This Gas Station Pizza Business Makes $540M/Yr?!

Episode 583: Sam Parr ( https://twitter.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://twitter.com/ShaanVP ) talk about the genius business model of Hunt Brothers Pizza, and bring you three totally different inspirational stories of people doing cool shit. Want to see Sam and Shaan’s smiling faces? Head to the MFM YouTube Channel and subscribe - http://tinyurl.com/5n7ftsy5 — Show Notes: (0:00) Shaan gets triggered (3:16) $540M ARR Pizza Business (14:02) This silly game is making $22M a year (22:11) Shaan's white collar side hustle of the week (26:48) "The house always has an edge" (33:08) Nick Gray's unconventional dating experiment (37:22) Real life Rom Com plays out on Twitter (45:23) Scott Galloway: "I can get down but I won't stay down" (50:11) How To Lose Weight In 4 Easy Steps — Links: • Jambys - https://www.jambys.com/ • Hunt Brothers Pizza - https://www.huntbrotherspizza.com/ • Geoguessr - https://www.geoguessr.com/ • The New Yorker article - https://tinyurl.com/yh95wcm8 • Nick Gray on Twitter - https://tinyurl.com/pjctk56b • “How To Lose Weight In $ Ebay Steps” - https://tinyurl.com/yw7u4xbp • Get HubSpot's Free AI-Powered Sales Hub: enhance support, retention, and revenue all in one place https://clickhubspot.com/sym — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

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

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  If you have ever listened to this podcast, or you like this podcast, or it's the first time listening to this podcast, I swear to God, I swear on my life, this podcast is amazing. Today, this episode specifically, I can't guarantee all about all the rest of them. But today's episode is amazing. Everything that you've ever liked in any piece of content that's around business, life motivation, inspiration, people doing cool shit. It is in this episode. I swear on my life, you will love this episode. And I've never said that before. This is the first time, and it's probably the last time I'll ever do that because I don't want to die. The last 20 minutes are by far the best. Make sure you get those last 20 minutes.

• 0:43Sam Parr?

  All right, we're live. Sean, how you doing?

• 0:46Shaan Puri?

  How am I doing? Did you know it's funny? Some days I wake up and I'm Andrew Huberman's godson. I wake up, I stretch, I get my psoas loose, I get outside, I get some sunlight, I cold plunge, I sauna, I do everything. I meditate, I focus, I pray, I don't even believe in God. I'm just praying to the universe. I do everything. And then some days are like today, where I wake up and I just wage war for my boxers in my bedroom. I don't get out of bed. I open up my laptop. I'm like, oh, what's coming in? What's coming into the inbox? I'm ready. I put on my armor and I just start. I'm launching ad campaigns. I'm fighting off a cease and desist. I'm texting somebody. I'm diligence a good deal and three hours fly by. I haven't brushed my teeth. I haven't changed my clothes.

• 1:31Shaan Puri?

  I'm like, I'm just sitting, sitting in bed. I do a zoom call. They're like, are you in bed? I'm like, brother, I haven't gotten out of bed yet. I just started, I woke up and I was playing the game. And if I'm honest with you, if I'm totally honest with you, I've never feel more alive than when I'm in that second mode. I'm sorry, Huberman, forgive me. I just feel more alive when I do it the wrong way.

• 1:50Sam Parr?

  It usually starts with like something bad that you see, like a fire. Like, why the hell are we spending this much money on this? Or what did you see?

• 1:59Shaan Puri?

  Wage war. It's because I'm like, something triggers me. I'm like, exactly. Why are the numbers lower than they should be? F this. I'm going to single handedly change this dashboard right now. Or, you know, somebody texts me saying, whatever, did you see this? Or, hey, you know, we get an email in that's like, hey, you're screwed. I'm like, not only am I not screwed, I'm thriving. Hold on, just give me 90 minutes on this and I will turn this around. And I just like, I don't know. It's just, it gets something in me. Something comes out of me. That's just more valuable than all of the good, healthy stuff.

• 2:33Sam Parr?

  Years ago, we talked about a company on here called Jambi's. And I felt it was the stupidest idea that I've ever heard. I think it was underwear that you could wear shorts.

• 2:45Shaan Puri?

  Bro, I'm not going to flash the audience, but just so you know, I'm podding in Jambi's right now.

• 2:51Sam Parr?

  And that's what I was going to ask. Were you wearing Jambi? I like, I thought it was the dumbest idea and you're like, oh, I own a bunch of Jambi's.

• 2:57Shaan Puri?

  I bought like 30 pairs of Jambi's. I even cut a deal with him for the Milk Road to advertise, but I was like, pay me in Jambi's credits. He gave us $2,000 of Jambi's credits to run an ad. And I was like, dude, I'm eating off this $2,000, you know, store credit right now. I've never been more thrilled.

• 3:16Sam Parr?

  Speaking of eating, I see on the top of our document that you have something called the insane pizza business.

• 3:23Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 3:23Sam Parr?

  What's, what's that?

• 3:24Shaan Puri?

  All right. You're going to know about this. I didn't know about this. So our buddy Val tweeted this out. He goes, the biggest pizza chain in the country is one I've never heard of. Hunt Brothers Pizza.

• 3:37Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 3:38Shaan Puri?

  And here's the hook. These guys went in and basically found a new way to do the pizza business. They've spread to 9,000 stores and I'm pretty sure, this is my guesswork, but I'm pretty sure they're doing over 500 million a year in revenue. And they're growing very, very fast. So what Hunt Brothers is, if you're like me, and you're a dainty little flower that only lives in, you know, metropolitan areas.

• 4:01Sam Parr?

  Civilized places.

• 4:03Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. We, we cut our nails over here. Okay.

• 4:08Shaan Puri?

  So I've never run into a Hunt Brothers, but apparently.

• 4:10Sam Parr?

  If, if you've never worn jorts before, there's a direct correlation of how often you've worn jorts and how often you've eaten Hunt's pizza.

• 4:17Shaan Puri?

  That Venn diagram is a circle.

• 4:19Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 4:20Shaan Puri?

  All right. So basically what these guys do is they created a pizza restaurant that is only like 50 or a hundred square feet. The way it works is they put them into a lot of times convenience stores, gas stations, places like that. And the owner of the gas station now has a little pizza shop inside so he can pop in a pizza. It takes five minutes. It comes out kind of like, you know, broiling hot and they can sell them by the slice, or as they call them, by the hunk. And they sell a hunk of pizza. A hunk of pizza is a quarter, you know, one fourth of a pizza. And they sell it for like, you know, a hunk is 289, or you can get two hunks for 549. Or you can get two hunks for free if you go to our YouTube channel and subscribe. Nice segue. Thank you very much.

• 5:07Shaan Puri?

  I really just do this to amuse myself at this point.

• 5:09Sam Parr?

  Two hunks for the price of a like. I dig it.

• 5:11Shaan Puri?

  All right. So, so what these guys are doing, they, they basically, you buy the, the France, you buy the equipment for 10 grand. So you give them 10 grand, they'll give you the thing. But then after that, there's no contract. There's no licensing fee. There's no royalty fee. So it's very different than a traditional franchise. All you do is you have to buy the ingredients from them. And so the way it works is you buy the ingredients from them. They, they have like, I don't know, distribution centers across the, across the country. They have like, I don't know, what is it? Like a hundred, something, you know, 16 regional distribution centers, 100 trucks that are delivering pizzas daily to, out of each center to, um, to do this. And it's crushing in the south and rural areas, really a lot of areas. It's like the dollar store, how the Dollar General or Dollar Tree really have thrived over the last decade.

• 5:56Shaan Puri?

  And one of the reasons is like, there's a whole bunch of places that are kind of stranded, stranded land. People don't build enough retail there. And so, you know, the Dollar General becomes the spot. It becomes like the store you can use.

• 6:10Sam Parr?

  It's like where you go and get a gallon of milk.

• 6:12Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. And so what these guys are doing is like, there's a Hunt Brothers inside the gas station. There might not be another restaurant for like 10 miles.

