3 businesses we think are about to blow up

Database of 140+ business ideas: https://clickhubspot.com/slkm Episode 868: Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) and Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) talk about 3 business ideas. — Show Notes: (3:08) Idea: Oxytocin dosing (20:17) Idea: Loneliness solutions (27:30) Idea: Faith-based businesses (27:33) Angel Studios (34:36) What’s the reaction to the action? (42:03) The brutal business of making hit movies — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton (joinhampton.com): My community for founders. Average member does $25m/year. Many of the guests are members. Get after it...apply: http://joinhampton.com/mfm — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents. • Mercury - Shaan uses Mercury across all of his companies. you can too: http://mercury.com/ Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N. A., Members FDIC • I run all my newsletters on Beehiiv and you should too + we're giving away $10k to our favorite newsletter, check it out: beehiiv.com/mfm-challenge My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano /

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

• 0:00Sam Parr?

  We're going back to the roots a little bit with MFM. Everyone says they want more ideas. I've got two of them.

• 0:13Sam Parr?

  Okay, so everyone's lonely. We know this. I want to talk to you about two different radical ideas.

• 0:19Shaan Puri?

  If you're listening to this podcast, we know. You know, we know.

• 0:25Sam Parr?

  Well, these two ideas I've already been interested in and I was just trying to find an excuse to tie them together. I'm trying to make this cohesive, but they're two great ideas and we have a precedent of getting this first one somewhat ish right. We have predicted a couple like biohacking things, not predicted, that takes too much credit, but like we talked about it fairly early in the adoption cycle. Would you agree?

• 0:47Shaan Puri?

  We're basically big pharma. We have predicted and developed several, several pharmaceutical drugs on this podcast. Would you like to go down memory lane of a couple of them?

• 0:59Sam Parr?

  I don't actually know all the ones that we did. Obviously GLP ones, testosterone. What else were we talking about for a long time?

• 1:06Shaan Puri?

  You, you've brought up GLP ones, kind of before they even got to market, before Ozempic ever got to market.

• 1:13Shaan Puri?

  TRT businesses and you were toying around with the idea of like, hey, I really believe there's a big business to be built here. We didn't end up building one, but we invested in, well, we invested in one that that worked. You also talked about sperm freezing, not just egg freezing, and I think that's also become quite a big deal. We've talked about IVF, you know, fairly early on and the different business opportunities that exist in IVF. I don't think anyone's actually done those yet. The idea there is to build a trusted brand in the IVF world, a chain. The Chick-fil-A of IVF, as I like to say.

• 1:51Shaan Puri?

  A place you trust. Okay, but go on. What do you got now?

• 1:55Sam Parr?

  So I was scrolling on Instagram the other day and I saw two things. One, a new version, or rather another health trend that I think is going to be popular. And two, probably the best way to position this new trend I've ever seen. So Palmer Lucky, CEO, founder of Androl, also started Oculus. He was at this conference and someone said something to him, a question that I tend to hate. And he's one of the few people I've ever seen to answer this question in a great way. The question was basically Palmer, if you were starting from zero and you had nothing, no connections, what would you do? What would you work on? And he had the best answer.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  If you were starting with zero today, some bet you made wiped you out, you gotta start again. Didn't have your network, didn't have your wealth, what would you do today? Palmer?

• 2:46Speaker 03

  I would try to end the tragedy of divorce with oxytocin doping for marriage counseling. We understand mammal pair bonding pretty well. There's a lot of people who want to stay together. Most of the people who don't want to stay together should stay together, especially for their kids. Look, if, if, if people think SSRIs are fine, which they're not, but if they were, then oxytocin doping to stay together is definitely fine.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  It's really, it's really critical, right? So, you know, people sort of drift apart over time. Oxytocin is safe, but it's

• 3:18Speaker 03

  Safe, it's understood. We use it on mothers and infants.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  It's the bonding hormone.

• 3:22Speaker 03

  That's right. It's the mammal pair bonding chemical. There's things you can do to increase the uptake and there's, it's very well understood. Also totally unregulated, which is great. Unregulated spaces are a lot easier to do. You can go buy a kilogram of oxytocin on Sigma Aldrich Chemical Supply right now. And if you do that, maybe you won't, maybe you won't die alone.

• 3:41Sam Parr?

  Okay, so let's recap what we just heard here. So Palmer Lucky, tens of billionaire guy, very successful. He said, if I had to work on something again, it'd be saving America from the tragedy of divorce. And that would be oxytocin doping for marriage counseling. If you do this, maybe you won't die alone.

• 4:02Sam Parr?

  How great is that? Is that brilliant? Is that the?

• 4:04Shaan Puri?

  Dude, you're absolutely right. Most of the time when you ask somebody like, what would you do if you started up again? They'll just give you the most vague, hand wavy. He immediately had not only a great, original, novel, surprising idea, but he had the pitch ready to go, locked and loaded.

• 4:23Sam Parr?

  The best. And I hate using the F word, first principles. I hate using that word. Because it's overplayed and it's just not used correctly, but this is like a kind of a textbook case of that. He starts with divorce is a huge deal. It impacts 50% of people. What are some potential ideas that could solve the tragedy of divorce? You could say a bunch of stuff. You could say like helping people find the right person, having good conversations early in on a relationship. Okay, whatever, like one all can do this. And somehow he got to this idea of oxytocin. And I think that is brilliant. I'm not saying that I, in fact, I am saying I know nothing about oxytocin, other than a little bit of like nerdy research.

• 5:05Sam Parr?

  So I'm not, I'm not saying that oxytocin is necessarily great. What I'm saying is the packaging of this is beautiful. And when I heard this, I realized this is actually an interesting business idea and I've heard about oxytocin. The reason I've heard about it is I follow these weird subreddits with biohacking. And this is how I learned about GLP ones. This is how I learned about a little bit about testosterone. And what I've noticed is oftentimes these people are wrong. They'll say things that are kind of ridiculous, but occasionally there comes conversations where you're like, okay, there's a signal here. Something is interesting. And I followed along on the oxytocin forum on Reddit, the subreddit. And there's, there's this one called oxy, just oxytocin.

