 28:29Shaan Puri?

  My mom does the same thing, dude. She clicks every ad in my newsletter. She's like, "I clicked your ads today to help you." I'm like, "Mom, I don't know. I don't think that's not gonna count. It's not gonna do anything." She's like, "No, no. You said you get paid if they click, right?" I'm like, "Well, kind of. You know, you gotta go buy the thing." And then she's like, "Oh, I'm not gonna buy it." I'm like, "Yeah, you also don't need to click it. In fact, you don't even need to read it." I don't think you're very interested in this subject, Mom.

• 28:55Sam Parr?

  That's hilarious. That is so funny. Uh, God, it's so funny. You should have seen them walking around, just like putting around this conference, like saying like, "Oh, Sammy, come look at, let's look at this booth." And it's, I don't even know what it is. Like, I don't even know what it is. You know what I mean? And it's like procurement. I'm like, I don't, I don't even know what that means, Dad. Neither do you. You definitely don't know what that means.

• 29:15Shaan Puri?

  Dude, that's so funny. You said procurement. So, so Romaine, who runs like, he's my, basically my partner in my fund. And Romaine's got this company that's like, kind of like an old school baller company in, based out of like Georgia.

• 29:28Sam Parr?

  Right?

• 29:28Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So he lives in Georgia. Um, so he's like in the tech scene, but he kind of lives in Georgia and runs kind of like a bit of an old school, more, more service-based company that like, I think his wife's dad or something started and he like took it over and like grew it a bunch and is doing great with it. So I think the business does like 50 million a year or something. It's like a sizable business. And so I've asked him, I think no less than 15 times, like, "Yo, yo, so what does your business do again?" And he'll be like, "Yeah, we do procurement for, for SMBs and for whatever enterprise companies." And I'm like, Like you get office supplies? Wrap my head around what procurement is and he's like, he's like, you know what the word procurement means, right? And I'm like, yeah, he's like, so it's that. And I'm like, but this, see, I guess I don't know what the word means then, because I still don't know.

• 30:12Sam Parr?

  Like, like, does, does anybody use staples anymore? Like, I don't, yeah.

• 30:16Shaan Puri?

  And it's like, oh, he's like, he's like, it's not office supplies. It's like, you know, you need a vendor for something. But I was like, so then why wouldn't you just Google and get the vendors? He's like, yeah, but like bigger companies, they just do it differently. They need like this middle man who's going to basically like, help them get the things that they need. I don't know. You get paid for that?

• 30:34Sam Parr?

  Is it like someone who just like knows all the people who do blank and they just?

• 30:39Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's like you need vendors. I think I still fucking don't know, dude. I'm on explanation number 17. In fact, I just feel bad now. Every time I, I ask him or I try to tell somebody else what he does. Cause I'm like, I clearly don't know. It's almost like, you know, like, there's like a spot in my brain where there's just like, if you did a scan, it would just be like, oh, there's some dark cloud here. Yeah, that's the part of my brain that's trying to understand procurement and it's just never happening. It's just like a fuzzy region.

• 31:07Sam Parr?

  So I've got a story related to this. So, uh, two days ago, Saturday night, I went out to dinner at, at like the fancy place in St. Louis and we get to dinner and my dad goes, or I, uh, yeah, my dad goes, hey, the, the president of NASCAR, I guess NASCAR like performed or raced or whatever you call it yesterday, Sunday in St. Louis. And he goes, my dad likes NASCAR. He goes, that's the president of NASCAR, like Jim Nance, or I don't forget his name. And, uh,

• 31:31Shaan Puri?

  The football commentator?

• 31:32Sam Parr?

  Yeah, the football. I think it was Nance, something, not Jim Nance. Yeah, that's a bit. And, uh, he, uh, and I was like, oh yeah, you know, he's sitting with this guy named David Stewart. He's like the second richest black man in the world. And that like, and it's like, it's pretty funny. I'm like, I knew exactly who that rich guy was because he's, he's worth like four or five billion dollars. And I start researching him. And I was like, yeah, I've seen that guy before. I've seen him on articles because he's like the second or third richest black man. And he's from St. Louis. He's like the richest guy in St. Louis. And he's got this company called Worldwide Systems. You've never heard of that, have you?

• 32:00Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 32:01Sam Parr?

  So it does $14 billion a year and it's like the fourth or eighth, like in the top 10 largest privately held companies in the world and him and his partner just own, own the whole thing outright. And what they do is they're a systems integrator. And that's one of those words like procurement. I heard that and I'm like, what does that mean? And so I went on this deep dive. I'm like, I gotta figure out exactly what they do. I, I don't understand this. And then like it says they're a Cisco systems integrator. And I went to Cisco's website and I'm like, what does Cisco do? Yeah. I'm like, they're like networking, hardware, networking or like networking hardware. And I like read those words and I'm like,

• 32:40Shaan Puri?

  like the website would just be like networking redefined. And you're like, I didn't, I didn't know the first definition. Now it's redefined. Great.

• 32:46Sam Parr?

  Yeah. We, I didn't know we had to change that definition. And then like they talk about like switches and stuff. And I'm like, I don't know what like a switch is. I guess it has to do electronics. Like I just, I didn't have, have any idea what this stuff did. And, but I Google it and like, I know that Cisco is like one of the largest companies in the world, but I'm just, I like, I don't know what it is. And so I had to research it. It took me forever to figure out what a systems integrator is. Do you know what it is?

• 33:08Shaan Puri?

  Dude, no, I don't know any, I don't know what this, I don't know what SAP does. I've been on a mission also to understand what SAP does for a long ass time. And

• 33:16Sam Parr?

  They're, they're European though. They got a different word for everything. We'd never be able to figure that out.

• 33:20Shaan Puri?

  And I feel like sometimes I'm watching TV and it'll just pop up SAP. And I think it means like closed captioning or Spanish or something like that. I'm like, oh, this is different. Now I'm, now I'm super confused about SAP.

• 33:29Sam Parr?

  Yeah. But I don't even know why they named their company after their stock ticker either. It's kind of weird. But um, they, uh, so, so a systems integrator, basically, so what my father-in-law does for a living is if you're like Chase and you have a hundred employees working on floor 18, and you're like, hey, we gotta move these hundred employees up the floor 43 in the same building. He studies it for a few weeks and then you go to home for work on Friday and you come back on the floor 47 and you sit down at your desk that's already set up and everything just works. And there's no downtime. And I think system integrators kind of do that. But like, if you're a $20 billion company and you're selling like a $3 billion division to this other thing, like they have to go to work one day. And like all their computers are new or in like this new setup exists.

• 34:14Sam Parr?

  Or if you're like a hospital and you're like, we need an app. It's like, well, it's not as simple as just like checking into your lobby and saying you're there. Like you gotta like integrate all this crap into it. And I think that's what they do, but I don't know why they don't just call it like an agency. You know what I mean?

• 34:27Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I don't know either, but I do know like, you know, I guess like jokes aside, you know, there's basically things that are like, like, you know, NetSuite. NetSuite's another one of these where you're like.

• 34:36Sam Parr?

  I don't know what, what is NetSuite? Is that like QuickBooks, but different?

• 34:40Shaan Puri?

  It's basically like, um, I mean, I'll butcher the thing, but like, I mean, people use it for like inventory management, for example. So it's basically like a database that's like usable for, um, like it's usable in a couple of different ways. It tells you what you got. It tells you what's like running out. It tells you, uh, what you need. It'll tell you kind of like, it'll help generate a purchase order. It'll do things like that. By the way, if you go to NetSuite's website, I just went to it. It says complete procure to pay purchasing. Oh no, procurement, it has to do with this too. But basically there's, there's entire companies. I think this is what, um, you know, like.