• 6:19Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 6:19Shaan Puri?

  Or there might be just very few options. And so the Hunt Brothers becomes like, you know, the de facto restaurant choice.

• 6:24Sam Parr?

  Have you ever been to a town that's been like that?

• 6:27Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, my buddy, my best friend in college, my buddy Trevor, he was from a place called Lander, Wyoming. And, and I was like, I've never heard of Lander. And he's like, we got five traffic lights. Totally. There's one street that has like stop, you know, stoplights and there's five of them. And that's it. We went there. And it's the only time in my life I've ever been like, yeah, let's just drunk drive. It's fine. There's no cars. We literally got drunk and we drove and there's not a single car on the road because there's nobody in this town. There was no human alive. He would leave his car key in the car in the ignition. Would he just go to a store? He'd just come back out and like the car, the key is already in the ignition.

• 7:09Sam Parr?

  Dude, a lot of times they'll leave their car on. Like when I go and visit my cousins in these areas, they'll leave the car on.

• 7:16Shaan Puri?

  He bought his car used and he was one day at a gas station and this giant Native American guy came up to him was like, brother, is this your car? And he's like, yeah, it is. And he's like, hold on. He goes back to his car. He has a key. He's like, I used to have that car. Here's the key. Here's like an extra key that I've had for that car for a while. It's a, it's a crazy place. So anyways, it's places like that where Hunt Brothers does really, really well. I thought this is a pretty genius model because what they did was they changed the footprint. So in the same way that Five Hour Energy said, let's not sell an energy drink in the fridge where we're competing against Red Bull and Monster. Let's get, let's create a small shot size, you know, non refrigerated SKU that we could put right up at the front by the register. They changed the footprint. And because of

• 7:59Shaan Puri?

  that, they were able to compete in a category because they became a category of one. We're the only energy drink that's a shot size at the register. And what Hunt Brothers is doing is they're like, we're going to create a new category. Forget Domino's, forget Pizza Hut. We're going to be the pizza that's in the gas stations. And it's ironic, when I was researching this, I thought like you, like, oh, this must be like, isn't it gross? Dude, people love this pizza. They're like, dude, they're like, honestly, it tastes better than the pizza I get at Domino's. Like the, the, the amount of like love that this brand has, it's almost become kind of one of those, it's so bad, it's good.

• 8:31Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's like White Castle. It's like White Castle where it's like, it's just, it's distinct. So if you want it, that's the thing that's going to solve that problem. But it doesn't feel good.

• 8:41Shaan Puri?

  And just here's the math on this. So a normal Hunt Brothers location might drive 10 grand a month of revenue. Okay, now remember, they have no royalties, they have no licensing fees, they don't charge you a marketing surcharge. All they do is, is they just charge you for the ingredients. It's about 50% gross margin. So that means on 10,000 per location, they're doing five grand a month per location in the ingredients. Five grand a month times 9,000 locations that they have is 45 million a month.

• 9:12Sam Parr?

  Holy shit.

• 9:13Shaan Puri?

  Over 500 million a year. And they're like, dude, this is great. It's working. They're like, now we're going into military bases and basically like anywhere where you you couldn't justify a full restaurant build out. We can, we can still survive. Like, we're like the cockroach of the industry. We can, we can survive in places other people can't. So like, you know, a Domino's might make 700,000 a year in revenue and Hunt Brothers won't do that. They'll do 120 or 150 or 200. So they do less revenue, but they're only 100 square feet or 56 square feet, right? It's like tiny. And so they could just fit into places other people can't fit. And I just think this is a, it's an amazing business. I was blown away by the scale. And I think that there's actually many other businesses out there, like the five hour energy example, like Hunt Brothers, that if you just change the form factor

• 9:58Shaan Puri?

  and you figure out how to do the, the sort of like, um, the mutually, I forgot what it is. Like, there's like a type of parasite that's mutually beneficial. It's like, uh, like, you know, there's fish that, that live on top of whales. They're like, we eat the thing off you, but then we get all this other free stuff. That's basically Hunt Brothers. Cause if you're a gas station, you put one of these in, people will come in, well, guess what? They don't just buy the slice, they'll also buy a drink. And then they'll buy this and whatever. And they're like, you know, for, for a long time, gas stations basically subside on, you know, oil, beer and cigarettes. And now there's like a new one. There's like a fourth horseman. Pizza, pizza is now here. And so this like fresh food inside gas stations is, has become like a big win-win for them.

• 10:38Sam Parr?

  And they've been around forever. It looks like on Wikipedia, they started selling pizza in 1962, changed their business in 1991 to the current iteration. So they've been around for, for a long ass time.

• 10:49Shaan Puri?

  They did a thing called Pepe's, I think. It was like Pepe's.

• 10:52Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 10:52Shaan Puri?

  Wholesale food or some shit like that. And they were doing kind of the same thing, but without the front-facing brand. So they were doing wholesale food, wholesale food. Basically, you know, selling food in wholesale to other places. So they had that kind of like the supply chain side of it, but they didn't have the brand. And so the brothers came together and they were like, what if we made the consumer brand for for this? And it's kind of like a B to B to C model, right? We'll, we'll give the brand to these gas station owners, to these convenience stores, and then we'll supply the wholesale food like we already knew how to do.

• 11:24Sam Parr?

  What's even crazier is how weird things become culty. So for example, have you had canes, canes chicken?

• 11:31Shaan Puri?

  Raising canes?

• 11:32Sam Parr?

  Raising canes, sorry, raising canes. Like, it's okay, it's fine, but it just has like a crazy cult. It's just really weird how things kind of catch on like, and I'm really fascinated by that because raising canes is fine. I guess like it's really weird how they serve their stuff in styrofoam still, and they just give you like a piece of bread. Like, that's just kind of odd. And that's weird that it's now a cult thing amongst young people. And it's weird that this is also one of those things, but it takes like 30 years because it's almost like you have to grow up knowing that it's a thing. And then when you're grown up, it's got to be like the nostalgic thing that you post online about. Do you know what I'm saying?

• 12:09Shaan Puri?

  It's not a game plan you can execute because it's not predictable and it kind of takes 20, 30 years to do it. But when you do it, it's like, it's like when you, it's like those people who, you know, get hot and they're in their 30s or something. It's like, what? That's, that's found money. How'd you do that? It's like these brands that they kind of just were like low stakes brands that survived. But then 25 later, years later, they become trendy. They're like, what the fuck? We're trendy now? These mom jeans are cool now? All right, sweet. I just had these because I liked them, right? And that's basically what happens to these brands is 25 years in, they get this gust of wind that like picks them up and makes them cool all of a sudden.

• 12:48Sam Parr?

  Do you remember XFL, like the alternative NFL? And they had crazy names on their jerseys, like He Hate Me. Your XFL name is Sean Found Money Perry.

• 13:02Shaan Puri?

  That's found money.

• 13:03Sam Parr?

  That's your, that's your new nickname now. The guy who got hot in his 30s. You're officially found money. That's cool. I didn't think that this would interest you and I like you more because it does.

• 13:14Shaan Puri?

  I'm trying. It's actually part of my, my PR team was like, hey, you need something relatable, bro.

• 13:18Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 13:18Shaan Puri?

  You need a blue collar. Hey, can we find a blue collar business for this guy to talk about here?

• 13:22Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Sean, uh, you know, we're hit, we're tanking in the numbers because he didn't know who Dolly Parton was. We gotta revitalize it. We gotta make it more relatable.

• 13:30Shaan Puri?

  My Q score is dropping. I got my like, my fictional PR team over here. Like, guys, we need something.

• 13:36Sam Parr?

  Let me tell you another thing that is probably even more random. So listen to this. So in 2013, this 29 year old Swedish software engineer, he posted on Reddit in a web development subreddit and he said, I'm fiddling around with Google Maps and their new API and I made a small application. I'd appreciate your feedback and suggestions. And you click on the link and this, it's this thing called GeoGuessr. Have you ever heard of GeoGuessr?

• 14:04Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 14:05Sam Parr?

