Blue Collar Side Hustles, Covid Businesses, and Going Viral On TikTok For An "A"

Episode 423: Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) talk about Shaan's rich neighbor's Covid business success, an Emory professor who's giving A's for going viral, Sam's short-lived employment at Airbnb, and blue collar side hustles. Want to see more MFM? Subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here. ----- Links: * Professor Marina Cooley TikTok * Jupe * Marathon Ranch * Smash My Trash * Mobile Home Park Guy * Parcast * 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: (00:45) - Shaan's rich neighbor and Covid businesses (11:15) - TikTok Professor and the future of education (15:12) - The story of Sam dropping out to try to work for Airbnb (26:05) - Did Shaan and Sam get girls when they were younger? (29:25) - Jupe (38:25) - Blue Collar Side Hustle: Smash My Trash (51:25) - Parcast ----- 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.

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  Somehow, five years later, COVID hits. And you know what they decide to do? They're like, you know what? Let's go all in on creating like safety, safety stuff for COVID, like masks, respirators, gloves, things like that. And they become one of the like core providers right at the start of COVID. They shifted all their production manufacturing stuff. They're like, forget the vodka bottles, forget the LED screens. We need N95 masks and we need respirators and we need, you know, these testing kits and we need, and they started producing this stuff and they started just winning all these contracts.

• 0:45Sam Parr?

  All right, we're live. Sean, we have a bunch of stuff. You have a, you have a full menu over here and so do I.

• 0:52Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. All right. I want you to look at my menu here and I want you to just pick something off the menu. Go ahead and I'll riff off it. I will, for people who they don't, they don't know, we only write like one or two words. So you get like a teaser, you're like, man, what the hell is this about? But you don't know what it actually is.

• 1:07Sam Parr?

  But I have, I put all my stuff in here in accident. I have this new researcher who's crushing it. He just gives me all the content like five minutes ahead of time. But, uh, rich neighbor.

• 1:17Shaan Puri?

  How did I know you'd pick rich neighbor? So there's somebody in my neighborhood who I bumped into and I've, I'm, you know, I sort of get out there and I collect signals. Is this, you know, where, where do I place this person on the, the Billy scale? Like, are they, you know, are they on their way up? Are they, have they made it in life? Are they really balling out of control? Where, where is this person? And these people have been balling out of control. Like when Christmas time came up, there was just like, the wife went outside and was just pointing at windows and all of a sudden the house was lit up like a Christmas tree. They had like, so they had the most like decked out things and they go, hey, hey, invite your kids over this Thursday. We have a snow machine there. We're building a snow hill in our driveway. Like, you, you want to do sledding without going to Tahoe?

• 2:02Sam Parr?

  What's that? Like a big snow cone? Is that what that is?

• 2:04Shaan Puri?

  No, it's like a giant truck that comes that creates snow and it piles it up so that you're, like their house looked like it was in, you know, Michigan or something like that.

• 2:15Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but it's just like, like, like it's like an ice machine or something?

• 2:18Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's like, yeah, something like that.

• 2:20Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like a big snow cone, like a big shaved ice thing.

• 2:22Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, you were right from the, from the beginning. You're right. So. They did this and they had a fake Santa there. And I was like, man, this is a lot for a Thursday afternoon. But okay, uh, this is cool. Like these people's style. They seem really nice. And I didn't know what they did. So I kind of, I hit it with the Google the other day and I was like, let's see who these people are. And they have a crazy story. So they created a company that back in 2014 did this thing. It basically, it lets you take a vodka bottle. They had a vodka bottle that had an LED sign going around it. So you could give somebody a vodka bottle that would say, happy birthday, Sam, or like you could program any message. I could be like, you know, uh, whatever. I could be like, you're getting old bitch, whatever.

• 3:05Shaan Puri?

  I could write any message on it. It would go on your, your vodka bottle. All right. Seems kind of gimmicky. I don't really, you know, not a bad idea, but, but falling out of control from that didn't, didn't a hundred percent make sense, but that was the business.

• 3:17Sam Parr?

  Sounds like a drop shipping like joke.

• 3:19Shaan Puri?

  Sounds like my first idea out of college. It's like, this is like me in college would have been like, bro, next, next Google. I got it.

• 3:28Shaan Puri?

  What if we took, you know, this Jägerbomb and we put an LED screen on it? Wouldn't that be incredible? And so, so they had this thing and they were like licensing this out or something like that. Somehow like Shaq became an advisor to their company. It was really crazy.

• 3:40Sam Parr?

  Makes sense.

• 3:41Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, as you would.

• 3:43Shaan Puri?

  Somehow five years later, COVID hits. And you know what they decided to do? They're like, you know what? Fuck this vodka thing. Let's go all in on creating like safety, safety stuff for COVID, like masks, respirators, um, gloves, things like that. And they become one of the like core providers right at the start of COVID. They shifted all their production manufacturing stuff. They're like, forget the vodka bottles, forget the LED screens. We need N95 masks and we need respirators and we need, you know, these testing kits and we need, and they started producing this stuff. And they started just winning all these contracts. And so now, like, if you go look at their website, it's one of those, I know you're rich websites because there's like not a lot of information on it.

• 4:28Shaan Puri?

  But if you go to like the P, they have like a press release section and it's like PR Newswire. Company gets $113 million contract with the government for safety equipment.

• 4:39Sam Parr?

  Oh, my God.

• 4:39Shaan Puri?

  Local East Bay success story where they, uh, they're now the, the sole testing provider for, you know, with the Lakers stadium, Levi's stadium, like all these different places. And so these guys are getting hundred million dollar plus contracts for their stuff. Now, I think probably it's like, you know, probably only like 10% margin when you buy.

• 4:59Sam Parr?

  You think it's that small?

• 5:00Shaan Puri?

  Selling masks. I think for things like that, probably it's like 10, 15% is my guess. Maybe they, maybe during COVID and everyone was completely price insensitive and they could just charge whatever they wanted. I'm not sure.

• 5:09Sam Parr?

  I would have thought that.

• 5:11Shaan Puri?

  But, um, but wow, dude, what a, what a pivot. And, um, you know, that isn't that just kind of crazy? And that was an opportunity kind of available to a lot of people right when COVID happened.

• 5:22Sam Parr?

  I know a bunch of people who did that. And like, I had a friend that did it and he's like, dude, check this out. And he sends me a picture of a Shopify store and it's doing like 2 million a month. I know a lot of people who did that. And I've only followed up with one or two of them. And, uh, I have a feeling that like of the eight people I know who did it, like three of them, it worked out. And then the rest, it was like a really quick cash grab, but then they overbought inventory and it, and it's like nothing. Do you know people who did that?

• 5:47Shaan Puri?

  Yes, we, we, there was a guy in, um, I had started this mastermind group. That's actually where I found Ben. Uh, but like one of the other guys in the mastermind group, he, like, every time he came to the mastermind.

• 5:57Sam Parr?

  Does he live in Texas?

• 5:58Shaan Puri?

  No, he's in Canada. Every time he came to the mastermind group, I feel like he had a different business, which is like not what you want in a mastermind group. But he was a good dude and he would always be like, oh, I have this other business that's like, oh, you know, for auto repair, blah, blah. We do their SEO. And I was like, okay, but then what about that thing you told me last time? And then one time he came and he's like, dude, we're doing mobile COVID testing trucks that will drive up to places and we could just do rapid testing for COVID. And we were like, all right, that's, I mean, that sounds cool, but like, are you like, do you know anything about COVID testing? Like, does anybody in the world know about this? Like what? He's like, oh, I got the scientists. It's gonna be great. And then he came back and he was like, hey, I'm really excited to be here and he needs you guys' help. Like three months later, he was like, really need you guys' help about going public.

• 6:43Shaan Puri?

  I was like, what? And he's like, yeah, we're gonna do like 85 million this year in revenue. And I was like, what? And he's like, yeah, we're getting all these contracts with the state of, with like, you know, the, in Canada, like these country, countrywide contracts. And, um, you know, we, yeah, we think maybe we should take this public next year. I was like, what the fuck is going on?