• 5:47Sam Parr?

  And I, and it's basically mostly autistic people. So a lot of people who have Asperger's, a lot of people who suffer from PTSD. And they've been taking oxytocin for a few years now because it's fairly unregulated and I'll explain what it is in a minute. And they've like, are writing like a daily journal about how it makes them feel and it's kind of amazing. So what is oxytocin? Oxytocin is a hormone that naturally occurs in your body. The most common way that people get oxytocin is when women have babies. It creates a bonding between the mother and the, the infant. And so it, right when they have the kid, it like oxytocin, I believe it's one of the, when it gets released, the mother starts creating milk and they bond. Men get it after they have sex. You know, when you're cuddling, you know, that nice feeling.

• 6:33Sam Parr?

  That's because of oxytocin. A lot of mammals, a lot of animals, the, it's a strong correlation between when you, when mammals have a lot of oxytocin, they do bonding better with their partner. So they'll be like, they studied these, I think it was called prairie dogs, something like that. And they have huge amounts of oxytocin and they are lifelong partners with their spouse forever.

• 6:52Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah. Like if I have a really solid dap up with somebody, perfect hand clap. I feel a small surge of this male, this pair bonding chemical released in my body. I can almost hear it when it happens.

• 7:05Sam Parr?

  Or when you look your dog in the eye. So there are studies that show when you look at your dog and make eye contact with your dog, you release a little bit of oxytocin.

• 7:14Shaan Puri?

  Dude, when is, have you, have you recently just had like silent eye contact, very like you're four inches away from your wife? And you just hold eye contact for like 30 seconds to a minute. Have you done this?

• 7:29Sam Parr?

  No, but your friend, Chris Williamson, put out this thing where it was like questions to ask spouses to like make you bond. And like part of it was looking at eye contact together. And I told my wife, I was like, hey, I want to try this. And it's like, so we have like, we have like a scheduled time to do this.

• 7:45Shaan Puri?

  It's a little bit weird, but if you want to be adventurous tonight.

• 7:49Sam Parr?

  The eye contact thing is, is it awesome?

• 7:52Shaan Puri?

  Eye contact.

• 7:53Sam Parr?

  Do you do it?

• 7:54Shaan Puri?

  Hey, I want to tell you about something pretty cool. We have a database of all of the business ideas that have been discussed on this podcast. So hundreds of episodes, the team at HubSpot went through, they pulled out all the simple, relatable, interesting, profitable ideas that we have brainstormed. And they're all available for download for free. Just click the link in the description below. Thank you to our friends at HubSpot for sponsoring this podcast and putting together this free resource for you guys. Back to the show. Yeah, I've done this before and my wife literally starts crying.

• 8:24Sam Parr?

  It would make me cry.

• 8:24Shaan Puri?

  Within 30 seconds, she starts crying. It's like the most bizarre thing to me because I don't feel the urge to cry. I did, it's, there's definitely an intensity to it when you're just quiet and you're looking straight into the eyes of somebody who you know really well. I'm going to do it today. I'm going to do it tonight. In fact, that's everybody's homework tonight. 30 seconds, maybe a minute, if you're feeling freaky, of straight up eye contact.

• 8:48Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it doesn't matter if it's your spouse or roommate, just the stare.

• 8:52Shaan Puri?

  Or the mirror, if you're really, you know, if you're really in one of the Spotify wrapped top 1% listeners.

• 8:57Sam Parr?

  Well, one of the reasons why you feel that way is because of the chemical or the hormone oxytocin.

• 9:02Shaan Puri?

  This is, isn't this also why like skin to skin contact with a baby, like kind of, you hold the baby on your chest, they make you like take your shirt off in the hospital.

• 9:09Sam Parr?

  Yeah, amongst, amongst other things.

• 9:11Shaan Puri?

  Laugh.

• 9:12Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, that, I mean, I do that with my kids. I'll be holding them and I'll take my, I pop the top, I take the shirt off and I, and I like, I want to hold them because it feels special. You bond more. And, and what I didn't realize is that I, if you, if you Google buy oxytocin, you'll get like a bunch of interesting websites. They're usually called like something sciences or something pharmaceuticals where you can buy it in like a pure, I don't know if it's pure, I'm not using these words correctly, but from a, from a idiot's point of view, like a pure block of it.

• 9:42Shaan Puri?

  It's a powder. Stick of butter? What do you mean?

• 9:44Sam Parr?

  Like it looks like a.

• 9:45Shaan Puri?

  Nasal spray.

• 9:46Sam Parr?

  Okay, so here's what I'm getting at. It's, it's like a, it's like a powder, but now.

• 9:51Shaan Puri?

  Oh, wholesale.

• 9:53Sam Parr?

  Yes, you can buy a ton of it. And what a lot of companies I'm noticing, they're slowly getting into, if you go to BlueChew, which sells erectile dysfunction medicine. If you, if you go to Hims, I imagine they might start selling this, but you're noticing is that this fringe thing is be, being turned into a nasal spray, because that's the only way that you could take it. You could either take it to that, or I think like a, like a gas mask. You can't inject it, and it's not a pill, but they're starting to sell this. And my prediction.

• 10:20Shaan Puri?

  You do need a prescription for it, it looks like.

• 10:23Sam Parr?

  Not to buy on some of these websites, like you can just, you can click and order it right now. Yes.

• 10:28Shaan Puri?

  So you, you, you sent this over and this immediately got my, like, I feel like my brain overheated for a minute, because when you hear a genuinely interesting, great idea, that you don't understand fully, you don't know, you haven't researched it, you don't know the efficacy of it, you don't know the safety of it, so that, that, those are all the caveats.

• 10:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but by the way, it could, it could still be bullshit, like, right? Like this is totally understudied. So let's preface everything by saying that.

• 10:54Shaan Puri?