  All right. This is gonna blow your mind. And so his original application was a small thing where you basically see a random street view of Google Maps.

• 14:15Shaan Puri?

  I've seen this.

• 14:16Sam Parr?

  And you have to guess where you are. And so they'll drop you off. Like you could do like a, it depends how hard it is, but it could be.

• 14:24Shaan Puri?

  You could see a barn and you see like some grass and you see like a half of a road and then on TikTok, there's these guys who are like, this is rural Kansas. And then they'll like drop the pin and they're within like 20 feet of it. It's like insane.

• 14:36Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And so like, it could be easy. So it could be like Times Square or the, you know, Athens or something like that. But then it gets more complicated where you'll get dropped in some place in Ghana and you have to look at the license plate and you're like, the license plates are yellow. I know that's a thing in Ghana. And I also know that like these cars are this model of car. They quit selling that in Ghana. This might actually be this other location. And so it's like a contest, basically. It's a game and it does okay. And so up until 2019, it's only doing okay. It's, um, I believe it's a Swedish company and all the revenue is public. And so 2019, the company did. $467,000 in revenue and $61,000 in profit.

• 15:17Sam Parr?

  So he's five years into this business, six years into the business, or sorry, three years into the business, and it's doing okay. And like barely full-time living. Well, the pandemic hits. This thing explodes. And so check, listen to their revenue growth. 2020, 2 million. 21, 10 million. 22, 18, 23. They did 21 million in revenue and 11 million in EBITDA. And the owner took out $9 million in dividends. And so at this point, this thing, it's called GeoGuessr. So in 2019, 2020, the pandemic hits, people are sitting at home. Originally, it's just monetizing with some advertising, not doing that well. He decides to put up a paywall, so you have to pay for certain games. And his revenue blows up, and so does his traffic.

• 16:02Sam Parr?

  And so at this point, this guy, GeoGuessr's, this website, it has 50 employees and does, and it has 50 million registered users. And if you go to their traffic on SimilarWeb, it's like 12 or 15 million a month.

• 16:15Shaan Puri?

  Totally.

• 16:15Sam Parr?

  And there are all these YouTubers and TikTokers who are famous now because of it. And so there's a YouTuber that I was looking at, and I would watch his videos. He has something like 1.3 million subscribers. And in fact, GeoGuessr's has created a World Cup. So it's $100,000 in prizes. And they do this like in-person event. And these guys get dropped off in the most random locations. And they, at sometimes, within seconds, they can guess where they are to within like a mile. It's insane that this guy has built this company. And it's just amazing that something so small and so silly has become such a serious business.

• 16:53Shaan Puri?

  This is an amazing find.

• 16:57Shaan Puri?

  Kudos to you. Love that you found this. I had no idea this was a business. I had seen the games of the guys guessing this, right? Like, there's, there's one guy, I mean, I can't even describe what he looks like, but he's like ingrained in my mind. I see him all the time on TikTok, who's just like, he's like a god at this. And it blows me away. What I didn't realize is that there's actually a business for this. I just assumed they're using Google, Google Maps. I didn't even know that there was a, there's a website that does this and that. I went to it, I tried to sign up to play. I want to play while we're doing this. And it's, you cannot play.

• 17:25Sam Parr?

  You can't play, you have to pay.

• 17:26Shaan Puri?

  Until you pay. And the pricing is hilarious. It's like $2.49 a month. To play like five minutes, like you get to play once a day. But if you pay $2.89, I'm like for an extra like 40 cents, you can play unlimited. And my brain's like screaming the value just for 40 more cents, I get unlimited play. And so, uh, yeah, I want to do this. We should play a game of this online. Do you have an account? We should, we should play one.

• 17:52Sam Parr?

  No, I didn't. I didn't sign up, but I should. The guy, the guy's YouTube, who you're thinking about on Tik Tok, I think his name is Rainbolt. And I think he has over a million subscribers on YouTube and his views are huge. And so, and he's not the only one. There's tons of these guys doing this and it's really actually wildly exciting to watch. It's very strange.

• 18:12Shaan Puri?

  Dude, we should sponsor this. There's not many things I think we should sponsor. There's not many places where I want to be a big fish in the smallest of ponds. But if there's one, it's this nerd Olympics of GeoGuessr to be able to go and sponsor this thing for like, you know, 1999. Get to my first million banners somewhere.

• 18:32Sam Parr?

  It's awesome, right?

• 18:33Shaan Puri?

  We are, we are the official podcast of GeoGuessr is what I would like to be.

• 18:38Sam Parr?

  It's really cool, uh, what these guys have done. And the cool part is, is that just like, uh, in the UK, so in the UK, there's a website called Companies House where you, uh, if you're a company that does, I think 10 million in revenue, you have to display your reports or your financials. Uh, I guess in Switzerland, or wait, is he Swedish? I think he's Swedish. Sorry. In Sweden, you have to do the same. And so it was actually a little bit challenging, the finance numbers, because I've got to do all this translations. But, uh, you can actually see all of their numbers, uh, for their revenue and things like that. And so you can go back and track their growth. It's really fascinating.

• 19:11Shaan Puri?

  I'm surprised, I mean, uh, I'm surprised at many things. I'm surprised this thing's doing 20 million a year in revenue. I'm also surprised that it's only 50% margin. What do you think? What are this guy's costs? What is happening here?

• 19:23Sam Parr?

  I don't know. How much is hosting costs? You would know. You, you had one of these sites.

• 19:26Shaan Puri?

  Not $10 million. Someone to get this brother an AWS plan, like what's going on?

• 19:32Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I don't know. Uh, 50 employees costs $5 million maybe, or yeah.

• 19:36Shaan Puri?

  Why does he have 50 employees? What are they doing?

• 19:39Sam Parr?

  I don't know, man. You gotta look at him, look him up on LinkedIn, but I know that he, but on his, if you go to the GeoGuessr career page, they like list all their people. I don't know. I think they, they have a bunch of, uh, advertising stuff. So I think they have an ad sales team, because if you go to their like employee list, it's like developers, of course, but then like account managers, things like that.

• 19:57Shaan Puri?

  So Google increased their Maps API costs 14x. So it went from a dollar to $14 per thousand API calls. So that's gotta be, that's gotta be why.

• 20:08Sam Parr?

  And that's why he put the paywall in because he's like, ah, Google's forcing me.

• 20:13Shaan Puri?

  And by the way, five years ago, so he puts the paywall up. Here's a post on the subreddit for r/geoGuessr. Title, "Why the Paywall Is the Worst Idea Ever." It says, "So first of all, I understand that Google increased its API fees by this, and I understand that GeoGuessr needs to make money. However, I don't understand why all of a sudden there's a paywall. I can't do, I can't play at all. Every single map, every single thing is this. Why do a paywall? Do more ads? Do you seriously think users are going to pay a subscription fee? I think 90% are going to leave and never come back. This move was in no way intelligent, especially because GeoGuessr is not the type of game you're going to completely talk, you're going to keep playing and keep talking about. The paywall is a, is a great way to make sure nobody ever plays your game again. So congratulations on ruining what you had spent

• 20:58Shaan Puri?

  years building and your best achievement. It is now your worst flop ever, five years ago."

• 21:03Sam Parr?

  Well, I would say that the owner's new, the, the, the broker of the owner's new penthouse overlooking Stockholm really disagrees that that was a flop.

• 21:15Shaan Puri?

  Sorry, I can't hear you from the 19th floor penthouse.

• 21:18Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 21:20Shaan Puri?

  Dude, this is amazing. And this is like the, you know, internet dork version of like a revenge bot. When you get this, when you get this type of hater comment and then you're, you know, you're proven absolutely correct. This is, this is revenge.

• 21:31Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he gets the Found Money Award. I don't know if I used that correctly, but we'll just assume I did.

• 21:36Shaan Puri?

  Still workshopping it.

• 21:38Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So anyway, pretty, pretty sick, right? GeoGuessr. What do you got?

• 21:43Shaan Puri?