• 35:13Sam Parr?

  The P word.

• 35:13Shaan Puri?

  What Deloitte and other, other consulting companies do a lot of, which is basically they teach your company, like these, these businesses, there are these programs are so unintuitive that there's entire consulting businesses that generate billions of dollars a year that just go to a company like, oh, um, like right here on their website, Lovesac uses them. So it's like, you go to Lovesac, you're like, great, you guys sell giant bean bags, huh? They're like, yeah, like, you know, those things are getting a little out of hand. Get a little willy nilly now that it's growing so much. Yeah, it is, sure is. Don't you wish there was just a way to have everything organized in one place and a system that just all talk to each other and every one of your employees can log in and interface with it? They're like, that sounds pretty good. So I just go set it up on my own. I just go to the website and they're like, no, no, no, we do that for you.

• 35:56Shaan Puri?

  It takes 12 months and we will, we will add NetSuite to your thing. We will add Oracle, we will add these different services to your, we will, we will integrate them into your current business and we'll train your employees on how to actually use it.

• 36:09Sam Parr?

  Is that what service revenue in a SaaS line? So if you go to like Atlassian and look at their annual report, there's a huge amount of services revenue. So do they charge and I don't know what the server, how they. What they bucket in services. I would have thought like, does that mean just the software? But.

• 36:25Shaan Puri?

  I, I, I think it's different for different companies, but at the same time, uh, this is sort of like, if you were like, hey, Sean, you know, uh, what does it mean to blanch a vegetable? I'd be like, you know, I think it uses hot and cold water in some way. It's like, you know, like, I just don't know, right? Like, even you're asking me about like, what are these like giant enterprise companies that are like B two B service slash software companies? Like, uh, these are like, again, I don't know the first thing about the first thing about.

• 36:50Sam Parr?

  Dude, the, the craziest thing to me is when I think about these is to understand how someone came up with this idea. So for example, there's Okta. Do you know Okta? That's what we use for like logging into like websites and shit like that. Or there's, um, what's that one? Snowflake. You know, Snowflake?

• 37:05Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, like a data.

• 37:06Sam Parr?

  So I like, those are all companies that are founded relatively recently, like in the 2005, 2015 era. And I'm like, how did a person know that this was a problem and had to get billed? You know what I mean?

• 37:19Shaan Puri?

  Well, you're just working in a big company, right? Like, okay. So for example,

• 37:23Shaan Puri?

  we were talking the other day about, uh, what was it called? The, um, or like, like we have.

• 37:29Sam Parr?

  Mailchimp for companies.

• 37:30Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. Uh, what was the name of it again? I can't remember the name off the top of my head. Uh, I just committed to invest into it, but, um, but basically we're, when we ran a company or like you ran a, um, uh, you know, like an email based company. And so if I asked you, you know, like, what does ConvertKit do? You're like, if very well versed on like, what ConvertKit does, because you're like, well, like, here's a scenario. You get a bunch of people come to your website, but you, you know, you want to grab their email because you're going to be able to market to them later. So you, so ConvertKit lets you put up a little webpage that grabs your email. And then once you have it, you want to be able to like, tag them or segment them based on like, if they've paid for your thing or if they're free. And then like, wouldn't it be cool instead of like waking up every day of like, writing the same email over and over again, you could like automate a, a, a sequence of emails, one that goes out on day one, one goes out on day three, one goes out on day 10.

• 38:16Shaan Puri?

  And it's like, you solve a problem in your business and therefore, you know, you kind of understand what the solutions are and you can even create them. Well, there's another one that's like. Uh, like, you know, that this is basically what happens when you're, when you work inside of a large company, you're like, oh, man, there needs to be a solution for X. You just see a problem and you're like, there needs to be a solution for X. But you understand that context because it's like, like, we spent basically 15 years just starting companies from scratch. You started media companies. I started more like software, social networking type of companies. And we've done content a bunch so we could tell you all about content. Like, we just don't have that same frame of reference to that, like, somebody who's been like, you know, somebody who's used Salesforce every single day for like 10 years, then they understand why you need this like Salesforce add-on or app.

• 39:02Sam Parr?

  All the time, I'm like, damn, I wish I knew how to do this stuff that people will charge a million dollars a year in subscription revenue. I'm like, damn, I just gotta talk to some stupid freaking guy about starting a newsletter and give the same spiel constantly. I don't want to talk about how to get your first thousand subscribers on Substack. You know, I'd rather get paid like a million dollars a year to do X, Y, and Z and, you know, get 100,000 customers.

• 39:24Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I mean, exactly. And this is why, like, when I was at Twitch, when we got acquired, I had like, I had wrote down, I'm gonna walk out of here with like 10 ideas. And I use that import-export framework, which is like, what are five ideas that Twitch would import a solution for? Like, we need something, like, and a country needs something, they import it, you know, like, the US needs oil, we import it from whatever, Iraq or Afghanistan, wherever it needs to come from, Saudi Arabia. And so, in the same way, companies have these pain points, and you're like, when you're sitting there, you're like, oh, damn, if somebody had us, if somebody had a magic way to do this, we would pay $100,000 a month for this. You know, we would pay X dollars for this. Like, for example, when I was there, I talked about this idea way back in the day, but like, all hands.

• 40:08Shaan Puri?

  It's like, at our company, you know, if I needed to say something to the whole company as a startup, I would just like, literally fucking stand up at my desk and be like, hey, hey, yo, headphones, we're doing this now. The company, we pivoted to this, okay? Good. Or like, you know, we'd be at lunch, and I'd just like, stand up and say something. But like, at a company like Twitch, 2,000 people, you know, there was like this organize every Thursday, there's an all hands, it happens at At lunch, they do it at lunch because that's where they have like a captive audience of people that will actually sit there and pay attention because they're eating. And like, and they would do the thing and it had like a presentation and there was like a whole, there was like a conductor of the whole ceremony. And then there's like a Q and A and they needed like this question and answer thing, then they needed to stream it to remote employees.

• 40:50Shaan Puri?

  It was like all these things they had to think about and we were just stitching together like these four different tools. Like we use this for the Q and A, we use this for streaming, we use this for the presentation, we use this for new employees, whatever. And I was like, oh, if somebody just made like a really good, like all hands software. I'm pretty sure you could get a company like Twitch to pay like 25 to $50,000 a year for your software. And it would need to be secure, it would need to be, you know, easy to stream on your phone, it would need to have the Q and A integrated, like et cetera, et cetera. And I believe that to be true and like I could go validate them, I could have just gone and talked to like, you know, the head of the all in, the all hands thing and be like, hey, if this existed, would you buy this?

• 41:32Shaan Puri?

  And like, I saw that problem because I was there before that I didn't even see that problem.

• 41:37Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and we had talked about it, it was like a high school newspaper, but for your company.

• 41:42Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, by the way, Workshop is the name, it came to me now.

• 41:45Sam Parr?

  So what's the URL?

• 41:46Shaan Puri?

  Useworkshop.com. So it's pretty sick. We talked about this before, which is in insight, like we all have like Mailchimp or you have like, SendGrid, you have a ton of different services to send mass marketing emails to customers. But like, there's actually internal marketing too, that happens all the time. Like a company is like a small, like, you know, tribe and like you constantly need like information and sort of propaganda from the top. That needs to get to your employees and whether it's like, hey, remember this Friday, we're doing casual Friday, like, you know, whatever. Don't wear underwear this Friday, but you have to like get some message across about like what's going on. Or it's like, hey, we had these wins in the company, like, congrats to this team for launching this safety feature that saved us, whatever.