• 7:02Sam Parr?

  So how did it end?

• 7:03Shaan Puri?

  I don't even know, because I, that, that guy, my head was just spinning every time, uh, you know, he would talk, cause I'm like, this is either too good to be true. Or I'm too dumb and this is amazing and I can't tell which one it is. It's probably some mix of both. But you're right. I know several people that went all in on COVID, right when it happened. And like low key got like an absurd amount of traction very, very fast.

• 7:25Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like a ton.

• 7:27Shaan Puri?

  My dad had actually called me one day and he goes, my friend works at this hospital. They need extra equipment. They need extra masks. I talked to somebody in India, um, and they could produce these masks. And like, I think we could do like a two or three million dollar contract. And I was like, fantastic. Um, should do it. And he's like, yeah, I want to, but my dad has this problem where my dad is addicted to meetings. Like he thinks winning is like this important person met with me and then he'll tell me the duration of the meeting to show me the values. Like only scheduled for one hour, but we sat there for 90 minutes. And I'd be like, okay, so what? Like, and he'd be like, so, you know, he was really interested. It's two hours, right?

• 8:08Shaan Puri?

  And he was just like, he's just like always obsessed with that. So he was, he just had a bunch of meetings and I was like, dad, you're gonna,

• 8:15Shaan Puri?

  it's all about that action, boss. You're gonna take some action here. What, what's gonna happen? Like go, go for it. Do it. And he's like, well, no, I want, he's like, I want everybody to like sign off on it and de-risk it completely. Pay me upfront. And I was just like, dude, this is, this is like the cheap way to do business. Like you gotta take a little risk here. And he wasn't willing to take the risk.

• 8:35Sam Parr?

  You're, you're throwing shade on your dad right now. I hope he doesn't listen to this. And you called him boss. If my son calls me boss, he's getting in the headlock.

• 8:45Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, my dad, we make fun of each other like we call it like it is. I do a bunch of dumb things and I say when I do dumb things, this is his dumb thing. He is high planning, low action on these things. And he says it all the time. Like, we went, I went, I took him to Tony Robbins. And Tony Robbins is all about like taking massive action on like the things you want. And he's like, I was like, what's your big takeaway? He's like, oh, man, I need to take massive action. And I was like, that, yeah, that's, you did it. You learned the right lesson from this thing. He goes, that's my problem. I don't take massive action. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. He started slipping back into like, basically, he's like, I've identified my problem. But not like, right. Just like, so right. So true.

• 9:29Sam Parr?

  Whatever. It worked out for him.

• 9:30Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he did. He did great. Like, right. For like village in India to like live in like owning multiple homes.

• 9:35Sam Parr?

  Did the story, the story of you tell of your mom of like, I think you said she like had never eaten with a fork or something. And she just comes to America when she's 17. Is that what you said? I'm not exaggerating. I don't want to be disrespectful. I thought you said, I thought you said like she had, they didn't use like utensils or she went to a restaurant and like, or she didn't know.

• 9:52Shaan Puri?

  You're right. You're right. That that did happen.

• 9:54Sam Parr?

  No, I'm not being disrespectful, Mrs. Perry. That's the story. It's on record. And then also, when she used a payphone to call her brother to say that she was in town, she didn't know like that you hang it up. So she like let it hang. And then she

• 10:06Shaan Puri?

  She was just crying at the airport and some guy was like, hey, do you need help? Are you okay? She's like, I need like, my brother's supposed to pick me up. I don't know where he is. Like, she just landed in America. And he's like, do you have a phone number? She's like, yeah. So he, that guy picks up the payphone, puts in the quarters, calls the brother, tells him, hey, she's at Terminal 2. She's waiting here. I'm gonna tell her not to move. Brother didn't even know, oh, your flight was today? Like, they had no correspondence. Like, okay, I'll hang tight. I'll be there. And she talks to him and she's like, he's like, don't move. And then that guy had left, the helper had left. And so she didn't, she's like, not only did I not know how to use the payphone, I didn't even understand, how do you put this back? And she's like, I kind of was like fiddling with it, like, kind of like, like, trying to get it to stick. And I didn't know what to do. I looked around, nobody was there. And I just left it hanging. I walked away. She's like,

• 10:51Shaan Puri?

  I'll never forget, like, just feeling so Clueless about the world. Um, and there's like five stories like that on her.

• 10:58Sam Parr?

  Just to now they got to America. Now they have a house in San Francisco, so it worked out. That's the, uh, that's the American dream.

• 11:05Shaan Puri?

  Um, all right. Another topic.

• 11:06Sam Parr?

  What do you got?

• 11:07Shaan Puri?

  Uh, I got a quick one here. So I saw this Tik Tok of this professor. Uh, there's some professor at a college. Uh, I apologize to her. I don't know her name, but um, let me see if I can find it real quick. She basically, uh, Professor Cooley. Uh, I don't know what, she's a Professor Cooley at Emory University. So shout out to her. Basically her, she has, she teaches marketing at, um, at this college and for her marketing class, she goes, all right, class, um, if you want to do well in this class, you want to get an A, you have one job. Go viral on Tik Tok. All right. I'll see you. I'll see you in a few weeks. Like if you need help, you know, we have some, maybe, maybe some, uh, we could talk about what it takes to get there, but like, that's how you get a good grade. Go viral on Tik Tok.

• 11:49Sam Parr?

  Awesome. How old is she? Young looking or older?

• 11:52Shaan Puri?

  Younger looking. Um, yeah, she looks like, you know,

• 11:57Shaan Puri?

  she looks like if you were 12, she would be your friend's mom.

• 11:59Sam Parr?

  Um, got it. All right.

• 12:00Shaan Puri?

  Something like that. Whatever age that is.

• 12:02Sam Parr?

  Perfect description.

• 12:04Shaan Puri?

  So.

• 12:07Shaan Puri?

  So basically, uh, I thought this was amazing and it got me thinking like, really? How many more classes at a university should be taught this way? Um, so for example, like, why isn't there a class at, you know, why isn't there a class at, at, at school where it's basically like, okay, we're going to have four lemonade stands on campus, break up into teams. You're each going to run a lemonade stand like, and you know, the top lemonade stands is going to get an A plus. The next one gets an A minus, B plus, B minus. Um, and if you, if you're not able to break this threshold of sales, you fail. It's like, just let them go and do their thing and let them.

• 12:43Sam Parr?

  That's 100% how it should be.

• 12:45Shaan Puri?

  Or it's like, you know, maybe it's the net profit. So they learn about the cost management as well, but like, give them, you know, 500 bucks and be like, go, who can run the best lemonade stand or T-shirt company or whatever it is, or writing on Twitter. Um, like, you know, okay, it's an English class. Should you basically go read Shakespeare and all the stuff, or should I basically teach you how to do writing in like the modern day? And basically get cold email newsletter, cold email or Twitter. And it's like, yeah, you need to grow an audience around whatever topic you're interested in. It could be. The Bachelor, it could be world politics. It doesn't matter. You pick your topic, but you got to write to an audience on that and you got to publish. First thing is quantity. You got to publish every day for the next 60 days. And then the next thing is going to be quality.

• 13:30Shaan Puri?

  Can you actually grow an audience? Can you get, you know, 50% open rate on a newsletter with, you know, a thousand people on it? Go figure out how to do that. And so, things like this, I feel like would be so much better than the way that people learn about how to do real world business today in school. Another one would be flipping, like, everybody, you're gonna look under your desk? Yep, you're starting with this drill. Okay, everybody's got a drill. Like, your job is to flip this drill into the most valuable item you can get by the end of the semester. Go. And it's like, you gotta sell this, take the profit, buy something else, sell that. And like, just keep doing that until you can get to the biggest thing.

• 14:07Sam Parr?