  I got a quick, I got a quick one for you. So this is my side hustle of the week. It's not quite a blue collar side hustle. It's actually a white collar side hustle. So this is a, you know, this is a Ivy League side hustle. So saw this story the other day that Alex Isler, I don't know how you say the last name, who is a sophomore at Brown University. So shout out to Alex, coolest sophomore at Brown. This person is basically flipping.

• 22:12Shaan Puri?

  You know, high end restaurant reservations.

• 22:14Sam Parr?

  I saw that.

• 22:15Shaan Puri?

  Was basically like, the guys basically created a ton of accounts on Resy, on OpenTable, calls in, calls in using fake voices, fake names, and he's getting reservations at Carbone and all these cool New York restaurants, like the hottest of the hot places, gets a month in advance and he flips it for $750. Or I got a restaurant, I got a reservation at Carbone and he flips it for $1,500. And he says that in the last year, he's made $70,000 flipping restaurant reservations, 70 grand as a side hustle doing this. And his, his screen name on Appointment, Appointment Trader is GloriousSeed75.

• 22:54Sam Parr?

  Oh, my God.

• 22:54Shaan Puri?

  Which I know you were thinking about for baby names and it was your second choice, but Glorious Seed is just a phenomenal name as well. I'm a big fan of this kid.

• 23:06Sam Parr?

  That definitely was the nickname when she was in her, in her mother's stomach, my glorious seed.

• 23:11Shaan Puri?

  The quote I love, it was this, Alex said, "It's like some people play Candy Crush on their phone. I play dinner reservations."

• 23:19Sam Parr?

  Was this in like, was this in like the New Yorker? Where was this?

• 23:22Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it was in the New Yorker, but it was like buried halfway through the story. So the story to me was, wow, some sophomore is making 70 grand flipping high end restaurant reservations. That's awesome. But the New York article was like, like 15 pages long and it was all about like, how restaurants are really busy now. It's like, who is the editor of this? Like, you buried the viral story of this, you know, nine pages in. This is ridiculous.

• 23:47Sam Parr?

  That's insane. What do you think about that? I mean, so I think someone doing that, I think they're going to be incredibly successful. I think this will get shut down. He shouldn't have talked to the New Yorker.

• 23:57Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. What are you doing? Oh, you, the only, the only explanation that would make me respect them more is if this doesn't actually work anymore. And then they're like, all right, well, let me just go get some free PR as my like backend bonus out of this. Because like, the arbitrage is going away or it's not working as well anymore. Yeah, I had like two crazy months during the pandemic or after the pandemic, you know, stopped and everyone wanted to go to these restaurants and my run rate was 70 grand, but let me just feed this to the New Yorker and get some free press. That would be a cool story. If this was actually working really well and you went to the New Yorker to go talk about this, silly move. Don't need to do that. And yeah, I'm like you. This is actually a waste of talent, a waste of time and talent, but it does show me that you've got talent and congratulations. You will be successful, but you're kind of wasting yourself

• 24:42Shaan Puri?

  right now.

• 24:43Sam Parr?

  It's not a waste for a 20 year old. It's, it's a, it's a worthy, it's a worthy cause. If you're a sophomore in college, but yeah, like this, like it'll be done. It's probably already dead. He probably already got glorious seed. Probably is already banned from the, uh, from that website.

• 25:01Shaan Puri?

  Dude, when I was a sophomore in college, my friends and I had a genius idea to try to win the McDonald's Monopoly game. And unlike the movies where the guy who actually did it, he like figured out how to win. We just tried to brute force it.

• 25:15Sam Parr?

  You know how he figured out how to win, right? He just worked at the, he worked, he worked at the place that made the pieces.

• 25:22Shaan Puri?

  So I would have respected myself more if I had contacted the, the place that made the pieces and been like, Hey man, I'll give you a thousand bucks if you tell me where, where Boardwalk is. Instead, we were just like, Hey, we're just going to dig through dumpsters and go, get, go get the, go get the pieces that people throw out and see if we can win.

• 25:38Shaan Puri?

  And I, I ended up making like three grand that, that year.

• 25:41Sam Parr?

  Wait, did you really?

• 25:42Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. We like found some, we like won something. It was like worth like probably like a thousand dollars, but I wasted like a semester of brain power, of like extracurricular brain power doing this. And I thought I was winning and uh, you know, what's, it's like winning a carnival game. It's like, I won the bear. It's like, dude, you spent $90 winning that bear. You know, you could have just bought the bear for six, six bucks, right? That's basically how I treated my college career. A bunch of, you know, this really dumb, really dumb side, side hustle ideas that kind of panned out. But if I had just done like something useful with my time, I would have made, you know, 10 times more in the long run.

• 26:21Sam Parr?

  Did you really? I mean, winning a thousand dollars on that thing is kind of like a rush. Have you ever won the lottery or like any type of scratch off?

• 26:27Shaan Puri?

  I've won like raffles. I've won like poker tournaments. I think on scratchers, I've never had a big win. Uh, I've played a lot of scratchers. I probably, I probably down a couple of thousand bucks lifetime on scratchers. That's my guess.

• 26:37Sam Parr?

  Do you really, you still buy them?

• 26:39Shaan Puri?

  Not anymore. Cause my wife looks down on me for doing it, but there was like a three year period of my life where like, if I saw a scratcher, uh, you know, I'm buying.

• 26:49Sam Parr?

  I have not bought a scratch off thing or a lottery ticket in my entire life.

• 26:54Shaan Puri?

  That lines up. You're the same guy who sold his company and then put it all in his, like a CD and never touched it.

• 27:02Shaan Puri?

  Congratulations.

• 27:03Sam Parr?

  I have, I've been missing out.

• 27:05Shaan Puri?

  So I'm a pretty degenerate gambler and I spent, I have, I have a lot of, you know, like anyone who's a degenerate about anything, you have stories that are, it sounds like you're rock bottom and you're like, bro, that's just scratching the surface of what I've done. Uh, like, you know, I've gone on riverboats and I've, you know, overdrawn my account and I've, you know, I've done really dumb stuff, uh, when I was in my early twenties gambling. So I, I love gambling and if you take me to a casino, I'm a, I'm a happy, I'm happy as a clam. But I went with my mentor, my investor, who's a billionaire. I went with, with my, my, my mentor, Michael Birch, and we go to Vegas for like a conference or for, for a meeting. We're gonna go meet Rupert Murdoch, actually. And so we're there for this big, big meeting and we're staying at the win, I think. And we go, you know, we go down to the, to the floor

• 27:48Shaan Puri?

  and any degenerate knows like, there's a certain feeling that comes over your body when you walk the floor of a casino, when you enter the casino, it's like something about the air, the sounds, it like physiologically does something in my body.

• 27:59Sam Parr?

  For sure.

• 28:00Shaan Puri?

  And so I'm like, Michael, you want to play? I'm like, let's, uh, let's find a table. We got, you know, a couple of hours before this thing. Let's, uh, let's gamble. And I'm just like, I want to gamble, but I'm also, you know, I'm trying to hang out with him and I'm trying to be cool and whatever.

• 28:11Sam Parr?

  And you're only like 26 or 27?

• 28:13Shaan Puri?

  I'm 25 years old, maybe. He's 40 or something like that, 40, 45. I don't know how old he is. And he's like, you know, a thousand, whatever, 10,000 times wealthier than me and smarter than me. He's, he's everything better than me. And so that became very apparent because he's like, I was like, do you gamble? And he's like, not really. And I was like, oh, why? Like, you know, you don't like it or whatever. He's like, why would I gamble? Uh, like, you know, the house has an edge, right?

• 28:41Shaan Puri?

  And I'm, so I have these chips in my hand and I just put them back in my pocket. And I really haven't gambled since because I was like, oh, so the rich, successful guy I admire just pointed, he's like, yeah, like, this is a losing game. Why would I play a losing game? And just him saying that, you know, my mom has told me to stop gambling. I've had friends been like, yo, you should, you know, why don't you just not do it? And then nothing has ever sunk in, except for this guy just being like, why would I play? His house has an edge.