  Well, we should explain the prairie, prairie vole thing, the, the study that they did. So most animals are not monogamous, right? But there are a few that are, that have an intense, you know, bond, a monogamy. And so they've studied these prairie voles where once the male and female mate, and they bond, and they spend enough of this like brief time together, they will be monogamous for life, and they will not only not go with other partners, they'll even attack if another, like if a male's there and a female comes, he will like kind of push her away. And then they did studies on this in a very small sample size, so not like a robust study, like a maybe bullshit study,

• 11:35Shaan Puri?

  where they did this with humans, and they had a placebo, and they had humans that would take oxytocin, and they would see what would happen. And, you know, for example, in one of them, they would have an attractive female come in, and if the person had had the oxytocin bonding with their partner, they would sit like an extra 15 centimeters apart from the attractive female, they would create distance between them and the attractive female, or they would spend less time looking at them, things like that. Now, again, small studies, but it's very interesting that most people, we like to think that we're in control of our mind, that we're in control of how we, how we're gonna feel and how we're gonna act. And so I'd say that there's one, one group of people that think they can think their way to a behavior.

• 12:19Shaan Puri?

  There's another group of people that would be feelings based, and they say, well, it's not about logic and, and thinking your way there, it's a feeling thing. But feelings to them are this amorphous sort of, you know, mystical thing. It's just something that happens about, it's like the idea of a soul. Whereas in truth, the, basically a feeling is a chemical brain state that you're in. And then you have a conscious readout of it that says, oh, I really like the way that, that means, that means I'm in love. Right? This brain state, this, the way I feel when I'm doing this, or when I'm with this person, that means I love this, that means I hate this, that means I'm disgusted by this, right? So we have a, a kind of a readout of the chemical state.

• 13:03Shaan Puri?

  And if we could find safe ways to alter or, or, or grease the wheels on certain chemical states, that's really interesting to me. And the reason why is, all these ideas sound a little farfetched before we had the miracle weight loss drugs, right? Like there used to literally be a phrase that was like, there's no magic pill for weight loss. But now there is, there's literally a magic pill for weight loss. Well, what if there's a magic pill for, for love or for being bonded with your partner? I find that really, really interesting. And then I think further, the example you just gave of people who are autistic or have Asperger's,

• 13:43Shaan Puri?

  using this to bridge maybe a social gap that they have, is really interesting. And when I was reading about this just before the pod, because you mentioned this idea and I'd never heard of it. One of the ways that it was described was, it's like a highlighter. So it's not that, like, it's not a love potion. It's not like you take something and you immediately fall in love with the first person you see or anything like that. What it does is it highlights or amplifies what you feel. So they, they did studies where if somebody was domestically abused, they wouldn't, this wouldn't like override that and make them feel loved towards the person, it would heighten their sense of, of distance between that person. So it was taking whatever the social feeling you have underneath and just amplifying it.

• 14:26Shaan Puri?

  So if it was bad, it would amplify that you want to get away from that person. And if it was good, the warmth, it would amplify the warmth for that person. So I find that really, I find that, that angle of it to be really promising, because that would be life changing for people who have trouble connecting socially and in relationships, right?

• 14:43Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's pretty magical. Well, the idea is magical. And I was listening to someone else, some other doctor talk about it. And he was basically saying, he was like, look, like, there's not like that much data to back this up. So it's not necessarily that it's disproven, but it's also not proven yet. But he was like, we've been doing some small stuff where we would give it to like small teams. And he didn't explain what a team was, but it could have been like coworkers or even a sports team, whatever, people working together. And he was like, they worked together so much better when they all had small doses of oxytocin. And I found that to be really fascinating. And I like ideas that seem very freakish and strange.

• 15:24Sam Parr?

  Like imagine walking into your office or going to a team retreat, which I just had, and everyone has to do oxytocin in advance. That's very weird, right? That's all putting, that's strange.

• 15:34Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 15:34Sam Parr?

  But like, maybe, maybe that's kind of interesting. And so I went and texted.

• 15:40Shaan Puri?

  Newman somewhere is like, yes, not weird. We are doing that.

• 15:45Sam Parr?

  But I just, I, I think it's interesting. I, I think this is really interesting. And I tweeted this out. I'm like, who has done this? And someone was like, don't do stuff that you read on forums. And I'm like, yeah, don't do it because we are talking about it or because someone else is talking about it. But there's some interesting signal there, particularly from a marketing standpoint, but potentially for like a selfish standpoint of like, maybe, maybe there is something here, because I've seen this enough times that when people that we call strange, where they're doing something, there's something there. And there's a subreddit where these guys, there's one guy who had Asperger's and he was talking about, I keep calling it Asperger's. Is it Asperger's? Am I saying it wrong? Sorry, guys.

• 16:22Shaan Puri?

  There's a pee in there somewhere between the ass and the burger that you're saying?

• 16:26Sam Parr?

  It's not Asperger's. Sorry, guys. The subreddit where these guys who have this are talking about, like, they're writing daily journals. And they're like, all right, I just took the dose. Okay, I'm feeling hoary now. That's probably too much of a dose. Okay, 10 hours later, I took a second dose. I noticed that I, I struggled to make eye contact with my children most of the time. Now, it was way easier to make eye contact and I had a significantly better conversation. Like they're documenting this and it's so interesting to me. I would not be surprised if in 12 months,

• 16:57Sam Parr?

  you and me and our listener are gonna get a lot of meta ads saying this will cure divorce or something like that.

• 17:04Shaan Puri?

  Well, I'm the type that I have an initial reaction to these things. Like, I don't, I don't do drugs. I, I don't even go to Burning Man because I'm scared of like, you know, just new, new experience. I'm very happy in my life. It's kind of like to chill, you know, in a happy little bubble. I've, I always have a, a kind of fear-based reaction to things that sound weird, unfamiliar, or like, you know, chemically altering. And I think there's some good, there's definitely some good in that, right? There's, there's, obviously you can protect yourself that way. But it's also, over time, I've seen how things that initially sounded very fringe can become very normal in not that long of a time.

• 17:42Shaan Puri?