  Dude, Ramon, our friend Ramon, his son goes to a school here in Texas and he, his kid had a class where he had to go haggle. And it was like, you have to get this much of a discount from a retail store, or something like that. And I was like, oh, that's awesome. That was awesome. It's like, great for a 12 year old. So I love that stuff. I, dude, I didn't have, when I was, all right, my sophomore year of college, I was a division one athlete, a runner, nonetheless, a runner, peak physical condition. They'd made me take a aerobic walking class, which was like, if you add up the tuition, it was like nine grand or something like that. So I'm on, it was aerobic walking. You show up and you go for a walk. So I'm all in favor of this stuff. I think it's awesome.

• 14:48Shaan Puri?

  Like, are you walking at least at like a fast pace? Why is it called aerobic walking versus just walking? Is that just branding?

• 14:54Sam Parr?

  Because the gym teacher had to justify their, their, their pension or their salary. I don't know. It was the stupidest thing ever. Like, it was, it was crazy. It was crazy to me. I had to take aerobic, I remember this, it was ridiculous. You just like showed up.

• 15:07Shaan Puri?

  What do you mean you had to? Seems like they don't force you.

• 15:09Sam Parr?

  You have to get like, the certain amount of credits. And it was like, this aerobic walking class is available.

• 15:15Shaan Puri?

  Was your major like PE? Why, why was this in your career?

• 15:19Sam Parr?

  Dude, because they make, I don't know. I don't remember exactly why I had to do this. No, I don't even remember what I majored in. I think just like, accounting or business or something.

• 15:28Sam Parr?

  It was a so I left school early. So it was accounting and then I and then I left school and then I finished online later and I was like, hey, you know, give me just give me any diploma that I can get, please.

• 15:39Shaan Puri?

  Why'd you leave school?

• 15:41Sam Parr?

  Because I moved out. So I the summer I had to take like some summer classes and one extra semester. And I heard about Airbnb. And I was like, that's where it's at. So I moved out there. Yeah, yeah. So you know, I think I told you this, I had heard about.

• 15:57Shaan Puri?

  I didn't know you were in college and dropped out for it.

• 16:01Sam Parr?

  I didn't drop out. I well, I don't know if it's technically drop out. I just like quit going and I finished online and like.

• 16:09Shaan Puri?

  You converted to an online student.

• 16:11Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like I took like some time off and then I eventually like finish and I would have to go like to a Kaplan, you know, like those Kaplan like testing centers. And I would have to take these nonsense nonsense tests. But basically, there's this famous runner, I was runner at the time, and there was a famous runner named Chris Luke Kezak, and he quit running, which wasn't exactly lucrative, but he was like the seventh most fastest fastest miler ever. And he was like, I quit, I'm quitting running at my peak to join this thing called Airbed and Breakfast. And I was like, what the hell is that? That sounds awesome. And so I emailed Joe Gebbia, the founder of Airbnb. And I was like, hey, I like Airbnb. I came up with this interesting hack that I think can help you grow. Here it is. And he forwarded it to like. It was at the time, there was this thing called Reportive that had just come out.

• 16:54Sam Parr?

  And I built an Excel sheet where you could type in someone's first name, last name, and like their Gmail or their company name. And then it like permutations and you put into this thing, it tells you which emails they are. So not like that sophisticated hack at all. But it was like new technology. And I emailed them and in his head, he's probably like, this is dumb. But like, the fact that you came up with this, like, whatever, we'll interview. So they interview and so he puts me to a minion. And the minion was like, hey, do you want to come to the Bay Area? Well, I don't know who the guy was. But the guy is probably worth.

• 17:23Shaan Puri?

  Really underused word. I'm gonna start using that. That's an amazing slander. I love it.

• 17:27Sam Parr?

  Well, that minion is probably worth $20 million. I mean, you know, because at the time, there were only like 200 people. And the guy who he referred me to was like the 17th employee. And so his name was Justin. I'm so friends with him. Sorry, Justin, call you minion, but maybe you were.

• 17:42Sam Parr?

  I'm friendly with them. I'm friendly with him, but he, they, they go, all right, great. You live in the Bay Area. And I was in Tennessee at the time. I didn't know what the hell the Bay Area was. When he said, I had never been west of Missouri. I'd only basically been to like Missouri and then like whatever the states are when you drive to like Destin, Florida for like spring break. Those are like the only places that I'd been. And he goes, are you in the Bay Area? And I was like, of course. Yeah. It goes, great. Come into my office on Monday. So I was like, shit, I gotta get out there. I gotta figure out what the hell the Bay Area is. I thought it was LA. So I pack up like, yeah, like Silicon Valley. I heard someone make a joke about Silicone Valley, but that was like where like porn is, I think in LA.

• 18:23Sam Parr?

  I, they're all the same to me. I didn't know. And so I Googled what the hell the Bay Area is. And I bought a ticket and I flew out there and I interviewed with him on a Monday and a Tuesday. And then I interviewed with Joe, the founder. He probably didn't even remember me because it was like a 10 minute interview. And then I go home on a Wednesday. They offered me the job on a Thursday. And then a week later, I, I called my mom. I go, dude, I got this job. This is awesome. And they go, what the hell is this? You stay at someone's home? I go, yeah, I think it's gonna be legit. She goes, it sounds like a multi-level marketing scheme. And I'm like, well, they, they have like health insurance. And she goes, whatever. And so my mom drove down and packed up my apartment with me and then shipped me off. And like, she like gave me a thousand dollars and that was my seed money. So I moved out there. And this was all in like a three week span.

• 19:05Sam Parr?

  The Sunday night before I'm supposed to start, they called me and they go, we busted you, man. You lied about your resume because you have a criminal record. At the time I'd gotten arrested for DUI. And I was like, well, technically like I'm still like the trial's still happening. So like, I didn't get convicted yet. And they're like, yeah, but that was sneaky, dude. Yeah, they're like, but that was sneaky. Like, we asked you if you've been charged or whatever. And I was like, you're right. I'm sorry. So I didn't actually get the job. I was hired for like a second, but I never had my first day. And then fast forward two years later, my wife ends up going to work there. And I remember walking around, I'm like, ah, my alma mater, my old soppy grounds. It's a, I never ended up working there, but I had a job there for like, you know, a few minutes.

• 19:50Sam Parr?

  And, uh, you know, it could have been something great. I would think I would have been like employee 200. I don't know. Maybe I would have made some money or not, but that's the story of Airbnb.

• 19:59Shaan Puri?

  That's an amazing story. I love that.

• 20:00Sam Parr?

  And while out there, I also had to like, take these classes. And I remember, I didn't have any money. I had the $1,000. That was my, my money. And I used to have to take this bike. And I lived in the dog patch in a warehouse that was $900 a month. And I asked to.

• 20:14Shaan Puri?

  For people that don't live in San Francisco, they're like, he lived in a dog patch warehouse.

• 20:17Sam Parr?

  It's, it's called Dog Patch. It's like, uh, the industrial part of San Francisco by the water. And I used to have to ride my bike because I didn't have any money. And I had to ride a bike that I took from my roommate all the way up to Twin Peaks to go to the Kaplan, like, place, which is like, six miles away, literally up the steepest hills in San Francisco. And so I used to have to do those classes and take tests for like, months. It was horrible, but it worked out.

• 20:41Shaan Puri?

  And now you're here. Incredible.

• 20:43Sam Parr?

  And now, dude, I used to, uh, like, I, like, I, I learned how to like, get, get rid of, like, you could jump on the bus. And like, when they, they would catch you all the time. And they'd be like, where do you live? And I'd be like, I don't know. What's your name? And I'd just like, give a name. And they're like, do you have any ID on you? I'm like, no, I don't have ID. And so I remember, like, there was zero, there were zero consequences. There were zero consequences. I mean, that's how little I had. Like, I didn't have cash for a bus fare, which was $250. But, uh, uh, yeah, it turned out okay.

• 21:12Shaan Puri?

  What did you do to, uh, to grow that thousand? How did you not just wipe out, like, because $1,000 doesn't get you very far in San Francisco. So how did you not wipe out in three months?