• 29:07Sam Parr?

  I thought you were gonna like, uh, like right when you walk into the casino, you turn your hat backwards and you're like, I tuck your shirt and you're like, Poké Shans here.

• 29:17Shaan Puri?

  I have a different dialect. I'm like prison Mike.

• 29:19Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Or date Mike. Yeah. Like, date Mike. Nice to meet me. Yeah. I thought you were gonna just like change. Like, thanks for holding my money. And I started saying that to people. Um, speaking of money. We have to get a shout out to one of our sponsors, Beehive.

• 29:34Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, what's not a gamble? Starting a newsletter on Beehive. You know what's not a gamble? Putting your content out there for the world to love. And you know who's making money instead of, you know, pissing it away? Tyler Denk, the CEO of Beehive, who just raised a crazy amount of money, $33 million, announced yesterday. And then he opened up a some community round. He's like, oh, by the way, like, if you want to invest in Beehive and you missed out on the fund, and he just posted in two hours, they crossed a million dollars of community money raised.

• 30:01Sam Parr?

  No way.

• 30:02Shaan Puri?

  Created amazing like PR, halo, you know, he's creating a cult of believers. It's pretty impressive to see what he's doing.

• 30:08Sam Parr?

  And I think I'm one of the believers. I had the opportunity to invest in this when they first started and I passed. I don't remember what the valuation was. What was it 10?

• 30:15Shaan Puri?

  It was under 10. I think we both passed under 10. I realized my sins and I came and I said, Father, forgive me, let me invest. After I started using the product and then I was like, I was like, so I'll use the product. I still really wasn't fully convinced because like, I don't know how big this market is, how big his newsletters, is this too niche? And then he, they kept shipping updates so fast and building features so well. I was like, okay, I've learned enough times in my career, like, just don't bet on like a workhorse founder and a team that ships this fast for a product you love and you use. Just like if that, if those boxes are checked, just invest. It's okay. You might be surprised on the upside with the market, which it seems like, I guess, is the case here because they've, they've really taken off.

• 30:55Shaan Puri?

  But I wa, I normally do not sell. I have a policy. Actually, I think this should be an official MFM policy, which is we do not celebrate fundraising news. Fundraising is not to be celebrated. I mean, think about what you're saying when you celebrate fundraising. It's either a combination of congratulations. Now the game is starting, like you don't get cheered for to start the game. You get cheered when you win. The second thing is it's congratulations. You gave up a piece of your company. You shouldn't really celebrate fundraising too much.

• 31:23Sam Parr?

  I thought this was an ad for them where we're supposed to make them look cool.

• 31:26Shaan Puri?

  But here's why I like, because he said something, he had a great quote. And if they're, if I'm a sucker for one thing, it's a great quote. He said, like, you know, in his Slack to his team, he's like, all right, guys, money's in the bank, but the rent's still due.

• 31:40Sam Parr?

  That's so good.

• 31:41Shaan Puri?

  I don't even know fully what that means, but that sounds like some mafia shit and I dig it, uh, which is some version of like, cool, we got all the funding, but like, we still got like, this doesn't mean anything. We still gotta pay the rent. We gotta put in the work and actually deliver. And so I like that line. That is the only reason I'm willing to talk about the fundraising because he said, the rent still do. And I think the rent still do is just like a, a, a great, great slogan.

• 32:06Sam Parr?

  He also had in the TechCrunch article, he goes, look, we're only two years into this and we have a billion emails going out. And like, that line does in itself isn't a lot, but the fact that this guy is this, I don't like using the word cocky because that's negative, but he's so confident. I love, I love what he has and I, uh, I don't know what the valuation was for this. Maybe it was probably north of a hundred million dollars. So he's right, I'm wrong. I lost on that one. So kudos to Beehive. And if you want to start a newsletter, Beehive with two I's. They still need to change their name though. Beehive.com.

• 32:39Shaan Puri?

  All right. Um, okay. So what else? What else you got?

• 32:42Sam Parr?

  Let's talk about Nick Gray. So Nick Gray's the hottest thing going on the internet right now. So Nick Gray is a good friend of mine, good friend of yours. I've known Nick for a little bit now. He's the weirdest person I've ever met. So one time Sarah and I are in New York. He DMs me on Twitter. I've never met him. He goes, hey, I want to take you to Washington, Washington Square Park and give you a tour. We go there and we just start hanging out and he pulls out a blanket that he goes, I keep a picnic blanket in my bag at all times. And he like lays it out. I'm like, all right, cool. And then he goes, hey, do you want to throw the frisbee? I always keep a frisbee on me. And he has a frisbee. And then I was like, I guess. And he goes, and we get done with that. And he goes, hey, do you want to fly a kite? I always have a kite on me. And so he pulls out a kite.

• 33:20Shaan Puri?

  Hey, you want a kiss? I got lips.

• 33:21Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 33:22Shaan Puri?

  That's the next one.

• 33:23Sam Parr?

  And I'm like, this is the weirdest guy I have ever met. And then I get to know him over the years and I realize it's totally genuine. You're just a weird guy and this is, it's an act. So fast forward a few years later, Nick has written a book called The Two Hour Cocktail Party. He's-

• 33:36Shaan Puri?

  By the way, all, none of this is an ad. We just, we admire this guy's weirdness. He lets his freak flag fly. We dig that. And he just did something interesting, which is what we're about to get to.

• 33:46Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And so he, uh, starts getting a little popular on the internet and he tweets something out last week. Here's the tweet. I'll read it verbatim. He goes, "I want to go on a blind date and I want to go to Tokyo next weekend. Here's the qualifications. If you're a woman with a passport who likes sushi and Japanese food and you could ride a bike in a big city, let's go and I'll pay for everything, but in return you have to film stupid videos of me for my socials." And then he puts out an application where you could sign up on like a Google Doc. So I called them. Do you know how many applications he got to this? Four, 400 women applied to go with him. And he sorts through all the listings and he sends me like his top five and his top 10 and he does calls with them to figure out if it's what he

• 34:31Sam Parr?

  says a culture fit. He's like, I want to see if it's basically like a job interview. He's like, I want to see if this is a culture fit. And so this post that he writes about or writes on Twitter, it gets something like 2 million views, the original, the original tweet. And people are so bought in. Now, fast forward a few days ago, he's on the date. He picks the girl. Up until recently, he'd never showed the woman, but he is tweeting out and documenting the whole thing, saying, "I just picked up flowers for her. I'm about to go pick her up at the airport. I've scheduled a ramen dinner for us and then we're going to do this, this and this. I'm nervous." And he's like explaining his inner dialogue publicly. Each tweet is getting hundreds of

• 35:12Sam Parr?

  thousands or millions of views. And he's saying exactly what's going on. Eventually, he shares her face and they look like they're having a blast. And I talked to him and people are reaching out to him from all over Japan. And like he shares, he goes, "We just got this amazing dinner reservation because this man owns this restaurant who's hosting us," or, "We're going to host a meetup with all the people who are following along." And the date goes so well, they've extended the date. So right now it's Wednesday. I believe they're still there. It was only supposed to be a couple of days. They're five or six days in. He has Netflix and Amazon reaching out to him about a show for this. It's just like one of the most viral things that I've seen about such a weird topic and people are so bought in. I've got so many people messaging

• 35:55Sam Parr?

  me saying, "Are you following what Nick just did? Nick just shared that the date's going well. I'm so invested into this."

• 36:00Shaan Puri?

  That's exactly it. I'm so invested into this. I love this on so many levels. The main thing is just...

• 36:09Shaan Puri?

  I love that Nick's just being himself and I love that he like there's, there's many ways to be rich. We've talked about this before. You could be rich with money. You could be rich with time. You could be rich with friends. Nick's life is rich with fun and adventure. And I think that that is something that that's why this is resonating because I think there's a deep part of a lot of us that is like, am I making the most of my time on this little blueberry? Right? Like, you know, am I, am I, am I making the most out of my time in life? And I think what Nick has done with this Tokyo date, to me, it's not about dating. It's not about anything. It's, this guy is like, living, he's had, he's having an adventure. He's having fun and we want to go along for the ride. And so I think we should actually go tweet by tweet with this thing. Go.