  You know, like when you, years ago, we're like, oh, I hurt my Achilles, and so I injected BPC whatever, 157 in my, and it's, and it's healing my Achilles. And I'm like, that's a crazy thing to do. You're like, no, it's the Wolverine stack or whatever, right? Like, I'm like, yeah, even more reason not to take this. It turns you to Wolverine or whatever. Like, I don't know, I don't want that. And now peptides are, are shockingly common. And same thing, recently, a psychedelics company just got acquired for $3 billion by Eli Lilly. Did you see this?

• 18:14Sam Parr?

  No, what was it called?

• 18:15Shaan Puri?

  It's probably the biggest psychedelic acquisition ever. This company called, I don't know how you say it, Ataya Beckley. They just got bought for 2.8 billion. And, you know, psychedelics are the same sort of thing, right? Like, you know, growing up, psychedelics were seen as a certain way, right? It's like, you know, tripping balls and it's a, it's a way to have a good time. And then, and now psychedelics is, I would say, amongst smart friends, considered to be one of the best interventions for people who have PTSD and other forms of deep trauma as a way to kind of do 20 years of therapy in 20 minutes type of shit. Now, again, this is maybe anecdotal, there's whatever, all I know is it went from very fringe and, and labeled a certain way

• 19:00Shaan Puri?

  to way more mainstream and now seen in a very different light, but it's the same thing. This, the sort of, um, social acceptance shifts over time for these things. And I suspect. That something like this is also something that where social acceptance could shift over time. The idea you said of, hey, before we go to this team retreat, uh, you know, quick, everyone pop, you know, let's, let's do the Flonase in our nose here real quick. It's gonna help. That sounds like laughable right now. But I don't know, I've seen this shift over time many times now, right? So who's to say this isn't also one where, where that might, might be true?

• 19:39Sam Parr?

  I have, I texted Jack Smith, our resident biohacker. And I said, um, have you ever taken this? And he said, no, but one time an intern at my company got effed up on it after, uh, he took some, and then once I took a taxi driver and I was telling the taxi driver about it and he asked to be paid in it.

• 20:01Sam Parr?

  So, uh, the, the opportunity sniffing bloodhounds. Something's there. So that's cool. Uh, that, that was one of mine, um, but I think that's interesting. And so this is, this is one of those things where we're gonna have to look back in 12 months and be like, were we, were we on that or not?

• 20:18Shaan Puri?

  10 out of 10, great segment. Hey, let's take a quick break. You know that feeling when strategy is done? The brief is written, everyone's aligned and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content? That someone is usually you and it's due tomorrow. Well, the Breeze assistant from HubSpot can help. It works right inside HubSpot. You can draft a campaign copy, blog posts, emails, all in your brand voice, all using your actual customer data. So you don't create just content, you create content that converts. Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.

• 20:47Sam Parr?

  Okay, second one. Have you ever heard of the Knights of Columbus?

• 20:52Shaan Puri?

  No. Is this that medieval play that you told me about once?

• 20:56Sam Parr?

  No.

• 20:57Shaan Puri?

  It's like where you go, it's like a buffet? What is that called?

• 21:00Sam Parr?

  No, that's a Renaissance fair. I forget the name of the restaurant, but so check this out. So we're talking about the lonely, loneliness epidemic a little bit. Uh, so in 1882, there was this guy, he was a priest up in New Haven in Connecticut. What was his name? His name was, uh, McGivney. He was a Catholic priest. Someone in his parish died. And he was like, dude, this sucks. This man had two kids and a wife and he died. He was the earner for his family. We have to do something about this. So he convinced something like 200 of his male people in his priests to join what he called a mutual benefit society, where they would all chip in money and they would help pay for this guy's family for a little while. And then if any, uh, any of them other, uh, died, some of the money would go towards them. This sounds very similar to life insurance, right? Um, and that's sort of what it became.

• 21:45Sam Parr?

  And so the Knights of Columbus is now an organization. It's a fraternal organization that's been around since 1882. It has something like two or three million members. They have $30 billion in assets. They do like 10 or five or $10 billion a year in revenue. And it's a fraternal organization for Catholic men. And the whole thing is that they, um, you pay dues, something like $300 a year. And you basically show up in your church after hours and you guys plan charities that you're gonna do together. So predominantly it's like pancake drives or they do a lot of like homeless stuff. And they're there to help each other. And at this point, they're a huge lobby. They like, it's quite powerful.

• 22:26Sam Parr?

  But the way that they make money is they sell life insurance to their members. And they crush it. It's been around for over a hundred years and it's a massive business. And I've always been interested in this type of business. And what this is, is basically a shared interest group that they get together for, and, and help other people or help themselves in a variety of ways. And it monetizes by selling financial products, insurance products. And I think that this is a really interesting business for a couple of reasons. Number one, the Knights of Columbus, they are actually growing mostly through young men. For decades, young men were not joining. It was mostly old men. Um, and they have local chapters. I think they have like 14,000 chapters all over the country.

• 23:11Sam Parr?

  And it was mostly old men and it was kind of dying. And what they're noticing is that young men, uh, like between 30 and 40 are joining. And it's their fastest growing segment. And so I'm interested in it for that reason. The second reason I'm interested in it is because these exist for all types of organizations. So for example, uh, let's use Good Sam as an example. Have you heard of Good Sam?

• 23:34Shaan Puri?

  What is Good Sam?

• 23:35Sam Parr?

  Good Sam is an RV owner membership. So it's all based around a shared identity and community and they monetize through financial stuff. So Good Sam is if you own an RV, you spend a couple hundred dollars a year and you get some better insurance for your RV. But you also get like, you get discounts to like campgrounds and things like that.

• 23:54Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 23:55Sam Parr?

  Another one is there's this thing for, uh, it's called the USCCA. I was a member of it. When you get your conceal and carry license, you can pay $300 and you can get access to monthly trainings for like gun ownership. But also you get insurance if you ever get prosecuted for shooting someone. And they do about $400 million a year in revenue. And these are huge businesses that last a very long time. And in my opinion, there's a lot of interesting opportunities to jump on this whole loneliness thing and monetize it via financial products.

• 24:28Shaan Puri?