• 21:21Sam Parr?

  On my, so when I went to the interview for Airbnb, I stayed at the cheapest Airbnb there was, which was a bedroom in this guy's house. And he had told me he was starting a business. And so when I moved back out there, I go, hey, dude, uh, I don't have a job anymore. Can I join you? I only have like, two or three weeks of like, payment. And then, and, uh, my mother and father had given me a pickup truck for college. And I asked them to sell that and they sold it. So they gave me $4,000. So I was like, all right, I gotta have like, three weeks of rent or three weeks of like, living expenses. Now I just got this influx of four or five grand. Um, I've got like, six months of cash. Let's do this. And, and so I started, I co-founded a, a, a company with this guy, a roommate matching company, where we would, uh, post ads on Craigslist saying we were hosting these roommate parties,

• 22:05Sam Parr?

  where we would match people up into three and four bedroom apartments because. Normally, it's like you're a single person who just moved there, don't know anyone. So you gotta move into a existing bedroom and there was lots of competition. So we would post fake existing bedrooms and get 300 people to apply on Craigslist and be like, "Hey, this doesn't exist, but we'll team you up with 200 other people who wanna the same shit as you." And we would host these parties and we would charge people money to attend those parties. And after they got an apartment, and so we basically spun that up on Weebly and made money right away. And that's how I lived.

• 22:35Shaan Puri?

  Amazing. Wow. Great stories. I love this. I feel like, I feel like there's a bunch of, I've heard bits of these, but not all of them. Uh, this is great.

• 22:44Sam Parr?

  And I would ride my bike to like, collect these money. I would knock on their door after they got the apartment. I'm like, "Hey, you got my money?" It was ridiculous.

• 22:53Shaan Puri?

  That's so good.

• 22:56Sam Parr?

  After this, I have to go get a hearing aid and, uh, fitted for one, and I have to tell you why. I forgot to tell you this. We are at the Vancouver thing and there is these two women speaking to me afterwards. And it was loud. So like, the problem with my hearing is I can't hear the difference between background noise and the person speaking for me. It's hard to tell the difference. And these women were talking to me and you probably noticed this. I lean in hard, so I'm only deaf in one ear, but I lean in, I lean, I turn and I, and I, I get really close to you. And also-

• 23:27Shaan Puri?

  It was a super loud after-party, by the way. It was like, it was like a club.

• 23:31Sam Parr?

  It was like a club. It was loud. And I also stare at people's lips. So I, I'll either stare at your mouth or I'll lean in.

• 23:38Shaan Puri?

  Mr. Real Signals over here.

• 23:40Sam Parr?

  The horrible worst signals. And this woman comes up to me and I'm leaning in and like, I'm starting to get really close. And I can tell she's really uncomfortable. And I, I go, "Oh, I, sorry. I forgot to tell you. I, I'm deaf. I can't freaking hear you." That's why I'm leaning in so hard. And, uh, it was at that point, I was, I told Sarah, I was like, "I gotta go. I gotta get a hearing aid. I can't, I'm making people uncomfortable."

• 24:02Shaan Puri?

  This is why you bring your wife with you to all events, just to like, you know, totally, totally make it clear what's happening here.

• 24:08Sam Parr?

  Dude, and I have a rule. I don't, I don't travel alone. I love having her around when I travel, but that is, that's definitely the icing on the cake is having her around for that reason.

• 24:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah. You, you did the opposite of the billionaire hug. You like, you went in with the, with the broke boy lean.

• 24:23Sam Parr?

  Yeah, the broke boy lean. I just stared at her lips and she's just, literally tried to watch as the words come out of her mouth and just staring, going down her lips and looking and then leaning in and, oh man, I can tell she was uncomfortable. I was like, oh, I forgot to tell you. I can't hear, so I'm gonna go get one of those things.

• 24:39Shaan Puri?

  Did you ever learn that like trick from, this might be, it might've been in like those pick up artist things. I'm not a hundred percent sure, but.

• 24:45Sam Parr?

  We're like looking at their.

• 24:46Shaan Puri?

  The triangle?

• 24:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the third eye or something like that?

• 24:49Shaan Puri?

  No, no, it's, if you ever wanted, if you want somebody to want to kiss you, you're close, if you, let's say you're close, you're in range. And you want to like kind of almost like hack their little like biology and get them to want to kiss you. You, you do this like triangle. So you basically look at one eye, the second eye, down to their lips, back to the first eye. So it makes, it traces like a little triangle. And if you do that, you'll just see immediately the person just pucker up, baby. It's happening.

• 25:21Sam Parr?

  Yeah, right.

• 25:21Shaan Puri?

  It just happens.

• 25:23Sam Parr?

  Yeah, right.

• 25:23Shaan Puri?

  I don't know if it's because you're signaling that you want to kiss them or that it just makes them want to kiss you, but this shit works. This was like in college. I was like, you know, you would have thought I'm in the Illuminati, how many triangles I was throwing up everywhere because I was like, this is like a magic trick. This thing is amazing.

• 25:38Sam Parr?

  Did you get any girls in college? Probably. You're really charismatic. Did you do well?

• 25:42Shaan Puri?

  King, baby.

• 25:47Sam Parr?

  Had a good batting average, but not a lot of home runs.

• 25:49Shaan Puri?

  Got that lead off, but never got the second.

• 25:53Sam Parr?

  Oh, well, that's good.

• 25:54Shaan Puri?

  The hard part too is my roommate was like, um, just unbelievably good with girls and so.

• 26:00Sam Parr?

  He's really good looking.

• 26:00Shaan Puri?

  He's a good looking guy and he was.

• 26:02Sam Parr?

  Trevor, right?

• 26:02Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, Trevor. He's an athlete and he's just like a professional flirt. And so somehow this guy was just pulling crazy people from like, you know, you have like an RA who's like the, the person who's like four years older that lives in the freshman dorm. He just started dating the RA's girlfriend and then like, you know, he started dating like this girl on the basketball team and started dating like all these seniors. Started dating this like one really rich girl who's giving him gifts all the time. I was like, I don't know what's happening here, but like, you know, this guy's definitely sucking up all the, the alpha male energy in this room and, uh, you know, I'm just sort of here along for the ride, but it's okay. It, it, it turned out all right.

• 26:38Sam Parr?

  Uh, well, you know, you worked out all right.

• 26:41Shaan Puri?

  By the way, my dating life was a lot like my startup life. It was basically like fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, home run. It's like, you know, like most people in their career, they sort of get this like 10% raise a year or whatever, where it's like this linear, like steady climb up the ladder. But if you're in the startup world, you're often like making nothing or in debt or broke.

• 27:02Sam Parr?

  And then all of a sudden.

• 27:02Shaan Puri?

  For like seven, eight years, and then all of a sudden you're rich. And that's what my dating life was like. I was broke for like 10 years and then all of a sudden I was rich.

• 27:10Sam Parr?

  100% same. It like, it didn't, it didn't start picking up until my twenties. It was 100% the same.

• 27:16Shaan Puri?

  You're trying to, what were you trying to do in your teens, bro?

• 27:19Sam Parr?

  I tried. I tried a lot. Trust me, I tried. I just, I looked like Napoleon Dynamite. I, I, with braces, it just didn't work out.

• 27:27Shaan Puri?

  Dude, I didn't talk to a girl. I was sitting there reciting lines from The Rock in WWE when I was in my teens, bro. I was, I was jumping off the top rope in my bedroom, trying to, you know, just, I loved wrestling and basketball and stuff. I didn't have time for girls when I was like 15.

• 27:42Sam Parr?

  It was a numbers game for me. I knew like, you know, 3% conversion, therefore, you know, you gotta try a hundred times.

• 27:48Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. You never want war of attrition to describe.

• 27:55Sam Parr?