• 36:53Shaan Puri?

  Dive deep for anybody who's not following this. So tweet, tweet one, we'll put this on the screen on YouTube so you can see it all and you can see pictures of her. And so go to, go to the YouTube, uh, channel where it's my first million, you'll see it. So, all right. So tweet one is, he goes, I want to do a blind date in Tokyo next weekend. You read that out. He puts a Google Doc. Let's read the Google Doc. You open up the Google Doc and it says, Nick raised Tokyo Blind Date. Do you like sushi? Do you like exploring new cities? Do you like blonde guys with glasses? If so, come to Tokyo for a blind date next weekend. It'll be fun. Possible itinerary. You arrive April 25th, you leave April 28th. It's now May 1st. They're still going. It's like, you know, we replaced in the bottle and they got, you know, seven minutes of heaven. It's been 11

• 37:35Shaan Puri?

  minutes. What is going on in this closet over there? I must know. So he says, if you've never been to Tokyo, we're going to do some touristy stuff, blah, blah, blah. We're going to go to Shinjuku at night, go to some hot springs, Team Lab, tea tastings, this park. Each day we'll try two or three restaurants, maybe four. We'll, we'll talk, we'll walk a lot, shop, eat and explore. Why I'm doing this. I went to Tokyo last summer and it was excellent, but after a few days, I wish that I had a fun, cute friend traveling with me. Just to say that out loud, I mean, I'm not even saying that. And even a part of me, you know, clenched up when I had to read that, those words. Okay. I just wish I had a fun, cute friend traveling with me. All right. So I wanted to talk and share stories with and also film me for my dumb Instagram reels.

• 38:17Shaan Puri?

  Logistics, I'll get you a flight. I'll get you a hotel room. Is this crazy? I guess, but it also sounds fun. Yes, exactly. That's the sweet spot of life. Feel free to reference check me here. Here, apply, blah, blah, blah. And so you had to email him to apply. So you said he had how much? 400 women apply?

• 38:33Sam Parr?

  400.

• 38:34Shaan Puri?

  Which let's just take a moment to admire that.

• 38:37Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 38:37Shaan Puri?

  So you can go on a dating app as a guy and normally it's you send 400 messages to get one back. He sent one message out and got 400 women coming inbound.

• 38:48Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 38:49Shaan Puri?

  Work smarter, not harder, my friends. All right. So that's sweet one.

• 38:53Sam Parr?

  He also tweeted out the conversion rate between the Japanese yen and the US dollar. And he was like, all of you people thought I was going to be spending a lot. Turns out it just turned in my favor. And he's like, is like tweeting out like the.

• 39:04Shaan Puri?

  The universe is conspiring to help Nick Gray with this date. So he's giving updates kind of play by play. So he's like, I'm flying out. Here's what I'm going to do. He's like, here's the agenda. He's like, she's, you know, I'm, I'm in on my way to the airport. She's on her way to the airport. I'm going to pick her up. I'm going to get flowers. He does a poll on Twitter. Should I bring flowers? Yes, bring the flowers. No, chill vibes. Guess which one won the poll?

• 39:28Sam Parr?

  Which one?

• 39:29Shaan Puri?

  55% bring flowers, 45%. Too hot, too tryhardy.

• 39:32Sam Parr?

  Dude, 45% on Twitter is our losers. That's an easy.

• 39:36Shaan Puri?

  He's promoting his blog. He's like, by the way, I'm traveling. Here's my travel pack of must haves. He's got refreshed tears. He's got his eye mask. He's got like some, I don't know, some tape. I don't know why he's bringing tape. Things are getting a little crazy here. He's got a toothbrush. Okay. So he's going step by step as to how he's going to do this. Okay. So now he picks her up.

• 39:54Sam Parr?

  And he never shows her face. He only shows her face.

• 39:57Shaan Puri?

  Which is brilliant.

• 39:57Sam Parr?

  Like, like, like her hands accepting the flowers or the back of her head as she's taking a picture in awe of the Tokyo skyline.

• 40:04Shaan Puri?

  So let's just read here. He's at the airport. He goes, I pick, he's like, he's like, my, uh, my blind date update. So he goes, waiting for someone at the airport is humbling. You're scanning hundreds of people's faces, trying to find the one person who you've never, never met before. Each passing person says, no, not her, not her, no, not her. Until I see her come out, I pump my fist in the air and call her name. She runs over and we sort of half hug. We look at each other square up and full smile. I, I think we're both thinking the same thing. Wow. You are real. She might have been thinking something else, but I think that's hilarious. At least I have a feeling deep in my stomach that is, yes, she is real. That's a relief. I knew she'd be real, but you never know. What are, what are people on the, in the internet saying about us? She asked me.

• 40:46Shaan Puri?

  I say, it's 90% hype and 10% worry that you're going to cut out my kidneys. I like those odds, she says. Damn, full rom com. We're going full rom com. This is great. I send her on a side quest while I handled the train tickets to get us back to downtown Tokyo. We board the train and start talking. Conversation comes easily. Our ramen tour starts in two hours. The comments blow up. People are, are fully in, fully in subscriptions on notifications on. I gotta do this. So then he talks about, I booked a ramen tour for two reasons. If it was awkward for us to talk, then somebody else would be leading the conversations, the tour guide. And it would keep her awake till 9pm through the jet lag. So we meet, we do this, we do that. We tell our tour guide that we're on a blind date.

• 41:28Shaan Puri?

  He believes, he believes that we, uh, he misunderstood us or we must have misstated this. He, he said, but you said you just flew in. How did you meet? I explain what's going on with the date. The guide is confused, but he likes it and he likes us. She and I share a glance and smile. The ramen is good and I like her. End of chapter.

• 41:46Sam Parr?

  Dude, he's doing great writing this.

• 41:49Shaan Puri?

  Fifty Shades of Nick Gray is actually the name of this date, dude. This is, this is incredible. So he's going, and I love that. There was, there was one that he was talking about. He was just like, honestly, I'm exhausted. I kind of overplan like, my nervous energy around this made me like schedule too many things. I'm feeling exhausted. I just said goodnight and like, you know, honestly, I'm just, I'm just totally, totally pooped out tomorrow. I'm going to act a little bit differently. I'm just going to settle in a little bit. And every day, step by step.

• 42:18Shaan Puri?

  Has just been thrilling. He did a meetup. So he's like, I'm hosting a Tokyo meetup for us. Anybody who's following the blind date and then he posts a picture in the park and there's like 20 people there. He's holding his book. It's his date, him and 20 random people in Tokyo. Who are like fully invested in this date that came for a meetup.

• 42:35Sam Parr?

  Dude, so listen to this. So on one of the, two hours ago, he posted. It's late. I'm always late. We are running through the side streets of Tokyo's most upscale neighborhood to make our dinner reservations. She's wearing eyeliner and I have on my least wrinkled shirt. It'll be our last big meal together and I want to make it special. In two hours, we'll cry over a plate of Kobe beef. I get a message. I'd like to treat you and your date to a fancy dinner in Tokyo. I love the stories you share and I'll pay for everything. Please enjoy. But what's the catch? The foreign man, I don't know, has a travel company that does reservations. Nice, nice reservations are hard to find in Tokyo. The catch is that we'll like it and we'll share. I grab her hand and I risk a jaywalk to sprint us towards the skyscraper. You have the royal option. It's the only thing the waiter says before a train or a train

• 43:20Sam Parr?

  of lobster, shrimp and beef is sent our way. We eat and joke about how ridiculous the amount of food is. And we have a sense of excitement and dread about how this meal will play out. And it's a picture of this massive amount of food overlooking Tokyo. And he's just writing this, these almost poetic posts the entire time as he goes.

• 43:38Sam Parr?

