#66 - Life Coins, Amazon FBA Rollups & Going Back In Time

Sam (@thesamparr) and Shaan (@shaanvp) are back to talk wearing ivy league swag (3:24), Thrasio Amazon FBA rollup (6:20), Classpass for online courses (16:16), Real life bruce wayne Kinobody (19:45), What's a way the hosts have hacked a shortcut for themselves? (24:31), Looking at old newspapers to see what they got right/wrong (28:50), Personal ICOs (37:31), Billionaire of the week: Jim Patterson (44:44), Do you want to become a billionaire? (52:36) and Sexy notary business (57:05). The way you write has a huge effect on what you get — both in your business and personal life so why not learn how to write like you speak and sell like hell: search Kopywriting Kourse and improve you life 100x. 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.

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  All right, we got a friend of the show here, Jordan Harbinger. He's one of the guys who's been advising us on how to build this podcast because his podcast is way more successful than ours, has been around, he's been doing podcasting for like 12 and a half years, which, Jordan, that's gotta be as long as podcasting has existed, right?

• 0:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think podcasts have been around for like 14 years and I've, or 15, and I've been around for 13 of those. So yeah, when I started, there was no way, there were no iPhones. So you couldn't get podcasts on your phone. You had to use an iPod to play them.

• 0:30Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, straight to cassette. That's how, that's how long this guy's been doing it. Um, so, so Jordan, uh, you know, I like, I like your show. I've been binging it while in quarantine because, you know, what else am I gonna do besides try to learn something new or improve myself in some way? And I gotta say, I like it because you do the, you know, the interview style show where you go deep with a guest. I think, uh, you know, you had, I was listening to the one with Tony Hawk, which was pretty awesome. And I gotta say, I like that you don't do the kind of surface level, you know, just, just, you know, pitty patting around with the questions or trying to do, you know, inspirational fluff where you're just saying, go, you can do this. Um, so with that episode with Tony Hawk, what was that like? Cause Tony Hawk's an icon. How was it, uh, you know, interviewing Tony Hawk?

• 1:10Speaker 01

  It was great. He's a really interesting guy, really open and fun. And he told some pretty funny stories. One, which was very apropos of what's, what's going on right now is one day he walked into his agent or some sort of marketing team that he'd hired. He walked into their office. This is like at the height of video games where he's making, I don't know, well, 50 million bucks off these skating games and these brands. And he goes in and he says, look, I got this backpack that was made pretty shoddily and it's got my name and face on it. I don't want any more stuff like that.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  And as the agent marketer, whatever, is sort of nodding his head in understanding, Tony goes, wait, what's that on your shelf? And it was a roll of toilet paper with Tony Hawk's name, face and logo on it. And he goes, what the hell is that? And the guy goes, oh yeah, anything we put your name and face on does so well. We were joking that we could put your face on toilet paper and we'd still be able to sell it. And he fired them on the spot because it was clear that they didn't value his brand, which I thought was a funny story. And he's got a ton of stuff like that, that he talked about on the show.

• 2:12Shaan Puri?

  That is epic. Uh, you know, I actually met Tony Hawk. Uh, we went on a trip to Africa, a charity trip together. And believe it or not, we were halfway up a, up a mountain in Ethiopia where, you know, it's a, like, this is a mountain village. And somebody saw him there and they were like Tony Hawk, you know, that's probably the only English word they said to us all day. They identified Tony Hawk on a mountain in Ethiopia. That's how famous that guy is. So that's an amazing guest to have on the show.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Imagine being that famous that you get recognized in the middle of countries where like nobody speaks your language and they maybe don't even have skateboards.

• 2:44Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, we were there trying to give people clean water. They didn't even have water, but they knew Tony Hawk. That's how, that's how famous that guy is.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 2:50Shaan Puri?

  Awesome. Well, if you want to hear more from Jordan, we're going to be having him on more and more. He's a friend of, friend of the house and you should listen to his show. It's one of the podcasts that I would recommend. If you like Tim Ferriss's stuff, if you like our stuff, you're going to like his stuff. And so go check out the Jordan Harbinger Show on iTunes, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts, you'll find them there.

• 3:19Shaan Puri?

  All right, we're back, man. I started off with a big um. That's not cool. Sam, you are wearing a Harvard shirt. Why go to the school when you can buy the shirt for $35 and get half the benefits?

• 3:30Sam Parr?

  Uh, it was $60, Sean, but whenever I wear it, they go, you went to Harvard? Yeah, I went to Harvard.

• 3:37Shaan Puri?

  I've been.

• 3:38Sam Parr?

  I've been to Harvard. I took a, I paid $20. I got a tour there last year when I was 28.

• 3:47Shaan Puri?

  That's actually a great conversation starter. And then they don't know how to escape. They thought they were going to have an alumni chat.

• 3:53Sam Parr?

  Harvard, you bid. Yeah, I went for Easter, took a tour. It was lovely. It'd be a great school to go to.

• 4:04Shaan Puri?

  Uh, that's great. That's great.

• 4:06Sam Parr?

  I, I actually, this is like a weird thing. I, I have a lot of weird collections and one of them, I like collecting university sweatshirts. So I have, I didn't go to a, you know, an elite school, but I respect them. I have a Stanford one. I have a Harvard one. I think I have a Dartmouth one. I've got all the cool ones. My wife has an Ivy pen. I have a pen one.

• 4:28Shaan Puri?

  I have a Harvard one too. I don't even know why. I don't even know where, I don't even think I bought it. It's just at my house somehow and I wear it. And then I didn't buy any of my college gear when I was in college because I was like, this is expensive and a little bit lame how people would wait in line for hours for a free shirt.

• 4:44Sam Parr?

  I would wear a Duke one though. You went to Duke.

• 4:46Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I went to Duke, but I like the stuff. I just didn't, I just thought it was too expensive. And then now, like literally during Black Friday, everybody was shopping. And I was like, oh shit, I wanna shop. I got the urge to shop too, but I don't know what the hell to shop for. So I bought a bunch of university shit 10 years later, 10 years later. And so now I have like all Duke gear. I wear it like, you know, every day.

• 5:07Sam Parr?

  I would wear Duke stuff too. I would be proud. I think Duke's cool.

• 5:10Shaan Puri?

  Okay, I'll hook you up. I have a bunch. I will get you a Duke sweater.

• 5:13Sam Parr?

  Well, Duke probably has like really good dry fit basketball gear and stuff like that. I'm gonna, um. I'll go and buy some. I'll buy some from Duke. What should I, what else should I add to my collection? Cornell, that's like a cool one.

• 5:24Shaan Puri?

  Maybe like an edgy one of some kind, like you should get like, uh. You know, what school has sort of fallen out of favor? Or you should just do like the like Theranos shirt or like Lambeth School shirt or something.

• 5:36Sam Parr?

  No, I want universities like, uh, I don't know.

• 5:40Shaan Puri?

  Maybe throw a little Oxford in there. Go international.

• 5:42Sam Parr?

  Ooh, I could do Oxford or like, like is Rhodes Scholar a thing?

• 5:47Shaan Puri?

  I think that's, um, I think that's part of Oxford. I don't know.

• 5:51Sam Parr?

  Alan just told me to wear a University of Sydney one, because I did go to University of Sydney for a year.

• 5:57Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's less interesting when you actually went there.

• 6:00Sam Parr?

  I know. So anyway, I'm wearing a Harvard sweatshirt and I'm drinking Kool-Aid.

• 6:04Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he's drinking a glass of Kool-Aid. The mood is set. That is the perfect formula. So let's, let's jump in. What do we got?

• 6:11Sam Parr?

  Uh, we can talk about a bunch of interesting things. You wanna, um, bring up this, uh, Amazon company?

• 6:19Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, so this company, I don't know how you say it exactly. I think it's called Thrasio. So, um, saw the news recently. I think probably a lot of people listening to this have heard of this. So we'll just give kind of our opinion. Okay, so, so Thrasio is the name of it. It's a roll-up company. So we've been talking roll-ups, you know, here and there. So this is a roll-up company and what they're doing is they're rolling up Amazon FBA businesses. So, um, brands that, you know, are built and sold just pretty much exclusively on Amazon. And, uh, these are usually like private labeled goods. So they, you know, find some shit in China, slap their name on it. Post it on Amazon and, uh, they try to just surf the search traffic on Amazon. And so these businesses are, you know, they can be, be decent.

• 7:03Shaan Puri?

  And so these guys have rolled up so many of them that basically, so they just raised 110 million dollars at it. Seven hundred eighty million dollar valuation and.