  Whatever, I, it worked out. We, we both, it worked out for both of us. Before we get into this, we gotta remind people, there is a gentleman's agreement. Except this time it's, it's different. So we have this thing at this podcast. Unlike everything on YouTube and on Spotify and all that stuff, our content actually isn't free. You're only getting this episode for free if it's your first one. And if it's your second or third one, you have to go do something for us. What is it?

• 28:15Shaan Puri?

  They, they gotta fire up YouTube, youtube.com, YouTube, the app, whatever it is, and type in my first million. They're gonna see our pretty little faces right there. You don't even have to watch video. Just click my first million, clip, click subscribe, turn the notifications on. And we need, we need this. This is what we need, right? Everybody's got needs. Food, shelter, YouTube subscribers. These are your core primal needs and we have ours.

• 28:40Sam Parr?

  And that's why it's called the gentleman's agreement. We're not on the other side, so you just have to do it. And everyone's doing it lately, so you should do it. And that's what we expect out of you. And also, do me a huge favor and actually click follow on the podcast app and Spotify. Cause those help us actually go up the rankings. And then when we go up the rankings, we get more dopamine and we do dumber shit. And that's why we're here. So do that. I have a story for you. So go to jupe.com. So it's J U P E, jupe. So it's jupe.com. Okay. They have a slick looking website, so tell me what you see.

• 29:17Shaan Puri?

  I see some sort of like mega tent contraption. I don't know what this is. This is like some sort of structure. It's like, is this like a, like basically like a outdoor unit? That's not like something more than a tent, but less than a house.

• 29:31Sam Parr?

  So I met these kinda, I met these guys recently and they're really fascinating. And so basically the, one of the founders, he's like this artist type. He's, his name's Jeff Wilson. And before this, he like wrote a book because he lived in a dumpster for a year. Like he like slept in a dumpster. It was like some like art project as well as like to show like.

• 29:52Shaan Puri?

  For what?

• 29:52Sam Parr?

  I don't, I don't know. I mean, he's, he's a wacky, interesting guy, but he lived in a dumpster. And then he, then he started this like prefab house. I guess it was like marketing for like a pre fabricated homes or something like that. And they eventually launched this startup. It's called jupe. And I originally saw it because Gary Tan, famous investor, billionaire investor Gary Tan, made this YouTube video where he stayed in one of their things. And so basically what it is, is it's, I don't know. They would be mad if I called it a tent, but it kinda looks like a tent. But basically they ship it to you on, in like a huge container and you pop it up. And on the inside, it's like a fancy, like a nice mattress. And then there's like a heating and cooling unit.

• 30:36Sam Parr?

  And it's got lighting that's all solar powered. And so it's like a standalone like house. And the way that their business model works. Is you could do one of two things. You could just buy it for 30 grand outright, or you can do a thing where you they give it to you for free and they take something like 40%, 30 to 50% of the revenue and you rent it out and these things are renting out and I was like, I don't know, man. Who wants to stay in this thing? And he was like, dude, we rent them out for 250 to $500 a night. And they're always booked and they're trying to pitch it to me to put it on my land and I'm not sure if I'm gonna do it or not. But they're it's a pretty interesting thing. This year they're supposed to do like 12 million in revenue and it's break even. And they've deployed 400 of these things and their future, what they're doing is

• 31:21Sam Parr?

  they've got these guys that are just buying plots of land and then putting 15 or 20 of these on there. And then Jupe, the company, if you do the profit sharing with them, they kind of run it for you. So they have like their own little platform and they like will help manage the thing for you. But it's pretty fascinating and I've been thinking about putting one of these on my on my property. I'm not sure if I'm gonna do it or not because I don't know if I want more work. But really fascinating, interesting idea that I came across. I've been loving these ideas where you just make more money off the shit that you already have. So like I have land and I was like, should I just like put these all over my place? But they look kind of fascinating and I thought you'd get a kick out of it.

• 31:58Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I mean, these look super cool and I gotta give them credit because I see a lot of these like,

• 32:05Shaan Puri?

  like this kind of like, I forget what you call ADUs or whatever. It's like this additional dwelling unit or something. And they're often just like vaporware. It's just a render of something that looks sick. And what I really like is if you click their vision tab, it opens up a notion and explains what they're doing. And four times in this thing, it just says, here's our thing, parentheses, not a render. Here's what it looks like, you know, after it gets delivered. Here's what it looks like the next day. Again, not a render. Hey, we actually build the thing. It exists. This is real. This is not like some futuristic dream. And so I think that's pretty, pretty, pretty amazing. This looks super cool. I don't know why you wouldn't do this, just for even like the story.

• 32:46Sam Parr?

  So I can, I have an update. So my, I have this property, marathonranch.com and you can see it. It's doing like anywhere from 13 to 17,000 a month in gross revenue and

• 33:01Sam Parr?

  So it's doing well. I'm like making money on my Airbnb. Finally, I got like 40 or something like five star reviews on Airbnb and I finally started going up the rankings and it's been really fun to do. And so I'm not sure, but I have 20 acres, 20 acres of land. I'm not sure if I want to like screw anything up because dude, at my Airbnb, we have like 20 cows. So my neighbor is a cow. Well, that's true, but like people, my neighbor owns these cows and they use our property and in exchange, we pay less property tax and people like wake up to like a mooing cow because they sleep and wake, they sleep at all my property. For some reason, they decided that's the bed and I don't know if I want to like screw that up. It's like so peaceful going out there. So I don't know if I want to screw that up by having more

• 33:46Sam Parr?

  units on the property, but uh.

• 33:48Shaan Puri?

  Dude, marathonranch.com, your photo here, you chose the wrong photo. You chose like a not awesome looking photo for your hero photo. Then if you click gallery, you all of a sudden see all these awesome photos.

• 34:00Sam Parr?

  It's a work in progress, my friend. It's a work in progress.

• 34:04Sam Parr?

  It's still in beta. Yeah, I, it's because one of the pictures, it, you couldn't see the writing. Anyway, it's a whole thing I gotta fix. But uh, anyway, it's going well. I, I always, I basically to the listeners, I send Sean updates on my Airbnb and he's like, oh, that's neat. You're making 5%, you're making 5% return. That's, that's really, that's lovely.

• 34:24Shaan Puri?

  What did I tell you? You were like, dude, this is, this is 5% or 7% or 7% a year. This is great. I go, and I told you, I go, I've lost more money in crypto than you'll ever make on your Airbnb.

• 34:36Shaan Puri?

  Somehow that felt like a good statement to me.

• 34:39Sam Parr?

  It's been awesome, man. The Airbnb game, it's been fun. It sucked for a minute and then once I started rolling, it is pretty dope. So maybe one day you'll, you'll be convinced, but right now it's killing it. I don't know if it'll kill it in like June when it's like a hundred degrees, but we'll see.

• 34:52Shaan Puri?

  To me, the only reason I would do this is the tax benefits if I bought property. The actual like rental income and, or, and or slow real estate appreciation to me is not worth it, especially given the headache of, of doing stuff. So you said, let's say.

• 35:07Sam Parr?

  From a financial investment, it's only been okay, but from a like reward, like it's been quite exciting.

• 35:13Shaan Puri?

  What is the margin? So you say 13K a month, um, gross. Okay. So now we take out what Airbnb, we take out property management, we take out utilities, we take out what, what, what, how much, what's the gross on that?

• 35:26Sam Parr?

  So like a like a record month recently was like seventeen thousand, but let's round down to fifteen thousand because that's what it's been lately. So that's gross. So I give away, so I own the property outright, but I assume that I have a mortgage. So if you assume that I had a mortgage plus utilities and taxes, that's in the seven thousand range.

• 35:48Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 35:48Sam Parr?

  Um, I don't have that, but let's just assume that I do because I will get one eventually. Um, and then property management is twenty percent of, uh, of, uh, like the fourteen thousand. So if I do fif- if I do sixteen thousand revenue, three hundred dollars per stay goes to my cleaner. So whatever that that, let's just say that's two thousand. So that's brings us down to whatever that is. What did I say? Fifteen minus two thousand? That's thirteen thousand. And then management gets twenty percent of that. And then the rest, I assume it goes to a, a, a property, um, property taxes and a fake mortgage. So all said and done on fifteen thousand in revenue, I'll walk away with only three thousand, maybe.