• 42:31Shaan Puri?

  And so what Use Workshop does is basically creates like a little Mailchimp for inside your company. So let you do lists.

• 42:38Sam Parr?

  But did they launch this because of our podcast or were they already working on it?

• 42:41Shaan Puri?

  I think they were already working on it and we just got connected from, we got connected when they were. They were doing, somebody pointed it out to me. They're like, hey, these guys are doing almost exactly what you're talking about. I reached out and they're like, and the guy was awesome. He's like, yeah, we had this past company that was successful. We kind of like, you know, like this is our second merry go round. Got the team back together to do this. And then it's like, it's working. Hey, we just signed this client, this client, this like big name, big name, big name. They showed me the chart of revenue and I was like, oh, this is like so spot on. Like I really think that a tool like this is going to exist and it's going to work.

• 43:15Sam Parr?

  Yeah, this is sick.

• 43:17Shaan Puri?

  And like the design is just really good. Like if you go to the design of the page, it's like, just like, clearly these people are good at, like, they're good at simple products. And that's kind of all you need to do to be able to build something like this is like, yeah, nice, clean, simple, easy to use.

• 43:31Sam Parr?

  And they have the use cases. So for employee engagement, a change of management, company alignment, hybrid work, mergers and acquisitions, internal marketing. It's pretty sick. Measuring performance. Yeah, this is awesome.

• 43:43Shaan Puri?

  And like, you know, you send these emails out normally in your company. You don't have the open rate, you don't have the open tracking. You don't know who's actually engaged or who's not in your company emails. You don't know how, you can't test the subject line difference and be like, oh, this one got way more people to respond to the engagement survey or whatever we sent out. And so it lets the internal comms team like do their job better. They didn't really have a tool before this.

• 44:05Shaan Puri?

  I can't find this client info.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform, so it shares its data across every application. Every team can stay aligned. No out of sync spreadsheets or dueling databases. HubSpot, grow better.

• 44:21Sam Parr?

  Are you angel investing actively right now?

• 44:24Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. You stopped, right? Are you like, took a break?

• 44:27Sam Parr?

  Well, I've taken a break because A, the markets and B, because I'm working on this. I got my, I could talk about a little bit, but I got like 20 customers for, already for my new project.

• 44:38Shaan Puri?

  Oh, nice. Okay, let's talk about that a second. Let's do the angel investing thing first, though. So I heard something interesting, like my initial reaction was to do what you're doing, which was like, uh, it's just, I don't know, the world's crazy. I lost a bunch of money. Everywhere I look, prices are going down, like, you know, stocks are going down, crypto is going down, everything's going down. Maybe I should just bunker down for the season and just like, you know, chill out a little bit with investing in these like high risk illiquid startups. But at the same time, then I heard somebody say something, I think it was somebody on All In on the podcast, that one of their guests, he had said something, he was like, he's like, actually, they're like, are you slowing down? And he was like, no, this is the time to speed up. He goes, you know, the last few years, I was like, getting pretty worried.

• 45:20Shaan Puri?

  And I thought like, maybe it's time to slow down because valuations were getting really high. There's just everybody, there's too much capital flowing around. Everybody's throwing money at everything. It's really, you know, when you would do a deal, it'd be like, you wouldn't be able to get all the information you need. It's like, hey dude, we're closing, like you're either in or you're out. You don't have time to do like certain level of diligence. He's like, I actually think that those like vintages of companies, right? Like, you know, like a, like a vintage of wine, like the 1985 Bordeaux was so good. It's like, basically that happens in startup investing too, where like certain vintages turn out really good. Certain are kind of dry, they don't have any big winners. If you look, basically after every kind of like market crash or recession is like, those next three years are some of the best vintages for startups.

• 46:02Shaan Puri?

  And so like this happened after that's kind of 2000, 2001 crash. And like the next vintage that came out was like, had LinkedIn, had Facebook, had like a bunch of large companies.

• 46:12Sam Parr?

  I agree with that, but like the valuations, maybe it could have, it's like, feels like it's changing week by week. But like two weeks ago, when I was looking at a few deals, the valuations were still quite high.

• 46:22Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I, I think they are coming down and they're coming down week by week. You're, you're absolutely right. And I, you know, you could be disciplined on that where you're just like, oh, you haven't gotten the memo? That like, you know, what used to be 50 million is now 22 million? And what used to be 20 million is now eight? Like you, you need to get that memo and some people just haven't got that memo yet, but like a lot of them.

• 46:41Sam Parr?

  Right, that, so I'm, I'm, I'm waiting like that amount, like just a few more weeks, maybe until, so that, that's what, when I say wait, that's what I mean, because we were talking to people and they weren't budging. And I was like, well, all right, we'll wait. And now I'm getting emails from some like portfolio companies and they're like, you could see their cash balance and how much money they have left. And it's like, damn, man, I think there actually might be like a lot of things going out of business in six months.

• 47:04Shaan Puri?

  I, I think there absolutely will be. I mean, I've been getting a ton of, hey, we just raised this extra money. Like a lot of smart founders basically are like taking the bag while it's available, uh, just to give themselves buffer. Cause like, who knows how much worse it's going to get. And, um, but the values are coming down. So I actually think that like this, this year, next year, the next basically two, two and a half years are going to be like, kind of an awesome. Vintage of startups to be investing in because you're getting all the, you know, like none of the big trends have changed. Like the world's just getting more tech enabled. Tech is just going into more and more industries. Size of the price is getting bigger. There's more and more people coming online. Machine learning and all that stuff's making stuff better. Like all of that's still true. It's just that the prices got cut in half. And so it's like, oh, good.

• 47:43Sam Parr?

  I'm, I'm, I'm on board. I'm just like, wait, I just think that like, there's, there's so far been like this two, three week period where it's like, there's a discrepancy. That'll get fixed, I think, in like two, three, four, five, six weeks. You know, I think that's gonna happen pretty, pretty soon.

• 47:58Shaan Puri?

  Should we talk about your, uh, your thing? Now, or you wanna do a devoted?

• 48:02Sam Parr?

  All right. Well, we could, we could, yeah, I don't wanna do a devoted thing because I'm not gonna announce what it is entirely yet. So, but we can kinda talk about it. But basically, like, I'm kinda going back to my roots. I'm launching this new thing. I'm not even saying I'm launching it. I'm more so like, uh, launching, uh, enough of it to prove or disapprove if it's a good idea.

• 48:22Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 48:23Sam Parr?

  And I've gotten, hmm, like, I forget exact, like, tens of thousands in revenue in the first two weeks.

• 48:32Shaan Puri?

  Amazing. And, um,

• 48:33Sam Parr?

  And I didn't tweet about it once.

• 48:35Shaan Puri?

  So, so tell me this. Tell me, uh, what are you doing differently this time around than you did? So, last time you started this rodeo was maybe six years ago, something like that?

• 48:45Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:46Shaan Puri?

  And so now with, you did the whole hustle chapter. You get acquired. You go to HubSpot. You see a bunch of things. You meet a bunch of people. You get smarter, wiser, all that stuff. You got some hair on your chest now. And so it's like, what's, what did you decide? Like, all right, this time I'm doing these things differently? Or was there any?

• 49:01Sam Parr?