• 7:15Sam Parr?

  It's only a year old or two years old.

• 7:16Shaan Puri?

  Two, two years old, exactly. So two years old and they've built a ton of value. So the, you know, this valuation at seven hundred eighty million is thirty times what it was eighteen months ago. So they've built a pretty big. Uh, company. So the holding company, uh, they, they say their gross revenue is over two hundred million and they have thirty five million in trailing twelve months EBITDA. So thirty five million of EBITDA the last twelve months. Um, not bad. Now, uh, this is a little bit controversial. So when I first saw this, I was like, oh, that's interesting. That's smart. Um, they own a bunch of brands like.

• 7:47Sam Parr?

  I think they own thirty five of them or two hundred of them.

• 7:49Shaan Puri?

  Forty three, forty three brands. They do all cash transactions. And, uh, so some of the examples, they have a, a brand called Beast Gear, which I think is a fitness brand. They have a, a Trail Buddy hiking poles.

• 8:01Sam Parr?

  I, I've seen that.

• 8:03Shaan Puri?

  Anti-fatigue floor mats, pet deodorizers. So all these like little niche businesses that will do individually, you know, single digit millions a year in revenue. And they're rolling them up. And so on one hand, I was like, okay, this is a quick way to like build a lot of value. Because, um, you know, the, the, the sellers in these markets kind of know. They built a thing to, you know, let's call it four million dollars in revenue. And they're doing all right, but they'll, you know, if you, if you would pay them out three or four million bucks, they'll take it because that's three years of, uh, you know, cash flow and they'll. They, they know that FBA businesses are very fickle. So that was.

• 8:41Sam Parr?

  Okay, but where's the but? Where's the but?

• 8:43Shaan Puri?

  The but is Amazon FBA businesses are not durable or defensible. Now, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe these guys have a contrarian point of view. That's correct, but the conventional wisdom here is. It's very easy for a competitor to come in and compete with you. Um, it's very hard to build any kind of moat because you're just hoping to be at the top of the rankings. On top of that, Amazon themselves is going into different categories and creating Amazon Basic Brands.

• 9:08Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I mean, I just I just typed in anti-fatigue mat. Their brand is number two and the number one brand is Amazon Basics and it's $10 cheaper.

• 9:15Shaan Puri?

  And then there's probably, I don't know how many more, uh, like right next to that, there's probably like a bunch more that are in that same category.

• 9:22Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 9:22Shaan Puri?

  And, uh, you know, what works in the algorithm for some amount of time, like let's say you bought a bunch of fake reviews or something like that. That can get penalized and then boom, your brand drops to essentially zero or it can it can drop like a, uh, uh, like a rock.

• 9:37Sam Parr?

  Okay, well, let's play devil's advocate here, though. Let's, here's, let's explain, um, how this can be great. So if you, let's just type in phone charger, Amazon. So there's this brand called, um, Anchor, A N K E R. You know that brand?

• 9:54Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 9:55Sam Parr?

  Started in China in, uh, what's the, uh, Silicon Valley of China? It's called Shozhen or?

• 10:00Shaan Puri?

  Uh, I don't know. I think there's a few different hubs. There's like a manufacturing hub. There's a tech hub. There's a, there's different hubs.

• 10:05Sam Parr?

  Here's Alan messaging me. Shen, Shen, Shenzen. Okay, the guy, he worked at, I think his name was Peter. I believe he worked at Google in San Francisco, in California. And then he's from this area and he moved back there and he started this charger company called Anchor. And he goes, when we, when we started this business, our goal was to be at a, we would want to rest in the four to four and a half. Star review on Amazon. So we wanted to have products that were pretty good, but affordable. And they started making phone chargers and it's a billion dollar company now and they lived on Amazon for a long time and then have since built a brand beyond it.

• 10:43Sam Parr?

  And I love their products. So it is definitely possible to build beyond, but there are so many Amazon only companies that just suck.

• 10:51Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah. And so the, the question I have for these guys is, what does the hit rate need to be for this to work? So like, out of every 10 businesses they buy, if one or two of them next year have been outcompeted or delisted or de-ranked in the Amazon search and, you know, revenue drops by 40%, 50%, 80%, which can totally happen on Amazon. Can their business still work? Or do they need a high hit rate? Or do they have some sort of durability where they can take some losses along the way? Like a venture capitalist can invest in a portfolio of companies. They don't need most to work. They need one or two to work for the whole portfolio to return.

• 11:33Shaan Puri?

  But for other types of businesses, when you're buying, you know, you're buying it based off of EBITDA. I don't think you have that same luxury. So I'm very curious how this works. Now, what I will say is if you're the founder, you kind of had nothing to lose doing this, right? There's an opportunity to do the roll up. You used other people's money to do it. You've built a, you know, presumably eight hundred million dollar company in two years. And you could take some secondary off, off the table and, and then you're free rolling the rest. And maybe this works if, even if there's a 20% chance of it working. You, you know, for the entrepreneur, I think it was a good bet for the investors. I don't know.

• 12:10Sam Parr?

  So that valuations doesn't seem crazy rich, to be honest. Thirty five, so that's only, is that 12 times profit?

• 12:18Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, which is a lot for, and these FBA businesses individually are selling for, I don't know, two, three X.

• 12:25Sam Parr?

  So yeah, but none of them have thirty five million dollars in profit. And do they get thirty five million dollars in profit in two years?

• 12:31Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, but like there's not, they're, they're not growing at a rapid pace because they're, you know, one company is growing. They're just, they're paying for each growth, each, you know, incremental growth, right? They're acquiring companies to grow. And so

• 12:43Sam Parr?

  And I agree with you. I'm just

• 12:45Shaan Puri?

  Why the group would be worth more?

• 12:46Sam Parr?

  I'm just playing the other side here. Instant Pot, that was basically an FB, or that was like lived only on Amazon. I mean, so it could happen.

• 12:53Shaan Puri?

  That's a defensible product, right? So like if you go, as I have on Alibaba and you go try to find an Instant Pot competitor. It is not easy to get a product that is of the same quality as Instant Pot. It is not a, it's not an easily clonable business. Whereas this, you know, the business they wrote in here, Beast Gear, the number one selling product looks like it's hand wraps for like boxing.

• 13:16Sam Parr?

  It's not really what it is.

• 13:17Shaan Puri?

  You search wrist wraps in Amazon and you get tons of competitors. I could go start a wrist wrap, you know, boxing gear brand tomorrow. Like, give me 18 hours and I'll have a clone of Beast Gear spun up. That doesn't mean I'll be able to rank as high right away, but it's

• 13:34Sam Parr?

  Is it Gear Beast?

• 13:37Shaan Puri?

  Uh, yeah, Gear Beast.

• 13:38Sam Parr?

  They have a ton of crap. They've got a cell phone holder that goes on your water bottle. That's kind of cool.

• 13:45Shaan Puri?

  Be- no beast gear, not gear beast.

• 13:48Sam Parr?

  Oh.

• 13:49Shaan Puri?

  I'll send you the link. Yeah.

• 13:53Sam Parr?

  Well.

• 13:53Shaan Puri?

  It's so it's all fitness equipment. I'm not saying it's bad. It might be fine fitness equipment, but what I'm saying is this is a clearly, you know, private label, Amazon supplier. You can find this in in a very short, you can clone the product in a very short amount of time.

• 14:07Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I'm looking at this beast gear. This looks like shit.

• 14:11Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, the harder part is is to rank high, right? So but the problem with that is just like, you know, we have a friend who has a business that he bought for a million, between one and two million dollars and um was heavily dependent on SEO as well as YouTube. So it was doing great in SEO. It was doing great on YouTube. I had was bringing in, you know, close to a million dollars in revenue a year. And um, you know, the SEO and the YouTube rank was very strong. Now, two years later, I just talked to him and he said it's fallen off a cliff. YouTube changed their algorithm and Google changed their algorithm slightly and my business is essentially dead. Um, and now that's a, you know, that's a business he bought for for over a million dollars.

• 14:52Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he shouldn't have bought that in the first place. It was obvious that was gonna happen, but.

• 14:56Shaan Puri?

  And so these are, you know, the number one thing, you know, we just had Andrew Wilkinson on the podcast and he's talking about buying businesses. I think, you know, my point of view is aligned with his, which is that durability is, you know, one of the top characteristics that that you look for when you're buying a business.

• 15:12Sam Parr?

  Yeah, um, I I I think that this is a risky bet, but the guy who started it seems really interesting.

• 15:20Shaan Puri?

  What's his story?

• 15:22Sam Parr?

