#29 - Powder Diets, Instagrammable Experiences & Distribution First

The Hustle's My First Million presents: Million Dollar Brainstorm is back. Host Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and The Hustle CEO Sam Parr (@theSamParr) sit down and discuss what side hustles, trends and big business ideas that's keeping them up at night. This time, it’s live with you guys who came to the Trends meetup last Thursday and answered some of burning questions. They also explore this week powder diets, turnkey instagrammable moments, building products around the distribution & why Facebook groups is the place to be. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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

• 0:03Shaan Puri?

  Okay, quick break to talk about our sponsor for today. That's right. A few weeks ago, I did a fake ad read where I said this episode is brought to you by nobody. And ever since then, people have just emailed, reaching out to advertise on the podcast, which is great. And this is a really cool company. The sponsor for this week's podcast is Supercast. So if you want to cash in on your podcast, Supercast can help you unlock predictable recurring revenue from your audience. How was that? By cutting out the middleman and turning listeners into paying subscribers. In fact, podcasters using a subscription model can make twice as much versus advertising alone. I like that. Visit Supercast.com/hustle to learn and earn more.

• 0:46Shaan Puri?

  Alright, I will have to check that out after this. I do love me some subscriptions.

• 0:52Shaan Puri?

  So me and Sam met, um... Actually, we met in a really fucking random way. So we met because Sam was hosting HustleCon. And I get an email from Sam Parr that says, "Hey Sean, heard great things about you. Heard great things about your space, Monkey Inferno. Office is so dope. Hey, you know what? I have HustleCon coming up like in a week from now. And I need a space to host my speaker dinner. It's gonna have badass speakers. This guy, this guy, this guy, this guy. You know, all these people are coming. Would you be down to host it?" And I read it and I was like, "I don't know this guy. There's nothing about... You know, like... I was like, "He's full of shit. Like, he hasn't heard anything about me."

• 1:36Shaan Puri?

  But he probably saw our space because our space was really cool.

• 1:40Sam Parr?

  And for the record, I had.

• 1:42Shaan Puri?

  I assumed it was bullshit, but I was like, "Still, this is high-class bullshit." And so I was like, "Yeah, this sounds great." And he was bringing some value to the table. He was like, "You can attend the dinner. You'll meet all these people." So I tried to negotiate back. I was like, "Cool, as long as I can speak at HustleCon, I'll do it." And he was like, "No, there's no spots left." And I was like, "Alright, fair play. You can still do it." And so that's actually how we met. That night at the speaker dinner and I met a few of my best friends there. Uh, which is like testament to the idea of like just show up. Uh, it's become like a motto of mine, which is uh, showing up like it's just 80%. And like for you guys who came here, you could have done anything. You could have stayed home. Netflix, gone on dates, you know, you could have done whatever you guys do, you know, you could have done tonight.

• 2:26Shaan Puri?

  Uh, but you showed up and so good things can happen when you show up.

• 2:29Sam Parr?

  And, and, and so, uh, we used to do a weekly, weekly or monthly where it was Sean and three of our friends. And we would meet up every single week and then eventually every single month for years, it felt like.

• 2:42Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it was like 7:00 PM, once a week or once every two weeks, we would get together. And um, it was, it's what we call a junto now, uh, which is basically like a, a meeting of the minds. And Sam was in it and you invited a couple of friends that were really good. And uh, the idea was like, hey, you spend most of your time where you have to sell. If you, you know, if you're doing a business, you gotta sell to investors. You sell to your customers, you sell to your teammates that, hey, things are going great. Um, but in reality, things are usually not going great. Default by most, most of the time, things are not going great. And so, uh, we wanted a group of people that you could talk to and it's like, you know, 30% therapy. Or it's probably like 70% therapy, 30% strategy.

• 3:22Shaan Puri?

  Uh, but we like told ourselves it's all about the strategy, which was that, hey, if I say I'm having trouble with this thing. Uh, turns out Sam's really good at marketing and he could be like, dude, why don't you just do this, this and this? Go read this blog post. It's awesome. It'll help you out.

• 3:34Sam Parr?

  But then also we would have like insider knowledge because of, cause I host conferences. You, uh, you're just very personal. You know, everyone. And then we have investor friends and like, we had this network of. We were like, it felt like one step away from anyone we ever wanted to speak with. And so we would also like hear rumors and we'd bring up those rumors like, I heard this person was doing this.

• 3:54Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 3:55Sam Parr?

  And that's kind of what the podcast, one, this part of the podcast turned into.

• 3:58Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. Uh, so that's how we got to know each other and that's why I knew Sam would be good to do these, uh, brainstorms with. Uh, so I'm curious for people who are, uh, did anybody come from out of town? You, you came from out of town, right? So you came from? San Diego. San Diego? Livermore. Livermore? Malibu. Malibu. Love it. Sacramento. Sacramento. Who came the furthest? Who thinks they came the furthest? Los Angeles. Los Angeles, okay, very good.

• 4:22Sam Parr?

  San Diego.

• 4:23Shaan Puri?

  San Diego's the furthest, alright. Round of applause for the guy who came from San Diego.

• 4:29Shaan Puri?

  On like 10 days' notice, I think.

• 4:32Sam Parr?

  Yeah, whenever I hear that, I'm like, "Why?"

• 4:34Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, we don't say that part out loud.

• 4:39Shaan Puri?

  What is the answer? Why?

• 4:41Speaker 02

  I just have some questions I want to ask you guys, yeah.

• 4:43Shaan Puri?

  Okay. Should we start with that? What's the question? I feel like you came from San Diego. I owe it to you.

• 4:51Sam Parr?

  And before we actually get to the question, I do want to preface this by saying, I feel like because of the... We've created... You created this podcast, I created the Hustle. People think that, like, we have answers, and that's definitely not the truth. But what is the truth is, though, that I, like... Because of the business...

• 5:07Shaan Puri?

  Opinions.

• 5:08Sam Parr?

  Very opinionated. Because of the business that I've created and you as well, I've met so many freaking people and seen so many patterns and have heard of all these stories. And so, I would say, for questions, that's where the answer's coming from.

• 5:20Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, what I always tell people is if you know... There's a lot of people out there who are smarter and wiser than me, but you probably don't know them. So, I'm the best you got.

• 5:28Shaan Puri?

  So, go ahead.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I wanted to ask you about your startup with Blab.

• 5:32Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  I know that started in, what, 2014?

• 5:35Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  And so, I was reading your podcast... Sorry, your Medium post about why it failed and how it failed. And I know you mentioned that churn rate was one of the main issues, but what other issues did you see coming? And like, what other reasons besides the churn rate did you have that came to the failure of Blab?

• 5:53Shaan Puri?

  So, okay, so we had built an app called Blab. Jake's here, Jake was part of Blab. Jason was a Blab... I think he joined right when we closed Blab down. I think somebody else said they were a user of Blab here. Basically, Blab was like a way you could push a button and start a talk show. So, basically what we're doing now, but like, online. And so, you could have two, up to four people talking on screen and unlimited people watching. And so, now like Periscope, Facebook Live, now a lot of things are out there that try to do stuff like this. We tried. Your question was, "Why did it fail?" It failed for really two reasons. One was... When most people make content, if you look at YouTube, podcasts, blogs, 99% of content is really bad. And not bad by my judgment, but bad by the market's judgment.

• 6:37Shaan Puri?

  It doesn't get any views, it doesn't get a following. And the problem with live is that, you know, you can get away with that if you're YouTube or you're a blog post because the good stuff sticks around, it's still there. So, you know, the 1% that's good, you can find it and enjoy it and that you can create a successful service. With live, you have this really hard problem where the good stuff is only good while it's on and then as soon as they go offline, it's gone. So it's like exponentially harder to have good entertainment on all the time. And we felt that pain. And so ultimately, that's why it failed. The other weird thing was, do you guys know who Martin Shkreli is?

• 7:12Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 7:13Shaan Puri?

  So if you-

• 7:14Sam Parr?

  I blabbed with him on your show.

• 7:15Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, so if you don't know, I didn't know who this guy was, but he came on, I was like, wow, who's this guy Martin? He's the biggest user we have. This guy's got thousands of people watching him and we were this tiny service at the time. And it turns out, I Googled him and it has, like, the first thing that comes up is Martin Shkreli, most hated man in America. And I was like, uh-oh, it's not a good thing. And basically, he was the guy who had bought a- he bought some drug and jacked up the price. Which is like-

• 7:40Sam Parr?

  His nickname is Pharma Bro.

• 7:41Shaan Puri?

  Pharma Bro, and then he did all kinds of other stuff. He's now in jail. So that's like the- that's where the story ends. But he was on our service and he would blab every night. He was actually our star user. He used it as like, he used it perfectly. We had other celebrities try to use it, but it was like very inauthentic. This guy, he would use it all the time. And he would use it every single night. He was driving hundreds of thousands of people to us. So we were growing, but if you guys know about 4chan or some of these other like internet like troll groups or hacking groups, actually, I shouldn't say anything. Don't attack me anymore, I am scarred. But there was a group called Lizard Squad at the time, who did not like Martin Shkreli. And they did not like that we were letting him broadcast on our platform.

• 8:24Shaan Puri?