  Early on, early on, I was like against outsourcing or hiring anyone overseas or hiring like cheap labor or hourly labor. And I was like, no, I wanna create jobs and I wanna like, do salary position with benefits. And now I'm not doing that. Eventually, maybe we'll add some people like that. But now it's like, just how do I automate this? And how do I like, get someone overseas just to do this like a machine? And I just don't really care if I don't have any employees and I wanna, and I'd prefer being alone. So that's the big difference. The second difference is, well, the, the same similarity is I'm doing it all by hand. And this is totally the right move. And I stand by that. So before I wrote everything, I sold the first ads, I did it all. This time I'm doing the same thing. So I'm literally doing the cold emailing. I'm getting them on the phone. I'm doing the sales. I'm listening to

• 49:45Sam Parr?

  them. I'm doing that constantly. And getting those reps in is actually really impactful. And you could actually like, see, uh, what's happening. But I, by the way, I got that revenue. Uh, 0% of the revenue has come through our website. It's all been from cold emailing people on LinkedIn and getting them on the phone and then just sending them a Stripe account.

• 50:03Shaan Puri?

  Amazing. What, um, what else? What else is different about your mindset? I bet there's more.

• 50:09Sam Parr?

  Way more confident for sure. Um, there is still a sense of urgency. Uh, so like wanting to move fast and like, I have to get this done. I have to do this, but more so like, um, I have to get this done, but also remember like, I may do this for like 20 years.

• 50:25Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 50:25Sam Parr?

  So like having this longer term, this longer horizon. What I learned with my business, we sold around year five and the truth is most, the value created between year five and year six was more probably than the value of zero to five combined.

• 50:40Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 50:41Sam Parr?

  And I was, I wasn't impatient because I'm happy I did what I did because it unlocked a lot for my life. But had I not, I said this a bunch of times, if I was already wealthy, I would never have sold because real value seems like it comes like, now I've only experienced a business from like around year five, but it seems like maybe there's something that happens to your five, your six where values created. And then who knows, maybe someone who's owned a company for years is like, man, 20 and 30 is when like shit magic really happens. So I don't know, but I do think like year five, if you bootstrap is around the time where you're like, all right, I recruited some actually good people. I've got people doing, helping and everything, but like, I don't know. Do you agree with like year five, year six, year seven is where some crazy stuff happens?

• 51:21Shaan Puri?

  I think it's just, I think it's just generally true. Right? Like you, you plant seeds and they water them and you water them and you're looking at them and you're trying not to just go dig up the dirt and be like, why the fuck aren't you growing? But like at some point, those things do start to grow. Like we're seeing this with our e-commerce business too, which was, um, uh, my buddy had told me this, he goes, he goes, there's this magic moment in e-commerce where you've, you've brute forced enough of the like building your brand and getting, getting new people to try you where every month you're returning customers just come back because they love your product and you don't have to remarket, you don't have to spend money remarketing to them. And then the business goes from like this giant cash suck to this giant cash cow. If you do it right. And, um, and I was, and we just started to hit a tipping point like that where you could

• 52:06Shaan Puri?

  say, and it's not every month, but there's some months where I'm like, whoa, what just happened? And it's like, oh yeah, that's, that's what's happening. Like we actually just, last year we brute forced and got a bunch of people to love our product. And then they came back and bought and this like a bunch of them came back and bought this month to where it outweighed all of the new investments that we're making. Like, wow, that's nice. Or like at Twitch, we were always doing these like planning exercises about like, you know, these profitability targets. Um, I can't say too much, but like basically profitability targets. And I think Emmett had said something. He was like, yeah, we from the like, he's like, pretty early on, we modeled it out. And it was like, it's gonna take like 10 years probably. And this, and he said a huge number. He's like,

• 52:50Shaan Puri?

  X billion in revenue for us to, you know, break even. And I was like, that's just a crazy idea. That's like, we need to get to X billion in revenue for this to be profitable. And like, but it's like, that's exactly, you know, that's the, that's what actually how it was playing out. Yeah. And it's like, whoa, like I hadn't even really like, Amazon, I think had a sort of had a semi similar story. Amazon, I think for 15 years or something like that was like, unprofitable on, on the whole. But the difference in Amazon was like, the individual divisions were getting very profitable after like a repeat of like a reliable, like, I don't know, let's call it four year cycles. Like books got super profitable, but by the time books was getting profitable, they were investing heavily in CDs and music and these other things. And so then the, the total always looked unprofitable.

• 53:34Shaan Puri?

  But they knew internally, this is just a clock that goes, you know, every X, it's going to take four years or whatever it is to this unit to get profitable. And once they're all profitable, this thing's going to be like unbelievable, which is where it's at now.

• 53:46Sam Parr?

  Trusting that process is really hard, particularly for first time entrepreneurs with Bezos and Emmett, or I guess, you know, after like 10 years, it's like, well, I'm not exactly a first time founder anymore, but you know what I mean?

• 53:56Shaan Puri?

  Well, I'll say the, the way I'm saying the Twitch one right now, sounds a bit like a master plan, like, ah, I'm, I could see this coming and I'll, oh, whatever. It's like, no, it was more like,

• 54:06Shaan Puri?

  oh shit, we got users. Oh, fuck, the costs are really high. What if we raise money? Okay. What do we got to tell these guys? What are you going to tell these investors or how they're going to get their money back? Maybe this business model will work and maybe on this timeline. And then like, we update that information every two years and like, I think, you know, I think Twitch had like a thing where it's like, we're going to be profitable in three years. And they've been saying that for the last six, you know, like, that's just like been a thing and that's very common actually for businesses. It's like, Yeah, like entrepreneurs generally pretty optimistic. Elon's been saying self-driving cars will come out this year for four years. Like, you know, it's like entrepreneurs are usually right about the the actual assessment and they're wrong about the timeline. Or somebody, somebody gave me this great phrase. They go, don't confuse a clear view for a short distance. It's like, imagine you're driving, you see something so clearly, but it's like, it looks

• 54:51Shaan Puri?

  like it's just right there, right? Just right around the corner. And like, actually, that corner is like a 10-year odyssey that felt like, oh, it's gotta be just two or three years away.

• 55:00Sam Parr?

  The last big thing that's different between now and then, you know, having some experience versus no experience, is the ability to say no and be like, oh, well, you're saying you don't want this product, therefore, I guess I should change it. It's like, oh, okay, well, that's okay if you don't want it. You're actually not who we're going for. I, I, so you, you, you didn't, you didn't, my takeaway from this is not you, that my product is not good and people don't want it. It's just that I just, I, I, now I know I shouldn't target people like you and instead I should only target people like this other person.

• 55:30Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 55:30Sam Parr?

  And that's like the, a huge thing where it's like, the vision is that we're going to be this for this people. Eventually, maybe it can expand beyond that, but for a while, this is what we are and this is who we are for. And if you don't talk to people who you think you are for, then it's okay. That's just, they're not the right target market. And I just targeted that customer poorly, but you should only like, you know, be one thing for one type of person and you go deep on that. And oftentimes people will be like, but that's not that big. But A, sometimes it is that big. And B, it's like, that's okay. You just gotta like, get that initial traction and then more opportunity spots itself. But you have to be this one thing for this one person and ignore everyone else.

• 56:11Shaan Puri?

  So my sister has a business, I don't know, have I told you about her like cloud kids thing?

• 56:16Sam Parr?

  Well, I know she's a babysitter's a little, that's not actually accurate, but like daycare, right?

• 56:22Shaan Puri?

  It was, it was, I guess it was kind of like an in-home daycare that became like a preschool and became like an outdoor preschool, whatever, it kind of evolved.