  He worked at Seamless. I mean, he seems like a like a, I I think he worked at Seamless. He just seems like he's just been around a bunch of fast growing companies.

• 15:31Shaan Puri?

  Gotcha.

• 15:32Sam Parr?

  Let me look him up. What was the?

• 15:35Shaan Puri?

  Thrasio.

• 15:36Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he just, he like, I believe he's in New York and he started a bunch of companies and then the guys who started Seamless are are a bit involved. Um, so he seems interesting and the people invested in him said that he was a kind of a force to be reckoned with, so. Maybe they know something we don't know.

• 15:54Shaan Puri?

  This is not, this is not easy to do. So I, you know, I definitely give them credit for doing this in such a short amount of time. Again, as an entrepreneur, I think it's a great bet. As a, do I think that this business is actually gonna work and would I invest in this business? No.

• 16:08Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I I agree with you, but yeah, the it's pretty amazing what they pulled off. So good for them.

• 16:15Shaan Puri?

  Okay, I got I got a another I got a half baked idea for you. Okay, so um I don't love this idea. I'd give it a four out of ten. But there's something there. I think it can be improved a little bit. So this is the second one. So um right now, everybody is at home uh and a lot of people are sort of you know, finding in home entertainment. Some people watch Netflix, you know, Twitch, YouTube, etc. And some people are trying to figure out, okay, how do I do home workouts? How do I improve my fitness? Some people are taking, you know, doing online classes. And so online class is kind of interesting to me, right? Um, you've taken a bunch of online classes. You guys offer online classes. I've taken a bunch as well. I pay for it. And um I was wondering, you know, like, every time I see an interesting online class, I'm like, okay.

• 17:01Shaan Puri?

  You know, the risk of this just being some like shitty, you know, good sales pitch shitty class is too high. And um and I'm always just like, I wish I could just, you know, kind of try this or have a kind of an all you can eat pass where I could just try as many of these as I want. So the idea is, why isn't there a class pass for online courses? Or even better, why isn't there just a pirate bay for to have all these for free? That's the bootleg.

• 17:25Sam Parr?

  There is a pirate bay for it. I mean, I've I've downloaded a bunch.

• 17:28Shaan Puri?

  What is the part? Is it just the pirate bay? Or is there a different one?

• 17:31Sam Parr?

  No, I mean, look, you know how like we find like illegal streams of UFC events and stuff like that? And you just like know it to Google, like UFC crack stream or like.

• 17:39Shaan Puri?

  Allegedly, yes.

• 17:40Sam Parr?

  Yeah, uh, or on Reddit, you could look it up on Reddit, or you could look it up on Twitter. Uh, there's the same thing. So like, for example, there's this fitness guy who advertises on YouTube called Kino Body and he's like shredded.

• 17:53Shaan Puri?

  Kino Body dude, that guy's got the best ads.

• 17:55Sam Parr?

  His ads are so funny. And I was like, I just gotta buy this just to see what like what it's about. Like, I don't even want to do it. But I just typed in like Kino Body torrent. Dropbox or something and I was able to download it for free.

• 18:09Shaan Puri?

  Amazing. Okay, this week's episode is brought to you by Neville Madora's Copywriting Course. If you listen to Sam, you've probably heard him say the word copyrighting a million times now. He did a whole podcast talking about one of the skillsets that has helped him the most as well as, you know, it, you, you did this in your recession proof skillsets podcast, I think. Uh, and a lot of people were asking, okay, where do I go to find it? When you did it back then, you were just saying, you know, the tools and the books and the stuff that, you know, the things that have worked for you, you were not paid to say it, you truly believe it. This time it's an ad, we are paid to say it, but we still believe it. I actually have bought the course as well. Um, I've gone through it, you know, two months ago, three months ago. And, um, I mean, it's amazing. If you wanna, the fastest way for me to increase sales or increase conversions

• 18:52Shaan Puri?

  or increase growth has been to change the words on the page or change the words in an email. It is way faster than trying to come up with new features or whole new ideas to, to try to grow. So copyrighting, I'm a big fan. Sam, what do you think?

• 19:04Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So I think that it definitely changed how I wrote copy and I got more sales. But more importantly, to me, copyrighting means understanding what motivates people and figuring out how to communicate how my product will solve a problem in their, in their life. And I took Neville's course in 2013, I believe, and it really kind of opened my eyes to how to do this. So if you're into this, if you want to try it, just go to copywritingcourse.com. That's copyrighting course and Neville's kind of funny. Uh, he's a, he's an oddball and he spelled copyrighting with a K and course with a K. So just Google copyrighting course and you'll see his blog and you can sign up to his course if you want. And if you just want to go straight to the course, just Google copyrighting course, join and you will see a link for it.

• 19:46Shaan Puri?

  Okay. So for people who haven't heard of Kino Body, you need to find this guy's YouTube ads. So just go Facebook ad library, which if you didn't know is amazing. You can go see any brands, Facebook ads. So Google Facebook ad library, then type in Kino Body and then watch these guys ads. This guy, basically he tries to position himself as like, um,

• 20:03Sam Parr?

  Bruce Wayne.

• 20:05Shaan Puri?

  Bruce Wayne. Yeah. He's like in front of a castle. He's in front of Wayne Manor. And he's out in nature, he's shirtless and he's super ripped, obviously, and he's just stretching, he's just doing this like, you know, pushups.

• 20:15Sam Parr?

  In front of a Ferrari.

• 20:16Shaan Puri?

  And then the Ferrari's behind him and then like a woman comes up and hands him a glass of champagne, he drinks the glass and then he continues his workout and it's like this over the top ridiculous lifestyle ad, it's like Tai Lopez, if Tai Lopez was Jack.

• 20:29Sam Parr?

  It's so funny, it's, it's, it's great, you know, I've actually, I like got caught by the ad, I was like this guy's funny, like I gotta.

• 20:37Shaan Puri?

  I bookmarked it and I sent it to friends, I was like, this is the best ad I've ever seen.

• 20:40Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's, it's like, I feel as though he's definitely mocking himself a little bit, like he's, it's like, and I did research on him, his name's Greg and his family is wealthy, not like billionaire wealthy, but just like good gigs and stuff like that, I think they live in Canada. And his programs, it's fine, it's great advice.

• 20:59Shaan Puri?

  You know, the good thing, so, so you click the ad and then it basically takes you through this quiz of like, you know, the reason I haven't been able to get as fit as I want is it's hard to stick to my diet, or I don't like going to the gym, and you start taking this quiz and it's just two giant buttons on the screen and you're just picking your answer. And like ten questions in, he's like, alright, I'm formulating the perfect plan for you. And of course, it just fits out the same three plans, like, do you wanna be a Greek god body?

• 21:27Shaan Puri?

  Would you rather be, you know, whatever, you and not buy my program? And you just pick one of those and it's like sixty bucks, and I think this guy's making like somewhere, you know, six, seven million dollars a year.

• 21:38Sam Parr?

  I think it was like eight to ten.

• 21:40Shaan Puri?

  Eight to ten, yeah, so he said it in some interview, um, and you know, I would totally believe that, that makes sense to me.

• 21:46Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's, he's got a great YouTube channel, I love that guy, let's say Greg, Greg McCafferty or Greg, uh.

• 21:51Shaan Puri?

  No, no, it's something else, it's, uh.

• 21:54Sam Parr?

  He's great, you know, he kinda, his whole brand.

• 21:58Sam Parr?

  O'Gallagher, he's got this brand, that's like a mix of Bruce Wayne and American Psycho and his YouTube ads are so good. And what I always tell people who are interested in internet marketing is I go, find out what the affiliate marketers or the fitness people or anyone you think is scammy, find out whatever they're doing and copy it.

• 22:20Sam Parr?

  Because it works, it's so effective and, uh.

• 22:24Shaan Puri?

  It's not the best way to change the world, but it is an amazing way, that advice is an amazing way to actually build the core skillset you need to sell anything and make anything successful. And like if I was, you know, twenty to twenty-six, I would be on that. I'd be like, okay, hey, it looks like this gamer energy drink is being, you know, slung around and doing twenty million dollars a year. Okay, I'm gonna make my own gamer energy drink. Or I'm gonna make my own keenabody, or I'm gonna make my own whatever. And I would learn the core skillset of internet marketing to be able to succeed in anything.

• 22:58Sam Parr?

  Because usually these guys, they typically, they're, they have a wobbly moral compass, so they're willing to do some things that most people are not willing to do. And also, they start with nothing and they have to spend a dollar and make more than a dollar. And so what I like to say is, whatever tactics they're doing, just take all the Silicon Valley funding that you've raised and definitely be ethical and have a really good product, but also do all that stuff that they do.