  And so they started DDoSing us, basically, like, like you wouldn't believe. Every day for, I don't, Jake, how many months straight did we fight this?

• 8:33Sam Parr?

  As long as Martin's always on.

• 8:35Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, as long as Martin was on, they would do this. And it was unbelievable. So the other reason it failed was that we had one of the most prolific internet hacking groups attacking us with their full force while we were like this new startup. And was not ready for this.

• 8:50Sam Parr?

  And I'll say that there was maybe a third reason. As one of my best friends, I saw like this whole thing is that his setup as an entrepreneur was like way different than most people. They basically...

• 9:00Shaan Puri?

  Too nice?

• 9:00Sam Parr?

  Yeah. The monkey inferno was, so there's this billionaire named Michael Birch, or he's close to a billionaire. And most people, when they get a little bit of money, maybe they'll buy a nice car or a nice watch. This billionaire had probably a five, I don't know what your budget was, but let's say five million dollar a year incubator where Sean was the boss and got to spend this money on launching cool stuff. And I think it created a little distraction because like you had the freedom to every three months try something new.

• 9:27Shaan Puri?

  We had a private chef every day and we have like, you know, a bar, an office in the bar, I'm sorry, a bar in our office. Now, these weren't, in my opinion, I don't think they were the reason we failed, but they do create a sense of security and comfort that like, you know, who's running a business that's like, your office is embarrassing. Like you are, your daily conditions are...

• 9:47Sam Parr?

  What I mean is, like, you...

• 9:49Shaan Puri?

  Nobody raised their hand? Like, yeah, thank you, like, just be honest here.

• 9:53Sam Parr?

  What I mean is, like, your back was against the wall.

• 9:56Shaan Puri?

  I used to take dates to my office to impress them. I don't think, I don't think most entrepreneurs would take their dates to their garage to try to impress them, right?

• 10:03Sam Parr?

  When a lot of people start companies, their back's up against the wall, they're like, I gotta make this work. You never really had your back up against the wall, which I thought was awesome. And maybe it is awesome, it could be awesome, but...

• 10:12Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that might have been, that might have been a factor for sure. But it's hard to say, right? When you fail, it's hard to say why exactly you failed. You try to pinpoint reasons, but it's usually a multitude of things. Same thing with success. If you ask successful people, how'd you do it? Usually they don't even remember the hard times. They sort of blacked out and forgot about all those things they used to do in pre-success. And so, in general, I try not to take, put too much weight in... You know, why did you fail or why did you succeed? Because it's so nuanced and, uh, sorry, that's not a great answer, but.

• 10:42Sam Parr?

  No, thank you, yeah.

• 10:43Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Cool, yeah, what's up?

• 10:45Speaker 03

  Question for you, so you like run startups, you've built great companies and now you're like an employee and running a startup. So I'm curious.

• 10:51Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, don't remind me.

• 10:52Speaker 03

  What about balance? Like, how do you make sure that you're a good employee when you have a startup?

• 10:56Sam Parr?

  I asked him that the other day.

• 10:58Shaan Puri?

  So the question, if you didn't hear on the podcast, uh, was you've done startups, now you're an employee at, at, at a company. How do you, what was it? How do you?

• 11:06Speaker 03

  Make sure you're a good employee.

• 11:07Shaan Puri?

  How do you make sure you're a good employee?

• 11:09Sam Parr?

  Well, how about even, first of all, what did it, what was the, almost the difference of running versus not having to?

• 11:15Shaan Puri?

  Uh, major difference, right? So like, um, so right now I have a baby, a two and a half month old baby and, uh, like, you gotta keep the baby alive. That's like the only job. The job is keep the baby alive and you gotta do stuff. You can't, the baby's not just gonna stay alive. You gotta actively do things all times a day. Like, my wife wakes up panicked just every hour, just to be like, I don't know what I'm supposed to be panicked about, but I gotta keep this baby alive. That's how a startup felt to me, which was like, by default, we were failing every single week. You know, today, I'm at Twitch and we have a, you know, what, what you would consider like a high-pressure job. Like, I'm basically running international growth for them. But Twitch is not gonna fail tomorrow or the next week, you know, pretty much regardless of what I do.

• 11:54Shaan Puri?

  If I do something great, it's gonna be additive, but if I do a okay or mediocre job, the company doesn't fail. And so there's just a different level of pressure when literally the whole thing's gonna fail. You're gonna owe people money who you raised money from. Your employees who took a bet on you and came to work for you, they're gonna be out of a job. That's just a different level of pressure. And if you can see, I have like sort of gray hairs on the side here, even though I'm 31 years old, because I think that was the, the pressure then. So to me, that's the difference. I don't know if you've tasted the difference.

• 12:23Sam Parr?

  And she wants to know how you balance it, but I would, I would say that I. Our company is a good business. I don't like running a company. I really like starting a company. And they're way different.

• 12:37Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, and it takes two different skills to do it. And you either have both or you don't. The other thing, which was how do you make sure you're a good employee? I don't know. I don't know if I'm necessarily a great employee, to be honest with you. In fact, like when we got acquired to do one thing within the company, and then within two months, I'm like, no, we should do this other thing that's like really important. And I pivoted, which like I thought my days of pivoting were over when I left my startup. But so I think in some ways, I was a bad employee. I didn't do the job I was meant to do. But maybe there's a trade off, which was, you know, the project we're working on now is a startup type project. It's more of an entrepreneurial type of project within a big company.

• 13:16Sam Parr?

  I think it's possible to balance that because that's how I started this was when I had another business and we sold it and then started this. The things that are built between like 6:00 PM and 1:00 AM are pretty amazing.

• 13:28Shaan Puri?

  And to be honest, now those hours are for my family. They're for working out. They're for the podcast. They used to be for the business, those same hours. And so I don't give those hours to my job. And that's why I said I'm not sure if I am a great employee.

• 13:41Sam Parr?

  And we can keep doing questions or go through some of the stuff we had here.

• 13:45Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, do you guys want to hear? I guess, show of hands. Who wants ideas? And then we'll do who wants question, more questions. So if you want to hear brainstormed ideas, hands up now. Okay. And if you want Q and A now.

• 14:00Shaan Puri?

  Justin, do you want to just ask a question?

• 14:05Sam Parr?

  I'm wondering what other questions people have.

• 14:06Shaan Puri?

  Oh, okay. The meta question. All right, we'll do some ideas. And then, and you guys can tell us, because you know, when we do these ideas, we literally just like throughout the week, take notes of interesting stuff I'm hearing that other people are doing or stuff, trends I'm noticing, or stuff I read in the Trends group. I'm curious also, who here is a subscriber to Trends? That's pretty good. Yeah, it's a trend.

• 14:29Sam Parr?

  I know.

• 14:30Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's pretty good. You want to? Yeah, who's going to Housecon? I'm going. Alright, okay. We're just gonna do polls all night. That's the whole thing.

• 14:39Sam Parr?

  You know who to talk to.

• 14:41Shaan Puri?

  So yeah, we do these ideas and I've actually found that there's this great practice. So I actually encourage you, even if you're not doing a podcast about new ideas, act like you are. Because now that I write down new ideas, because I know, oh shit, we're gonna brainstorm on Thursday or Friday, it's got my brain constantly looking. And if I wasn't doing this podcast, I wouldn't be writing these notes down. My brain would kind of just start to ignore those interesting things. It would just think, oh, that's for other people to do. And I notice this a lot in our company, too. You know, there's a lot of smart people and I actually asked someone today, I said, "So have you thought of any business ideas while you've been working here?" And they like were confused I even asked the question. And it's because their brain wasn't thinking about that. And I encourage you to train your brain to look at the stuff.

• 15:24Sam Parr?

  I have to list forever. I just love... I do it all the time.

• 15:27Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you have a backlog. Okay, so what do we got? I got a couple ideas. I'm gonna tell you about one that I'm pretty bullish on. So, anybody ever heard of Amazing Grass?

• 15:38Shaan Puri?

  It's... okay, so I wanna eat healthy. And eating healthy is basically, it's actually really fucking simple. You eat real food, not processed food, mostly vegetables, and just like don't eat too much. That's the whole... that's the diet book. But eating vegetables is like pretty tough. So I started taking this powder called Amazing Grass. And basically, it's the equivalent of like, I was too lazy to cook vegetables, so I started doing green smoothies. And now this is like, hey, you know what? Don't even do the smoothie, just put this powder in water and chug. And I'm like, great, you know, sign me up. Like, if you could just inject it in my veins, I'll take that, too. And so, I don't know what you think of this, but...

• 16:15Sam Parr?

  Well, I wanna know why you're bringing it up now. I feel like this is already a pretty popular thing, right?

• 16:20Shaan Puri?

  It's new to me. I've never, so I've, when I've tried, when I tried to like...

• 16:24Sam Parr?

  I don't know what they call it, like a green juice, or... Are you talking about Athletic Greens?

• 16:27Shaan Puri?

  So Athletic Greens is similar.

• 16:28Sam Parr?

  That's what I said to them, too.

• 16:29Shaan Puri?

  So Athletic Greens, I think, is similar, but it's a green powder. And so, I don't know if Athletic Greens is a green powder, I think it is.

• 16:36Sam Parr?

  It is.

• 16:37Shaan Puri?