• 56:29Sam Parr?

  Yeah, by the way, sorry, I didn't mean to call that babysitting. She would have punched me in the face and I knew that wasn't the right, I knew it wasn't babysitting. I was like, I called it, I was about to say daycare.

• 56:39Shaan Puri?

  So, yeah, it's okay. That's, that's, it's right. So. But during COVID, she pivoted to like an online thing. Like a lot of businesses went from like, oh shit, brick and mortar is really hard right now because they're like, you know, every month, the government is changing the rules on what we can, if we can and can't operate our business. So she created this thing called Cloud Kidz. So if you go to cloud kids with a Z,

• 57:02Shaan Puri?

  I think it's preschool.com. Let me see if that's it. Yeah, cloud kids with a Z preschool.com. So go to that website real quick and just look at this. I actually think she's done a pretty good job with the website.

• 57:15Sam Parr?

  Kids, it's cloud kids, what?

• 57:16Shaan Puri?

  Cloud kid. I'll just put the link here. Cloud kids with a Z preschool.com. So check this out. So this is like, helping her with this has been pretty fun because she like, she built this in like Wix. I'm like, oh, Wix.

• 57:28Sam Parr?

  Oh, it looks great.

• 57:29Shaan Puri?

  Who's using Wix? And then, and I was like, all right, you need to add like, change the headline. You need to add like a video. The video needs to be not like a full-on video, like just make it look like a teacher teaching something.

• 57:39Sam Parr?

  Wow, dude, this looks amazing.

• 57:41Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. So now it's really good. It used to be like, you know, get info. Now it's like, free trial, right? Like just optimizing the landing page with her like headline, sub-headline, button, hero image, you know, reasons to, reasons to buy, all that stuff. Like, and then she's like working with people in like Fiverr and Upwork to like do these designs. It's like, it's actually turned out pretty good. And so she created this thing, which is basically like these small group classes. Like, let's say you have your kid at home, either because they're just like my, like my daughter, she's too young to go to school right now. We don't want to send her to full-time preschool, but like, we want her to like, learn something every day. And it's like, kind of takes a shit ton of energy to sit there and be like, the engaging, patient parent and like, keep your

• 58:22Shaan Puri?

  kids' attention and be like, I'll teach you like, how to write the letter W today. Like, but like, with this, I'm like, I sit her down in front of the computer. I get the materials in front of her with paper and crayon. And like, the teacher is like, so good. They'll be like, all right, you know, like, hi, high five, let's sing our welcome song. And then they like, do all the things. So for one hour, she get, it's like, screen time without the guilt. It's like, the, she gets engaged like it's cartoons, but it's not cartoons because she's actually like, learning stuff and getting better. And so she created this service and it's like, I was like, dude, this is actually a pretty good product. And she, she's hired these teachers and the teachers are like, like in Florida and different places like that. So, so then she was, she calls me, she's like, I'm just like, struggling so much with the growth. And so I like, I was like, all right, well, like, tell me what, like, she's like, I just, it's not working.

• 59:08Sam Parr?

  What were the numbers?

• 59:09Shaan Puri?

  And so she gives her the numbers and she's basically like, I was like, okay, so let's draw the funnel. And she's like, what's a funnel? I'm like, all right, just imagine like at the top, you know, you're getting leads, like people who come to your website. And then some of them give you an email, some of them sign for free trial, some of them actually show up. And then some of them become a fully paid customer. So we drew that funnel out as like, oh, actually this conversion rate is kind of awesome. I like, why do you? And then I was like, so what's your cost per lead? Is that really high? It's like, no, it's like not high at all. And this is with like, you know, this like $50 a day, $100 a day ad budget. Like, and she's just like, I don't even know how to do Facebook ads. I just put in like, you know, a hundred and I just wanted to see what would happen. And like, I was like, wow, this is actually like, this business is kind of amazing. So you pay back your customer in less than a month? She's like, I don't know if you say so. I'm like, yeah, like that's what your numbers say.

• 59:53Shaan Puri?

  You basically pay back before your ads bill is even due. That's like the, the ultimate like thing you want with ads driven business is like, to get the revenue from a customer profitably before you even pay your credit card bill.

• 1:00:06Sam Parr?

  And, and to give the listener context, so it prices range from $40 a week to, so you could, all right, I understand. So you can get classes, one day, two day, three day, four day a week. They, it all ranges from like $160 a month to $400 a month. And you get, it's basically, it's a, the, the tagline is actually quite good. Although the website needs a little work, like I clicked on the FAQs and it goes to privacy policy. But that's all right. Live online preschool classes, the number one live preschool program from home. We, this is a beautiful line. We provide the curriculum, teachers and friends.

• 1:00:41Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:00:42Sam Parr?

  That's, that's great. And then there's a video, who, is this like this woman who works for her? You don't have a white sister?

• 1:00:47Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 1:00:49Sam Parr?

  And it is great. I'm all about this. This is beautiful. By the way, the art is actually really good.

• 1:00:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's pretty good, right? And so, so this, and so then the reason I bring this up is because. You were talking about handling, uh, no, handling an objection. And what I learned when I was like diving in, I was like, your funnel is not broken. Your website is good, your services, your retention is amazing. I was like, even your ad, like ROAS, your payback period is also amazing. So I was like, what are you talking about this thing? And she's like, well, I mean, like, I talked to like, you know, so many people, they all just, you know, they don't come back for the, from the free trial. I'm like, but you're converting 20% or something like that from free to paid. That's like, yeah, best on the internet. She's like, yeah, but like, I talked to eight moms that were like, you know, we can't do it for this or this reason. And I was like, yeah, but eight out of 10 is eight out of 10 no's.

• 1:01:40Shaan Puri?

  That means two out of 10 yeses, that's a 20% conversion. That's again, amazing. And the numbers back out where this business is like an awesome business. And I think the, the site, what will happen was the psychology. Cause I told her, I was like, hey, if you want to close more people, call everybody who just did your free trial and see if they'll convert to paid. And be like, hey, I'm the owner of the school. How did you like it? So glad, you know, I saw, I dropped in on the class. I saw she was doing great. Like, do you think you want to continue? Like, do you want to do more classes? And like, oh, payment's a problem. Like, we can help you with a payment plan. Cause a lot of the people who are doing this, they're like Detroit, inner city. Like, there's a lot of people that are basically like, hey, I can't pay for full-time caretaking. I can't pay for even full school.

• 1:02:22Shaan Puri?

  Or like in Detroit, for example, shit, what I learned through this was in Detroit, the public schools are full. So you just can't send your kid. Can you believe that? So the people are like six years old and they're like, yeah, the school's full and I can't afford private school. It's like, I've never heard public school can be full. And like, that's what's going on in Detroit right now.

• 1:02:39Sam Parr?

  Is this, is this, your sister's just like, move over, Sean, there's a new, there's a new big swing at the house.

• 1:02:46Shaan Puri?

  Well, the funny thing is she's, she's got a better product and business than I have in any of my businesses. In terms of all the core metrics are stronger than all of mine. The product offering, the retention, stronger than anything. The problem is, not a problem, actually, the, she doesn't want to like, she's not trying to do world domination. She's like, no, this would be great if we got to like 50 students. And like, well, then you'll want a hundred, right? She's like, no, because that'll be way more work. Like, I have 50, I already have these great teachers that can handle 50. I just want to fill up my occupancy. And like, she truly is like, well, because when I do that and then I can go work out in the middle of the day and like, I just want my lifestyle. I can go to my daughter's thing.