• 23:23Shaan Puri?

  Right. If you can sell a shit product, you can sell a great product. That's one way, that's one way of thinking about it.

• 23:28Sam Parr?

  Right. And so whatever the internet marketers do, do that. So there's a reason why you see those internet marketers with long sales pages with lots of texts. There's a reason why you see them, you know, with a Ferrari in the, in the background. It works.

• 23:41Shaan Puri?

  So on the Y Combinator application, if you want to apply to YC, they have one question, that's kind of the famous question, which is, tell me about a real life system you've hacked to your benefit. And what they mean is basically like, tell me where you, you know, didn't follow the standard playbook, you came up with some clever solution and you got a good result for yourself out of it. And they're not looking for anything unethical, they're just trying to say like, you know, oh, you know, I realized that, um, you know, I really wanted to place, you know, during, during COVID, I realized that, you know, grocery shortage was a big problem. I realized I could scrape all the availability windows at midnight every day, Eastern time, because that's when their servers updated. I could find the delivery times and I could book them for me and my family or whatever.

• 24:24Sam Parr?

  What's your answer, Sean?

• 24:26Shaan Puri?

  You know, I had an answer for that because I did apply to Y C. I just tried to think of what it would be.

• 24:30Sam Parr?

  I'll tell you mine while you think.

• 24:32Shaan Puri?

  Go, yeah, go for it.

• 24:32Sam Parr?

  I have too many that I don't want to say on air because for a bunch of reasons, I don't want to incriminate incriminate myself or also look bad when I don't think it's actually that bad. But I'll, but I'll say, I'll say one, when I was in college, uh, they let you take 28 hours, up to 28 hours of summer school, but they don't define what summer is. And so what I would do my, during a semester was, I found out that summer school could also be online school and LSU has courses that you can take that only costs $600 or $400. Whereas at my university, like the credit, I forget how it was structured, but like the equivalent was like 10 grand.

• 25:10Sam Parr?

  Um, and so I signed up for $20 through LSU and it was all online and you could sign up for these bullshit classes. And then I hired an Indian, uh, to do it for like 50 bucks, like so cheap. He just wrote these crap essays and then a TA like graded it. And so I, a whole semester of school was just that way.

• 25:30Shaan Puri?

  Dude, that, that's hilarious. I don't know what mine would be, but I have a very similar one, which was when I was at Duke. I had this, I, I was doing so poorly in all my classes. I was like a very mediocre student. And, um, I was like, man, these people all work harder than me and are smarter than me. Like there's just not really like a great path for me to, you know, in high school, I was the smartest kid and didn't have to work that hard. And here everybody is the smartest kid from their high school is all here. So now that doesn't work anymore. And so I looked at, I looked around and I realized, man, what are all these athletes doing? Because the only not smart people on campus were the athletes for the most part, uh, except for Brian Zubek, shout out to Zubek for being smart. So, um, I looked at what the basketball players would take. So I found a way to look at their class schedule.

• 26:10Shaan Puri?

  And I signed up for all those classes and, uh, one of them in particular that I, I saw all of them were in was this one, uh, it's like business, it was like this business course. And so I signed up for it. And first day of semester, I was like, okay, where do I go? Like there's no classroom listed here. I like emailed the professor. I'm like, hey, there seems to be some error. There's no classroom listed on the thing. And he was like, oh yeah, this is a virtual course. You just need to read, um, these three books. And they were like, it was the Lance Armstrong book. It was like two, like other like super light, like breezy reads. I was like, you have to read these three books, the whole semester, and at the end, pick one and write one page about it.

• 26:49Sam Parr?

  Kind of so stupid.

• 26:51Shaan Puri?

  Just email that to me and I got an A and it was just me and all the athletes in this course and nobody else even knew about it. And so I got a.

• 26:57Sam Parr?

  That's so stupid. And that course for, I don't know if you were in scholarship or not, that, that was probably 10 grand.

• 27:04Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, well, that's the thing we do for them. They're on scholarship. I was the only one paying for my tuition.

• 27:09Sam Parr?

  That's so stupid. That's so stupid. This is why I don't want people to bail out, um, folks who have loans because I know it will hurt them, but in the short term it will hurt them, but in the long term it should make these schools should go out of business. When I was in school, I, I went there on a track and field scholarship. I had to take a gym class, so I took aerobic walking.

• 27:28Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 27:28Sam Parr?

  Oh, God.

• 27:29Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, there's literally like rocks for jocks and all these like, you know, secret classes that were so easy to be in. Um, it, it says the guy who is wearing the Harvard sweatshirt right now.

• 27:38Sam Parr?

  Hey, Harvard seems great. Oh, I thought Duke seemed great, but the fact that those things existed, that's so stupid to me.

• 27:45Shaan Puri?

  Dude, another one like that. Um, so Harvard has this thing called the extension. Have you, have you heard of the Harvard extension?

• 27:50Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's like people go, like executives go and they pay and they let everyone in and then on their LinkedIn, they put that they went to Harvard.

• 27:57Shaan Puri?

  No, so that's the, that's the executive MBA, which is just straight up. Yeah, it's you, you pay a, a absurd amount of money and you take this thing online.

• 28:05Sam Parr?

  On Tyra Banks's LinkedIn, it says graduate of Harvard.

• 28:08Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 28:08Sam Parr?

  And she went to an executive.

• 28:10Shaan Puri?

  So my cousin had this where he had a Harvard thing on his resume. I was like, dude, you went to Harvard? And he was like, oh, no, no, there's this extension school. It's like two blocks away from Harvard. And, uh, anyone can get in. You just pay and you go. And it's called Harvard Extension. He's like, but when people read the resume, they just stop at Harvard. They're like, okay, cool. Uh, you know, they, they don't even know what this other EXT stands for.

• 28:32Sam Parr?

  I hope your cousin's listening.

• 28:34Shaan Puri?

  Uh, yeah, he's, he's great. He's actually really smart and has been super successful since then. So, yeah, anyways.

• 28:40Sam Parr?

  Okay, you want to talk about some hacks? You want to talk, I want to talk about this Jim Patterson guy? And then I want to tell you and the listeners, one thing that I do, I told Andrew about the CRD and he loved it. Have you heard of newspapers.com?

• 28:51Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 28:52Sam Parr?

  First of all, awesome company. Love this business.

• 28:55Shaan Puri?

  Newspapers.com, aren't I'm going to.

• 28:56Sam Parr?

  It's owned by, I believe it's owned by, uh.

• 29:00Shaan Puri?

  Ancestry.

• 29:00Sam Parr?

  It's owned by Ancestry. Um, it's amazing. I'm a subscriber. I pay $10 a month, maybe $20 a month. I forget. I love it. And it's

• 29:09Shaan Puri?

  What do you do with this?

• 29:10Sam Parr?

  I'll tell you, it's an aggregation of all the newspapers ever, or at least they try to make it that. And what I love to do is whenever I read books, which I love biographies and I love books, so right now I feel like a douche admitting this. I'm reading The Fountainhead. I've never read Ayn Rand, but

• 29:25Shaan Puri?

  I've never read it either, actually.

• 29:26Sam Parr?

  I've never read any of that, but everyone says that I should, so whatever, I read it. It's based in nineteen thirty-three, and so what I'll do, and they talk about architecture. And architecture nowadays, that doesn't, that's not like a particularly sexy job, but I guess according to that book it was. And so I'll use newspaper.com and I'll set the time range from like nineteen twenty-eight to like nineteen thirty-three. And I'll just type in like New York architecture and I'll read cool New York article, articles about architecture and I'll kind of, or like, the book is based on Frank Lloyd Wright, so I'll look at articles about him. Or when I read the biography of Ted Turner, I'll type in Ted Turner. He had an advertising company in nineteen seventy-three, but the problem is if I Google that, Ted Turner CNN will show up.

• 30:08Sam Parr?

  And Google it, it exists in nineteen seventy-three, so I want to look up articles about, it'll say like Edward Turner buys new billboard in Athens, Georgia.

• 30:16Shaan Puri?

  Are you trying to see what were they saying about this back then?

• 30:20Sam Parr?

  Yes.

• 30:20Shaan Puri?

  What did people think back then and not

• 30:22Sam Parr?