• 36:26Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's nuts. So that means, let's see, uh, we do, we get fifteen thousand, so twenty percent margins.

• 36:33Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's, it's not like, it's not.

• 36:34Shaan Puri?

  And then you have to pay tax on the fifteen.

• 36:38Sam Parr?

  Well, but I have depreciation, so I'm able to like save a fair bit there. But, um, yeah, like it's a cash on cash return. It's going to end up being like five or somewhere between five and eight percent. But if you assume appreciation, which is a big assumption, but I looked at the trailing thirty years, it'll probably be a fifteen to twenty percent. Uh, annual return, if I own it for like ten years. So, but that's a big if. So that cash on cash, it's only okay. It's only okay, but I'm completely hands off and I also like it. And I've, I learned how to do something. So I didn't, I didn't do everything. I didn't do everything right here at all. I, I, I think I paid a premium. I definitely paid a premium for the property.

• 37:19Shaan Puri?

  Dude, I know you paid a premium because if I look at this, uh, like if I go to the gallery, it's got the kitchen with like the white. Everything's like white and like this one look of wood that. I'm just like a sucker for, if it looks like this, I'm like, it's a nice place.

• 37:34Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 37:34Shaan Puri?

  People who know about construction, they're like, this is like, cheap and easy, like, you know, I would walk into a house, I'd be like, well, this is a good house. I'm gonna pay a premium for this house. They're like, why? Because the countertops are nice? And I'm like, yeah, but look at this, it looks fantastic, it looks modern. And they're like, dude, that's, that costs nothing. Like, you need to pay for a location, you need to pay for square footage, you need to pay for all these other things, but I'm a sucker for like, just like the countertops.

• 37:58Sam Parr?

  But I have 20 acres, and so my, my plan, my plan originally, before the markets tanked, I was like, I'll put more, I'll build more crap there. And then when the markets tanked, I got cold feet, and I was like, well, let's just sit on it and just see what happens. And so now I'm just sitting on it, and it's going awesome. Like, it's, it's booked constantly. And so I'm happy with it. I don't regret it. I would, I would do it again. Um, and I, but like, I learned, it was a lot of money to like, you know, it was seven figures to like, get in the game. And so I was fucking nervous as hell.

• 38:26Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 38:27Sam Parr?

  It's worked out, and I've learned how to do it. So now I, I know more about it, so I'm happy.

• 38:32Shaan Puri?

  I can't find this client info.

• 38:34Speaker 02

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• 38:48Shaan Puri?

  All right, let me go. Um, I got two blue collar hustles for you. So these are in the trash, in the trash biz. So, um, I've heard of two trash businesses recently that I thought were pretty interesting, and wanted to share them with you. I want you to tell me which one you like better. Okay, so the first one, our buddy Siava told me about this. It's called Smash My Trash. Have you ever heard of this? Has he told you about this?

• 39:10Sam Parr?

  No, but you want to know something funny? I've been very close with Siava for like 12 years now, and I don't, I still don't know how to say his last name.

• 39:18Shaan Puri?

  Kozinski, right?

• 39:20Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I, I had to like, yeah, I, I just, he's in my phone book as, when the very first time I ever met him, I just, he said he was Russian, so he's just saved as Siava Russia. And so I just assumed he was Siava Russia. That's, I mean, this guy was like, in my wedding, close.

• 39:36Shaan Puri?

  See, I have a tall, handsome, smart.

• 39:38Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I just called him Adonis.

• 39:40Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, first name and then attributes, like visual attributes that I remember you by.

• 39:45Sam Parr?

  Six pack, six three, got it.

• 39:48Shaan Puri?

  I have a system and it serves me well. All right. So I see you were telling me about this franchise called Smash My Trash. And so what they do is they basically imagine a giant crane. And so they drive to any business and like, if you've ever been to like, we had a warehouse. So our warehouse just produces like an ungodly amount of trash, just cardboard.

• 40:11Sam Parr?

  You don't just burn it? Be normal.

• 40:14Shaan Puri?

  So we have Charlie, Charlie burns the trash, but like, I'd be not at that. You would have basically a dumpster and you get charged per like, I don't know, like per filling of the dumpster. Like how many times you fill the dumpster and then you call them up and they come and they empty your dumpster. What Smash My Trash does is they'll, you sign up for them. They drive around, they'll come to your dumpster and they just take this giant crane arm and just smash the trash in, just compacting it. They let you get way more volume or less, it takes less fills, so it lowers your trash bill. And you know, that could save you hundreds of dollars every month if you do this. And so basically the cost of Smash My Trash should just be less than the savings that they give you from having to do less, less dumpster fills.

• 40:58Shaan Puri?

  And so this is like a franchise that kind of crushes it. It's basically, you can run this with like two guys and the numbers on this are you invest like, I don't know, 400K. Typically they'll make like a million dollars a year in revenue and like 300K of like net income, like EBITDA at the end of the day. And so you're getting like a kind of amazing cash on cash, not, not that, not that trash return you were getting on your Airbnb. This is some real, real returns and, and I think they have, I think they have like a shit ton of locations. I think they have like 160 locations or something like that. And so that's like, they've made probably 40, 50 million dollars in just the franchise fees, just franchising this concept out. So I think this is kind of like low key amazing business.

• 41:44Sam Parr?

  It's amazing, but there's a big downside. When was the last time you had a blue collar job? Do you remember? Have you ever had one?

• 41:50Shaan Puri?

  Restaurant, yeah, when I was.

• 41:51Sam Parr?

  Restaurant?

• 41:52Shaan Puri?

  Twenty one, yeah.

• 41:53Sam Parr?

  What happens at a restaurant when it closes? Do you remember?

• 41:57Shaan Puri?

  Just carnage.

• 41:58Sam Parr?

  Carnage. Everyone goes and gets super screwed up. They get drunk. You take pills. You get hot. You just do all types of shit. And then hopefully they show up the next day. And there's lots of like, I remember I, you know, I've, I've been a janitor before. I've worked in restaurants. I've done all this stuff. And there was like, particularly in restaurants, there was constant like issues with this type of person who works there. And it sounds classless, but it is kind of the facts of my experience. I don't know. What do you think the trash? I guess if a trash person has a job, maybe they get up early. So, and I, when I think of a trash guy, I think more of a family guy.

• 42:35Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, trash guys are, I, I trust a trash guy. Like, you know, I feel like a trash guy is reliable, dependable, salt of the earth. You know, like I feel like it's not the degenerates that you'll get like, I would rather hire any trash guy than a barista at Starbucks. Right? Like, I feel like the barista is a flake and we never know what's gonna happen, but.

• 42:55Sam Parr?

  Well, the worst is, is, is like a bartender or a waiter at a fancy like nighttime restaurant, like a, like a, like a, or like a, like a TGI Fridays, like, you know what I'm saying? Like.

• 43:09Shaan Puri?

  The worst of the worst. There's, there's someone out there right now, listening to this, that is a waiter at TGI Fridays, just slammed their phone in disgust.

• 43:17Sam Parr?

  Dude, I've worked at all these places. I've worked at all these places and like, this is probably why I had a little bit of a habit. It's, I don't know, man. This, this is the downside of, of.

• 43:27Shaan Puri?

  If you have unlimited access to loaded nachos, then something just happens to you.

• 43:32Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Yeah, like the blooming onion, it's like, uh, it's like, it's like the full moon. You know what I'm saying? Like I turn into a werewolf. And if I, if I get that every night, you know, like it's, it's bad. I turn into like a, like a Guns N' Roses after party. Like I'm going wild. I'm throwing furniture out the window. So, uh, yeah, is this cool? Yes. I think there's a, a lot of headache and I would be curious. We have a good friend, uh, or I, I think you're friends with them. His name's Brian, Brian Scootamore or Scutamore. He owns, um.