• 1:03:21Sam Parr?

  You know, Sean, you know, she has something that you'll never have.

• 1:03:24Shaan Puri?

  No, oh no, the E word.

• 1:03:26Sam Parr?

  Enough.

• 1:03:27Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, she does.

• 1:03:28Sam Parr?

  I'll have enough. My, I went through, my mother-in-law, she's like, hey, Sam, can I drive you to the airport? I was like, why? She goes, well, it's two hours to get there. I need you to explain to me how online commerce works. Cause I wanted to start a store. This was two or three years ago and I like did the ride and I told her how to use a store. Now she's got a business doing like half a million a year. And I was like, so why don't you scale this? Why don't you do this? Why don't you do this? You could be like, I'm always like, you could be like the black Martha Stewart. Like you could crush this. And she's like, but I like taking Tuesdays and Thursdays off. And I was like, oh, all right.

• 1:03:55Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:03:56Sam Parr?

  Well.

• 1:03:57Shaan Puri?

  But if you made more, then you could take Tuesdays and Thursdays off. She's like, I could do that right now.

• 1:04:00Sam Parr?

  Right. So, yeah, it's the same exact thing. And I'm like, but, but, but.

• 1:04:05Shaan Puri?

  But, and this stuff is the point on the rejection thing. What I learned was when she called people and eight people in a row said no, it was like completely demoralizing to her and she started to question everything. It's like, am I going after the wrong market? Do I have the wrong product? Am I have, am I priced too high? Am I this? Am I that? And I think it's really important to be able to back out numbers. I've seen the same mistake on fundraising all the time. So it sounds kind of silly when it's like, oh, my sister's a little preschool. Oh, you know, she has 20% conversion rate. Obviously that's good. Like even if it was 10%, it would still be great. Like it is still work. Like, oh, that's so silly. You know, she got demoralized by, by hearing, you know, eight no's in a row, you know, on a Monday morning. And, or not even hearing no's, just not hearing back from people. I'm like, yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:50Shaan Puri?

  But then I talked to founders and they're like, dude, raising money so hard. I need to change this, change that. Can you, will you help me with my pitch? I'm like, how many investors did you pitch to? And they're like, well, yeah, we talked to like, you know, these four last week. I'm like, four? And I'm like, you know, this is a numbers game. This is a sales funnel and you need, you are selling your equity in your business in exchange for money. And like, like what you're doing is you're getting highly emotional and you're taking it highly personal that somebody doesn't want to fund your business. And like in reality, yes, you should be learning from like how to pitch better. And like you may, maybe, maybe in the end you will strike out, but you don't even know that yet. You haven't hit enough people.

• 1:05:25Sam Parr?

  What a lot of people realize is like one to 3% conversion rate is like normal, which kind of means that like, maybe you'll go oh for 29 and on the 30th one, you get a one. And that's like, boom, you know, you're now, you're one for three or you're, you're, you're, that's a 3% conversion rate. You're good.

• 1:05:41Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:41Sam Parr?

  Or maybe on your 99th one, the 10th one, boom, 1% of 100. That's good. That's why I always joke with Ben. I'm like Mormons are probably the best salespeople because convincing someone to join a religion has like the lowest conversion rate ever. And then you hear that like you could sell Salesforce and it has a 2% conversion rate. And you're like, this is the easiest thing ever.

• 1:06:00Shaan Puri?

  Convention apparel.

• 1:06:02Sam Parr?

  Ben, how many, like, I, I, I don't know, like, if that's actually what you did, where you tried to get people to like quit whatever religion they were in and join your crew. But how many people do you think who were like either atheists or in another team? And they just said, yeah, cool. I'll, I'll join your thing. How many people, what, what's, what was your percentage rate?

• 1:06:22Ben?

  Uh, so let's see, I had.

• 1:06:24Shaan Puri?

  Did you convert anyone?

• 1:06:26Ben?

  Yeah, I converted low 30s. I'd have to look. 32 people on my mission. So it was two years and, um, oh man, how many doors do I think I knocked on in, in that time? I mean, it was, it was.

• 1:06:40Shaan Puri?

  Couple hundred, couple thousand?

• 1:06:42Ben?

  It was hundreds of doors a day across to every, every single day for two years. Right? So.

• 1:06:47Sam Parr?

  You knocked on a hundred doors a day?

• 1:06:49Ben?

  Easily, easily a hundred doors a day.

• 1:06:52Sam Parr?

  What country?

• 1:06:53Shaan Puri?

  Hold on, we're doing some public math. This deserves it. Let's say.

• 1:06:55Sam Parr?

  Well, yeah, while you do it, let me ask you a question. What country?

• 1:06:58Ben?

  So I was in El Paso, Texas. I was speaking Spanish.

• 1:07:02Shaan Puri?

  So if you did 150 doors a day, which you're saying easily is estimate. Every single day, 365 days, two years, you knocked on 109,000 doors. You did 109,000 and you did 32 at 109. So that's point oh, point oh two percent or point oh oh two percent, something like that. Some, something that's like, yeah, fraction, fractions of a percent.

• 1:07:33Sam Parr?

  Dude, and how about the fact that your friends were all going to these cool places in Africa or South America and they sent you to El Paso?

• 1:07:39Ben?

  Yeah, but I mean, you know, yeah, my brother went to Prague, my sister went to Moscow.

• 1:07:46Ben?

  But

• 1:07:47Shaan Puri?

  We had, we had, what's his name, Austin from Lambda School, which is now Bloom Tech.

• 1:07:51Sam Parr?

  He went to Russia.

• 1:07:52Shaan Puri?

  He was in Russia or something like that. He said he converted zero or one. He was like, oh, because we'd asked him, what would be good? He's like, one would have been great.

• 1:08:00Ben?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:00Shaan Puri?

  For where I was.

• 1:08:01Ben?

  So that's, that's the trade off you make is that like, yeah, my brother and sister were in much cooler places in Eastern Europe, but like Eastern Europe is hard, man, like really hard.

• 1:08:10Sam Parr?

  But I thought like, so I guess you're dealing with mostly Mexicans or some type of Hispanic?

• 1:08:14Ben?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:15Sam Parr?

  They're the most hardcore Catholics there are. They, they were, they're willing to fail.

• 1:08:19Ben?

  So what you gotta realize though, El Paso is like a very transitory. A lot of people just got there from, from Mexico. And so it's like, ah, well, I'm not really going to my church that I used to go to. Maybe I'm looking for something new. Like my life is already changing. I'm open to, to something new.

• 1:08:33Sam Parr?

  You know, Facebook has a similar feature. It's called recently moved and those are great people to target.

• 1:08:39Sam Parr?

  It's true. Recently moved is an awesome group of people to target because they're changing their life.

• 1:08:43Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. If you have like a weight loss thing. Ben, can you give me the like speed version of what is the pitch? So you knock, you literally physically knock on a door. I open up. What happens?

• 1:08:55Ben?

  Yeah. So essentially what we're taught to do is

• 1:08:59Shaan Puri?

  No, just like do it.

• 1:09:02Shaan Puri?

  In Spanish.

• 1:09:03Sam Parr?

  Yeah, do it to me. Do it to me. No oblo and you gotta

• 1:09:08Ben?

  You guys gotta, you gotta bear with me. It's been, okay. So I'm, I'm 34. It's been 13 years.

• 1:09:13Shaan Puri?

  You do this a hundred thousand times. You know this like

• 1:09:17Ben?