  Before they knew, yeah, before they knew what the outcome was gonna be. So another example, I, I started reading about Dan Gilbert, the guy started Quicken Loans and he's like, he owns all the stuff, big deal. He's revitalizing Detroit, everyone knows his name. I was like, what, what was his path? Like, what did he start? And so I went to Dan Gilbert, nineteen ninety-four, Quicken Loans, and it was like, his company was six years old and I looked at how they were describing him. And, and they described him as very similar to what they described him as now. I'm like, wow, that guy like kind of had the it factor back then. And it's really fun to see that. Same with the, have you heard of, um, Fossil Watches?

• 30:59Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 30:59Sam Parr?

  That guy who started it, he also now owns this thing called Shinola, which is really cool. And everyone knows him as Shinola, but I just like looked, I was like, I wonder what he was like when he was younger and just getting going. And I just read all about him and his brothers starting the Fossil Watches and they show them in their garage. And it's just really cool to, to read all about that. And so that, I use it like crazy or, and I read a lot of biographies set in the nineteen twenties, thirties, forties, all the way up to the seventies. And it's the only source that you can go and get real facts and information about it.

• 31:27Shaan Puri?

  I like that a lot. I I'm a little different than you in that I don't I don't A do as much biography type of stuff as you do. But B, my method for this, I have the same itch I try to scratch, but I scratch it a different way. So I think we've talked about this once before, but if the itch is, I want to know what people were saying back then, when we didn't know what the outcome was going to be. Because in reality, when you look at today, that's what today is. Today, people are talking about stuff and they don't know what the outcome is going to be. And so to train your mind to understand how like, not just to believe everything you read today and how to put this into context. And man, everybody was wrong about X. I have a bunch of different like methods of doing this. So first is,

• 32:08Shaan Puri?

  we've talked about these like memos before, like the original memo when they were like, hey, we're going to create PowerPoint. Or the Facebook memos when they're like, hey, I think we should compete with, you know, we should buy Oculus for this reason.

• 32:19Sam Parr?

  And the backstory to this is you worked with Emmett, the founder of Twitch, and he wrote a memo or wrote a bunch of stuff saying why they should pivot the company from doing this.

• 32:29Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you did this with your company. I emailed the CEO or not email, I slacked him and I said, hey, do you have any of the original document plans pitches that you had from when you started the company 10 years ago? Before this was a multi-billion dollar company? And he sent me a bunch of the raw research, like user interviews, PowerPoint presentations he was giving the like investors. And it was awesome to see that's what that's how sophisticated it was back then. And also, that's, you know, there were certain things that were totally wrong about and and so it's.

• 32:59Sam Parr?

  What do you mean it was sophisticated? So when Emmett was starting Twitch, you're saying?

• 33:04Shaan Puri?

  I'm saying, you know, like when you look at the pitch, it's not a polished thing. There's not a ton of well researched data. Same thing, we, you know, Suli, our friend who started a really successful mobile gaming company called Tiny. I Tiny Co. I had asked him, I said, hey, you raised all this money from Andreessen Horowitz. He raised 16 million dollars. And if you go look, Ben Horowitz writes a blog post about him and says like, this founder kicks ass and this company is going to be awesome. And here's why. And I was like, dude, what was your pitch to them? I want to see the deck you sent them. And he sent it to me and it was no joke. All black and white, like no styling, like two images in the whole thing.

• 33:46Shaan Puri?

  There are some really like bold, like proclamations about what they were trying to do and why, why it was going to work and that like. It was just so interesting to see the content, like the name of the company was something totally different back then.

• 33:56Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it was called like Brooklyn.

• 33:58Shaan Puri?

  Brooklyn Packet Company. Um, and so, yeah, I like, I like seeing stuff back when it started, when it was unclear what the outcome was gonna be. The other thing I do with this is my own emails. So I frequently, if I make a decision, I will email the decision out to the people who are involved in it. And they're like, yeah, I know, we just talked about this on the phone for two hours. Like, why did you?

• 34:18Sam Parr?

  And it's like a diary.

• 34:19Shaan Puri?

  It's a diary. And then I go back and I look at this, I'm like, okay, I was a dumbass. What was I wrong about then? That I now can see. And I'll go back and I'll read my old emails to like, help refine my own, my own game, so I can make better decisions as I go forward.

• 34:34Sam Parr?

  That's a great, um, you ask that question all the time. What am I, say it again?

• 34:40Shaan Puri?

  Uh, like, what am I wrong about? Uh, my question is, uh, when, if we look back in 12 months or six months from now, and we say, hey, man, that podcast was great. You know, you were really excited about it. It seemed like it was gonna work. Uh, and let's assume like 12 months from now, it's failed. What's the most likely reason you're gonna say why it failed? Right? That's a, a question I ask myself on any project I do. What's the? If six months from now, if we fast forward to there and it's failed, what's the most likely reason I'd be giving you over a beer when we're like, dude, what happened? That was great. And I write that down now. And I start to work on it now, but then I, when it, you know, six months later, I'll go back and I'll look at those things and I'll say, okay. What was I right about? What was I wrong about? And it's really just a humbling exercise. Um, cause I'm like, okay, cool. I know, you know.

• 35:24Shaan Puri?

  Today, how, like not to take it sort of face value, all the stuff I'm reading from others as well as things I'm thinking myself, because. I just seen over time how wrong people are.

• 35:34Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I've stolen that from you. I always ask, I have been asking myself, what exists now that I need to take advantage of that won't exist in the next 10 or 20 years? For me right now, it's called emailing. I think it's pretty crazy that you can email anyone.

• 35:46Shaan Puri?

  Like this hole is open.

• 35:48Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I think it's nuts. It'd be like if I had anyone's, if I could easily guess everyone's phone number. It's like, well, why?

• 35:55Shaan Puri?

  So here's, here's another version of that. So Paul Graham, again, Y C. Has this essay and he's talking about like how to get great startup ideas. And if you're listening to this, you want to get great startup ideas. I would go, I would recommend you go read this. It's paulgram.com. I think it's just slash ideas.

• 36:10Sam Parr?

  Is this the one called Schlep?

• 36:12Shaan Puri?

  No, that's a different one. But this one, he basically says, look, the easiest way to invent the future is to just live in the future and then figure out what's missing for others. Right? So he was like, you know, Mark Zuckerberg, when he created Facebook, he already was blogging on these like, you know, kind of blogging wasn't as big of a thing, but he was blogging. He was top, he was sharing life updates and photos online with other people who, you know, he didn't even know super well, but they were just following him online. And he's like, for him, living online and posting your photos, your status updates, your thoughts, that was normal. But for everybody else, it was abnormal. So he was sort of already living in the future and he just needed to build what was missing for everybody else who was currently living in the present.

• 36:56Shaan Puri?

  And, um, and there's like, so the, the, the blog post is really good. It talks about the same thing with like, uh, it's the, there's old painting quotes, like, how do you paint the perfect painting? It's like, first you become perfect and then you just paint. Uh, and it's the same idea, which is like, if you are already living a lifestyle that is awesome for you, but you are doing it in a kind of manual way, or you've hacked the system into, to where you are, you have these, um, products or benefits that other people don't have. You just have to figure out how to make that accessible and educate the market on those things and so that they can come live the same lifestyle you're living. So I have an example of this.

• 37:34Shaan Puri?

  I was reading something recently that was really interesting. There's this guy named Alex something. I don't know. It doesn't matter what his last name is. So his name's Alex and he did something very interesting. So he created, uh, he's in the crypto space and crypto has never been more interesting to me than it is now, because now everybody who was just like here for the bandwagon has jumped off and has moved on to the next shit. And so only the real diehards are still in it, just making progress every week. And so this guy's one of those diehards, he's still in it. And what he did was he created what I'll call a life coin. So he created his own currency called Alex. It's dollar sign Alex, if you want to buy it.

• 38:12Sam Parr?

  Wait, a life, a life coin is the category?

• 38:15Shaan Puri?

  My term, uh, that's not like what they call it, but um. You know, it could also be called a personal ICO. He created a social currency for himself. There's no like terms for it. That's how new this idea is. But I call it a life coin. Basically, he minted 10 million Alex coins. And of the 10 million Alex coins, he kept a bunch for himself and then he's like, okay. I will sell some Alex coins to the general market. And the contract is this, he created an income sharing agreement. He's like, hey, I'm 20. I really want to go to this. Crypto conference and um, you know, I don't have the money to pay. I don't have three grand. I can go pay for this now. And some guy on Twitter reached out was like, I'll loan you the money. Um, you just pay me back. And he's like, but let's do it through a smart contract using crypto.

• 39:00Shaan Puri?

  And so that was kind of how this started. And then so eventually what he did was he financed his education doing this. So he sold $20,000 worth of his student loan, basically. And he has an income share agreement, which means after he graduates, whatever job he gets for the first three years, he's going to pay back the holders of this Alex coin at some predefined rate.