  But I view this as, to me, when I saw this, I was like, the same way that the protein powder industry has just sort of like gone up and up and up and has really, you know, if you're trying to bulk up, that's just becomes a part of your staple, like, routine. I think that this is sort of the vegan version of it, right? It's basically, instead of trying to bulk up, it's about hacking your way into health. So it's about getting sort of everything you want from your greens faster. And the thing I like best about it is that it tastes like shit. So I believe that it actually works. Like, if this thing tasted good, I would be like, oh no, this is garbage. This is sugary something, something.

• 17:14Sam Parr?

  Well, so Athletic Greens, I think-

• 17:16Shaan Puri?

  I thought Adam brought you something right now.

• 17:17Sam Parr?

  No, it's really expensive. Is that stuff expensive?

• 17:20Shaan Puri?

  So this little tub is like-

• 17:21Sam Parr?

  So this is a $100 million a year company, and they are acquired?

• 17:25Shaan Puri?

  Uh, no, they got a private equity investment, so they're worth more than that. Yeah, yeah, private equity-

• 17:30Sam Parr?

  If they invest in you, you're very profitable, typically.

• 17:32Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. So the idea that's here is not to invent something that's already invented, but to do it in a new way. So, uh, we have a lot of friends that do D to C companies, uh, direct-to-consumer, uh, brands. And this, to me, was like screaming for direct-to-consumer, right? I bought it because I was in Whole Foods and I just saw it and I grabbed it. Uh, but this is something that would be, you know, D to C, if you were thinking about D to C products, it's like a checklist in your head, right? So you want a, a price point that's high enough. So, uh, you know, you don't want to sell a $2 product because the Facebook ads are too expensive. You want something that's recurring and that, basically, people consume, not something they buy once and, uh, they keep forever. So this is consumable, it's a high price point, it appeals to the health and fitness market, which is a very big market. And, um, and it's very like sort of shipping-friendly and you could private-label it pretty easily.

• 18:17Shaan Puri?

  So, the idea here is to go D to C with, like, a competitor to Athletic Greens, um, through Facebook Instagram.

• 18:24Sam Parr?

  I hate D to C.

• 18:26Shaan Puri?

  Why would you hate D to C?

• 18:27Sam Parr?

  This is like, the, a lot of these direct-to-consumer companies, which, D to C, like-

• 18:31Shaan Puri?

  But you know how well our friends are doing with this, so how could you hate that?

• 18:34Sam Parr?

  I think that, this whole D to C, first of all, like, everything's D to C. So we're just talking about, like, basically, it's like, in my mind, it's white la- it's shitty products that are white-labeled, that are either pink, turquoise, or yellow, use a lowercase font.

• 18:49Sam Parr?

  As a logo and they triple or quadruple the price of the normal.

• 18:53Shaan Puri?

  That's like saying a tech company, you remove the vowels and you, you know, dot L Y and you know, like, dot I O, right?

• 19:01Sam Parr?

  It's similar and I would never, I think I'm stupid too. But I, my take on the direct to consumer thing, which like I said, it's not even like direct to consumer. It's whatever this like category is all most like, like a way travel. I think their suitcases suck.

• 19:17Shaan Puri?

  You don't like the products?

• 19:18Sam Parr?

  I think most of these products are horrible because I have friends that own these companies and they print money.

• 19:24Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 19:24Sam Parr?

  But they just like find something shitty in Alibaba or whatever and they, it's just all market. It's a market. It's, I think it's a, it's a soulless marketing machine that will make you rich. But once, when Facebook gets more expensive, which it is, we pay four times more, five times more than what we did two years ago.

• 19:40Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 19:41Sam Parr?

  It's going to close.

• 19:42Shaan Puri?

  Okay, fine. What ideas you got?

• 19:47Sam Parr?

  You guys see, Honey got acquired? Yeah, so I've been bullish on Chrome plugins for a while and I think I've been bullish on them is if, I don't, I've actually posted this in the group. If anyone's seen it before this acquisition, so I'm tooting my own horn, but

• 20:04Sam Parr?

  I love Chrome plugins because people dismiss them as silly dumb ideas. So Shopify apps are dismissed as dumb ideas. WordPress plugins are dismissed as dumb ideas. Newsletters, my company dismisses small dumb ideas and Chrome plugins as well. And they think that it's like this small silly thing, like it's a Chrome plugin. And it's like, no, it's not. It's just like if you're PayPal, are you an app? Are you a website? It's like you're a service and then you just happen to deliver through a particular mechanism. And so to me, Chrome plugins are just services and they just so happens to use a Chrome plugin. And I'll tell you firsthand, we own a Chrome plugin and I was showing Sean the stats before this. The Chrome plugin is the stickiest delivery mechanism of a service or product that I've ever seen in my life.

• 20:48Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, we were looking at the stats and you guys launched it like three years ago.

• 20:52Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and fifty or sixty percent of those users, we literally launched it on day one and never touched it ever again. And most of the users are still using it every single day.

• 21:02Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 21:02Sam Parr?

  And so this is a thing we launched called snippets. Does anyone actually have snippets? Oh, you have it? Or you did, someone did have it. Kathy, you have it? Okay, it was just a silly widget. There was like no thought and it's neat, but it doesn't like provide like a ton of value. And it's still, people don't, I think the reason people uninstalled it is they got a new computer.

• 21:20Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 21:21Sam Parr?

  But like with twenty-five-hundred users, we'll drive a hundred thousand page uses of that thing a day. And it's a Chrome plugin. So, another example is Grammarly. You guys know Grammarly? Yeah. So the founder spoke at HustleCon and I was shooting the shit with him and this was two thousand and sixteen, so this was three years ago. And I was like, Max, like, what is this thing about? He's like, I'll tell you this, we just raised a hundred million dollars in funding and I took, and that money went most to me and they only bought ten percent of the company. I was like, holy shit. And he's like telling me all the numbers. And I was like, it's a plugin. And he's like, yeah, it's gonna be huge. And I think they actually just raised more money recently at some huge valuation.

• 22:01Shaan Puri?

  Stupidly big, yeah.

• 22:02Sam Parr?

  But the stickiness of plugins are crazy. And so in my head, I'm thinking what server, like with the Hustle, we're just a news service or an information service and we just picked the mechanism of email because it's incredibly sticky. Chrome plugins way stickier than anything I've seen. And in my head, I'm constantly thinking of value that can be driven on it. Something that you need that each and every day because a Chrome plugin is perfect for that.

• 22:31Shaan Puri?

  Right. And you uh...

• 22:32Sam Parr?

  Gmail plugins too.

• 22:34Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you were saying for snippets, you were saying that you guys promoted it just once. And so like the graph basically looked like launch day, there's a spike of users. Then no new users, but the, no new users coming in, but the active users is just like steady for three years straight. And that's just like a very interesting graph to me.

• 22:52Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but I actually, what we could have done is, it was an ad-based thing. And I don't really like advertising as a business, but we very easily could have seen how much revenue we earned per, per page view and actually paid to promote it. We probably should have done it. We would have made probably millions of dollars because it's gotten like a hundred or 150 million page views already. But if you look at Honey, I studied how they're growing. They're growing through Taboola and Albrain, those little art, those little images, thumbnails at the bottom of like CNN.com.

• 23:22Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 23:23Sam Parr?

  Because they calculated the LTV. They were just spending like crazy to acquire users. I also think Google lets you pay to, like, app installs.

• 23:32Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you also, I like, I like how you think because you like to work backwards from distribution.

• 23:37Sam Parr?

  I think distribution first.

• 23:38Shaan Puri?

  So you'll just think of a distribution channel. Okay, Chrome extensions. And then work backwards until a product makes sense. Like you do that basically with email for the, for, for the hustle.

• 23:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah, you know who taught me that was this guy, the, you guys heard of Nerd Wallet? It's like a $200 million a year business. They bootstrapped it for a long time, then they raised all this money. He taught me that.

• 23:57Shaan Puri?

  How did they do that? They basically worked backwards from what? Google searches?

• 24:01Sam Parr?

  I had told one of the founders, he is, we raised, we had not raised any VC, but we raised a little angel money. I told one of the founders, I was like, we have this conference and I think, I was like, I could build this huge email list. I learned how to do it. And I know how to do that really well. And he goes, he's like, dude, raise this money and go big. And I was like, I don't know what I'm gonna sell. And he goes, you'll figure it out. Getting the audience is the hard part. And I was like, that sounds reckless. I don't know what you're talking about. He was right. And so I learned that once, getting the audience and baking distribution into your cost to acquire a customer. So basically, getting the audience means acquiring a customer. Acquiring a customer is way harder. Because if you think about it, think about how many shitty products are in the world that are huge businesses. Like, go to that convenience store across the street and you'll see like,

• 24:46Sam Parr?

  really bad, I mean, that's subjective, but you'll see like candy or something that you're like, man, this is not that high quality. But they're in every fucking store in the world. Right?

• 24:55Shaan Puri?

  For the record, Sam ate like... 20 pieces of candy right before this.

• 24:59Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 24:59Shaan Puri?

  It was an incredible experience. I sat there and he just like a small child's Halloween loot, just downed it while we were talking. And then he had to like with two hands, get all the wrappers and throw it away. I was like, wow.