  So, you know, I'd say, hi, how are you? My name is Elder Wilson. This is like, I got my companion with me. This is Elder Lopez. How are you today? You know, just whatever.

• 1:09:29Sam Parr?

  Hi, good. I'm doing great. Nice to meet you.

• 1:09:31Ben?

  Gosh, how, gosh, I'm sorry. Hold on, let me think about this.

• 1:09:34Sam Parr?

  What do you want?

• 1:09:34Shaan Puri?

  Okay, we'll give you a second.

• 1:09:36Ben?

  We'll get into it. I can get into it, but like how would I first, first start? That's what I'm trying to think of.

• 1:09:41Sam Parr?

  How many times did people tell you to F off?

• 1:09:43Ben?

  I couldn't begin to tell you.

• 1:09:46Sam Parr?

  I mean, more often than not.

• 1:09:47Shaan Puri?

  Do they train you or you just sort of figure out how to sell?

• 1:09:49Ben?

  You go to, uh, well, so you have three weeks of training if you're speaking English. If you're learning a language, it depends on how difficult the language is. I got six weeks of training, I think.

• 1:10:00Sam Parr?

  Do you carry mace?

• 1:10:01Ben?

  No.

• 1:10:03Sam Parr?

  No weapon, no, nothing like a whistle? You have a whistle?

• 1:10:06Ben?

  No, I, I think maybe the, the, the women, it might be up to their own discretion. Maybe they do some stuff like that. I have a friend who got stabbed. He was in Honduras, uh, like a good buddy of mine got stabbed on his mission.

• 1:10:19Sam Parr?

  I guess.

• 1:10:19Shaan Puri?

  Ben, just put him up, lethal weapon here.

• 1:10:22Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:22Ben?

  I'm trying to think of how, uh, how, you know, um, you, you'd start off with just like, um, you know, we're, we're missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ, Latter Day Saints. And you, you, you start off by asking them questions like, uh, do you believe in God? Are you someone who, who believes in God? Yeah. Oh, uh, you know, like, well, what, what do you believe about it? Do you go to a church? Oh, yeah, I go to a church. And so you start with kind of relating to them about their faith. And then you say, well, you know, our message is that, uh, you know, you said you believe in Jesus Christ. We also believe in Jesus Christ from the Church of Jesus Christ, Latter Day Saints. And what we believe is that the same Christ, the same church that Christ established when he was on the earth 2,000 years ago was lost for a period of time.

• 1:11:07Ben?

  Um, and, and so no one had the complete truth, but that it's been restored again, that exact same church. And so that's why we're out here trying to, to talk to people. If you knew that was true, that Christ's church was, was back on the earth, the same one that he established, is that something that would be interesting to you?

• 1:11:23Sam Parr?

  Oh my gosh, this is awesome.

• 1:11:24Shaan Puri?

  The wolf.

• 1:11:25Sam Parr?

  Just a sales call.

• 1:11:26Shaan Puri?

  The wolf of, of, of.

• 1:11:28Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:31Sam Parr?

  Provo, this is great, man.

• 1:11:33Shaan Puri?

  Dude, uh, that's fascinating, man. I feel like, by the way, you know, to whoever runs the budget at the, uh, you know, the Mormon church, me and Sam are available for consultation. If you need some, uh, some, uh, you know, tips on how to brush up that, that opening script. I think maybe those first few lines, maybe we could give you some other hooks, maybe some other, some other, uh, other ways in because.

• 1:11:53Sam Parr?

  Also, like, have you seen the trends on TikTok where it's like a baby or something like running away? And they overlay, uh, audio that says, excuse me, ma'am, can I talk, can I talk to you about the Lord?

• 1:12:02Ben?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:03Sam Parr?

  Or could I, you know, could I talk to you about the Lord, ma'am? Have you been to church lately, ma'am? Where are you going? Could we, can we please talk? It's like always like something funny running away. You guys should pounce on that, man.

• 1:12:12Shaan Puri?

  Would it be valid to do your mission through TikTok? Like if you were like, I'm gonna make amazing TikTok videos that go viral and help spread our mission. Like, could you do that? Is that like, or it has to be door knocking?

• 1:12:23Ben?

  Well, no. So during COVID, a lot of missions kind of went to social media, essentially. Now you gotta realize that like, your mission is like, it's a rite of passage, really. Like, for two years, when I was 19 to 21 years old, I didn't have any contact with my family, except for I wrote them an email once a week and then I got to call home on Christmas and Mother's Day. That was it. So like, completely separated from my past life, like doing this extremely hard thing. And so during COVID, missionaries did like start doing like social media missions because they couldn't go to people's doors and talk to them. But my impression was like, man, that sounds like this sucks. Like you missed out on the rite of passage.

• 1:13:07Ben?

  Like, I wouldn't want to do that for two years. Like, that doesn't sound fun.

• 1:13:12Sam Parr?

  Just exploring yourself, losing your virginity, going to parties, converting people.

• 1:13:16Ben?

  Well, the funny thing is like, no.

• 1:13:19Sam Parr?

  This shit, baby.

• 1:13:21Shaan Puri?

  You're saying, you're saying, man, that sounds like it sucks. I wouldn't want to do that. And like, when you described like not seeing your family and like, you know, having to like, whatever you said, like, you know.

• 1:13:32Ben?

  The thing is, like, if you're going to.

• 1:13:34Shaan Puri?

  Wash your knees every day or whatever.

• 1:13:36Ben?

  Like, you want it to be hard. You want it to be like this, like, life-changing, difficult, crazy thing that you do with your life, not like sitting behind a computer for two years.

• 1:13:45Sam Parr?

  That's the difference between Mormons and Gentiles like us.

• 1:13:48Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:13:49Sam Parr?

  It's a bunch of heathens.

• 1:13:50Shaan Puri?

  Dude, I spent my whole life avoiding hardship. Like, I would be in the military or like, you know, the Mormon church or whatever. Like, if I, if I really wanted to lean into like, difficulty, I spent my life running away from difficulty.

• 1:14:03Sam Parr?

  We, we are not the same.

• 1:14:06Sam Parr?

  Yeah, we are not the same.

• 1:14:08Ben?

  Yeah, then it is like a big cultural thing. It's hard to explain how excited I was for this, again, in two years.

• 1:14:15Sam Parr?

  Oh my God. Well, that's why you're, you know, are gonna be probably more successful than both of us.

• 1:14:21Shaan Puri?

  And happier.

• 1:14:21Sam Parr?

  And happier.

• 1:14:23Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I have a ton of respect for anybody who does that. I also have even more respect for whoever was able to convince people to do this. I think that is like one of the greatest, you know, like, uh, greatest like organizations that that's been created like with such a strong pull that its members would take such a like large, you know, uh, movement and like to support it like.

• 1:14:47Sam Parr?

  And they're obligated to convince 10 other people to join.

• 1:14:50Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I'm trying to get somebody to give me their email address for like two seconds and I'm like, ah, this is so hard.

• 1:14:55Sam Parr?

  Like they have to give you 10% of their income. They gotta give you 10% of their income and go and recruit about 50 more people. It's the greatest thing ever.

• 1:15:02Shaan Puri?

  Two years of your life, 10% of your income, all of your social capital and probably something else that I don't even know about.

• 1:15:08Sam Parr?

  And we can't pay taxes either because we're giving it all away.

• 1:15:13Ben?

  It's the, it's the sweetest deal in the world. It is. It is a great deal. 10% is cheap on, uh, on what you get in return.

• 1:15:21Shaan Puri?

  Wow. Oh, wow. Amazing. And you have to believe it's the greatest deal in the world.