• 39:16Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I have, I just Googled it. This is amazing. It's smart kid. He's only 21 or two or from France.

• 39:22Shaan Puri?

  Right. And so he, uh, he did this. And so, um, I, I started looking into this because I'm very intrigued by this because there's so many people who I'm like. Uh, like we have this friend Vishal. He's really young. He's like, I think 22 now. Uh, but for two years now, I've been like, this guy's going to be a billionaire someday. If I could just own. 5% of Vishal's future earnings, I would pay a lot of money for that. I wouldn't bet on every individual venture because dude, I don't know, it might not be this one, you know, but, but by the time this guy's 40, he's going to be a billionaire.

• 39:53Sam Parr?

  You feel that about him?

• 39:55Shaan Puri?

  What's that?

• 39:55Sam Parr?

  You feel that about him?

• 39:56Shaan Puri?

  Oh yeah, for sure. He's also maniacally focused on becoming a billionaire. It's the only thing he does and cares about in his life. Uh, he doesn't. Date, he doesn't work out, he doesn't have hobbies. His hobby is making money. His interest is making money. His friends are people who have money. Like, that's who this guy is.

• 40:12Sam Parr?

  Let's, we gotta spell his name. I've never met Vishal, even though he's good friends with you.

• 40:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, we should have him on the podcast.

• 40:18Sam Parr?

  What's his name?

• 40:19Shaan Puri?

  So it's Vishal, V I S H A L. And his last name is, uh, if you just do his Twitter, it's Vishal Hark.

• 40:26Sam Parr?

  How do you spell that? The last name?

• 40:29Shaan Puri?

  H A R P.

• 40:30Sam Parr?

  H A R P.

• 40:32Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 40:32Sam Parr?

  The Shaw Harp, I gotta find him.

• 40:34Shaan Puri?

  So I have confidence that this guy is gonna be a billionaire someday. And so I would love to invest a hundred grand right now and own a piece of his future earnings. Now, he might not take that trade, but there's many people out there who don't have access to capital, don't have access to fund their education. Uh, or they're just, they're being like, an NBA player is a great example of this. So there's this NBA basketball player called Spencer Dinwiddie, who did this also. He just signed a contract with the Nets. That was a four-year, twenty-nine million dollar deal. A three-year, a three-year, twenty-nine million dollar deal, something like that. And he, he wanted to basically s- uh, fr- sell fractions of his future NBA earnings through crypto. The NBA ultimately blocked him, but he was literally trying to do it. He was like, hey, look, I just signed a thirty million dollar deal.

• 41:20Shaan Puri?

  And I'm gonna sell off part of my future contracts today. I want capital today. And if you bet that I'm gonna get my next contract's gonna be bigger, then you're gonna own a piece of something that's bigger. It's like a stock, but it's my future earnings.

• 41:32Sam Parr?

  Well, you know, people do this illegally, obviously. Like, this is what you do in high school when you, when you see it, like, this happened all the time where, like, a good high schooler would be, we'd be great at basketball. And a guy would be like, alright, I'll buy you a car now. Um, and I'll buy you a house now, but when it comes back, you got me.

• 41:50Shaan Puri?

  Right. And the NCAA tries to block all this and like, you know, Nike does this all the time where it's like, oh, why does this guy's uncle, why is he now like a senior VP at Nike? It's like, well, cuz, you know, that's their workaround to like, get in with this guy, so he signs with Nike. And so anyways, I think this is interesting for musicians. I think it's interesting for athletes. I will say upfront, I don't think this is really a thing. But if this was a thing, it would like, change the way the world works. So I'm very intrigued by it. I'm very, keeping very close tabs on every example that I see of these. And in fact, they, they, uh, this guy Alex is using this company called Roll to do this. I think it's like, I don't know, tryroll.com or some shit like that. And the founder reached out and DM me and he was like, hey, you know, you guys could do this for your podcast.

• 42:33Shaan Puri?

  Like, let's say you created the Milli coin and you created 10 million Milli coins and you could, they could be redeemed for, you know, if you have 2,000, you could get a sponsorship slot on the, on the podcast. So you could, let's say, buy slots today that could be redeemed in the future as the show continues to grow. And now you're getting better value. Or it could be used for a one hour coaching session for us or whatever, right? Like, we can create a social currency within our community that can be traded on the market as well as redeemed for value with us or our podcast.

• 43:05Sam Parr?

  That's pretty cool.

• 43:06Shaan Puri?

  I think it's very interesting. I'm like, kind of tempted to try it because I just, again, this is one of those where I want to try to live in the future. Maybe this is the future.

• 43:13Sam Parr?

  Did you see what Alan just sent? It's called pandopooling.com.

• 43:18Shaan Puri?

  I have not seen this.

• 43:20Sam Parr?

  Look up pandopooling.com.

• 43:22Shaan Puri?

  It looks like a sort of share your future earnings, like sell off your future earnings or whatever.

• 43:26Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 43:27Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's interesting, dude. There's something to this. Or I shouldn't say that. I think that this, if this worked, it would be, it would change a lot of shit. And so I want to, I want to be the, one of the first people to test this out and see, see what's what.

• 43:43Sam Parr?

  Um, that's cool. This is, uh, yeah, there, there may be something here. I like this because it's really weird and I don't think it would work, but most cool things that are really innovative won't work, right?

• 43:58Shaan Puri?

  Initially, yeah.

• 43:58Sam Parr?

  Initially, at least. Maybe never. Um, I mean, it was kind of like Blab though, where you were saying the other day that if Blab existed today, it would, it would have worked really well. And if your first cloud kitchen would have existed today, it would have at least worked, survived. So maybe it's just, maybe one day it will work, but not for a while.

• 44:19Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you know, I tweeted this out, which was, being early is the same, is the same thing as being wrong. Or, or another phrase of that is if you do the right thing at the wrong time, it, you get pain. You don't get pleasure.

• 44:31Sam Parr?

  Right. And you are just, uh, two years off.

• 44:35Shaan Puri?

  Uh, yeah, it was a few, few years off, but you know, and then a lot of people were like, oh, well, if you guys had just persevered. You know, yeah, who the hell knows, you know?

• 44:43Sam Parr?

  You want to talk about this guy named Jim Patterson, who I discovered?

• 44:46Shaan Puri?

  Yes, so this is the Billy of the week. Cue the song. We should make a song for the Billy of the week.

• 44:52Sam Parr?

  Here's why I like this. Now. Sometimes, uh, I wonder like, do you, so this guy who I'm about to mention, he's interesting and I'll explain why. But he is like, people who I bring up a lot, which is, uh, these old companies that. I don't think they grow slow. I mean, but they definitely, uh, like. It's not like a, a zero to massive in three years. So, but it's definitely massive. And Mark Andreessen has like a famous quote that I can't find, but he's basically trying to say that, uh. He's like, Mark Andreessen says, the things that Warren Buffett loves C candies because it grows just a little bit each year, but it's really stable. I'm trying to build things that crush Warren Buffett's things.

• 45:38Sam Parr?

  Most of them won't, but some might.

• 45:40Shaan Puri?

  Mark Andreessen said that?

• 45:41Sam Parr?

  I believe he did. Yeah. He was like with C's candy, uh, he's like, uh, that's great for him. And it definitely works, but I'm trying to build are the things that will crush that. Uh, he goes, we're not going to invest, uh. Here, what he says, he goes, we're not trying to invest in C's candy or Coca-Cola. We're trying to invest in the things that crush them.

• 46:02Shaan Puri?

  Interesting.

• 46:02Sam Parr?

  Um. So here, let me find the exact quote. Is it on here? Um, anyway, uh. Yeah, he says absolutely, he goes, you're, you're not trying to build the next C's candy. No, absolutely not. And every time I hear a story like C's candies. I want to go and find some new scientific superfood candy company that will blow them right out of the water. We're wired completely opposite in that sense. Basically, we're betting against change. We're betting, or he's betting against change. We're betting for change. When he makes a mistake, it's because something changes that he didn't expect. When we make a mistake, it's because something doesn't change that we thought would. And it's just two ways to look at it. Both are successful.

• 46:42Shaan Puri?

  Very interesting. I like when people can distill their whole strategy down into like two lines and that's what it's exactly.

• 46:49Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and it's great. It's just different ways to go about looking at things. I tend to lately I've been liking things that are more long lasting. And so anyway, let me pull this up. There's a guy named Jim Patterson. Have you ever heard of this guy, Sean?