• 25:10Sam Parr?

  I'm a big candy guy.

• 25:10Shaan Puri?

  That was phenomenal.

• 25:11Sam Parr?

  But I think a business is just distribution and then the product. And there's loads of examples of amazing products that completely die and become horrible companies because, you know, no one wants to go and buy it. But if an inferior product has great distribution, like what you see at the gas station, you're like, well, fuck, I just need this thing. I'm gonna, I don't care if it sucks.

• 25:31Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 25:32Sam Parr?

  Obviously, if you have great distribution and great product, that's where magic comes in.

• 25:35Shaan Puri?

  It multiplies, yeah.

• 25:36Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 25:36Shaan Puri?

  I'm curious, does anybody here have an idea for the brainstorm? Like, have you?

• 25:42Shaan Puri?

  Are you all just idealess? All right, who we got? What's your name? Karen, great. What's your idea, Karen?

• 25:50Speaker 04

  The idea is to create-

• 25:52Shaan Puri?

  You want to come up here and say it into the mic? You want to get on the podcast?

• 25:54Sam Parr?

  She is containerly.

• 25:56Shaan Puri?

  Oh, containerly.

• 25:58Sam Parr?

  No, that's okay.

• 25:59Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 26:00Sam Parr?

  No disrespect.

• 26:00Shaan Puri?

  Are you pitching your own business or are you? You're pitching your own actual business?

• 26:04Speaker 04

  Actual business.

• 26:05Shaan Puri?

  Okay, this is actually an ad.

• 26:08Speaker 04

  No, it's still an idea, you know? The idea is that we need to live more connected to nature, have places to co-work and co-live, you know, live an itinerant, crazy, you know, mobile-first lifestyle, you know? And that we can do that together by living in shipping containers in poorly performing RV parks that we purchase. And then move everyone in, have a great co-working space. And we're out there in nature, going for a walk, breathing fresh air, eating food that we grow.

• 26:37Sam Parr?

  So I'll dumb it down. It's, it's-

• 26:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:38Sam Parr?

  Without being disrespectful. Container ships or container units-

• 26:42Speaker 04

  Container units.

• 26:43Sam Parr?

  That people vacation in. I think it's vacation. They vacation or live?

• 26:47Speaker 04

  Well, it's for short, medium term, short to medium term living.

• 26:50Sam Parr?

  Okay.

• 26:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:51Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 26:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, thank you.

• 26:52Shaan Puri?

  Thank you, Karen.

• 26:52Speaker 04

  Thank you for letting me down. I was way too high ground.

• 26:55Sam Parr?

  No, that's okay.

• 26:56Shaan Puri?

  And Karen, what do you think of-

• 26:58Sam Parr?

  That's how I would tell my friends.

• 27:00Shaan Puri?

  Have you heard of AutoCamp?

• 27:02Speaker 04

  I sure have.

• 27:03Shaan Puri?

  What do you think of AutoCamp?

• 27:04Speaker 04

  Actually, I stayed there and it is absolutely gorgeous, but it doesn't allow any of you guys to buy into it. And we're giving the opportunity to co-own something.

• 27:14Sam Parr?

  Ah, okay.

• 27:14Speaker 04

  Right? So AutoCamp's a great way to spend a lot of money on a glamping unit, right? But they're all stacked next to each other. So it's all about the re- layout of the space so that there is actual nature involved.

• 27:28Sam Parr?

  How much does it cost to buy one of your things?

• 27:30Speaker 04

  Hundred and ten thousand.

• 27:32Sam Parr?

  Do you have to buy the land?

• 27:33Speaker 04

  No.

• 27:33Sam Parr?

  So it's like an RV, it's like a trailer park.

• 27:36Shaan Puri?

  But you rent it out, you make money the whole time.

• 27:37Speaker 04

  It's like a fancy trailer park.

• 27:38Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that's okay. I'm not being disrespectful.

• 27:40Speaker 04

  Fancy.

• 27:41Sam Parr?

  Got it.

• 27:42Speaker 04

  Um, but also, we rent it out. We get a company offsites and yoga retreats.

• 27:46Sam Parr?

  Can you put twenty thousand down, like twenty percent down?

• 27:48Speaker 04

  Sure, I can.

• 27:49Shaan Puri?

  All right, looks like you got a sale.

• 27:52Speaker 04

  And then, and then we rent it out for you, so we should be only about...

• 27:55Sam Parr?

  How many square feet are they?

• 27:56Speaker 04

  They're three hundred and twenty square feet. But plus the deck, plus the deck with a garage door that opens out so that...

• 28:02Sam Parr?

  A small one-bedroom apartment's six fifty, right? Or no, a studio's four fifty probably, right?

• 28:07Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:08Sam Parr?

  Okay, so it's a, it's a studio apartment.

• 28:10Speaker 04

  It's a studio apartment?

• 28:11Sam Parr?

  Got it.

• 28:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, in nature.

• 28:14Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I like, I actually like this general idea. First, I like that you pitch your business, that's hustling, I like it. Um, and then I actually like this idea, and the reason I ask about AutoCamp is because I'm fascinated by, um...

• 28:25Sam Parr?

  Say what AutoCamp is.

• 28:26Shaan Puri?

  So AutoCamp is basically glamping, which is like a glamorous camping experience. It's Airbnb if you want to like go out in nature, but you're like me and you don't want to do any of the work that's involved with going camping. And, um, that's how I think about it at least. I'm sure they would pitch it slightly more like with more flowery words.

• 28:45Sam Parr?

  But this company raised money from private equity.

• 28:48Shaan Puri?

  So they raised about a hundred and ten million dollars recently, um, and they only have about five locations, which means these guys must be printing money.

• 28:54Sam Parr?

  And does anyone know the difference between PE and VC? No. Okay, so if you raised from PE, you, you're a good business, or VC's more aspirational?

• 29:02Shaan Puri?

  VC is, your business is gonna suck for ten years and then might become humongous. PE is, your business is awesome now and they'll drain it. Um, that's the, that's the short, shorthand for it.

• 29:13Sam Parr?

  So if they raised from PE, in my head, I'm like, yeah, it probably works.

• 29:16Shaan Puri?

  Your shorthand for that means like they're already, like, they already have earnings.

• 29:21Speaker 04

  About eighty units and they range from four hundred thirty a night to two hundred thirty a night.

• 29:26Shaan Puri?

  So I remember, you can sit back down, I don't want you to have to stand the whole time. I remember reading, do anybody remember when Sony got their emails hacked? So I read like all of them and I was like, I was trying to figure out like, is there any good stuff in here? Because, you know, an email hack, you would think there's some good stuff. The one thing I remember that stuck out was, well, there's some cool emails early on when Snapchat was on the rise. And I think the guy who was CEO of Sony or whatever at the time, he was like on the board of Snapchat. So he had some good like, kind of raw thoughts of, you know, he didn't know these were going to be public. So he was telling the truth about what he thought about the business. And the other thing that I thought was interesting was some guy wrote an email to the top guy at Sony.

• 30:09Shaan Puri?

  And he was like a trend spotter type of guy. I don't know if you know about this, but like record labels and fashion brands, they have people who are trend spotters. They go all around the world and just try to look for what the trends are. And this guy was like, he's like, three things. And he said EDM is the rock and roll of this generation. You need to know that. Two.

• 30:28Sam Parr?

  That was right.

• 30:30Shaan Puri?

  That was right, that was totally spot on. And he's like, related, this generation loves festivals. He's like, in general, turnkey, turnkey outdoor experiences. So zero effort, but I get to be out in nature, away from my computer. It's sort of a response to the fact that we're always sort of indoors at a desk, connected at all times. He's like, those are, those are big. And number three was, bonus points if it's Instagrammable. And I've actually seen this play out. So like when we talked about the ice cream museum.

• 31:00Sam Parr?

  Down the street.

• 31:01Shaan Puri?

  And all these ideas, they all actually fit this same like ethos of how do you get turnkey experience with Instagrammable moments? We did a Spartan race together and it's the same thing. It's a, you know, turnkey, you feel like you're tough. Or if you're me, you feel like you're out of shape. And then like, you know, Instagrammable experiences along the way. There's one other idea that we were talking earlier about that's sort of like this, which is studs. So studs is a new startup that's based in New York. I thought was pretty interesting. What they're doing is they looked at what was working in malls. So I don't know if you ever remember Claire's that are inside malls. So place you go get your, you go get your ear pierced.

• 31:41Sam Parr?

  There's a lot of men here, I don't know.

• 31:43Shaan Puri?

  I saw some nods. They're either lying or they are they.

• 31:46Sam Parr?

  It was in the mall. It was like cheap earrings.

• 31:48Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's like where you go to get your ears pierced if you're like young, if you're like, you know, a tween. And so, um, so Claire's has like 4,000 locations around the world. They were doing like, you know, uh, they sold it, you know, in 2007 for $3 billion. So they built a, you know, a sizable business.

• 32:03Sam Parr?

  They still had a billion and a half in sales last year.