• 1:15:26Ben?

  I will say this.

• 1:15:27Shaan Puri?

  Even better. Wow. Amazing.

• 1:15:29Sam Parr?

  I didn't enjoy this, man. I've never seen.

• 1:15:32Shaan Puri?

  I'm convinced now.

• 1:15:34Sam Parr?

  You're like, do you guys want more?

• 1:15:36Ben?

  Let me, I'll, I'll tell you this. I do, I do, I pay 10% of, of all my income. I donate a ton of time. It sucks all my time. I donated two, I gave two years. I paid for two years to be on this mission. Okay. I get, I give up a lot, but at the same time, like, if I move anywhere, I show up in a new place, I call the local congregation, a bunch of dudes come help me unpack my boxes and move in. I go to church. I immediately have like a dozen friends. People invite me over to dinner for the first few nights that I'm in this new city. If I need, if I need a job, there's someone, you know, dedicated in the congregation who will help me find a job. If I'm ever like down on my luck and I need food, the Church of Jesus of Latter-day Saints will provide me with food, make sure I don't go hungry. Like,

• 1:16:21Shaan Puri?

  You just described being a famous podcaster also, by the way.

• 1:16:26Shaan Puri?

  Sam just Sam went on a road trip last year and was just like, hey, who wants me to drive their car? And people were like, here, here's the keys. He's like, hey, um, anybody here's wife want to cook me dinner and you know, give me a massage? People like, honey, honey, Sam's in town.

• 1:16:41Sam Parr?

  Maybe I, maybe I am Mormon after all.

• 1:16:43Shaan Puri?

  Exactly.

• 1:16:47Sam Parr?

  I mean, I, I look like it. Maybe I am Mormon. Maybe I should do a DNA test.

• 1:16:52Shaan Puri?

  Jokes aside, and also I don't want to have the wrath of God if he does exist against me. So, you know, uh, I think it is pretty awesome. And also like, I think people study like what makes people happy in the end. I think the biggest.

• 1:17:02Sam Parr?

  It's always religion. That's always part of it.

• 1:17:04Shaan Puri?

  Well, I think the biggest one is, is like, um, quality time spent with people you care about, which like, is a combination of like family, friends, communities, spiritual community, all that stuff. And so what you're describing is basically like.

• 1:17:18Sam Parr?

  That sounds awesome.

• 1:17:18Shaan Puri?

  Meaningful relationships with people who like, you know, have like kind of an unconditional support of each other, which is great. And something that everybody would sign up for, um, you know, depending on, you know, with the situation, the cost.

• 1:17:30Sam Parr?

  I do think believer, believers in a religion live longer than non-believers. And I also think they're happier. Uh, I was curious about that.

• 1:17:37Ben?

  Sean, that was a succinct pitch for, for why it's a great, and we need to send you on a mission. Elder Purdy.

• 1:17:43Shaan Puri?

  I would love to go knock on a, I would love to go knock on a hundred door. I really want to just do door sales just to see if I could do it and how it would work.

• 1:17:50Sam Parr?

  The pitch needs to be, excuse me, man. Do you know what the average life expectancy of an atheist is? Now, what if I were to tell you that Mormon believers, it's this? Would that interest you?

• 1:18:00Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:18:01Ben?

  We, I don't know if, if, uh, if the church would go for this, but if they would, we should do a YouTube series where like, we send Sean with a couple missionaries I could hook you up with in the Bay area and just go knock on like a hundred or 200 doors with them and like, see what it's like, offer your thoughts and then like, give them some observations and tips from, uh,

• 1:18:22Shaan Puri?

  Well, I would like to just go sell my own fake religion and just see like how well I could do. Because you know, I need I need that kind of fresh slate. I'm more of an entrepreneur, not an intrapreneur, if you know what I mean. So I gotta create something from scratch here and keep all those tax benefits to myself as well. I've actually considered this many times about creating my own religion. Because I do have my own philosophy, my own belief system. I do share it with others and and it's a life operating system.

• 1:18:51Sam Parr?

  And I don't like taxes.

• 1:18:52Shaan Puri?

  And I think that it's fantastic to to own a religion or to go own a church of a religion.

• 1:18:57Ben?

  And you're Indian. So you can be a guru. Like, people expect that, you know?

• 1:19:02Shaan Puri?

  I know. I mean, when I had the longer hair, I was much better suited for this. But you know, if like Sam, what would be your opening line? Like, what where what direction would you take it? Like, he was like, hi, I'm Ben. Do you have a do you have a moment to talk about?

• 1:19:12Sam Parr?

  I would have said exactly, I would say, excuse me, ma'am, I know this is so strange, but I got to ask you a quick question. What would you say if I told you that the average life expectancy of an atheist was 72, but the average life expectancy of a Mormon is 84? Would you want to know why? And I think they would say, yeah, I guess. Well, you see, it's

• 1:19:29Shaan Puri?

  Do you want to see your grandkids someday?

• 1:19:31Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like, well, because when you believe in a religion, it means this, this, this, and this. And it just so happens, our religion, I would sell them on the

• 1:19:38Shaan Puri?

  Well, that's why it was good that he he started with, do you believe in God? Right? Because

• 1:19:42Sam Parr?

  Get the losers out of the way.

• 1:19:43Shaan Puri?

  Well, no, well, you got to separate. Are you talking to an atheist? Are you talking to somebody of another religion? Because you can't, you got to know which way you're going there. The other way is, you know, you do the thing where you're like, you know, hey, you know, I was just at your neighbor's house and I thought I would pop by, just so you're like,

• 1:20:02Sam Parr?

  I hate when I get

• 1:20:03Shaan Puri?

  I'm in the neighborhood.

• 1:20:04Sam Parr?

  I would say, which neighbor?

• 1:20:05Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I was, you know, the Johnsons across the street. And, you know, I thought I'd stop by because blah, blah, blah. Or like, you know, I really just wanted to chat with you for a minute. Do you do you believe in God? Or, you know, maybe go with something that's like, I was just wondering, have you seen this video? Hold up my phone of that Tik Tok of the baby be chased away. You know, like, I'm just trying to like, you know, stun them into not, not like automatically rejecting me, right? Like, it's like, how do I get some curiosity? Which would be something like, um, you know, I'm going around the neighborhood. I'm just asking, you know, do you go to church regularly? And they're like, oh, yeah, right. Awesome. Uh, would you say you believe in God? Yeah, I do believe in

• 1:20:48Shaan Puri?

  God. Um, you know, where'd that start? Was that from your parents? Yeah, my mom was super religious. My mom too. And then I was like, you know, trying to do something like that. That's off the top of my head. How I would try to like, you know, build rapport quickly is I get them to talk.

• 1:21:02Sam Parr?

  Stick to podcasts.

• 1:21:05Shaan Puri?

  Stick to podcasts. Hey, you give me, give me a hundred thousand reps at this. I think I'd be pretty good by the end.

• 1:21:10Sam Parr?

  Yeah, better than Ben and having to think about it.

• 1:21:12Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, Ben's response made me think he might, he might not have gone on that mission after all.

• 1:21:16Ben?

  Hey Sean, I had 32 converts. You've got zero so far. So you gotta get on my level.

• 1:21:21Shaan Puri?

  I just don't know how you forgot the script. You said a thousand, a hundred thousand times. It sounds a little suspicious.

• 1:21:26Ben?

  Over a decade's a long time, Sean. A decade's a long time.

• 1:21:30Sam Parr?

  All right, I gotta go bathroom. I'll talk to you all in a little bit.