• 47:00Shaan Puri?

  Not until you mention them.

• 47:01Sam Parr?

  Okay, he's interesting because for a bunch of reasons. First of all, he owns this thing called Patterson Group. Now, from the looks of it, he owns 100% of this company and it's in Canada and it's privately owned. I don't think it's true that he owns 100% of it because I don't know how that would work. That just seems like impossible. But anyway, he owns 100% of it. It does 10 billion in sales and they own roughly 25 divisions of the business. So ranging from lumber to Ripley's Believe It or Not, to Guinness Book of World Records, to 30 different car dealerships. They own just everything and he's this like shorter guy. He's like 5'4", 5'5". He's 90 years old.

• 47:41Sam Parr?

  He drives, he's like this, like not a hillbilly, but like this like down home, like he drives the same pickup truck forever. And he's really smart and bright, but he like walks around eating popcorn. Like, you know, he's supposed to be this like normal guy. That's like the shtick and it seems legit and he's bullish on lumber. He owns lots of lumber companies. And I posted the growth of his businesses. So in the, in the group channel or in the doc. But he has 45,000 employees in Canada. It's just super fascinating guy.

• 48:14Shaan Puri?

  And some of the brands that they own, I'm on their website right now. So some of the brands that they own are, here's the ones I've recognized. Guinness Book of World Records, Ocean Brands, Ripley's Believe It or Not.

• 48:28Shaan Puri?

  Those are the only ones I recognize and there's, it looks like there's a bunch of food, advertising, media, they're in a, you know, eight different sort of industries.

• 48:35Sam Parr?

  They own.

• 48:35Shaan Puri?

  Wine.

• 48:37Sam Parr?

  They own Gold Seal. They own Oceans, which is a, is that cranberry juice or?

• 48:45Shaan Puri?

  That's what I was thinking when I read it, but maybe that's a different brand.

• 48:48Sam Parr?

  I think it is. They own mines in Canada. They own dozens of car dealerships. He started it as a car dealership in 1961.

• 48:58Shaan Puri?

  Washington's tuna, by the way.

• 48:59Sam Parr?

  Oh tuna. Sorry, I do know he owns fishing businesses. Then he parlayed that 1961 car dealership. Four years later, he bought.

• 49:11Sam Parr?

  He bought a radio station. Then he bought like an advertising and billboard company. Then he bought like magazines. Then he bought a mine. Then he bought more car dealerships. Then I think they bought like, and then he like bought Ripley's Believe It or Not because he went to an auction and. It was like, he like went to an auction or something like that and it was like for sale. And then he also bought like Marilyn Monroe's dress that she sang Happy Birthday Mr. President to JFK for like five million dollars. It was like. Alright, we're in the like souvenirs and like museum business now. Like he's just super interesting and a little sporadic and very.

• 49:49Shaan Puri?

  And let me ask you, how did you even discover this guy?

• 49:52Sam Parr?

  I'll show you. Well, for that, the way that I discovered him is how I discover anything, which is anything I find interesting. So like Ripley's Believe It or Not has always interested me. So did Guinness Book of World Records. You and I one time talked about the business behind like certifying and like giving like a seal of approval. I got interested in that and I thought, what, what out there is kind of like that? And Guinness Book of World Records was one. And so I clicked on it and I always do the same thing where I go to the very far right and I see who's the parent company and owner. And then I click that and then I read the history and it says, this person bought it, sold it to this person, sold it to this person. I always open up all those tabs and I like to see how they're connected.

• 50:32Sam Parr?

  And I like to see the history of the person. And so when I did that with Guinness Book of World Records, it said Patterson Group. And I clicked that and it says they own Guinness Book of World Records and they own car dealership. And I was like, okay, interested. What's going on here? Then I go to newspapers.com and I type in Jim Patterson and I read all about him and that's how.

• 50:54Shaan Puri?

  By the way, I remember, you know, I've wanted to have a Guinness Book of World Record record for a while just because again, I'm a sucker for the credential. And it's hard to get because they have to like come out and there's like all these rules. But there's a startup that Chris Saka and others invest in called Record Setter. Where it was like way easier to just like get the actual records that you just have to like submit a video. They didn't have to have send an official person out or whatever. I wonder if this thing succeeded. This was a while back. I'm going to see if they've.

• 51:23Sam Parr?

  Doesn't look like it's.

• 51:24Shaan Puri?

  Doesn't look like they succeeded. So their 1.5 million raised started 2008. Yeah. So probably either dead or dead or extremely profitable. I think there's only two paths for for why that how that how that happens.

• 51:36Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So what I learned about Guinness Book of World Records is Jim Patterson changed the business model. So like you can pay like a hundred grand. And then they like send coaches to like show you exactly how to break the record. And it's like, so like, for example, Toyota wanted to set some world record on X, Y, and Z. And so they sent like these scientists to Toyota and they go, all right, so in order to break it, you got to do this, this, and this. The best way to do that is this, this, and this. And just get it all ready and we'll be back out in about a month and we will give you the record so long as you achieve it.

• 52:05Shaan Puri?

  That's amazing.

• 52:05Sam Parr?

  And so anyway, Jim Patterson, super interesting, 90 years old, still working. There was a story that I saw about him that happened just a few months ago and a camera crew went with him. He wanted to go drive and see one of his supermarkets somewhere south of Vancouver. And he drove his car like six hours, slept at a Days Inn motel, got up, went to the supermarket unannounced just to check in on things and then drove home. Really interesting guy and well liked.

• 52:35Shaan Puri?

  Do you want to be a billionaire? Is that a goal of yours?

• 52:40Sam Parr?

  I want to get into trouble and like, like scheme until I die and I, and I believe, I believe that massive amounts of wealth are going to come from that.

• 52:54Shaan Puri?

  Oh, that's perfect.

• 52:58Sam Parr?

  So like.

• 53:02Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like I just love, I love the thrill of doing shit like the it it just excites me more than anything. And so, yeah, like for example.

• 53:09Shaan Puri?

  I am with you, dude.

• 53:10Sam Parr?

  Go like going to a it like just seeing a um a grocery store for sale. And it's like, oh, this is cheap. I bet. Maybe I could. It's like, I don't give a shit about grocery stores, but just like the act of doing.

• 53:22Shaan Puri?

  Right. It's like a business fantasy plays out in your mind. What if I bought this grocery store and then what if I did this?

• 53:28Sam Parr?

  What if I did that? Yeah. And so like I I think that I I for sure think that before. I think before forty for sure, I'll be well worth over a hundred million dollars and be very liquid.

• 53:44Shaan Puri?

  Nice. Um, okay, great. Love it. I would bet that too. I would buy your life coin if I could.

• 53:50Sam Parr?

  Um, you are. You want to talk about one or two more things?

• 53:53Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, actually, let me ask you that. If somebody was, if I wanted to buy ten percent of your lifetime earnings, so whatever you're making per year. Uh, I get ten percent. What amount would I have to give you today in order to get ten percent of your lifetime earnings?

• 54:08Sam Parr?

  I would never do that. Uh, but, uh.

• 54:11Shaan Puri?

  There's no price. Not for a billion dollars, you wouldn't give up ten percent of your earnings?

• 54:16Sam Parr?

  Okay, yeah, there's a price. Um, I don't know.

• 54:19Shaan Puri?

  And what? Why were you allergic to it just now?

• 54:22Sam Parr?

  Because I'd rather be poor than have to owe someone something like that or like be told what to do. Um.

• 54:28Shaan Puri?

  You wouldn't be told what to do.

• 54:30Sam Parr?

  Yeah, what?

• 54:32Shaan Puri?

  It's basically just.

• 54:33Sam Parr?

  Maybe, maybe.

• 54:34Shaan Puri?

  Like, hey, if you had ten million dollars right now, would that make you more dangerous? Would you be able to build more faster and do more interesting things? Okay, you know.

• 54:43Sam Parr?

  I don't think that would make me more dangerous because I have access to that, like capital is the easy part. So maybe like twenty million bucks right now. I don't even know. That's what people don't understand is like at capitals is rarely rarely is capital the the missing equation, right?

• 55:03Shaan Puri?

  Um, yeah, I think it is missing for a lot of people, but it shouldn't be. And I think you're right that like you can get yourself to a point where accessing capital is no longer a bottleneck at all. For a lot of people, that is the bottleneck they're stuck on.

• 55:17Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but I just think that convincing rich people to give you money typically is not the hard part about making like getting wealthy. So like building a company, convincing a rich person to give you money is the easiest part because what you're saying it's all false. Like it's all like, there's no truth to it, right? There's like ideas and there's promises.