  You're saying you basically take a deep interest based community. It could be religious, could be non-religious, could be RV owners or whatever. Um, and then you become a member. You get to meet other members or you kind of get community belonging. You get maybe some discounts that immediately kind of justify the value of your, your membership because it's, it's marketing for them. But the real, the real banana is you figure out how to sell a finance, a commodity financial service. But people will have some preferential attachment to you because you are the community.

• 25:04Sam Parr?

  100%. And I think now's an interesting time because the loneliness thing, it's quite easy to like capitalize on that. And two, these things last forever. What do you think?

• 25:15Shaan Puri?

  Well, I mean, I've never heard of this, but I have heard of healthcare shares. I mean, I guess in general, that's a thing, right? Like there's a whole health insurance, life insurance model. That's kind of like this is usually religious, I think, is the, the general way these go. And I'd never understood if this is just some tax loophole type stuff or if there's a better value prop for these things. Do you, do you know a lot about these healthcare share programs?

• 25:40Sam Parr?

  For some, it depends what your offering is. For some of them, there is tax benefits. So there's some like weird rules around if you are a membership and you are considered a, um, I think they call it a, um, uh, a mutual benefit membership where like everyone gets the same benefits. You do get, where you don't have to pay taxes on, I think it's the, the game, the investment gains of your premium, something like that. There is some tax advantages for sure, but that's not required in order to make this awesome.

• 26:10Shaan Puri?

  So, so I'm looking at this now. So, so it looks like these healthcare share programs are often like, instead of paying into your, paying, you know, two grand a month to Blue Cross, you pay the same two grand a month, or maybe even a little bit less. You pay maybe a thousand a month into a healthcare share program. And now if anybody in the community has that $40,000 surgical bill, the group coordinates to get the money paid out to that person who needs it. But I think there's some weird stuff where like legally they're not obligated to pay it. It's like a high trust type of situation. But like not contractual in the same way that, that health insurance might be. Although people who have had trouble getting health insurance to pay for things that they think should be covered probably would disagree that, that,

• 26:53Shaan Puri?

  that is any more likely to be paid out is, is, is probably a fair, fair criticism.

• 26:57Sam Parr?

  But what's going on here, first of all, health insurance is like a whole other thing where I'm like, I, I don't know if I would touch that. That's very messy. But the majority of these businesses, they're not insurance companies. They are partners with someone else who does it and they get a more tailored plan.

• 27:12Shaan Puri?

  So, so the Knights of Columbus, they just have all the money in the members and then they go to who?

• 27:17Sam Parr?

  Uh, Knights of Columbus might be one of the few that does it.

• 27:21Shaan Puri?

  Maybe because they're big enough now.

• 27:22Sam Parr?

  But like AARP, if you know AARP, so AARP does billions of dollars a year in revenue. AARP is a association of retired people, I think. It's if you're above 50 or 60, you automatically get a letter from AARP that says, hey, come join AARP. You'll get our magazine. You can come to some of our events and you'll get a, a discount on your health insurance and they partner with United. And so they are not, they license their name. So they are the trusted brand and something like the marketing channel, but they do not actually provide the health insurance. But, but they're a partner. And so they aren't actually running that.

• 27:57Shaan Puri?

  Well, these, these faith-based businesses are very interesting. So, um, I just did a, a, an interview with the guy behind Angel Studios. So Angel is probably the 10th biggest studio in the world. And you've never heard of it and it's basically all values-based content, they call it. Which is like one out of every 10 of their movies or TV shows is religious. Like it'll be like, um, the Jesus, like Game of Thrones for, but the, but the book, underlying book is, uh, the New Testament. And it's like called The Chosen or Chosen, something like that. It's like a, a show about Jesus. And he said 200 million people have watched that show now. Um, it's like, it's like on Amazon Prime. It's like one of the, one of the most watched shows ever

• 28:41Shaan Puri?

  in the history of television is that show. It's on seven, it's on the seventh season. And they helped produce the first three seasons of that. But they make, they make all kinds of movies and shows and their community is basically 3 million members who want content that's gonna have no cursing, no drinking, no drugs. Um, stuff like that. And also just heroes, like good, good people doing good things are in the movie. So like, it can't be just like a dark film where like everybody's kind of bad. Right? Or like everybody's flawed and messed up. And it's just a bunch of messed up people living together, right? Like they're trying to avoid that type of content. And so like, for example, they have one movie right now called The Runner. If you watch the trailer for it, it's Owen Wilson and, um, Scott Allen, whatever, Richardson, something like that.

• 29:26Shaan Puri?

  And basically the, the premise of the thing is they're delivering, uh, uh, an organ donor, like their organ donor, uh, van, they're like driving this, this liver. And suddenly like three cars like pull up in front of it and they have guns. And they're like, um, how much does this liver go for on the black market? They're like a million dollars. And they're like, oh shit, we gotta get out of here.

• 29:48Sam Parr?

  Dude, I saw that trailer last night in a movie and in my head I was thinking, there's like 18 guys, like trying to kidnap this, this body part for only a million dollars?

• 30:01Sam Parr?

  It's crazy. Like, they did so much work for I

• 30:04Shaan Puri?

  Kind of margins is this operation running?

• 30:08Sam Parr?

  I just that doesn't see worth it, right? Like, in the movie, they're like blowing stuff up.

• 30:13Shaan Puri?

  The cost of ammunition lately?

• 30:15Sam Parr?

  They definitely spent more than a million to get, yeah, I saw that.

• 30:19Shaan Puri?

  To get the liver.

• 30:21Sam Parr?

  But the, and so what about it?

• 30:23Shaan Puri?

  Well, the, so, but this, this business is a juggernaut. They're doing 400 plus million dollars a year in ARR.

• 30:32Sam Parr?

  What?

• 30:32Shaan Puri?

  450 million in ARR. It's a public company. You can see their, their, their data. And the way they did it was they basically said they had a worldview. In fact, the guy who started it is this epic marketer, who did the marketing behind like Poo Puri and Squatty Potty. He was like one of these like really viral marketers, you know, like Dollar Shave Club? Like, they would make videos like that.

• 30:53Sam Parr?