  It's, this is just great. This is great. And I texted him and I'm not going to blow his story, but uh, I think they like each other. Uh, and he said that, he said that he'll come on the pod. He said, he goes, I don't know if I want to. And I go, okay, no pressure. And then he replies back. He goes, actually you guys promoted me for a long time. I'll come on and we'll talk about it. And so he's going to come on, but uh, it seems they like each other.

• 43:59Shaan Puri?

  I'm so in. Uh, I'm so in. My first marriage. Let's go. Uh, I, I've been waiting for an opportunity to turn our whole podcast into a dating show and I think the time has finally come. Nick, you're the man. This is a reminder to everybody. Step up your adventure. Do something fun. Do something a little bit out of the box. And good things happen in your life. I really do believe that. He created a situation to get lucky, that cool things would happen, that, that, you know, whether this date works out or not is sort of irrelevant. He's going to have a great adventure, a great story to tell. And he, he opened up the door to where maybe, maybe Lady Luck can walk in.

• 44:31Sam Parr?

  What if he marries this woman?

• 44:33Shaan Puri?

  I don't, I don't know if my little heart can take it.

• 44:36Sam Parr?

  If he

• 44:37Shaan Puri?

  I only got two ventricles, brother. Fill it up too much.

• 44:42Sam Parr?

  I I had a person come to my house one time and they were bringing their new girlfriend. And I find out that they're staying at my, they stayed at my house for five nights. I found out on the third night that this is a blind date and the first time that they've met. And they got married a few weeks ago.

• 45:00Shaan Puri?

  That's great. All right, do we have anything else? I got a little, little bit of, I have one, one sort of life advice type thing I like.

• 45:07Sam Parr?

  Let me hear.

• 45:08Shaan Puri?

  So this is not new, actually, we were, we did a podcast with Scott Galloway, which maybe it's come out by the time this comes out. I don't know exactly. And Scott said a bunch of things. He talked about his business, he talks about his money. But he said one thing in the middle that has stuck with me days later. Like, I honestly can't really remember a bunch of the stuff he said about money. But this one little phrase stuck with me. And I kind of want to give it some extra shine, you know? And instead, we talked about, don't bury the lead. To me, this was actually the lead. And we had talked to him about when he was younger and he was going, he's pretty open about going through tough times. He talks about when he went through a divorce. He talks about when he, you know, hadn't made it yet. He talks about his insecurities. And he said something which was like, he goes, you gotta keep your sails up.

• 45:53Shaan Puri?

  And I was like, kept your sails up? What did you mean by that? Keep your sails up? He's like, you know, like even when things were going poorly, I, I didn't let it, I didn't let things go poorly.

• 46:05Shaan Puri?

  Even if I felt down, I didn't take actions that were down. He's like, so even when things weren't going my way, I got down, but I didn't stay down. He goes, I kept my sails up so that, he's like, you know, I started eating right. I cleaned up my room. I would make sure every day I would go out and I would talk to people. And, you know, he's like, I just did little things. I would try to be kind and try to be generous to somebody that day. Even though I was feeling kind of low and I felt like things weren't going the right way, I started taking actions. You know, I kept my sails up so that when the next gust of wind came, I would be ready. And that's what happened. The wind came and I was ready because I had my sails up. And I just thought that was a beautiful life metaphor and just a great philosophy to have. Which is like, you gotta keep your sails up.

• 46:48Shaan Puri?

  Because the things that happen that are good in your life are not fully, you know, your, your doing. They're not your creation. There are tons of. Market conditions and luck and, you know, contributions from other people that help you out that come your way, that's the wind. And you can't control the wind, but the thing you can control is having your sails up so that when the wind comes, you actually get a benefit from it. Like if you're in such a lull or you're in such a low point or you're in such a funk that even when the wind comes, you weren't ready for it, it passed you by, now that's, that's on you. And so I just love that metaphor, that philosophy of life, and I wanted to kind of bring some attention to it. What do you think about that?

• 47:25Sam Parr?

  It was good to hear from him about it because he had a lot of, first of all, he was a late bloomer in terms of traditional success. So he told the story about how he had a bunch of companies that actually were doing good, but he lost them. He got fired from them. He told the story about how he didn't have a relationship with his father and his single mother. There was, it was a hard upbringing. He got divorced and he had his first kid, I think when he was 40 or something like that, a little bit later in life. And he was like, I have to make money to provide for this kid. I can't just be jerking off like I've been messing around a little bit too much. And it was good to hear that advice from him because I admire him and he was sort of a late bloomer. And so I know that he experienced hardship and he actually is living this life of, of, of keeping your sails up. And so that's why it was particularly special.

• 48:09Sam Parr?

  It was better to hear that from him this versus some like 28 year old, you know what I mean?

• 48:13Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. If you see like a 24 year old on Tik Tok talking about this, like you have the right idea. You just don't have the scars to prove it. And I thought Scott has the scars to prove it. I just love the phrasing, you know? Even when I was down, I didn't stay down. That's so powerful, dude. You know, you're allowed to go down, but you, you're not allowed to stay down. And also like a lot of these little things, I, I never had the words to explain it, but it resonated with me because like, you know, I'll do things where, you know, if I'm feeling a certain way, I'll be like, all right, I'm making my bed this morning. Or fuck it, I'm going for a run. I don't even like running, I suck at running, but I'm going for a run, I'm a run till I cramp. And it's like, all right, I'm gonna run till I cramp. It's like, why do those things? On the surface, making your bed seems like a nothing action.

• 48:56Shaan Puri?

  And it's like, dude, making your bed's not going to help you, you know, go get that girl or not going to help you, you know, recover from this breakup or go get the job or go get whatever, help turn your business around. But like anybody who's actually done it knows that actually those things are linked. You don't know how they're linked. And this phrase to me is a great way to link them. It's like, you know, I'm not just making my bed. I'm getting my sails up today. And all of these little actions I'm taking, I'm getting my sails up. And I now I kind of like, at the end, I can connect the dots of like, what were all those actions and little habits that like, instinctively in my gut, I knew were the right thing to do, but I didn't really, couldn't have logic and told you why that matters. Now I know why it matters. It's because that's getting your sails up so that now that when the wind comes, you're ready.

• 49:37Sam Parr?

  There's this awesome video that's not very popular, but it is like, it's so good. It's the guy from SNL, I think his name is Tom Bennett. He made this.

• 49:45Shaan Puri?

  No, dude, it's a, it's an essay. It was an essay for, it was a blog first, and then they turned it into, actually they turned it into a movie.

• 49:51Sam Parr?

  Wait, really?

• 49:51Shaan Puri?

  A blog post became a full-length movie. Oh dude, it's one of the best blog posts ever.

• 49:56Sam Parr?

  It's one of the, the video is so good.

• 49:58Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so this, this guy, Aaron is the guy who wrote it. It's called How to Lose Weight in Four Easy Steps.

• 50:02Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 50:03Shaan Puri?

  And it goes, I spent the last past year losing 80 pounds and getting in, in shape. A lot of people have asked me how I did it, specifics on my diet, how many times I worked out. So I thought I'd just answer all my questions here. It's just four easy steps. Ready? Here we go. Number one, no beer. This is probably one you've heard of before, but every time you drink a beer, it's like eating seven slices of bread. That's a lot of bread. Number two, portion control. This is especially true when you go to restaurants and your meal comes, cut it in half and ask the, ask the waiter right away for a takeout container. So you can save the second half for later. Number three, have your heart broken. And not just broken, shattered into itsy bitsy tiny little pieces by a girl who never loved you and never will. And then the rest of the post is basically about the heartbreak. And I was like, wow, I remember reading that intro and I fucking cleared my calendar. I was like, I am going to sink into this blog post.

• 50:47Shaan Puri?

  This, whoever wrote this, this is genius level writing and I loved it.

• 50:52Sam Parr?

  And the whole step three is like, get your heart broken. And then it's like, start going for walks to feel better. And so you start going to the gym and you previously thought that gym rats were a bunch of bros. And now you realize that they're your family and you start making puddles and you start eating chicken and more chicken. And you make more puddles and you repeat every day. And then suddenly.