• 55:39Shaan Puri?

  It's not that it's all false, it's unfalsifiable. It's like, we can't prove what this is or is not gonna happen.

• 55:46Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so I can tell you like, look, this is gonna happen. I'm gonna do this, this and this, and I think it's gonna work. And you could tell people anything and as long as you're charismatic enough, you get the money.

• 55:56Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, or credible enough, yeah.

• 55:59Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but most people aren't credible. I mean, you're credible in that like, dude, I raised a little bit of seed money. And I had people, we, most people invested twenty five thousand dollars a piece and we raised not a lot of money. I cold emailed people and I met with them for thirty minutes and then they gave me a check for twenty five grand. And I was shocked.

• 56:19Shaan Puri?

  Charismatic and credible.

• 56:21Sam Parr?

  How did they know I was credible?

• 56:22Shaan Puri?

  Well, you've done stuff, right? Like you guys had built a list, you had done events, you had done things before.

• 56:28Sam Parr?

  Yes, yeah, that's true.

• 56:30Shaan Puri?

  And you could speak with confidence and clarity around what you were doing.

• 56:34Sam Parr?

  That was just like a false, like it was, I just, I thought it might work and I had, and on, like you could do the math, you're like, all right, I think this, this, this works, I think. But anyway, my point is that I don't, I think that people would be shocked at how getting access to startup capital is typically the, one of the easier things in, in the progression.

• 56:55Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 56:55Sam Parr?

  Uh, you wanna talk about one or two more things?

• 56:58Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, let's do one more. What, what do you wanna talk about?

• 56:59Sam Parr?

  Uh, let's do, uh, this notary thing because I know this company and it's huge.

• 57:05Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, so, okay, so I just refinanced my house and, uh, you know, every time I go through a process, I've reframed pain and annoyance as opportunity. Um, and so now, so I'm going through this process and it's like the most annoying thing to refinance your house or get a loan in general, if you get a mortgage loan. And so, um, you know, it's taken us months to do this, to finish this, mostly because I'm too lazy to do the paperwork that they, this endless amount of paperwork that they keep sending me. Um, but we got to the last step and the last step is basically, hey, you need to sign your documents. And with COVID, you basically, they needed to send a mobile notary to our house. So they sent a mobile notary. He got, guy shows up at our house. Um, he stands there and sort of says, sign here, sign here, sign here. Okay, cool. I'm an official notary. This is now an official document.

• 57:49Shaan Puri?

  And then that goes to the title company. And the title company just does like, nothing because again, I already own this house. And I'm gonna own this house again, and yet they're gonna make $5,000 out of this transaction. The notary said he can make, you know, between a hundred to $500, depending on who dispatches him out. He's an independent contractor. Um, so anyways, as I was going through this process, I was just trying to figure out, okay, wow, what is this whole space and where, where could this be improved?

• 58:16Sam Parr?

  It's crazy. It's, there's so much money in it and it's still so archaic.

• 58:20Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. And so, uh, the notary thing, it looks like it's being, uh, modernized and there's a company called Notarize, which is sort of leading the way here. So these guys have raised about $50 million. Um, I was just messaging with the founder right before we went live. Uh, and I, I basically said, hey, give me some numbers that I can brag about. Um, that, that, you know, you could share.

• 58:39Sam Parr?

  What, how were you messaging him on Twitter?

• 58:42Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, just Twitter. Um, cause I've been following him for a while. I like this company. And so I just reached out and said, hey, I'm about to, I'm about to shout you out on the podcast. Tell me something, send me some of these things. And so I'm pretty certain that they're doing over 50 million a year in revenue. Um, he didn't say that, but that.

• 58:55Sam Parr?

  That's not recurring though, is it?

• 58:57Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 58:58Sam Parr?

  And how do they make money?

• 58:59Shaan Puri?

  Well, part of it is recurring in the sense, it's not a, it's not a s- a subscription, but their customers are essentially the, the title companies, the escrow companies, the banks. And so they're, they just have this sort of, um, you know, trusted set of vendors that they'll use for notarizing. And so, uh, he said that this month alone, 2,500 lenders and title companies have come inbound to their, to their service. Um, the volume is doubling every week, every week right now, and they're hiring a thousand notaries right now to meet the on-demand, to meet the demand for this sort of mobile, uh, notaries. They also have a online notary function that they've created, which is great because you don't have to send the person in person to, to your house or wherever to sign.

• 59:42Shaan Puri?

  Um, and basically, you know, what they're just trying to do is make this less painful. So how do you make it more convenient? Reduce errors like the guy who came to our house, he made an error. He's got to come back again today to do it again because the paperwork has to be airtight. Um, you know, it has to, you know, be instantly given to the, to the title company so that you can close your loan quickly. Um, so anyways, I think this is very interesting. They have this fleet now of thousands of notaries. That are like, cool. I don't have to work for a company. I work for myself like an Uber driver and notarize basically has aggregated the supply of notaries. And then the demand side uh as well. And so I think this is an example. This is the opposite of the company we said at the beginning of the podcast, Thrasia, which was like.

• 1:00:22Shaan Puri?

  Kind of like a, you know, house of cards versus this to me is a simple. Durable, defensible, profitable company that will be built uh in this space and. It's kind of boring because nobody gets up and says, man, I want to change the, you know, the notary world. Um, but I think these guys are actually going to do it.

• 1:00:41Sam Parr?

  This is awesome. There's another one called Snap Docs. Have you seen that one? They, they're in a similar space. They've raised fifty five million dollars. Also a big company. Um, it looks like notarize is literally just notar- no, no, noter, right? How do you say it? Notary?

• 1:00:56Shaan Puri?

  Notary, yeah, notary, I guess.

• 1:00:58Sam Parr?

  Um, Snap Doc is uh similar, um, but a little bit more, it's notary, but just for real estate. Yeah, huge, huge, huge space. Um, I love this. You know, this reminds me of Checker. Do you know Checker?

• 1:01:12Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, Checker, oh man, that's another one where I was like, soon as I saw it, I. Had to like take a timeout for ten minutes and be upset with myself that I didn't think of this idea.

• 1:01:21Sam Parr?

  So Checker, it's Checker, but there's no R. So the word check and then the letter.

• 1:01:25Shaan Puri?

  No E.

• 1:01:26Sam Parr?

  Sorry, no E. It's the word check and then an R. Uh, raised a hundred fifty, two hundred million dollars at a billion dollar valuation and it's. Crazy simple. All they do is they do the background checks for particularly for a lot of the gig account, gig folks. So like Uber and Lyft, whenever they want to, they, you know, they don't uh. They don't uh let people with DUIs and things like that be drivers. And so they, they do that for them and uh crazy, simple, incredibly effective, huge company, got huge, very fast.

• 1:01:56Shaan Puri?

  And they they basically turned a background check into like an API call and it's as simple as that.

• 1:02:04Sam Parr?

  Yeah, amazing company. They just laid off a ton of people, I guess, because you know, there's not as many people wanting to get background checks right now, but I still think it's gonna be great.

• 1:02:13Shaan Puri?

  Okay, maybe it's not as profitable and durable as I thought.

• 1:02:16Sam Parr?

  Well, I think they got huge fast, like they hired a ton of people quickly and Uber's revenue for driving is just going down like crazy. So I imagine they just aren't having to do a lot of background checks at the moment. Um, I believe that will you will always need that. It's just a matter of how much will you need and when?

• 1:02:35Shaan Puri?

  Yes. Um, okay, cool. Uh, this is interesting.

• 1:02:38Sam Parr?

  So notaries, background checks, is there anything else that's interesting in that category? If there if there's something in that category, tell me. I bet you another one is locksmith. Um, I would love to know what else.

• 1:02:50Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, and if anybody can figure out how to take a refi and make it 10 minutes online, that would be amazing and I would invest in that company. I don't know. I don't know what the bottleneck is. I don't know why it can't be as simple as that, but it should be as simple as, hey, here's your current rate. Uh, here's the, you know, the here's the rate you can get on the market that's cheaper. If you'd like to refi 10 minutes and you're done. That's how it should be.

• 1:03:13Sam Parr?

  Uh, anything else you want to go over? You want to save them for the rest?

• 1:03:15Shaan Puri?

  We'll save it for Thursday.

• 1:03:17Sam Parr?

  All right, uh, let us know what you think about this. Tweet at us, leave reviews. And we will talk to you soon.

• 1:03:25Shaan Puri?

  See ya.

• 1:04:06Shaan Puri?

  The.

• 1:06:16Shaan Puri?

  The.