  Dude, there's like a whole Mormon cabal of these like really good marketers up there in Salt Lake. And they, they, all those companies that I think you named are either Mormon based or like some affiliation and they're really good at marketing.

• 31:04Shaan Puri?

  So this guy's a Latter Day Saint and, and, you know, so what he did was, he was like tired of looking at like YouTube videos where, you know, your kids, you never know what you're gonna get when your kids click on YouTube. Like, they can get to, they're two clicks away from watching somebody like, you know, smoke meth. And so he's like, you know, that's not great. So he created this like filter and like, because the project didn't even start as a real business. He literally just took a movie, I think it was like Cinderella Man. It, it, it would wipe out all of the cursing, the sex scenes, the drug scenes, but it would leave the, the rest of the movie. And so he's like, you know, the gluten free movie, basically.

• 31:38Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 31:39Shaan Puri?

  And so he creates this filter and he publishes it, uh, he publishes the movie and immediately gets sued and he ends up having to like pay $10 million at a lawsuit somewhere along the way. But he, this tool and these movies started attracting, um, a lot of people. So like 100,000 people eventually wanted like the service. They then started doing this thing where like you would go rent, like technically you would rent the DVD for a dollar. And then that gave the, his group the like permission to like wipe out all the scenes and then give it back, give you the streaming version of it or something like that. Like, created this whole loophole to try to make this business work. And finally said, all right, I'm tired of getting like sued by the, by the movie industry because they don't like that we're doing this.

• 32:23Shaan Puri?

  Why don't we just make our own movies and our own TV shows? That just have like out of the box are clean, you know, better for you.

• 32:31Sam Parr?

  Did he raise funding?

• 32:32Shaan Puri?

  Um, yeah, they raised some money. Um, but like, it's amazing that they've, you know, they've reached this incredible scale. And it's really only like, you know, they, it's like two or three million people. It's not like that many people, but two or three million people each who pay, you know, 13 to 20 bucks a month for this, this streaming service, you know, just like you're paying for Peacock and Paramount and, you know, whatever tier two, tier three streamer service that you, you, you subscribe to. And then the members vote on the content. So basically they'll take a, a movie that's already made and they'll show the, the trailer or they'll show like a snippet of the movie to the 2 million members and the members vote. And if 70% of, less than 70% green light it, the deal's dead, no matter what.

• 33:17Shaan Puri?

  But if more than 70% say yes, then the movie like kind of gets picked up by them and it's gonna go into their marketing pipeline and whatnot. And they have like a higher average like Rotten Tomatoes and hit rate than, you know, all the popular studios.

• 33:31Sam Parr?

  How did you meet this guy?

• 33:32Shaan Puri?

  Ben met him somewhere at a barbecue or something like that. And was, Ben knows that I've been, uh, you know, curious about the movie and TV industry and making a movie. And he said, you know, you should talk to this guy. He's done it. You know, he went from no experience in the movie business to now doing almost half a billion dollars a year in revenue for their movie. Kind of, kind of their like values based A24, right? Like,

• 33:55Sam Parr?

  Do you know anything about, I, I saw a movie last night. I went and saw the Chris Hansen movie. You know what that is?

• 34:01Shaan Puri?

  Catch a Predator?

• 34:02Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:03Shaan Puri?

  It's got a movie?

• 34:04Sam Parr?

  It's about him that he doesn't like.

• 34:06Shaan Puri?

  Didn't he get canceled also or something though?

• 34:08Sam Parr?

  What? I think he was cheating on his wife. I don't think he was a predator, but I, I don't think he was breaking the law, but I think he was doing not good stuff. That's, that's part of the movie is that he was, uh, while he was doing this, he wasn't like the, a good husband, basically. And it's called Primetime. It was pretty great. And it's got Robert Pattinson. It was awesome. It's an A24 movie. And every great trailer leading up to the movie, uh, was A24. I don't really know anything about A24 other than Scott Belsky, who, who I have a man crush on, was a tech guy, is now working there. Do you know anything about A24?

• 34:42Shaan Puri?

  Well, what do you want to know? I know some things about A24, but I'm not an expert.

• 34:45Sam Parr?

  How on, how does someone start a studio like, because it seems like they came out of nowhere. It seemed like there was a startup at first. And if I remember correctly, their movies early on were kind of, kind of dumb or artsy. Like, they weren't like mainstream movies, but now it seems like everything they do, I want to see it.

• 35:00Shaan Puri?

  Well, one of my business theories is that, uh, a great way to think of a business idea is to find the reaction to the action. Like, for example, when Facebook was in its absolute prime and everyone was using Facebook. Facebook created this world where all your photos would be public and they would be permanent. You'd post them on your profile, your timeline, your history, everyone could see them. And so that became the action and the reaction became Snapchat. Photos you could send that would self-destruct in 10 seconds. And it's actually that the, the popularity of one creates the need for the other. And you see this a lot of times, right? So you, as, you know, we talked about GLP-1s, as food calories become abundant, you know,

• 35:44Shaan Puri?

  you have DoorDash and you have fast food and you have all these, you know, the, the way that the food industry went. Well, then there became a higher, a greater need for the reaction. And this happens over and over and over again. You see this right now with like screen time limiting apps and BRIC and things like that. Like, things that are getting quite popular that are really just like a reaction to kind of the, the current norm. And so, uh, A24 was also a reaction to the action in a way, where the movie studios and the people in Hollywood really started to become extremely conservative and predictable in the movies that they would film, uh, fund. Because why would you fund an unproven screenplay by this, you know, cool hipster who's drinking matcha?

• 36:28Shaan Puri?

  When you could just go do Spider-Man 7? You know, like, why, why not? Why not just do Spider-Man again? And so they kept gravitating towards what they call these like four quadrant movies. Uh, I don't know if you've seen like the quadrants. Have you, have you ever heard this before?

• 36:41Sam Parr?

  No, what are they?

• 36:41Shaan Puri?