• 32:05Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, a billion and a half in sales last year. And, um, so it's a big business, but it's like kind of outdated. Like Claire's, Hot Topic, these were all like popular mall stores back in the 90s. And so what Studs is doing is just reimagined it. So it's a cool looking place. Uh, like every part of the store is like Instagrammable. Like you would, you would want to take a photo of yourself there and share it out. And you're getting your ears pierced, which is something that's like internet resistant. Like it's not like, probably not going to get like direct to consumer ear piercing. So, um, so you need to be, you need a physical location to do this. And when all of retail is dying, there's a small segment of retail that's thriving. And these are things that are, uh, that are essentially internet resistant businesses. And so I'm very interested in those and thinking through what, what more those might be. So like.

• 32:49Sam Parr?

  So we, we should talk about things that we think won't work. And I would put that in my category.

• 32:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Why are you betting against?

• 32:56Sam Parr?

  Um, I think it's too cute. And I think that, I think there's a problem with people, particularly in San Francisco and New York, who build things only for San Francisco and New York or LA people. Um, so one of my favorite companies is Wish, wish.com. Has anyone not heard of Wish? Some people, not that many though. Okay. Last year it would have been, or a few, like.

• 33:15Shaan Puri?

  Few years ago, yeah.

• 33:16Sam Parr?

  Okay. But wish.com, they have offices nearby. They've been popular for five years now. And not just popular, like, I think like 10 billion users a month. Like one of the most popular websites on earth.

• 33:28Shaan Puri?

  Not 10 billion users, but something else. 10 billion users?

• 33:31Sam Parr?

  Sorry, not users. Sorry.

• 33:33Shaan Puri?

  It's more than the human population.

• 33:37Sam Parr?

  Sorry, I meant, like, uh, sessions, like, web sessions. I have, uh, sorry.

• 33:44Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 33:44Sam Parr?

  Uh, I have, uh, a tool that guests web sessions.

• 33:48Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 33:48Sam Parr?

  So, that would potentially be a billion users.

• 33:51Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 33:51Sam Parr?

  But it was big enough that I'm friends with the founder on Facebook. I don't actually know him, but we became Facebook friends somehow. And he always shares, like, a screenshot. He's like, "We're, we were downloaded more than Instagram this month."

• 34:01Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 34:01Sam Parr?

  So, that's how big it is. Anyway, I love them because they made stuff that teenagers in middle America, where I'm from...

• 34:08Shaan Puri?

  Would buy.

• 34:08Sam Parr?

  Would buy. And what always angers me about these companies...

• 34:12Shaan Puri?

  So, you don't like the SoulCycle-type of, like, Barry's Bootcamp-type of companies?

• 34:16Sam Parr?

  No, I like them. I just think that not everything works that way. Like, the whole point of Claire's was that it was, like, shitty stuff that young people don't have any money on. And that serves a purpose.

• 34:27Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 34:27Sam Parr?

  Um, but a lot of new companies don't make stuff for that demographic.

• 34:31Shaan Puri?

  My thinking is...

• 34:32Sam Parr?

  And I think that, like, that's... It doesn't make sense to me.

• 34:35Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 34:36Sam Parr?

  This, it's like a high-end, it's like at that millennial pink thing, it's like...

• 34:40Shaan Puri?

  Right. It's too, it's, you're like, "Get off my lawn."

• 34:43Sam Parr?

  Yeah. No, I just, I just, I just think that there's a gap. I think that most people start too high-end and too coastal. When there's, you could just crush, like, it's like, uh, you know what I would, I'd love way more than that? It's Fashion Nova. You guys know Fashion Nova? Okay, Fashion Nova.

• 35:00Shaan Puri?

  Explain the, explain the business model.

• 35:01Sam Parr?

  Fashion Nova, who doesn't know Fashion Nova? Wow, okay.

• 35:05Shaan Puri?

  It's the new wish.

• 35:07Sam Parr?

  Fashion Nova is awesome. A year, I mean, it's pretty, it's pretty big now. Bootstrapped by, uh, a Middle Eastern guy, an immigrant, which is another reason why I like it. And he's in LA. His parents had a mall store, like Claire's, that sold really sh- has anyone been to, like, New York and seen these, like, stores that sell women jeans and women clothing that are all, like, knockoffs and not really low-quality? That's what his parents ran, and he's like, "I should sell this online." And so, he went right to Instagram and gave funny-looking clothes to young women, and they would wear it. But it, like, became a joke, almost like World Star Hip-Hop, where it was like, fat, like, they, they were like, you know how, like, young guys will yell, whenever there's a fight, they yell, like...

• 35:48Sam Parr?

  World Star, well, they advertised with all these Instagram models that it became a joke that Fashion Nova was on everything and it turned out that they're actually kind of cool. And so Fashion Nova is, I think it's one of the largest Shopify stores out there and it's like a $600 million a year fashion brand and they sell really cheap, low-quality clothes, but they're kind of like funny and cool.

• 36:13Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 36:13Sam Parr?

  Like Cardi B is now their spokesperson.

• 36:15Shaan Puri?

  And they just went crazy on the influencer side. So like if you go down the right Instagram rabbit hole, you will see Fashion Nova everywhere.

• 36:24Sam Parr?

  But that's an example of people selling to relatively normal folks.

• 36:28Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 36:28Sam Parr?

  It's affordable, it's kind of funny, they put themselves in the middle of culture. I like that. Jim Shark's another cool one that did the same thing.

• 36:37Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, I like those businesses too. All right, I want to turn it over, questions.

• 36:41Sam Parr?

  Oh, do you want to do things that we don't think will work?

• 36:43Shaan Puri?

  Okay, let's do it. What do you got?

• 36:45Sam Parr?

  Uh, why don't you say yours? So we always talk about things that we think will work. Let's talk about things we think won't work.

• 36:51Shaan Puri?

  Hater mode.

• 36:51Sam Parr?

  And I try never to do this because I always respect someone who tries something, even if it is stupid.

• 36:57Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 36:57Sam Parr?

  You want to start with yours?

• 36:58Shaan Puri?

  Well, to be clear, they have our respect.

• 37:00Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 37:01Shaan Puri?

  But we think it's stupid.

• 37:02Sam Parr?

  Yep.

• 37:02Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so the way you qualify for this is, most people think this is a good business, but we actually think it might be a bad business.

• 37:12Sam Parr?

  And I agree with you on most things that you've said. I think you do me.

• 37:15Shaan Puri?

  So we were doing this, kind of in the back, just shooting the shit. Turns out Sam wrote them down and now we're doing it live. Okay, so Patreon, so Patreon is not a cool business to hate on because it's like the nicest business.

• 37:27Sam Parr?

  Say what it is.

• 37:28Shaan Puri?

  Patreon basically lets any indie creator, so you're a blogger, a podcaster, whatever, you can say, "Hey, fans, support me directly. Give me five bucks a month, that'll help me do my art." So I could do that with this show, for example. I think that's a really cool thing. I think Patreon is going to be a bad business, even though that's a cool thing.

• 37:45Sam Parr?

  I think it's going to be the worst business.

• 37:47Shaan Puri?

  The reason why is they went, you know, bad is always relative, right? So it's high expectations, they raised VC money, a lot of VC money, I think, I don't know what they're, I think they raised $50 million in their last round. So that means they're trying to track towards like a billion-dollar-plus exit. And on the other side, you have the business model, which is to take essentially 5% of the patronage donations. And so if you just sort of calculate out, you're like, alright, to get to, you know, to be a billion dollar business, you need to be about 100 million in revenue as a business, which means they're gonna need to make 20 times that is needs to be flowing through their system. And I just don't think that's ever gonna happen. And I don't think that, and I also think that's like highly commoditized. Like, I work at Twitch. We have a built-in way for you to give money to broadcasters.

• 38:31Sam Parr?

  Do you know how many, can you say how many people? So, the reason I think it's bad is I have seen media companies, when they ask for donations, it's a horrible business.

• 38:39Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 38:40Sam Parr?

  Like, very few people ever, the only reason Wikipedia does it is because it's the most popular website in the country, or the world. Like, or one of. I don't think that people donate money. I like Substack, which is a newsletter subscription company, because people give, you give, it's not, please give me money. It's, I'll allow you to get my information if you give me money.

• 38:58Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah, yeah, it's different. It's paying for a product versus, like, tipping.

• 39:03Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I think, and so my question is...

• 39:05Shaan Puri?

  So, from Twitch, I can tell you, people definitely do tip, like, a lot. People definitely just voluntarily give money to things that they could also get the content for free. The whole Twitch business model is off that, based off that premise.

• 39:15Sam Parr?

  Well, the business model isn't, is it?

• 39:17Shaan Puri?

  The majority of revenue will come through that. Yeah, so a lot of people do this behavior. But, what I would say is that, the bad part is when you're taking like a 5% cut of, of that, you have such a small, you have such a small share. And so like, you know, for Twitch, I think the default share is 50/50. 50% is way more than the sort of 5%. And I think Patreon tried to up it to like 7% once, and everyone revolted. And, so that showed, they basically have no like headroom to, to take a bigger, bigger cut of this.

• 39:47Sam Parr?

  It's a huge difference because they're like artists. So like, if we're gonna stereotype them, they probably don't have a lot of money in the first place. And so any percentage more...

• 39:55Shaan Puri?

  And some guy went and scraped all the top Patreon pages to see who's making the most. And like, the top people are not very big. And so it just, to me, it's like, I don't know, it doesn't add up, doesn't pass a sniff test.