• 51:09Shaan Puri?

  Let's read some of the, this is beautiful. Let's just read some of it. So by a girl who'll never love you and never will, join the gym at your work. Start going to the gym regularly, even though you don't know much about exercise and you're way too weak to do anything except for live, live five pound weights and do the elliptical machines with the old people. Do it until your sweat makes a puddle on the floor, then go home, go to bed early and do it again the next day and again and again. Listen to stories of your ex-girlfriend fucking around with gross and terrible people. Stories from your friends who think they're doing you a favor. Go to the gym and make more puddles of sweat. Buy, buy books, learn about muscle groups, how they work together, start eating healthy. Start, start planning your meals, try to forget her, more puddles. And it just keeps going and keeps going. And then it's like, you know, it talks about the, uh, I'm gonna see if I can find one more at the end here.

• 51:50Sam Parr?

  And then eventually, yeah, he meets a girl or something like that at the gym.

• 51:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you make puddle after puddle and eat single chicken breasts and work and sleep and the weather gets warm and the weather gets cold. And all you know is Taylor Swift songs by heart. And the only thing that exists in the entire universe is you and the gym. And there's a different sort of happiness. It comes at night when you're the last person in the gym and it's you and the girl who does weird leg exercises. You end up walking, walking out at the same time. Her name's Melissa, she works at the building next to you. She's worked there for two years, she asks you for dinner on Friday, promising it'll be healthy. The leg exercises she's doing, by the way, are called pivoting curtsy lunges. And then it goes into the, you know, the love story.

• 52:24Sam Parr?

  And then it ends with step four, no sugar.

• 52:29Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, no fruit juice.

• 52:30Sam Parr?

  Yeah, no fruit juice.

• 52:33Sam Parr?

  One of the best posts I've watched that, I remember when I first watched, you get teary eyed. It's a, cause it's a, it was a, I guess it was a blog post first, I didn't know that. And then it was a YouTube video and then I guess a whole movie. The YouTube, the YouTube video, it gets me teary eyed and it gets me so motivated whenever I watch this. So that's a little, a little bit similar to Scott Galloway's Keep Your Sales Up. This was just like the most positive episode we've ever done.

• 52:55Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, positivity, baby. That's it, that's the pod. All right, we have a big announcement, possibly the biggest announcement of the year from us. So pay attention, turn the headphones up. We are doing a challenge called. My first muscle. Instead of my first million, this is my first muscle. It is a fitness challenge that we're doing. We want everybody to get involved with it. Sam, tell them how it works and why we're doing it.

• 53:19Sam Parr?

  All right, so here's what it is. Summer's coming up. We got this thing called the PodBod. We've been sitting here, I think we're on 650 episodes or so. We want to get fit. So it's a challenge. It's a race, actually. It's 100 pushups, 100 squats, 100 burpees. 100 times 100 times 100. That's your first million and it's hopefully going to be your first million muscle. So here's what you're going to do. You can do any order. You could start with burpees, you could start with squats, it doesn't matter. But when you do a burpee, you gotta go nips to the floor. Your chest has to touch the floor and then you hop up. And when you jump up to the top of the burpee, your feet need to leave the ground. And you should film yourself doing it. And when you film yourself doing it, you have to time yourself too. And then you have to share the video with us at MyFirstMilkPod on Twitter.

• 54:01Shaan Puri?

  Exactly, or you can tag me and Sam directly. Either way, so just to summarize, turn a timer on. Best case scenario, you film it too, but at least turn the timer on and do it. You have to, you have as much time as you need to complete 100 pushups, 100 air squats, so no weight. And then 100 burpees. And you can mix it up and you could do them in whatever sets of five or 10 or however you want to mix it up. You just gotta get it done. That's the challenge. You've heard of 75 hard. You've, you've heard of the Murph. Well, this is our version of that. My first muscle. Me and Sam are going to be doing it. We're going to film it. We're going to post our videos of us doing it. Sam, what do you think your, your prediction, your time is going to be? You're a super fit guy.

• 54:36Sam Parr?

  I'm going to break 20 minutes. That's my goal. And I think I'll be in the 90th percentile. 20 minutes, I think is 90th percentile. I think the winner will be 15 minutes.

• 54:44Shaan Puri?

  I predict that I will be far above 20 minutes. I think I'm going to be closer to 35 to 40 minutes. If I'm, I did a little test run. I did a little test run, I went 80%, 70% and it took me like 42 minutes. And so I got a, I got a, that was just V1.

• 54:59Sam Parr?

  That's okay.

• 55:00Shaan Puri?

  Just, I was a nibble, it was a Costco sample of it. I just need to now iterate and get better.

• 55:04Sam Parr?

  There's two things here. The first is just doing it. So I think doing it, I have a feeling you're going to see thousands of people doing it. I think it's going to be cool to see that you're going to do it.

• 55:12Shaan Puri?

  Well, let's talk about the doing it first. You brought this idea from Jesse Itzler about the misog. A hard, physical challenge that you do, something that that makes you a little bit scared, that pushes you past your limits. It's good to do these. And instead of having everybody come up with a misog, we want to give the community one that we can all kind of share, all do together. And I don't care if you're out of shape. Don't let that be the reason you don't do this. If you can do pushups on your knees, do pushups on your knees. All right, you might not win the prize, but get it done. You'll be proud of yourself when you get it done. And I think there's immense, there's an amazing feeling on the other side of doing this. And that's who you want to be. Now let's talk about the prizes. So if you want to be eligible for the prizes, you got to do it legit. And you got to have a video camera when you're doing it. Otherwise, we don't know if you're, you know, this is not the gentleman's agreement. You got to actually show some proof if you actually do this thing.

• 55:56Shaan Puri?

  We've seen some amazing videos come in. So a couple of people heard about the announcement early and started doing them. Did you see these girls who did them in their peanut butter and jelly costume?

• 56:06Sam Parr?

  That was awesome.

• 56:07Shaan Puri?

  There's a guy who's doing it out in a field in a, just a set of overalls. That's hilarious. It's amazing.

• 56:13Sam Parr?

  All right. And so here's the prizes. So we got the company plunge.com. We got them to give us two cold plunges. I think these are like six or seven grand apiece. So they're going to give them away. We're going to give one to the fastest male, one to the fastest female. And then we got Nike strength to give away a bunch of bumper plates and a whole bunch of workout equipment. That's going to go to three other people. Who are the three other people?

• 56:32Shaan Puri?

  Well, we're, it's our discretion. We're the judges and we're looking for three things. We want, we're looking for creativity. So best dressed is one area I'm looking at. Another one is creativity on the video. And the last one is just inspiration. This is the Rudy Award. So for whoever really like, we watched the video and we are rooting for you. You will win a prize as well, but we're all winners if you do the thing because I don't know, you had the option not to, could have easily chickened out, could have easily said it's too hard, could have easily said you're too busy, but you didn't take any of those excuses. You're the real winner.

• 57:01Sam Parr?

  And to make sure there's no excuses, we have a timeline on this. It's going to end on May 12th, which is this Sunday. So you don't actually have a lot of time to get this done. So if you're listening to this, you might go do it like in the next 30 minutes and just get it out the way.

• 57:13Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. All right, I'm excited. My first muscle, let's go, we got to get rid of Podbot. Podbot is a plague. It's getting so many people, don't be caught up in Podbot.

• 57:21Sam Parr?

  And we have to say one last thing. In order to get any of the prizes. You have to subscribe to our YouTube channel and to our podcast on Spotify and on iTunes. You have to subscribe. That part is the gentleman's agreement. We're giving away all these prizes and we're trying to make everyone get a little bit healthier. All we ask for in exchange is just to subscribe. It costs you nothing and it means a lot to us. So that's all you have to do. Check it out. My first muscle challenge.

• 57:45Shaan Puri?

  Do it, post it, tag me and Sam on Twitter. I'm at Sean VP. He's at Sam Parr. Send us your videos. We can't wait to see them.