• 43:59Shaan Puri?

  Sounds like a good friend.

• 44:01Sam Parr?

  Another guy, another last name guy.

• 44:03Shaan Puri?

  In your, in your phone.

• 44:05Sam Parr?

  And no, not trash.

• 44:07Shaan Puri?

  Junk.

• 44:07Sam Parr?

  Junk. One eight hundred, got junk. And Brian has been on the pod and he, I don't know if, maybe I could say this, but the company's 100% bootstrapped. Revenue, this is public revenue, I think is in the 350, 350 million dollar a year range. He owns 100% of it. He parlayed that now they own like a painting business and they do all these like services. I would be curious what he would have to say if like his trash guys, like or his franchisees are like degenerates or not. And like, what's the headache with those types of people?

• 44:39Shaan Puri?

  We should definitely ask him. I feel like, I feel like he's gonna give his sign off on this. So this is one trash idea. The other one comes from Twitter. I gotta give credit to Mobile Home Park Guy. I know the guy behind this, he's actually pretty awesome, but I don't know if he's trying to be public with his identity here, but he's part of our guy mafia, right? We got the restaurant guy, we got the car dealership guy. Now we have Mobile Home Park Guy. And he goes, I just found this trash business that is called Bin Scrub. And what they do is they clean off your trash cans. So they wash, they power wash your trash cans because everybody's trash cans are filthy. And he's like, he's like, here's how I would take this business and turn it into, you know, six figures a year of profit. He goes, why do

• 45:24Shaan Puri?

  I love this business? So everybody's got trash bins. So, you know, your market is every home. It's a very young industry, low market penetration. So you'll probably be the only person offering this service. It's not like a bunch of competitors yet. You just need one truck and some hustle. In a post COVID world, there's lots of germaphobes and you can play on that. And this has like word of mouth virality. So there, you know, this has like public virality. You can see the actual service being done. And so he goes, so he goes, you've got to buy a truck. The trucks are about 40K, but it's a hard asset. You're going to be able to get a loan against this. So you might only have to put down $5,000 or $10,000 and get a bank to finance the rest because the truck will do this. He goes, now here's how I, here's how I juice this business to make it more, more valuable. He goes, we're gonna make it, make this like the

• 46:07Shaan Puri?

  ice cream truck. We're gonna put a speaker system on top. And every time we're coming around your neighborhood, we're playing the same song. He's like, you know, I'm going with OutKast, so fresh, so clean, just because it's a pun. And he's like, we're gonna play this every single time. This song is our branding. We're gonna drive around from 3pm to 8pm when people are home from school, home from work, and they can look out the window and be like, what is that? And then they will, they will see us power washing someone in their neighborhood's bins. You can even

• 46:34Sam Parr?

  That's like a horrible idea.

• 46:36Shaan Puri?

  Hold on, hold on, hold on. He goes, um, he goes, we're gonna, we're gonna like basically leave little flyer brochures on top of everyone's bins. So when they take out the trash, they're gonna see that, you know, this trash can is dirty. We clean them out. We, we leave your trash can so clean, you could eat cereal from it. And he's like, that would be my, he's like my, I put a spoon in it, be like, you're so clean, you could eat cereal out of this. So he's like, that's what I would do for my marketing. He goes, I think one truck can do about a hundred to 200 homes a day. It's a few thousand dollars a day per truck in revenue. You will use that to finance the second truck. Your costs are gas, water, maintenance, some chemicals, assuming you're the one doing the truck. And he's basically like, this is a blue collar side hustle. If somebody wants to themselves get out there and get to that 10K a month of, of, of income,

• 47:21Shaan Puri?

  that they may not be able to get out of their job. This is, this is his idea. So he goes, what do you think, fella? So Sam, you said it's a horrible idea. Tell me why.

• 47:29Sam Parr?

  Uh, okay. So completely uneducated here. So two doubts.

• 47:36Sam Parr?

  I don't think that you can do, I, I don't think that that many people would want this. And number two, a hundred to 200 a day? That's so many. That is so many. I would, how much, it would, it would take 20 minutes to drive somewhere. I don't, that math is wild to me.

• 47:53Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. You, you'd basically have to get to a like dense area and then, and then do a route. But that would kind of assume that they're all your customers, which they're not at all because your customers at the, at the start.

• 48:04Sam Parr?

  Did he call us out and say, what do we think?

• 48:06Shaan Puri?

  No, but, oh, you know, he listens to the pod, so.

• 48:11Shaan Puri?

  And by the way, there's two, there's two people in the comments here. One, um, sparkling bins business, they make the trucks. So there's a woman in the comments goes, it's a fantastic business. We've been, we manufacture the trucks. It's been going great since 2020. And then another guy goes, um, yeah, I do this. Mine's called bin busters. I'm two years in, it's going great.

• 48:32Sam Parr?

  Okay. Well, I mean, what the hell do I know?

• 48:34Shaan Puri?

  And by the way, that guy, his bio says, living the American dream.

• 48:39Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 48:39Shaan Puri?

  Not sure.

• 48:40Sam Parr?

  I dream. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 48:43Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Living an American's dream.

• 48:45Sam Parr?

  Yeah. One person's. Good, good for him. He's, this is their dream and they're, they're pulling it off. I don't know, man. I'm out. I'm out on this one. I don't want to do this.

• 48:58Shaan Puri?

  Sounds like start a newsletter.

• 49:00Sam Parr?

  Yeah, start a newsletter. Dude, I, I, I, I've, people make fun of me because I bring this up so much. I had hot dog stands, whatever, but I used to work with my hands outside. It's so hard, man. It is so hard.

• 49:11Shaan Puri?

  You said you were a janitor? When were you a janitor?

• 49:14Sam Parr?

  When I was in eighth grade, I worked at a bakery and it was my job to like mop the floors, take out the trash, clean the dishes. And so that was like my first job, $6 an hour. And then, uh, yeah, that's what I did.

• 49:26Shaan Puri?

  Dude, I am so mad at my parents for never giving me my, my, my grind story. Like, can I brother get a little hardship?

• 49:35Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like, yeah, you ain't gangster at all, dude.

• 49:38Shaan Puri?

  An uncle's store for a month and just, just give me that story. $5 an hour and I had to enter, empty the trash. Like, nobody knows how long I did it. Like, I got nothing, dude. I grew up.

• 49:47Sam Parr?

  A lot of Asian parents don't want you to do that. They say, do your homework.

• 49:50Shaan Puri?

  Hands got no calluses.

• 49:51Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 49:51Shaan Puri?

  And my kids, I'm going to give them one hustle story. Yeah, they're going to have some very token, small hardship that will sound good later when they make it because you need that story and I just don't have it.

• 50:03Sam Parr?

  A lot of my Indian friends, which I have a ton, they, their parents were like, you don't even clean your room. Just do your homework.

• 50:10Shaan Puri?

  Just study.

• 50:11Sam Parr?

  Is that what they said to you? Like, like, don't cook, don't clean, just study.

• 50:15Shaan Puri?

  Well, they didn't say it like that, but I wasn't asking to cook or clean. So, you know, it just never came up. And they were like, yeah, your, your job is to study and do good in school. So you can get like a good job. Don't go be a janitor. And I was like, well.

• 50:29Sam Parr?

  I did it all, man. I did the janitor stuff. I was a waiter. I was a bus boy. I was a valet driver. I did it all, man. I, and I'm happy I did it, but I don't want to do it anymore.

• 50:41Sam Parr?