• 40:05Sam Parr?

  Let's do one more.

• 40:06Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 40:06Sam Parr?

  Firefly. So have you guys seen these Ubers with the, oh, you worked at Uber, so you maybe know a little bit?

• 40:12Shaan Puri?

  Ubers with the ad on the top?

• 40:14Sam Parr?

  It's like...

• 40:15Shaan Puri?

  It's like making an Uber look like a taxi?

• 40:16Sam Parr?

  We talked, I talked to those, we...

• 40:19Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:20Sam Parr?

  Okay, so we talked to these guys when they were first raising their seed round.

• 40:23Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 40:24Sam Parr?

  And we saw the deck and it was promising. I don't think it's gonna work though.

• 40:29Shaan Puri?

  You didn't think so at the time either?

• 40:30Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 40:31Shaan Puri?

  Cause you didn't invest.

• 40:32Sam Parr?

  On it, on it. They have since raised money hundreds of millions of dollars.

• 40:37Shaan Puri?

  It looks like they're doing phenomenal and they might be. I always just thought it was weird because like you used to work at Uber. I always just thought this is a huge platform risk.

• 40:44Sam Parr?

  If I was Uber, I would say get off.

• 40:45Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, cause if Uber ever decides, if the bigger this gets, Uber might say, hey, that looks like a good revenue stream. We should own.

• 40:51Sam Parr?

  And the learning of this, I think, but I'm wrong still, but I might be right, is I think you, it's impossible to build a, it's very unsafe, but it's doable. Zynga did it. It's very unsafe to build a business on top of one platform and they only have two platforms, Lyft and Uber.

• 41:06Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I don't love this, um, don't love this business.

• 41:10Sam Parr?

  I know a guy who had a, a company that was about to sell for 200 million dollars last January. Facebook changed their algorithm and it went out of business in March.

• 41:22Shaan Puri?

  I know the one you're talking about. It's a media company, right?

• 41:24Sam Parr?

  Yep.

• 41:27Sam Parr?

  Yeah, we won't say it.

• 41:28Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 41:29Sam Parr?

  But it's a true story. It was in the news probably, and I think that's exactly what will happen to Firefly and any company that builds on top of a platform.

• 41:37Shaan Puri?

  I remember when you were starting the hustle, I was like, you need to do Facebook, video, Snapchat, go to Snapchat. Snapchat's where it's at. Cause all these things were hot and trendy. And you were very adamant. You're like, I'm gonna do email because I'm not, you know, I'm not susceptible, you know, I own my community then, right? Like, these are people I have a direct relationship with. I'm not dependent on Facebook.

• 42:00Sam Parr?

  And it makes Uber stupid. It makes it look trashy. And also I think it's.

• 42:06Shaan Puri?

  Uh, Firefly planted? There you go. One point for Sam. They're, they're still up like a hundred, but like, you know.

• 42:12Sam Parr?

  I don't want them to fail.

• 42:13Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 42:14Sam Parr?

  I just think that.

• 42:15Shaan Puri?

  Not even a little bit?

• 42:15Sam Parr?

  No, I don't, I don't want anyone who's taken a risk to fail, but I think they will. And it sucks because the drivers make, they, I think they promised $200 or $300 a month to drivers. So of course I want all these guys to win. I want it to be great. I also think that in a. When a recession happens in two or three years, brand advertising, which is what that is, it won't, it's gonna go away.

• 42:34Shaan Puri?

  It trips.

• 42:35Sam Parr?

  It's not gonna go away, it's gonna shrink. And I think that the stock, I think that more people are gonna pay money on Facebook and Instagram and whatever is gonna exist, TikTok. And that type of advertising is gonna go away. The valuation that they eventually raised that, I bet you was more revenue than all of the taxi advertising did as a whole.

• 42:51Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah.

• 42:54Shaan Puri?

  Is there any way they can pivot? There's always a way you can pivot. Can you pivot successfully? Uh, what would you do?

• 43:00Sam Parr?

  I, I don't.

• 43:01Shaan Puri?

  So you, let's say you get, they have some assets, right? Let's say they're gonna have, they have money in the bank. They have a network of drivers, let's call it 10,000 drivers that have their unit installed on top. Um, what does that allow them to do? How does that, how can they leapfrog from that to something else interesting? Is there anything that comes to mind?

• 43:19Sam Parr?

  They said they had loads of information on where the cars were going. You, you're trying to build a driverless car company. Maybe there's something there.

• 43:30Sam Parr?

  You're still platform dependent, but that's way less obnoxious.

• 43:33Shaan Puri?

  Well, it's way, yeah, you're not, the city's not gonna, the city's not gonna go in.

• 43:40Sam Parr?

  I think they, you think they look good?

• 43:45Shaan Puri?

  You like ads, okay?

• 43:47Sam Parr?

  Would you put that on your car for an extra $300?

• 43:54Sam Parr?

  I could see that too.

• 43:56Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, the reason it works is they're on the road.

• 44:02Sam Parr?

  And they install them for free.

• 44:19Shaan Puri?

  So there's, so there's two types of platforms. Um, I remember there's a story of Facebook back in the day released their Facebook platform, which was like, hey, you can build games on Facebook. This is gonna be awesome. And they were being hailed as like the next great platform. And the story, I don't know if this is true or not, but the story I read was Zuck goes and meets with Bill Gates and is showing about Facebook platform. And really, Microsoft was the last, the previous like huge platform, right? The Microsoft operating system that had all these different apps you can, you can use on, on it. And Bill Gates was like, "This is horseshit." Like, "This is not a platform." He's like, "What do you mean? Developers can build on this." He's like, "That's not what a platform means."

• 44:59Shaan Puri?

  A platform is where the strategy is for the sum of all the apps that get built on this to be worth more than the platform itself. So like, although Microsoft was always a huge company, if you added up the value of all the different programs that could run on Microsoft, the total enterprise value of those was greater than the value of Microsoft. And that was their strategy, was like, "We will be able to sell more operating systems if we have more apps. Therefore, we need to make sure that apps win on our platform. Otherwise, we can't sell our operating systems."

• 45:29Sam Parr?

  And the second one?

• 45:29Shaan Puri?

  Which is very different. The second is like, more like what Facebook did, what Twitter did, which was like, "Hey, we got a whole bunch of users. And we got people trying to build stuff because they're all enthusiastic. We'll give them some access to try to build some things."

• 45:40Sam Parr?

  And for the record, huge companies have been built in the second place. The idea, though, is you've got to get in while the getting's good, and you've got to be really good at diversifying.

• 45:49Shaan Puri?

  Of getting out.

• 45:50Sam Parr?

  So, for example, Movement Watches, one of our friends, who spoke at HustleCon's bootstraps with the company for $100 million, they built a brand, and young people liked that brand. Blue Apron, and Plated, whatever those also HustleCon speakers, I was talking to him, and he was like, "We couldn't build that thing now because the cost to acquire our customers is way too expensive, and we didn't get in early enough to build this brand equity." So, the idea is, Amazon's a good example. Amazon totally got big because of Google AdWords, or what are the ads, whatever the ads platform?

• 46:26Shaan Puri?

  AdSense?

• 46:26Sam Parr?

  AdSense, whatever it is. They got big, they were the biggest customer of Google, but they built a brand. So, it is possible, I just don't think it's...

• 46:35Shaan Puri?

  You want to escape. There's a great talk that this guy, Josh Elman, he's a VC here, who, he ran growth at Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. He's had a good career. And so, he wrote, he gave a talk called, like, "Building a rocket ship on the back of a rocket ship," or something like that. And really, what he's talking about is like, "Hey, it's great when these platforms are around, you can go get some easy growth on top of them. But you've got to make sure you're building escape velocity to get off them quickly because you will not survive living off them." And so, just as much as you're thinking about all the advantages you're getting, you better be thinking about how you're going to build your escape off of those platforms, like Zynga did.

• 47:13Sam Parr?

  We grew a lot from Facebook, and when we were doing that, an advisor told me, "Get paranoid." And I was paranoid the whole time and we began diversifying and it has it hurt us but it worked.

• 47:25Shaan Puri?

  Right, like native who was on the podcast when he was talking, he talks about how they use Facebook and that's how they sell the majority of their product, but they're constantly trying to grab customer email addresses and then they remarket via email so they're not relying on the newsfeed. They diversify through like now they're in stores, so now that they're in stores, they're less relying on the Facebook relationship. So they're always trying to build those different assets and different relationships with customers so that you're not one channel.

• 47:50Sam Parr?

  If I had to start from scratch, I think one of the platforms that's best right now is Facebook groups. Is everyone who's a trend, are you guys in our Facebook group? Does our stuff show up at the top all the time? Every group I have shows up at the top. It's actually in the notifications. Yeah.

• 48:04Shaan Puri?

  Well, they publicly announced, they were like, "Our strategy is to promote groups." So that means right now, like, don't make a page, make a group, it's the algorithm is favoring it, but also don't try to live there forever because the day that they decide that, which is not the thing.

• 48:19Sam Parr?

  I know this works because Zuckerberg said this in an announcement last, this was the same announcement, like I said, that killed my friend's company. They said we're prioritizing group content, among other things, but if you go down to BART and all the other places and the commercials, they're advertising groups. And so whatever they're spending on their brand advertising, that's the thing they want to succeed most.

• 48:37Shaan Puri?

  So you have at least two years where that is still going to be like the focal point and then who knows after that? And so that's one of those, we say work backwards from distribution, it's like, well, if I knew this is going to work great on Facebook through groups, which is not even pay, you're not paying for ads, you could just work backwards from that, like what's a great group I could build? And then based off that group, what's a great, you know, sort of product or sort of off-platform commerce I could do?

• 48:59Sam Parr?

  Five or 10 more minutes of questions?

• 49:01Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, cool.

• 49:32Sam Parr?

  And one of the products that we were going to come out with for trends and they actually got shut down was we worked with a guy who had sold roughly 500 companies as a broker and we looked at a ton of Amazon companies and their valuations were horrible because of that same reason. Quietly, yeah. And so we, we sold, or he was, he was selling companies that were selling on Amazon for like one or two times earning. So if a company made like 10 million in revenue, or let's say 5 million in revenue, 1 million in profit, they would sell for like 800,000 dollars.

• 50:18Sam Parr?

  If anyone, and put that in perspective, our company, um, four or five X, Scott? Five. So we spend five times more to acquire one customer as we did one year ago.

• 50:27Shaan Puri?

  That's crazy. Malibu, what you got?

• 50:39Sam Parr?

  No, I think that they're gonna continue innovating for another many decades. Um, Scott, is Instagram cheap?

• 50:56Sam Parr?

  So when I started the company, I don't want to reveal too much, but let's just say that like, I'm gonna make up these numbers. Um, let's say one subscriber to us is worth 20 dollars. We were able to acquire a customer for a dollar 50. Now it's five or 10 times that. Some days it's 10. And in my opinion, that just means that a company like mine cannot be, be really expensive to start again now. That said, there's all these other ad products on Facebook that are really good. For example, like I said, groups, groups are awesome. You can acquire, you can advertise on Facebook and get someone to join your group, um, for really cheaply. And so I think that there's other things. I spent hours on Oculus this weekend, and I think that's gonna have so many ads in it.

• 51:36Sam Parr?

  So my opinion is that the normal Facebook ad placements are definitely getting more expensive, but it's not, definitely, there's still a lot of juice left in there. Particularly for you guys, if the margin's there.

• 51:48Shaan Puri?

  We'll do a couple more, couple more questions.

• 51:50Sam Parr?

  Political ads?

• 51:54Sam Parr?

  No, I don't care about that stuff. I save my lane.

• 51:58Shaan Puri?

  What's that?

• 52:01Sam Parr?

  Not that I don't care, I just don't know anything about it.

• 52:17Sam Parr?

  Our friend had a company that Ramon had a, you want to tell that story?

• 52:21Shaan Puri?

  What?

• 52:21Sam Parr?

  Well, Ramon had, our friend had a business built on top of that same demographic. And he had 400,000 people in his groups. And he started with one group and made it like sub-interest. Now it was mostly soap operas.

• 52:34Shaan Puri?

  Yes, so he, he basically drove them to a blog. There he captured their email address and the blog. He just did advertising because he had enough scale where he could do it that way.

• 52:42Sam Parr?

  But one of the major, the way that he did it was he got people to a blog and then to a Facebook group. And then from a Facebook group, he would post articles in there and then collect emails and then back to the blog and then back to the group. And it's very circular to the point where he sold it. His traffic was like perfectly broken evenly. So to me, starting with a large Facebook group is the same as starting with a large email list. You can like segment it out pretty good into different interest, interest groups, literally and meta, like figuratively. Anyway, um.

• 53:12Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I don't have too many answers. You gotta know the customers really well, like why they're in the group in the first place, what they're interested in, that sort of thing. But I would say generally people err on the side of being too afraid to charge, too afraid to ask. Uh, they think it's gonna offend people and everyone's gonna run away and all this stuff. And turns out if you're pretty honest about what you, about the value you think you're providing and you say, hey, would you guys be interested in this? Uh, that's a very easy way to start. And I think people overco- overcomplicate it and just do, I would do that. I would take your best idea. I would say, hey, we're thinking about doing this. You know, this is what it would cost. Would you guys be interested? And that doesn't mean that necessarily it's gonna work, but you'll know the opposite. If no one even says they're interested, then, then don't bother with that.

• 53:52Sam Parr?

  Best you could knock it out the park by having a premium one that's $20 a month and you do special stuff for them in the group. What we learned about our trends thing, which I thought was amazing is more people have been buying because of the group as opposed to the content. I didn't realize that.

• 54:09Shaan Puri?

  Jason, what you got?

• 54:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, so what I like about, what I like about you guys, you're very no bullshit and that's really great. And I know both of you see a lot of thoughts from founders, you read easy founder Twitter, you read blogs. I wonder if there's any like ventriloquism out there about like habits for founders or things like that that like always rub you the wrong way, always disagree with you every time you have a founder.

• 54:29Sam Parr?

  Can I say one? Yeah, and we were just talking about this. I think that there's a huge misconception about this like idea of like this person who starts something and then grows it to a huge publicly traded company. I actually think that it's better for most people to find professional managers. And that is like not popular, like Andreessen Horowitz, they say that they want the founders to be the CEO. I think that most founders would not want to be CEO and would suck at it. And there's been a lot of companies that have been completely running the ground because someone who starts a company may be a visionary or creative and really bad at operating. And I think that a lot of people don't acknowledge that.

• 55:07Shaan Puri?

  I used to make a mistake, which is I would listen to somebody and they would say one smart thing, two smart things, three smart things. I'm like, that's a smart person. And then I would sort of auto-accept all other statements that they make. And I never did this explicitly, but that's actually what was happening in my head. I was just taking it all in. And so now, and then I went the other way and I was like, I don't want to listen to nobody. I'm going to figure it all out myself. And I couldn't even last on that for six months because I was like, well, I want to hear what people think. I'm actually very curious. And so now my mindset is very different, which is absorb everything. I try to take, I try to hear everybody's point of view. But then I really like have like a wall, like a firewall, which is like, what do I actually believe? Which of these things resonate with me? Which of these things, like do I want to actually incorporate into, you know, my own little personal bible?

• 55:52Shaan Puri?

  And so I would say a lot of stuff that's sort of conventional wisdom doesn't pass that test. I think you said one which was like, starting a business versus running and operating a business, two, two sort of different things and. The way I would, I would think about it a little bit differently is I think that there's some really underrated business opportunities. So I think that buying a business, buying an existing business should be way more common than it is. Cause I think the media, investors, all glorify starting a new thing. But there's so much value in buying a business and actually just increasing the value. It's a much faster path to business success. Now, if you don't care about business success, you just want to make some change happen in the world, that's different. The second one that I think is like, like sort of criminally underrated

• 56:37Shaan Puri?

  is, I've told you this before, working, working at a job, I think is, is, is a flawed way to get to financial freedom. And I'm not like the first person to say this. I think most people would sort of agree with this, but the reality is that the majority, majority of people work as employees. And if you work as an employee, you sort of have the, the deck stacked against you. You might be a great employee.

• 57:02Sam Parr?

  I don't agree with you.

• 57:03Shaan Puri?

  Okay, let me, let me, let me tell you why I think it's bad. So if you're a great employee, you might be two, three, five times more productive or have higher output than the person next to you. But you'll never really get paid two, three, four, five X somebody who's in your peer group at your company. Companies sort of.

• 57:19Sam Parr?

  Have you ever met salespeople?

• 57:20Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, salespeople. But what, what they do is they just raise the quota. It's like, okay, fantastic. You did it. Here's your new way to get that same bonus. Like companies go broke if they.

• 57:30Sam Parr?

  If you do performance, if you are paid on performance, then you can knock it out the park.

• 57:35Shaan Puri?

  Maybe. I think most jobs are not, from my experience, sales jobs, they also, basically they just keep raising your quota so that you, you know, you, you can't continue to earn at the same rate you're earning.

• 57:45Sam Parr?

  I would say there's, there's only a few ways to get rich. It's you get lucky, which includes marrying into it, inheritance, or lottery.

• 57:52Shaan Puri?

  The best way.

• 57:53Sam Parr?

  Yeah, the best way. You start a business, or you become a salesperson. And salesperson includes anything that is like, performance related, that's typically sales. In tech world, it could be like growth as well.

• 58:04Shaan Puri?

  Right. Have you guys read the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad? I'm just curious. So, when I read that, that was one of those, like, I'm gonna write that in my Bible. Like, that one resonated with me. I was like, this makes absolute sense. And if you haven't read the book.

• 58:16Sam Parr?

  Isn't that kind of a crook?

• 58:17Shaan Puri?

  I don't think he's a crook. Yeah. I don't, I don't know if, I do this with a lot of people, like Elon Musk. A lot, some people think he's like a hero and a super genius. Some people think he's a fraud.

• 58:28Sam Parr?

  Didn't he go to jail?

• 58:31Shaan Puri?

  My point is this, is like, I don't really care about a person because from what I've encountered here in Silicon Valley, I've met my heroes and they're just, people have flaws, people are weird, people have strengths and weaknesses, and I don't judge their philosophies or wisdom based off of their totality as a person. And so, so this guy, his philosophy around, in Rich at Portad, it resonated with me. And so, that's one that I've let in that I don't think most people here in Silicon Valley talk about.

• 58:57Sam Parr?

  Do him and then Mike.

• 58:58Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 59:06Shaan Puri?

  Ideally, yes. The reality is, a lot of people do the opposite too, right?

• 59:10Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 59:15Sam Parr?

  I agree with you, but I'm gonna add a second perspective. You're, you're working, so this is, I'm gonna, I don't wanna call you Anan. How do you pronounce it? Anan. Anan. Okay. I have a friend who spells it the same way. We call him Anan. He's working on a self-driving car. That's, that's like a go big or go home. I think that, that's awesome. I think that you'd be, I'm from Missouri, so I've got a lot of, people aren't as smart as you, but my friends are not as smart as you, but there's people who are rich because they start a small business that makes $500,000 to a million dollars a year in profit, and that just goes straight to their pocket. And I would argue, though, that I agree with you. I think, I, I will, if you would accept my money, I will bet money on you, and I think that you will win, but I think that you can make-

• 59:56Shaan Puri?

  You just meet this guy?

• 59:57Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Did you spend three minutes on-

• 1:00:00Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he's great.

• 1:00:01Sam Parr?

  You guys see this guy's gonna win. I would, I think that a lot of people are surprised that, so we have this database that we surveyed 600 people, and there's people who own restaurants that are making $600,000 a year on a two and a half million dollar thing. Now, who knows what type of life you want. That's pretty cool for a lot of people. That's great for most people. But I do agree with you, but that is probably why you're probably gonna be the best.

• 1:00:36Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, I feel you. I feel you.

• 1:00:38Shaan Puri?

  You, you won't get rich if you-

• 1:00:45Shaan Puri?

  Aside from the lucky tier, you won't get rich unless you're solving somebody's problem. Unless you're giving value to other people. You're just gonna capture some percentage of that value back. Now, the thing you said which was, and if you're listening to this, you probably didn't hear what he said, which was, "Don't go try to start a business to make money, go out there, start a business to solve problems and money will come." I call, you know, that's the top of the pyramid, and if you're living by that, I think that is amazing. I also know many people who start businesses because they enjoy the act of starting a business, and they try to find different problems to solve. And they don't necessarily know which problem, ahead of time, they just decide, "That's who I am, I'm a business person, I'm gonna make it happen." And I think that, while what you're saying is amazing, I think what it does is it isolates

• 1:01:28Shaan Puri?

  people out who don't feel that true calling of which problem to solve, and it's okay to know that there's many different styles.

• 1:01:34Sam Parr?

  Yeah, my father owned a company that sold onions. He was an onion salesman. That's what my dad did, and he knocked it out the park because we were poor and he wanted to send me to private school. I think that is possible, that's my point, though, I think that your thinking is gonna make you a home run versus whatever is successful but not a home run.

• 1:01:53Shaan Puri?

  I will leave everyone with one little exercise that I think is an amazing one to do yourself. I'm gonna do it to you. I wrote down, we're gonna play the game real quick.

• 1:02:01Sam Parr?

  Wait, ask, get Mike's last one.

• 1:02:02Shaan Puri?

  Oh, sorry, Mike, one last question.

• 1:02:03Sam Parr?

  Cause he's got his hand up.

• 1:02:04Shaan Puri?

  Now, hold on, show your shirt. So, his shirt says, "Southern Sam's Wieners As Big As A Baby's Arm."

• 1:02:12Sam Parr?

  My first company was a hot dog cart called Southern Sam's Wieners As Big As Baby's Arm.

• 1:02:15Shaan Puri?

  This is how famous Sam is.

• 1:02:17Sam Parr?

  I had to do it because I was solving a problem.

• 1:02:18Shaan Puri?

  You made this shirt.

• 1:02:20Sam Parr?

  I wasn't trying to get more, get, get people to eat hot dogs. I was doing it because I wanted to get paid and I wanted to work outside.

• 1:02:54Shaan Puri?

  Wherever the attention is, that's if you're trying to get people's attention, that's where you gotta go and you gotta figure out how to play that game. So now it's on TikTok, fantastic. Now you gotta learn how to do music videos and get people's attention.

• 1:03:07Sam Parr?

  I think it's freaking awesome. It is so cool. I think that the 16-year-olds of today are amazing. I think that their bullshit detector is gonna be higher than any other generation's bullshit detector. And that I think that the only way you're gonna be able to circumvent that is by not bullshitting. And so it's gonna be really hard, I think, for a Walmart to advertise there unless they do something hip and cool, which big brands are able to do that, like a Nike or something. But I think that with Facebook, not so much Instagram, but with Facebook, it was really easy to scam people. Before I started a legitimate company, like most internet people, I did scams. Facebook was easy to do that. I mean, everyone, right, everyone who has made money on the internet.

• 1:03:47Shaan Puri?

  They're gonna leave you hanging.

• 1:03:48Sam Parr?

  Yeah, don't act like everyone has thought of something. I'm not talking like real scams, but like, you know, you hawk bullshit. Anyway, it was easy to do on Google. It was a little less, but still easy to do on Facebook. Kinda hard on Instagram. I think with TikTok, it's gonna be very, very, very, very hard. That's my opinion.

• 1:04:05Shaan Puri?

  So I think TikTok is amazingly fun to use. I also feel like a perv when I'm on it, because there's also like a lot of like just 16-year-old girls, no matter what I'm trying to watch, like, I like basketball, but it's like, no, here's what you like. I'm like, oh, God, this algorithm, I don't know how I feel about this. But the other thing is, I also don't know how long this lasts, because I know TikTok is pouring so much money into buying users. And usually, apps like TikTok don't have great retention. So I'm curious on the long haul, apps that don't typically... Right, but the sort of, the wave and the critical mass of users is really like 18 months old. And because they're buying so much, you can't tell how much is leaking out.

• 1:04:47Sam Parr?

  Is it popular in China?

• 1:04:48Shaan Puri?

  Like, they've spent over a billion dollars.

• 1:04:51Sam Parr?

  It's popular in China? I knew it was a Chinese company, but I wasn't sure if it was a... Yeah dude, I'm abolished on that.

• 1:04:59Shaan Puri?

  Usually products that, like, the Facebook-type products that feature your friends, WhatsApp, Instagram... Products that have people you know in them are like sticky forever. Products that are entertainment, like a Vine, or, you know, they have a harder time doing it. And they can do it. So I'm just saying, it's not like a given that TikTok's just gonna be the thing, you know, four or five years from now. It's totally possible, but it's not a given. The last thing I'll say is just, do what's native to the medium. So like, I know a lot of people, a lot of music artists are trying to use TikTok. They're designing songs to be TikTockable. And so they're like, uh, cause on TikTok, a lot of the dancers are like little hand gestures. So they're designing lyrics that are like, "Pick up the phone, say goodbye, thumbs down, see you later."

• 1:05:42Shaan Puri?

  And like, they're designing a song that can be TikToked really easily. And so I think that's the type of thinking you have. I was inspired by like, um, Dane Cook got really big because he gamed LimeWire back in the day. He would, people were searching for Chris Rock comedy. So he'd like put like five minutes of Chris Rock comedy and 45 minutes of Dane Cook comedy right afterwards. And that's how he got his followers, because he knew how to like game that system, because that's where the attention was at that time. And so, you know, that's how I would think about it.

• 1:06:11Shaan Puri?

  Okay, the game, the game's real simple. Uh, this is a game you could play with, you can do to yourself, you can play with other people. It tells you a lot about people. So I interview and hire a lot of people. And I found that this three-line test, uh, tells me a lot about the way somebody thinks. So I'm gonna play with you. So all you gotta do is just answer first thing that comes to mind. When I'm gonna say a sentence, I'm gonna fill in, I'm gonna leave a blank. That's where you say your thing, okay?

• 1:06:34Shaan Puri?

  Uh, people are...

• 1:06:36Sam Parr?

  Friendly.

• 1:06:37Shaan Puri?

  Life is...

• 1:06:39Sam Parr?

  Adventurous.

• 1:06:40Shaan Puri?

  I am...

• 1:06:42Sam Parr?

  An animal.

• 1:06:44Shaan Puri?

  Very good. Okay, so I've noticed that people have a default reaction, and you don't have to be held to it. But these are like the core beliefs that you carry around in the world. So if you think people are stupid, or if you think people are complicated, I bet you're gonna have a lot of problems with people as you go around the world, if that's kind of like what your top of mind thing is. Mine used to be, "Life is great," just something generally positive. But I updated it because I heard a better one, and I was like, "Ooh, I like that. I'm gonna take that." Which was just, "Life is what you make of it." And I was like, "Oh, that's a more empowering way to think about things." It's like, no matter what's going on in my life, it's gonna be about what I make of this situation. And so I encourage you, ask yourself these three questions. Say, "What do I think? People are, life is, I am."

• 1:07:28Shaan Puri?

  And then ask yourself, "Am I happy with those answers?" And also try it on other people, it'll tell you a lot about them. So I wanted to leave you guys with that little framework.

• 1:07:37Sam Parr?

  Thank you for coming.

• 1:07:38Shaan Puri?

  Alright.