  It's like males under 30, females under 30, males over 30, females over 30, whatever. A simplified version of that, but it's basically the big short. Uh, like if, if both of us said like, yo, do you like the big shorts? I love the big short. Well, we love the big short because we're in one of those quadrants and it hits for us. But guess who it doesn't hit for? It doesn't hit for like women over 40 in the same way as it does for, you know, men and their kind of 20s or 40s. And so the highest kind of potential for a film is something that satisfies all four quadrants. You know, Harry Potter right now, it's like, if you go, you know, the new HBO, uh, series for Harry Potter, they'll put a billion dollars into this because they know that millennials who read it growing up

• 37:24Shaan Puri?

  are now 30, 40, 50, you know, 50 years old, they like it, but so do kids still. And so you're gonna get this like huge demographic, the TAM is really large. And so what happened was studios became quite risk averse and they started gravitating towards sequels, superhero films and other things. A, that created an opportunity for folks like A24 who could go pick up at pretty low cost and pretty uncompetitively, all the other films that were being ignored. All, what are the great films that are being ignored right now? And so what they found was that these independent directors were creating really interesting things that could be produced on a fairly low budget, had pretty low expectations because there, there was not a lot of demand in Hollywood for their, their product.

• 38:08Shaan Puri?

  And so they started creating cool, edgy, they're making stuff nobody else was making. So they were like differentiated out of the box.

• 38:15Sam Parr?

  Do you remember the, the early movies? It looks like, um, like it was like the movie, The Room, which I saw was pretty awesome.

• 38:24Sam Parr?

  I don't know some of the other earlier ones though, do you?

• 38:27Shaan Puri?

  No, and I'm sure, by the way, this is like an extreme oversimplification. And somebody who like lives in the movie business is probably like yelling at their phone right now, being like, what? That's not it. That's not the whole story. You're forgetting A, B, and C. And I'm sure there's A, B, and C. And they, they did a bunch of things well, you know? They, they branded their studio well. They have limited edition merch. They figured out a different form of marketing. So like the Timothy Chalamet, like, uh, where he leaked his, you know, the movie trailer. Instead of saying, this, this summer, coming to a movie theater near you, this guy, this guy, in the hottest film of the year. It was like a Zoom recording, like a meeting that got accidentally leaked. That had a file name that sounded like a real thing. And it was like an hour long and it was this weird thing that they were doing. Um, you know, that, that sort of stuff.

• 39:10Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. For example, the guy yesterday was saying, they have a movie with Kevin James, you know, like, uh, King of Queens, Kevin, Kevin James. And they were like, he was like, to market that movie, Kevin James was like, hey, you know, the character in this, he's like this painter, just like teacher who's like a painter. So let's just create an Instagram account where I'm a teacher and a painter. We don't even mention, and people are gonna be like, isn't that Kevin James? But then people will be like, is that just like a Kevin James lookalike? This guy says he lives here and he's just painting every day and he doesn't, what, what's going on? Let's just do weird shit like that. And then they sent him to the Super Bowl and they bought 12 seats. And they left, you know, 10 of them empty and he sat, you know, 11 of them empty. He sat in the middle of the Super Bowl with, with empty seats on either side.

• 39:53Shaan Puri?

  He was wearing a tuxedo and he was holding flowers because that's like a famous scene from the movie. And they didn't even explain what was going on and suddenly, and then, but they paid for other influencers to be in the same section. Because they knew those influencers would be like, dude, that's Kevin James. And why are all those empty seats? Why is he wearing a tuxedo and why is he holding flowers? They put out their story and it created intrigue and people started wondering what the hell's going on. And then the movie comes out and it does really well because they can like do this guerrilla marketing that the traditional studios don't really understand or don't have the like DNA to go do. I think A24 and some of the upstarts have figured out that because make it like, when you think about the cost of making a movie, it's pretty mind blowing. So he was talking about a movie they made. He goes, yeah, it cost 14 million to make. Okay. How much you spend on marketing?

• 40:37Shaan Puri?

  40. So 14 million to make and 40 on marketing.

• 40:41Sam Parr?

  Whoa. So the 14 million, does that include the actor's salary?

• 40:44Shaan Puri?

  Everything. Yeah. Full production cost.

• 40:46Sam Parr?

  So it's $54 million all in for this?

• 40:49Shaan Puri?

  All in. So, so, but, but this is very common. I, I was talking to a friend who made a movie and I was like, uh, it'd been three or four years since he had first told me about the idea to when it came out. And I was like, damn, that's takes forever, but I guess that's just the creative process. And he's like, do you know how long filming takes for a movie? I was like, no. He goes, 30 days, 37 days for us. I was like, you shot the whole thing in 37 days? He goes, yep. End to end, 37 days. And that's complete. I was like, was that fast? He goes, no, that's normal. 30 days. That's how long it normally takes to shoot these things.

• 41:19Sam Parr?

  Is that?

• 41:20Shaan Puri?

  Now, the editing takes a long time, the post-production. What's that?

• 41:23Sam Parr?

  A normal movie can only take 30 or 60 or 90 days.

• 41:27Shaan Puri?

  The actual shooting of the filming of the movie.

• 41:30Sam Parr?

  Wow.

• 41:31Shaan Puri?

  So you spend time like writing, getting it funded. That could take like years sometimes to get it like it to get it to the for day one of principal production. And then afterwards, you have to do all the other like mixing, mastering, color correction, like all that stuff. That could take time. The edit can take a lot of time. And then you have the marketing and distribution. So the whole thing takes years, but the making of the movie, like the, the actual like, hey, lights, camera, action, go, say your lines. That thing's like 30 days, which is insane to me. Same thing with costs. Like I think the Grand Theft Auto games, they would spend like a couple hundred million making the game, like years of development and engineering time and animation and all that stuff. But then they would spend equally like hundreds of millions on marketing. Uh, and like, uh, maybe not Grand Theft Auto specifically, but video game, the video game industry is very common to do that.

• 42:15Shaan Puri?

  So for movies and, and video games, which are two of the kind of like biggest, you know, parts of the American economy, they spend more money on marketing than they do on actually making the product, which is, some people would say it's kind of sad, but it's kind of crazy.