  Oh, and by the way, I need to redeem myself. I made fun of like the someone the other day said, the retail class. So this is like the, the blue collar class. But I read this, there was this funny article on Business Insider. It had the worst but hilarious title and it was, I'm a millennial manager who works with Gen Z. And then it said like, colon, with Gen Z workers, they have a lot of feelings. And so, look, you're either gonna like, somebody either, you're gonna have drug issues, working with one group of people, or you're just gonna have to talk forever about like, bringing your whole self to work and all that nonsense. So like, we all have our faults. We're all screwed. You know what I'm saying? I hate when people say, bring your whole self to work. I'm okay with you just bringing your work self to work. That's cool, too. You don't have to do

• 51:23Shaan Puri?

  that. Yeah, I prefer that. If you want to bring a little bit more of yourself, we could talk about

• 51:27Sam Parr?

  that, too. But like, you know, it's not mandatory. You don't have to bring your whole self. I'm okay with just your work self. So we all, every, every, every class and every generation has issues. So I don't mean to throw shade just at one.

• 51:39Shaan Puri?

  We throw shade at all here. We're equal opportunity shade thrower.

• 51:42Sam Parr?

  Yeah, we're all screwed up.

• 51:43Shaan Puri?

  My dad, Sam hit the trash man. Who else did we get? Who else cut us stray today?

• 51:49Sam Parr?

  I'll make fun of myself. Someone made fun of me the other day because I've got these surgeries on my ear. I was talking about my ear and my glasses sit funny. I don't know if you noticed, my glasses sit crooked because like, it's my ear. And someone said, uh, it looks like Sam got brain, Sam got head surgery. Didn't pay for him to put the rest of it back in because his glasses are sitting. And I was like, yeah, that's kind of true. Yeah. You're kind of there. Dude, I told you the other day, I want to tell you about a media company that most people have no idea about, but they kind of killed it and I love it. So I told you the other day about, about Parcast. I tell you about Parcast?

• 52:27Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah. This was the podcast network that was doing true crime stuff.

• 52:32Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So I learned about the story. I think the guy who started it just tweeted saying that he was done at Spotify. So I guess his earnout is up. But listen to this. So it was a three year old startup that sold for $50 million to Spotify. And the way it started was the guy, his name was Max Cutler at the time. He's 27 year old graduate. And he bootstrapped this thing. His dad worked in radio. I don't think his dad was like a rich guy. I think his dad, Ron Cutler, I think he was like a, he was a radio broadcaster. So he had industry, but I don't think he was like, In the business type of thing. And he, uh, they bootstrapped this thing and by 2018, so only two years in, they had 16 shows with a hundred million downloads. By 2019, they had 40 weekly shows.

• 53:14Sam Parr?

  Now they have a staff of something like 150, of which 75 of them are voice actors. And I listen to these, it's so weird. I listen to these every night when I go to bed. So like, I've got like my favorites. I listened to one called Serial Killers. There's another one called Deathbed Confessions. Then there's another one called like Murder Couples, which is about Bonnie and Clyde. There's another one like, it's like all these things. And there's, and it's not like our podcast at all. There's zero riffing and it's like voice actors.

• 53:40Shaan Puri?

  Dude, we should just make up fake true crime shows, like stabbed but not dead yet.

• 53:45Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 53:48Sam Parr?

  The Black Eyed Peas. Yeah, I just, just like stories that people just got kind of hurt.

• 53:54Shaan Puri?

  Was it really an accident?

• 53:55Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Spit on by a homeless guy, stories of NYC.

• 53:59Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. Not injured, but it was gross.

• 54:04Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Barely assault.

• 54:10Shaan Puri?

  You hurt my feelings, true crime thrills.

• 54:14Sam Parr?

  Dude, and but like, this is, the reason why I like this is it's not like, uh, it's like, they're just like, you know how we were talking about like people who do things beautifully done? Like, you know, uh, This American Life? And it's like thoughtful, it's like thoughtful, like today on This American Life, we're gonna talk about like the opioid crisis and they like go out and interview people. This is not that. It's just someone who read a book, summarized it and then is reading it. And they pump out like literally one a day and they have like, uh, you know, 40 shows now, 40 shows now. And it's just a volume play. And this guy was like, dude, this true crime shit to, their audience is 75% women and then me. Uh, and their, their, like, their audience, like, it's crack. It's crack to me.

• 54:58Sam Parr?

  I cannot stop listening to this shit. And it's the same thing every single day. You know, it's kind of like Family Guy, you know, Family Guy, they've been doing it for like 25 years now. It's the same shit all the time. It works every time. I'm gonna watch it every single time. It's just like that. It's the same shtick over and over and over again. And they were acquired. It was they were acquired for something like fifty three million or fifty four million dollars in cash. And then like another fifty million in earn out. But pretty fascinating that this guy bootstrapped this and they're not popular on social. Twenty thousand followers Twitter, thirty six on Facebook, fifty thousand on Instagram. They just dominated like people searching for their their one podcast is called Serial Killers. That's all it's called. And they just like dominate when people search these. So it's like long tail. It's like, what's the what's what's SEO for podcasts? P E O? I don't know.

• 55:43Sam Parr?

  And they just crushed it. Really fascinating business and I brought that up. So I needed I hadn't done the proper research. I needed to kind of close that loop.

• 55:52Shaan Puri?

  You know, there's a we had talked about the beautifully done, like, you know, just X, but beautifully done. There's another version of that that we haven't talked about. And I don't know about you, but like when I was growing up, like if I had like a plate of food and it's like, let's say it's I had a bunch of veggies. I had a broccoli, Brussels sprouts, something like that. I didn't really want it. I was kind of like tired of eating it, but it's still there and I know I should eat it. Me and my sister used to have this thing where if one of us was like in that that spot where we wanted it, we know we should do this. But oh, God, just the idea of sitting here for another twenty minutes, just spoon after spoon of this. I just can't bring myself to do it. One of us would look at the other and just say savage it, just savage it.

• 56:31Shaan Puri?

  And savage it, you start to eat just like an absolute animal and you in like thirty seconds, you just basically it's like chugging for food. And so we used to say that and then we'd be like, all right, we got to savage it. And we were just quickly down the whole thing. Now, there's a version of that for businesses. That's kind of what you described here was this guy was like, oh, OK, people like this true crime audio thing.

• 56:51Sam Parr?

  Pumping this out.

• 56:53Shaan Puri?

  I'm gonna savage it. And so basically in two years to pump out forty shows and get a hundred million downloads. There's only one way to describe that. He savaged it and he wasn't trying to be beautifully done. I bet you it's imperfect in all these different ways. You know, he might have been hiring, you know, random voice actors in, you know, Paraguay and like doing whatever it took to get these out there and pump them out. But that's exactly what he did. And I think actually way more often than the beautifully done, do you see people just savage it? And just just scale up like an absolute savage because they find something that works. And then they don't, they're not perfectionists and they don't like they they don't get limited by what's the normal pace.

• 57:35Sam Parr?

  And that works more.

• 57:36Shaan Puri?

  What's the theoretical limit of this?

• 57:39Sam Parr?

  And that works more. I remember when I lived in San Francisco, when I started the hustle, I was like, originally, I was like, let's just pump out blog posts. And people are like, well, what about quality over quantity? And I was like, dude.

• 57:49Shaan Puri?

  Did you bring your whole self to work again?

• 57:50Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 57:53Sam Parr?

  Dude, I would always turn on, I go, no, our quality is quantity.

• 57:57Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 57:58Sam Parr?

  Like, we are not, we are not an article business. We are a, how many, how, how can these operations be where we pump out lots of articles? That's the product we're building.

• 58:07Shaan Puri?

  You're not a journalist, you're a blogger. Go, go blog.

• 58:10Sam Parr?

  It was like, and then another, that was always one where I'd be like, people are always like, quality versus quantity. And I'm like, you need both. Or if I wanted to play with their heads, I'd be like, no, the quality is the quantity. Another thing where people would say is like, well, it's a marathon, not a sprint. And that was like a reason for them to slack. And I'm like, yeah, but have you ever ran a marathon at world record pace? It's gonna feel like a sprint. So like, it feels pretty fast when you're running real, like, top marathoners, we're running fast. So it's gonna feel like a sprint. But yeah, this guy's a quantity over quality guy. And I love it. I love it.

• 58:42Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. Okay, I think we should, we should wrap it here.

• 58:47Shaan Puri?

  That's the pod.