• 42:30Shaan Puri?

  Today's podcast is brought to you by my friends at Mercury. They make the world's best banking product. I think you know this already. I use Mercury for all of my businesses. I think I have like maybe seven or eight businesses. We use Mercury as our business banking across all of them. And now they actually just launched a personal banking account. So I have my personal account there. I moved off of Wells Fargo and Chase. I'm just all in on Mercury. Why? Uh, I like products that are easy to use. I like products that get me and the problems that I have. So like very easy to make a joint account with my wife. Very easy to spin up virtual cards. Uh, one click and I get savings yield. It just has all the stuff that I need in one place. So if you're looking for the best banking product on the market, it's definitely Mercury. I will fist fight anybody who disagrees with me on that. Go to mercury.com slash personal and learn more. Mercury is a fintech, not an FDIC insured bank.

• 43:15Shaan Puri?

  Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group and Callum N A, members FDIC.

• 43:20Sam Parr?

  This business is foreign to me. I definitely, we should do a whole episode.

• 43:24Shaan Puri?

  By the way, seems like a terrible business. He was telling me, he was, he was our biggest hit. It did 250 million box office. And, but it only cost us 14 to make. So then I go, okay, how much was the other cost like marketing? So that's 40. Okay. So now we're, now we're at 54, 250 million in revenue. All right, that's not bad. You got a five extra turn. Oh, but wait, that's a box office. So how much do you keep out of that? Like, what does the theater get? The distributor? He's like, well, 50% because we're big. Be much smaller than that if, uh, if you're kind of a newcomer. So the 250 becomes 125, 125 on against 54 million to create. So you, you, your biggest hit in like a hits driven business where you can have lots of flops.

• 44:08Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that profit needs to cover six flops.

• 44:11Shaan Puri?

  Is like a two point something X return.

• 44:15Sam Parr?

  But that's the same way with, with all creative businesses. That's the case. So for example, um, Mark Manson, when he came on two or three years ago, he either said this on the podcast or when I was hanging out with him, his book for, I think it was Penguin, sold 20 million copies. And he was telling me one time, uh, he was like, yeah, like my mom and dad, like they always kind of gave me a hard time because I was, they thought I was just kind of playing on the computer because I was blogging and then I, it turned into a book deal and all this stuff. And I was like, well, when did they start taking you seriously? He was like, well, Penguin put out their annual, I think it was Penguin, I could be getting it wrong. They put out their annual report because they're owned by News Corp. And he was like, they said that I outsold Hillary Clinton and I was, uh, and I helped like make the whole company profitable that year.

• 45:01Sam Parr?

  And he like was, and I was like, wait, so you were the reason the company was profitable? And basically with a lot of these publishing businesses, whether it's games or it's movies, it's like one or two things. It's drives everything and the rest is like, hopefully it doesn't fail.

• 45:17Shaan Puri?

  That's normal. What was surprising to me was that the one or two things that hit really big, your biggest hit, I would have just expected to be much more than like a two and a half X return. I would have thought it's like, like in his case, like a book, yes, you're right. Most books fail. Sure. But when a book hits like the subtle art hit and you sell 10, 20 million copies, well, that book costs almost nothing to print. And so they're printing money when it hits. And, um, that's what I was surprised at. You know, like in startup investing, like you get a 50X, 100X, a 200X, a thousand X return when you hit. And I was surprised that the movie business isn't like that. Uh, or at least my layman's understanding from a few of his, a few of his examples and looking at their business.

• 45:59Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And it doesn't seem like it's a fun business to be in right now.

• 46:02Shaan Puri?

  And I think he explained why, by the way, he goes, have you ever met a billionaire who doesn't want to make a movie? I haven't. And he said, like, there are every year, let's say a thousand films get made, far less than that get distributed. So most, even of the films that get made, not just the films that get pitched and, and written, like screenplays and stuff like that.

• 46:23Sam Parr?

  There's some tax advantages there. I get pitched this all the time and I never like, I get these emails and I never like actually seriously read them. But isn't there something where if you fund a movie, there's some type of like, you can depreciate or something weird?

• 46:37Shaan Puri?

  But it's, uh, it's not that good. Like you can, it's a, you can write it off, but it has to be, it has, the thing has to go into production. So it's not like you could just like say you're doing it and like get it. You have to actually spend the money. The, the money has to go into the project and the project has to actually go get, start, you know, day one of production. They changed the rules on this. And so it has to actually get, get made. And if there's no return, well, yeah, you might've saved money in taxes, but you lost your entire principal. You know what I mean? Like if you have a million dollars in, maybe you get a 300K write off, but you might lose your million dollars. You'll probably lose your million dollars.

• 47:11Sam Parr?

  I didn't think it was going to take the entire episode to give a shout out to Grindr, by the way.

• 47:17Sam Parr?

  They listened to the, so we had the.

• 47:20Shaan Puri?

  Are you wearing a, are you wearing a Grindr vest?

• 47:22Sam Parr?

  Dude, they listened to the episode, uh, that we had with the, uh, or the, the former owners of Grindr. Great episode, did not hit in terms of YouTube. Wonderful episode with Mick Rick Marini, when we talked about Grindr and how they like turned the business around. They decided to send me some merch and it's kind of the least gay merch ever. It's, it's an archaic vest. Like I wanted something a little bit more like with some pizzazz.

• 47:46Shaan Puri?

  Like a scarf?

• 47:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I don't know. Like something like this is, this is way too straight for me. I wanted something a little bit more gay. I thought it'd be more enjoyable, but I appreciate the love, Grindr. I just wish that, uh, you lean in a little bit.

• 48:03Shaan Puri?

  Grindr, where's my puffy vest? This is a hot collab, Grindr MFM.

• 48:10Sam Parr?

  Well, that's it. That's the pod.

• 48:23Shaan Puri?

  All right, let's take a quick break. I want to tell you about marketing school. It is a podcast that is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network and it is run by Neil Patel and Eric Su. And these guys are both marketers who are running businesses. And so if you want real world tactics from practitioners who are actually out there in the field doing it, this is the podcast for you. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts.