#106 - The Q&A Special: We Answer Your Questions Live

Today’s episode is a Q&A from the archives. Sam Parr (@theSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) host a Q&A on the one year anniversary of Trends. In today’s episode you’ll hear: Sam talks through how to research topics and businesses (5:15), Shaan answers Sam’s question “what’s a contrarian opinion you hold?” (9:45), Shaan talks about where an entrepreneur should focus their energy (20:52), a lister asks “what’s one thing that you believed that ended up completely opposite?” (25:38), Sam talks about one of the lead gen companies he sold (31:40), Sam and Shaan do a rapid fire questions (35:45), A listener asks about shipping logistics (56:30), Sam and Shaan weigh in on how to adapt your business to COVID (67:30). This episode is presented by Tempo! Check them out at tempo.fit and use code "TempoHustle" for $100 off. Joined our private FB group yet? It's a page where people share each others million dollar ideas or what they're already working on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion. 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?

  What's up guys, Sean here. Sam is still out with his kidney problem and we're wishing him a speedy recovery. It's scary stuff. Hopefully, hopefully it turns out not to be anything too serious. This week, in the meantime, we're going to try to fill in as best as we can with a few different guests. You know, big shoes to fill, but we're going to do our best. Today's episode is actually a Q and A we did for trends subscribers a couple of months ago. And so in the trends community, it's pretty awesome. They bring in different speakers and you know, you can do a Q and A with a small group of people. And so they asked us questions like, how do you find interesting businesses? What are your contrarian opinions? What's something you were completely wrong about? You know, how would you validate this idea I have for a

• 0:42Shaan Puri?

  mental health app? What news do you consume? What other businesses do you own? How do you make great connections? Like, how do you build a network in the digital era where you're not meeting face to face? And then business questions like, you know, what are some big opportunities in the work from home world? What are your biggest failures in business? How would you build a newsletter from scratch? And then book recommendations and some other fun stuff. So, hope you guys enjoy this Q and A episode. Let's do it.

• 1:30Sam Parr?

  Okay, we will get going. We're at 70 people now. I think there's going to be 200 people here. We'll get going. Okay. Today is one year anniversary of, one year anniversary of trends. And Steph asked that Sean and I come here and just answer questions. We don't have much of an agenda today, but for those of you who don't know Sean, who you can't see, I don't think you can see him now, but he's visible once he talks. Sean and I have been very close friends since probably 2013, no, 2014. And we have this podcast called My First Million that Sean created. And now I was brought on as a co-host. And Sean and I have an interesting perspective. First of all,

• 2:12Sam Parr?

  I run this business, or I don't run it on everything about it, but I started it. And so I have a lot of insight to advertising businesses and Subscription businesses and we're like an eight-figure company or whatever you want to call it. And so, anyway, I've got that insight. But what makes Sean and I kind of unique is we have this massive network of people who are significantly more successful than we are. And we also have this massive network of people who are way less successful than we are, but are more likely than not going to be way more successful. And so, we're able to see all these interesting things and behind the scenes of all these interesting stuff. And when Sean started the podcast, he basically just interviewed people. So, he's got all these other insights. And anyway, we just see probably more things than you guys do, just because it's our job.

• 2:57Sam Parr?

  So, it's kind of a lucky job. And so, what we can do today is answer questions on patterns or trends we see on... What else, Sean? What can we talk about?

• 3:07Shaan Puri?

  I mean, really, it's whatever people are interested. And so, we obviously, on the podcast, we're always brainstorming new ideas, new opportunities, trends that we're seeing, or we'll break down a business and say, "Hey, have you heard of this thing? They're crushing it. Here's their model." So, that's what we like to nerd out about. But, you know, this is a sort of a community give back. So, hey, you know, we're here for an hour. Whatever you guys want to talk about, we'll talk about. It's structured as a Q and A. And there's two ways to do it. So, you can either submit a question in the Q and A portion of Zoom. So, you can type out your question if you prefer. Or if you actually want to ask a question live on audio or video and hop in, we can do that as well. So, just type in the chat, "Hey, I'd love to ask a question about," you know, whatever. "My, you know, get feedback on my pitch."

• 3:52Shaan Puri?

  Or, "I'd love to ask a question about how you guys, you know, do your hair," whatever it is. So, there's two ways to do it. Either type it in or say, "I want to call in." Either way works for us.

• 4:02Sam Parr?

  And it doesn't look like anyone has asked anything. So, what you do is, I think on the bottom left, like we see like those three dots and maybe it might say the word "more." Click Q and A and ask a question. So, we got one or two coming in. We'll... We will let a few come in.

• 4:22Sam Parr?

  What do you want to do, Sean?

• 4:23Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, we can answer this first one.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  I'm just gonna say, you can also upvote questions. So if you see a question, you're like, wow, I'd really love Sam and Sean to answer this. Make sure to upvote it so we get to the best ones.

• 4:33Shaan Puri?

  So, okay, I'll ask the question for Alex. Alex asked a question, which was to Sam, how do you do research? And I think this is a good question because, like, normally, if I saw this in a Q and A, I'd be like, how do you do research? What does that mean? But Sam, you actually have a knack for finding information and distilling information that most people don't have.

• 4:52Sam Parr?

  Well, I think we both do. I definitely think we both do.

• 4:55Shaan Puri?

  You're definitely better at it than me. Like, you've taught me a lot by being like, yeah, actually, here, you know, have you heard of this company? Here's what I know. Here's how I found it. Here's where the signals I look for, which, you know, is kind of interesting. So talk about your process. Or, I think, rather than generically, if you just, what's something you researched recently? And then talk about the rabbit hole you went down.

• 5:14Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so the way that I research is, I talk about this all the time. I talk about this with Steph and Brad. Basically, for me, researching is kind of like writing a song. So, writing a song, it has a set, there's like a handful of combinations, maybe a couple dozen, that just work all the time. And the way that you come up with those combinations is you see patterns, but then you also, you might see like an interesting riff from like, maybe I could be like Slash and Guns N' Roses, and I'll see something, I'll see just a Beethoven thing, I'm like, oh my god, that little like, structure he had right there for that chord, that solo, that's amazing, I'm gonna steal that. Or maybe he'll like, see a sign, this like graffiti that says, sweet child of mine, like in a poem, and he'll just like, take that. So that's what I do, is I find interesting things.

• 5:57Sam Parr?

  And typically, what I do is I have a variety of tools plugged into my browser, and whenever I'm looking on the internet, I just, whenever I see anything that catches my eye, and that's interesting, I throw it through this process. So I use a combination of SimilarWeb, a combination of Wikipedia, which anyone can use, a combination of annual reports from privately owned, publicly owned companies, and anytime I ever see something interesting, I throw it through that process of looking at SimilarWeb, looking at Reddit. If it's an app, I'll go on the iTunes store, and I'll just read the reviews. And then what I try to do is just completely deconstruct it to figure out exactly how it works. Because it's my theory. That the reason why no one broke the four minute mile and then in the sixties, I think it was Roger Bannister broke the four minute mile and five other people did it that year is it's a lot easier to accomplish things when you know what's possible.

• 6:42Sam Parr?

  So my logic is whenever I see anything that catches my eye, I put it in SimilarWeb, I put in HARef, which is a software for search analytics. I look at the reviews on iTunes and I try to figure out how the business works because then I want to know what's possible.

• 6:58Shaan Puri?

  And I'll add a couple of other scrappy techniques. So you said SimilarWeb, that tells you the traffic. You can use App Annie, that'll tell you downloads. If you go to the Google Play Store and you search an app, you scroll down to the bottom, it'll tell you how many installs the app has. These really easy, simple heuristics to figure out how big something is. Another thing you could do, contact ex-employees. I've done this before. I call them, I say, hey, an ex-employee doesn't really have anything to lose at this point for that company. So I'll say, hey, I saw you ran BD for this company. You know, would love to learn what you found, you know, what worked for you, what didn't. I get on the phone with them for 30 minutes and in that conversation, I'll ask something like, so like, you know, ballpark, how big was this? Was it like 10 million in revenue or 100? I have no way to tell.

• 7:39Shaan Puri?

  And then I ask a question like that to triangulate answers from ex-employees. I'll also, you know.

• 7:45Sam Parr?

  I do that all the time. Or I'll be like, it said here, you guys did X. That's bullshit, right? And they'll say, yeah.

• 7:51Shaan Puri?

  There's no way, we did this yesterday on our podcast with this guy. We were like, there's no way your margin's more than 30%, right? And you could say something like that and they don't want, if you ask, what is your margin? You'll never get an answer.

• 8:01Sam Parr?

  But they'll be like, they're like, they're like, you know, we wish, and then you know that it's not even close. Or they'll say like, that would be horrible if our margin was that bad. And then you go way higher.

• 8:12Shaan Puri?

  Right, exactly. Another, you know, I'll add some scrappy techniques that I did in the past. So when I was 21, 22, the first business I ever did out of college was this sushi chain, this sushi restaurant chain. We wanted to make the Chipotle of sushi. I wanted to know what our customers were or what our competitors were doing in revenue. And I did two things that that worked. The first was we sat in a parking lot outside of their restaurant and we counted customers and cars. And then that got really boring because we're sitting there for 12 hours a day just to try to get a sense of is this a good location for restaurants or not? And then we found you could order on receipts. And we could go in and in the morning, we would buy the cheapest thing and then evening would buy the cheapest thing. And we would compare those to the numbers of the order numbers and we would know how many orders they did that day.

• 8:55Shaan Puri?

  By the way, you can still do this with e-commerce stores.

• 8:58Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 8:58Shaan Puri?

  You can go and when you get, we can get a Shopify receipt at the beginning of the month and the end of the month. You'll know how many orders a Shopify store has done. I've also called and said, and that this is true at the time. I'm a student and I really want to learn about your business and write a report.

• 9:12Shaan Puri?

  Can you know, would you be down to answer 10 questions for for me? I have a student at this university. They didn't know I was a student also trying to launch a business, but you know, those were some of the more. I call it scrappy. Other people say, oh, that was miss, you know, disingenuous, but. I'm trying to give you content that you're not just going to find everywhere if you just Google how to do research, so.

• 9:28Sam Parr?

  But long story short, the point is, is that you're just looking for little tidbits of information. And then there's thousands of tactics that you can do to dig deeper. Sean, what's a, someone asked us, what's a opinion that you hold that is kind of a contrary opinion? I hate this. I don't like this question because it's just asking to be controversial, but why don't you answer it?

• 9:47Shaan Puri?

  Why don't you answer the shit question? No, it's a, it's a good question, but it's a hard question. So the idea here is what's a contrarian opinion you hold? So what's something you believe that few others?

• 9:57Sam Parr?

  Let's make it business related or in that, in that, in that sphere.

• 10:02Shaan Puri?

  So I, I think, you know, as I've been doing the podcast, the thing I've learned that has the thing where my opinion has changed the most. And I now view it as a controversial opinion is that. Starting a company is.

• 10:17Shaan Puri?

  Not the best way to build large wealth. I think that actually buying a business is the best opportunity in business right now. So, you know.

• 10:27Shaan Puri?

  Traditional path, go get a job. Non-traditional path, start a company in the tech world. That's usually like, start a software company, raise money from investors, all this other stuff. And I've just now seen people, sorry, the other one is, I'm a bootstrapper. I will put my own credit card money into this and I'll, I'll try to make profits on this. I'll build this organically myself from scratch. But now it seems like the lowest hanging fruit is to buy an existing business. There's, I'll give you an example. I looked at a business that does 2 million in revenue. It does 500,000 in EBITDA. This business, you can buy it today for 1.2 million. And you, so you can buy a business for 1.2 million. So it's about a two-year payback period, slightly over two years.

• 11:10Shaan Puri?

  And that's, and you, so you push a button that says, I'm interested in this business. They tell you everything about this business. So you're just getting an MBA first. Secondly, you don't have to put out a million dollars, right? You SBA, you, you get an SBA loan because this business has existing cash flows. So how, how would you buy this business? You would put down about 10 to 15% as a down payment. That's about 100 to 150 grand. You can either put that yourself from your savings or you can borrow money from friends, family to buy this business that has already proven to be successful. And, and then you get a loan on the rest. It's SBA loan. It is personally guaranteed, but you're buying businesses that are mature, that have existing cash flows and you, you should do your diligence to make sure this is durable. It's not a, you know, flash in the pan, you're not buying a lemon.

• 11:53Shaan Puri?

  But you're going to buy a business that's doing 2 million dollars a year in revenue, 500,000 in, in, in, you know, SDE, which is the seller's discretionary earnings. And you're going to be able to pay, every month that you're paying off your loan, you're actually profiting. You have more net profits from month one than you would if you did your own business from scratch or you went and got a job. And so I just think that so few people, you know, the people who are doing this, they're like, it's obvious. I see some people in the chat like, hey, here's a great book on this. I agree with this. This is such an obvious path that is so underpopulated. It's like the best city in America that nobody's living in right now. There's like 100 people there and they're like, this is fantastic. Don't tell anyone.

• 12:33Sam Parr?

  I'll, I'll say too, and one of them is the opposite of what Sean said. The first one is, um, I used to think that the best product would win. That's not true. The best, whoever has the best sales and marketing process, I think will win. And if it, and if your product happens to be good, that just makes sales and marketing a lot easier. And the second thing is I loved banking and finance and all that stuff. I think that shit is just, uh, uh, it is like siphons out all the soul of anything interesting. I think that like starting stuff and making stuff, um, from a place of like, act like, just simply going after an opportunity because it makes money. I think I, I just can't stand it.

• 13:17Sam Parr?

  And, um, I think it just sucks the life out of my, of me. And I, it's so hard for me to do. So that's a little bit different than what Sean said, but it doesn't have to be different.

• 13:28Shaan Puri?

  Cool. So if I had one more contrarian opinion, it's probably not that controversial in this group, but I would say in mainstream society, this would be contrarian, which is that, um, college, if you're a smart kid who wants to be successful, you shouldn't go to college.

• 13:45Sam Parr?

  Oh, I so disagree with you, Sean. I think if you can get into a top 20 university, you 100% should go.

• 13:51Shaan Puri?

  I went to a top 20 university and I disagree. So that's why it's a contrarian opinion, right? Because I think most people would disagree with me and that's why it's one of my contrarian opinions.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Dan, what if you can't get in the top 20? Do you still think you should go?

• 14:03Sam Parr?

  I, I think you should go to a state school, but you should not go into debt. Or you should go to community school, or you should just take two years off and just fuck around. I, I, well, I guess what I mean is I think that between 18 and 22, you should have the freedom and the ability to just be an idiot and be a fool and learn about yourself and sexuality and get drunk and have sex with people and try new jobs and do all that great stuff. But you shouldn't spend 30 grand a year to do it. Unless you can, unless you're like, like my wife went to Penn and she's a, she's a thinker, an academic. We need women like her. But I went to a school that cost 30 grand a year and it was a private school. That was a total waste.

• 14:46Shaan Puri?

  Cool. Next question, or where do you want to go?

• 14:48Sam Parr?

  Okay, let's, I don't want to talk about research, Gustavo, we'll talk about that in a minute. We already answered that, or we've talked similar, we'll come back to that though, because it's highly.

• 14:57Shaan Puri?

  Does anyone want to call in? I'd love to actually just.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  There was a couple of people in the chat. There was Sean McKay has a mental health app idea. So Sean, if you want to, if you want to talk, just raise your hand in Zoom, we'll get you on live. Adam Haston, Haston, also pinged us. He's a full-time real estate investor. He might want to come on live.

• 15:18Sam Parr?

  Okay, but your questions have to be fact.

• 15:22Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, sure.

• 15:27Sam Parr?

  Okay, and while you're pulling that person up, somebody asked for a broker, like where you find companies. I, I think Sean does as well. We use Quietlight Brokerage, which is pretty helpful.

• 15:40Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, there's several, you know, Quietlight is good for curated, smaller number of high-quality ones. But you don't always get the best value there because, you know, you don't get the diamonds in the rough there. And also, other people are fishing in that same pond. And so, honestly, the best businesses are not for sale.

• 15:56Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 15:57Shaan Puri?

  So I, I like to go find a business that's doing well, contact the owner, and get them to see if they, you know, or sorry, not get them to sell, but ask if they would be open to selling. And now you're bidding against nobody.

• 16:08Sam Parr?

  They're like, for example, I'm, I'm not trying to buy a company right now because I have a job and I have my, I'm busy. But like, for example, Hemingwayapp.com, I think 100% someone should buy it. And just to like, because I can't help myself, I emailed them and asked if they would sell, and they would, in fact, sell. I don't mean it's a good price, but they will sell.

• 16:30Speaker 02

  Nice. Okay, so we've got not other Sean, actually. Okay, I'm gonna, Sean, I'm gonna allow you to talk.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  Not sure if that worked. There you go. There's Sean.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Sean, feel free to go.

• 16:46Speaker 03

  Hey, guys. Yeah, hey, guys. How you doing?

• 16:49Sam Parr?

  Nice to hear from you.

• 16:50Speaker 03

  Great name. Shit spelling. Well, there's a lot of different ways. Yeah, I posted in the chat about an idea I'm toying around with. Also posted in the Facebook group a while back as well.

• 17:06Speaker 03

  Basically, it's a mental health app, I think, Calm app, but instead of de-stressing and calming yourself down, it's more guided sessions for improving your critical thinking, problem-solving, focus, motivation.

• 17:23Speaker 03

  Just wondering kind of where you would get started on testing the market if this is a viable idea.

• 17:29Sam Parr?

  Can I just jump right into this? I was just talking to my friend about this. Sean, are you finished talking? I shouldn't have cut you off.

• 17:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, go ahead.

• 17:39Sam Parr?

  I was just talking to my friend about this, where I'm like, everything that's going on in the world right now, a lot of it boils down to like

• 17:50Sam Parr?

  young men and young women not being good at processing emotions, whether it's good emotions or bad emotions, but like how to effectively process how you feel about something. And I totally thought about this because I used to be, if you ask Steph, some people or Sean still say I've got a bad temper. It used to be way worse, where I would be angry all the time. And I started using Calm, and it totally helped me identify emotions and try not to like be, what's it called, impulsive about it. And I think one guy who's kind of exploiting this opportunity in a good way is Sam Harris with Wake Up. And I don't know for a fact, but if I had a bet, I would say that's a $10 million a year company that is almost 100% profit.

• 18:34Sam Parr?

  So I understand what you're trying to do. I think it's incredibly interesting. And I think the way that these guys grow is by just through shit tons of paid performance marketing on the App Store. Is that right Sean, you think, I mean Sean, Harry, what do you think?

• 18:48Shaan Puri?

  That is how they grow, unless you're Sam Harris, then you also have your normal audience to grow through. But the thing I would say is like, okay, cool, you know, that's a worthy problem. So it's like, it's a problem worthy of your time. It is a real problem. So you're not trying to validate that part. You need to validate. So the question is, what are you trying to validate? And really what you're trying to validate is, can I acquire customers at a profitable rate? And then secondly, you know, do I actually have a way to deliver this value? How do I, do I have a way to deliver anxiety relief, stress relief to the customer? Right? So like, you know, what is my product? Is it actually, does it actually work? And then secondly, can I acquire customers profitably?

• 19:30Sam Parr?

  All right. Today's episode is brought to you by Tempo. Tempo.fit is the website. I actually use this. I've used this for a few months now. And it's this machine that has a touchscreen and this 3D sensor. And what it does is they give you weights, like 115 pounds in weights. And it's for strength training. So what it is, is it measures your body, and it sees how much weight you're lifting. It sees how many reps you're doing, and how much effort you're putting in, what your heart rate is. It's pretty amazing. And then you have a coach on screen walking you through what to lift, how many to lift, what workout to do, whether you want to do a 20 minute, 10 minute, 50 minute workout. It's pretty amazing. But the best part is the leaderboard. The other stuff, all the features that they have, that's cool. But I'm obsessed with the leaderboard, because

• 20:12Sam Parr?

  it measures how many reps you're doing, and how much volume you're doing. And you can compete with other people who have taken the same class. So it's made me want to work harder, lift more weight, or have more endurance. It's just pretty freaking fun. And the whole point of working hard is to have money so you can spend it on stuff that will make you live longer. And this product Tempo, it checks that box for me. So they're our sponsor today. If you use the code TEMPOHUSTLE, you'll get $100 off. So Tempo.fit is the URL, and TEMPOHUSTLE, one word, you'll get $100 off. So check it out. I use it. If you look me up on Twitter, you'll see I'm always filming videos where I'm talking to that company, saying I'm trying to crush their employees on the leaderboard, because I actually love this thing, and I use it all the time. So check it out.

• 20:53Shaan Puri?

  And so, you know, that's where you would, that's where I would focus all my energy. It's not about saying, is this a good idea or a bad idea? You have to zoom in and say, what part of this do I not know that I need to know to be successful? And in this case, I believe it's can I acquire customers profitably? And if I can, then I'm going to grow this.

• 21:15Sam Parr?

  I completely agree. It's not a question of do people want this? You already have that.

• 21:19Shaan Puri?

  It's like back in the day.

• 21:21Sam Parr?

  That's already validated. You already.

• 21:23Shaan Puri?

  I was gonna say, I wanted to make a dating app.

• 21:26Speaker 03

  Clarify, I'm not talking about an app that de-stresses and, you know, reduces your anxiety and calms you down and all that. I'm talking about going the other direction and kind of.

• 21:38Shaan Puri?

  So motivation.

• 21:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, all that.

• 21:40Shaan Puri?

  Great, great. So let's say all those are positive things. Fantastic. Same idea, which is worthy cause. I believe you could do it. You know, maybe there's open space in the market. That's all great. I guess that it comes down to, do you have a growth machine where you'd be able to acquire a customer for a dollar and make $2.50 or $3.00 off them? So that you could plow $2.00 back into buying the next customers? That's really how these businesses work.

• 22:06Sam Parr?

  I completely agree. It's kind of like when John Rockefeller started Standard Oil, like there was no question if there was a demand for kerosene. There was just a question, like his secret sauce was that he made a deal with the railroad so he could profitably get his kerosene all over the country. That's what this is. It's not about demand necessarily. It's about can you service demand profitably?

• 22:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would also just add that it's about whether people are willing to pay for. Everyone wants to be more productive. Everyone wants to be more mindful. Are people willing to put their money where their mouth is? In some industries, it's obvious. In some industries, it's taken a lot of time for people to be like, oh, I absolutely should spend 30 bucks on my mindfulness this month. And I do see a change in that, but you need to validate that people actually are willing to put money behind productivity.

• 22:49Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, actually, even on that front, I wouldn't worry about that personally. I've I've failed to see any apps that people use regularly that don't monetize well. So if you get enough scale, then the sort of, you know, the way mobile apps work, it's not like you're getting fifty or a hundred percent of people typically to pay. You know, usually these apps are freemium models. Games are really extreme where all the revenue comes from one percent or even less than one percent of the revenue, the whales. And apps like Calm are a little bit different because they've put a paywall up right in front and they sort of have just like the seven days of free calm or whatever.

• 23:24Shaan Puri?

  But I I guess like I used to do this with my earlier startups, I would try to validate, I tried to prove everything. And some great advice I got was like, when you step back, which one of these do you really doubt is true? And it's like, you know, some things you need to prove because you need to do them and and actually show it's not just a thought. But as an entrepreneur, you want to focus most of your energy on the thing you actually don't know is true or not. And so so that's where I would focus the majority of my energy, which in this case is is is acquiring customers. One little pilot prototype of this, so a couple of months ago, I put out a podcast that's called the nine minute morning routine. Because I do this nine minute morning routine, it helps me with the things you talked about motivation, clarity of thought, all those things.

• 24:08Shaan Puri?

  Helps me be basically more successful. So I put it out as a podcast, and I think a podcast is a very cheap way to pilot an idea and build an audience. That's not an app because for an app, you got to get a developer and build them a web app, that's a whole like set of work that maybe you don't want to do right now. And another example to look at that's like this, I talked to these guys who build this sleep app, I forgot what it's called.

• 24:28Sam Parr?

  Yeah, this shit's amazing. And they started out just by having a podcast where they would read sleep stories.

• 24:35Shaan Puri?

  Actually, I think it's the opposite, they started with a with a website, I started with a with an app. And the app's gotten really popular and the app does, you know, a few million bucks in revenue and has millions of users. And now they're actually doing more podcasting. They started doing podcast to sell the app to basically grow the app. But the podcast, they got way more users quickly. And so now he's like, dude, I love this. I don't even have to bother maintaining an app. Maybe I could just build this whole business on the podcast. And I never really heard anything like that, but that sort of leads me to believe that might be an interesting prototype for you is put the content on the on as a podcast, drive customers to that and see if you can get a huge base of hooked subscribers and you're not monetizing them yet. That's okay.

• 25:19Shaan Puri?

  Uh, maybe through ads or whatever, but and then you could transfer that audience to an app if you needed to later. That's one way I would consider approaching this.

• 25:26Sam Parr?

  Thank you, Sean.

• 25:30Sam Parr?

  So you can wait. Can I answer one of these questions?

• 25:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 25:35Sam Parr?

  Tom Schmidt asked, what's one thing in biz that you believed ended up? What's one thing that you 100% believe ended up opposite of what was expected? I'm reading that funny. You guys get what I mean?

• 25:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 25:47Sam Parr?

  I'll say a few. I was with Ryan Hoover the day before he launched Product Hunt and he told me what it is. And I was like, that is so stupid. You're wasting your time. The second thing is I, uh, when I started my business, I thought that like, I was gonna like, I'm gonna be this operational powerhouse and lead it every single day, just like Jeff Bezos. Now that didn't happen. And I think that that doesn't happen with most people.

• 26:12Sam Parr?

  The third thing is, uh, charge more money than you think for stuff and people actually are happier that way.

• 26:20Shaan Puri?

  Those are good. I like those. Um, I was also totally wrong on Product Hunt. In fact, Ryan had interviewed for a job at my company that like week before he started Product Hunt and we, we didn't bring him on board. I really liked him, but my team wasn't sold. And then he was like, okay, next week he's like, I launched this thing. So I'm, I'm user 15 of Product Hunt. Um, and I remember showing my team be like, hey, that guy we interviewed, here's what he's doing. And we all just sort of laughed and we're like, this is silly. Uh, I've been wrong many, many times on apps like that. My, my Snapchat username still has the word test in it because I thought this app's going nowhere. This is just a test account, just to see what this dumb thing is that'll be gone in two months. Uh, and here we are like seven years, eight years later, or whatever it is. Um, so I've been wrong many times on that.

• 27:02Shaan Puri?

  I was also wrong in some things I believed would happen in the future. So I'll give you an example. I thought that the way everybody, the way all these, you know, when the web got popular, these services like Squarespace and Wix and all that, they let anybody build their own website. And I was convinced this is going to happen for mobile apps. And maybe I'm right, but on a way slower time scale.

• 27:23Sam Parr?

  You're not right now.

• 27:25Shaan Puri?

  But I thought people are going to want to like, you're going to have no code. Basically, you're going to have non-coders building apps, just like non-coders build websites. And I also thought the way I have, you know, SeanPurry.com, people have their own personal websites. I thought, oh, it'd be great if Tim Ferriss just had the Tim Ferriss app. And he could directly connect with his audience and he could push notify them when he has any blog post. And I just thought that would be great. And it turned, I was totally wrong on that. That's just like one specific example of things that I thought the future would be. That it doesn't seem like it's played out that way.

• 27:56Sam Parr?

  Great.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  Nice. Can we bring someone else on live?

• 27:59Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  So Jackie, Jackie says he bought the largest towing directory in the US. I'll let him speak, but it sounds like something super interesting. Jackie, go ahead.

• 28:11Speaker 04

  Hey guys, how's it going?

• 28:12Sam Parr?

  What up? I know who you are.

• 28:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think I messaged you a couple of weeks back. You too, Steph. Nice to meet you, Sean. Uh, yeah, so I actually stumbled across one of these directories.

• 28:26Speaker 04

  My background's in SEO, so I managed to rank for like towing company near me, etc.

• 28:34Speaker 04

  So what we're doing right now is like, we're essentially selling ad space in each city for like a flat 1K a month, for example. But now that I'm listening to some of these calls, I realize like the customer experience is so bad. And like these guys have no idea how to run a company. And I was wondering if there's like some, some way to disrupt this industry. It's one of these like really boring, but I would say pretty lucrative industries. So what I have is a bunch of traffic. So essentially people looking for towing, but no one to fulfill it. And how would I rule it out in the US when I'm based in like Germany?

• 29:12Shaan Puri?

  Does it make good money as is with the lead gen?

• 29:15Speaker 04

  Uh, I mean, I bought it last month at like 200 and it makes 200 bucks a month. Last month, this month, we're gonna hit like two, three K. And it's just pure profit because it's just, it's a website, right?

• 29:28Sam Parr?

  Wait, so what are you trying to do? Sell leads to tow truck companies?

• 29:31Speaker 04

  So right now, that's what we're doing. I'm running Facebook ads and we're offering like 30 days for free. Just free calls. We're tracking everything. Um, but what I want to do, like the $50 million, $100 million idea is be like the next triple A.

• 29:47Shaan Puri?

  So I have a friend who built, um, exactly that. He tried to build the next triple A. It's called Swoop. I think it got bought like maybe 50 million bucks, something like that. By an existing tow trucking company. So if you actually want to do this, I can connect you with him. And he could tell you everything about the tow trucking industry. Why it's hard to disrupt and where it still can be disrupted. He was telling me and I was just getting bored, but like, uh, you know, it's obviously highly relevant for you. So I'll hook you up with him. Just DM me on Twitter after this. The other thing that I would say is like, uh, the lead gen revenue just seems really, really low for that business. Uh, like I'm guessing that a tow job is like, um, I don't know, hundreds of dollars. Uh, at least, right? What's the average job? Like $600?

• 30:30Speaker 04

  No, actually it's, um, depending on what they need. So a flat tire is like 50 bucks. Uh, actual tow is like a hundred something.

• 30:38Sam Parr?

  Well, so, but that's definitely, there's definitely enough of that in America to build a big business.

• 30:44Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So, so I would definitely try to like, just, I, I would first ask myself, how big should this lead gen business be? And I would do a back of the envelope and figure out, is that two or three K a month or is it 30 K a month? Or is it 300 K a month?

• 30:57Sam Parr?

  No dude, it's 2 million a month. I mean,

• 31:00Speaker 04

  It can definitely be up to, I calculated if we sign up one person in each city, I mean, major, at least 50 K a month. Uh, we're just getting to the sales side of it. Uh, building the funnel is like, everything's from scratch. I'm using some like janky SEO reselling platform right now.

• 31:18Shaan Puri?

  Um, but Jackie, you're talking about, that's not if you did something disruptive. That's just the lead gen business, right?

• 31:24Speaker 04

  Exactly. Yeah. But like the, the disruption is like rolling out in cities and offering actually like becoming a tow truck company. My advice, sorry, go ahead Sam.

• 31:34Sam Parr?

  Let me say this, I sold one of my companies, like it was a small exit, to this a lead gen company for apartments. And they scaled, they bootstrapped it to about twenty-five or thirty million in revenue. And the thing about lead gen is it was, it was very profitable. It probably, I think it did thirty, I think it was probably doing, when I, maybe two million a month in sales and like four hundred thousand dollars a month in profit, which is great. And then what happened was they were buying all this traffic from search, which is what you're gonna probably do. And they tried to rank on search and they're like, well shit, we're doing all this transactional revenue with these companies who buy leads from us.

• 32:18Sam Parr?

  We have a few problems. The first problem is, is if some of them, then you work with a combination of third parties, uh, like apartments.com and all these other places and they give you a cut of the lead. And what the problem was is two things. First of all, users were, they were coming to that website and it's a very transactional relationship. And that, and so when this company that I worked for wanted to build the relationship and create actual products that people would truly buy, the users were like, who the fuck are you? Like, I don't know you. You've just been pawning me off to other people. And that will probably happen to you. The second thing is, if you are just selling leads and then you want to become a to truck company, your revenue provider goes, oh, fuck that, you're gonna compete against me, we're out. And they quit, they're gonna quit paying you any money. And so, in my opinion, this company, this apartment company that did this with us,

• 33:04Sam Parr?

  they should have just kept that going and just let it, let it make two million dollars a year in revenue and like ten million in profit, and just took all that money and gone and started something else. Or, from the very beginning, they should have said like, we're gonna go and, we're gonna do it the hard way. It's gonna take a long time, but it might be way cooler and way better. And because they got addicted to this lead revenue and it just completely screwed them over. It's kinda like, at my company, we've done a good job of this, of doing revenue from advertising and, and subscription revenue. But if, it's really easy for people to get addicted to that ad revenue and they're like, no, no, no, we can't promote our subscription. So, that is what would happen, probably.

• 33:38Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, okay, we can sort of wrap it up, but I guess what I would say is personally, I would just try to get the lead gen revenue to 50K a month and I would move on. I would take that revenue and I would take the profits and I would invest it into other things. Unless you're really saying the next five years, I want to build a show trucking company. That's like the top thing you're most excited about.

• 33:59Sam Parr?

  I completely, I 100% agree.

• 34:01Shaan Puri?

  Don't, don't, don't turn, you know, something that's awesome into something that's shitty by trying to reach for scale and you know, doing 90% more work.

• 34:12Shaan Puri?

  For, you know, some potential return, it sounds like for a little, a little additional work over the next six to 12 months. You can get this thing to be a cash cow that nobody knows about and you don't hire anyone and you just milk it. That's what I would do.

• 34:26Speaker 04

  Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I was, I mean, I was looking for that $50 million idea. I guess I'll just settle for like.

• 34:33Shaan Puri?

  It's not really about settling. It's sort of like if you were, if this is really the $50 million idea you want, great, go for it, but. It sounds like this is an amazing 50K a month idea and with, you know, you have a clear line of sight to that, it sounds like. And I would do that. Maybe when you get there, you'll reassess and you will be able to overcome the problem Sam's talking about. Or maybe you don't and you're like, you know what? This is actually a great cash cow and my $50 million business idea is this other thing I'm really passionate about that I'm going to use, you know, my SEO skills to go do.

• 35:05Sam Parr?

  One of my favorite companies right now, Flexport, that's exactly how they started. They had the software that was, and then they go. Eh, it probably won't, let's not fuck this up, but let's just go start something new.

• 35:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Also, one thing that didn't add up in what you were saying was that was like a really low ticket price. And you said you could do a lot of money through Legion and that just didn't add up. So I would go check those numbers and be like, all right, do I really believe this can do 50K? And walk through step by step for that and get a second pair of eyes to look at it. All right. Next question.

• 35:37Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 35:38Sam Parr?

  Thank you. See you. Steph, can we rapidly go through some of these other questions?

• 35:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, the Q and A, I was going to say there's 36 questions in the Q and A. If people could go and upvote them so we get the best ones to the top.

• 35:49Sam Parr?

  Let's rapidly go through some of these, Sean. I'll say my answer in two sentences and you say yours in two sentences. How to make new connections. Wait, fuck, where'd it go? How to, oh, how to make great connections in the, in the, in a digital era? Uh, Twitter.

• 36:02Shaan Puri?

  Twitter and writing, yeah, blogging and writing, email list, blogging or Twitter. You can get famous in six months, uh, from this, it won't be, you don't need a huge audience. You just need like a thousand really smart people to think you're smart. And that's actually trivial to do if you are smart.

• 36:20Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I would say Twitter. Uh, how about, uh?

• 36:27Sam Parr?

  Okay, if you're trying to launch a popular blog, should you start wide or narrow? Narrow.

• 36:31Shaan Puri?

  Narrow. Next question. Uh, you have a great blog post on this, I think it's called, uh, niches get riches or something like that. Go Google that.

• 36:38Sam Parr?

  Yeah. You always go narrow. Someone said Sam for the Hustle newsletter was the first iteration newsletter blog or anything. It was a blog and then a newsletter. Uh, newsletter is way better. Uh, Sean and Sam, what other businesses do you currently own? Uh, I don't know if Sean wants to answer that, does he?

• 36:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, can't talk about it right now. Um, so yeah, can't talk about that.

• 36:58Sam Parr?

  I own the majority of the hustle. Um, I have partnered with my friend Ramon and we, uh, I'm a minority owner of, um, a software company. Um, both Sean and I are advisors to a few things that we have shareholders in. I wouldn't say we're owners, but we own equity.

• 37:18Shaan Puri?

  We are little pieces of.

• 37:19Sam Parr?

  Um, I have angel invested in not many companies, five.

• 37:25Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 37:25Sam Parr?

  Uh, so we own, partially own those, uh, anything else? I've got, uh, like maybe three or four things that pay bills, like it, I make money from each month, but they're all like tiny.

• 37:37Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, my, also, I would just say my goal, uh, is not to own many things. Everything you own owns a piece of you and I don't want to own many material things. I don't want to own many businesses. I'd rather own. You know, nothing or one amazing thing. And you know, I have this phrase. If you've ever seen Jerry Maguire, he talks about the Kwan. And he talks about, you know, basically like he wants the money and he wants the quality of life and he wants to have that it factor. I have a simpler phrase, which is, I don't want to be balling out of control. I want to be calling out of control and call is corny, but call is like quality of life. And I, I, I, I say it to myself specifically, my, I have my brother in law, we always talk about the little things and the quality of life. He walks his daughter to school every single day.

• 38:22Shaan Puri?

  And, you know, having the freedom to just go work out whenever he wants and travel whenever he wants, those are, those are wealth. And I don't want to own businesses and I don't want to have money tied to things that take away my quality of life.

• 38:35Sam Parr?

  Uh, great. What media and entrepreneurship organizations, let's, uh, okay. So media for me, I'm not going to say anything I'm associated with. I consume Business Insider and Hacker News every single day. Um, I also go to TechMeme and, uh, that's it.

• 38:51Shaan Puri?

  The only media I really consume is social media. Uh, I don't read any news. Um, I do listen to sports stuff just to kind of

• 39:00Sam Parr?

  Me too.

• 39:00Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, escape, kill my mindless stuff. Uh, or entrepreneurship organizations. Um, I pay attention to anything that white commentator does. I pay attention to anything that some, a group called NFX does. Um, and I pay attention to what's going on in India because I think there's a lot of really interesting things there. And I have a whole bunch of people who feed me information about the startup scene in India. That's where I'm, uh, and I also have um, uh, private groups. So I have several private groups that are either just chat, like messaging groups, or we meet up once a month. Um, that are full of other founders and, um, those are my favorite entrepreneurship groups. And that's where I learned from. I don't listen to the news or read anything. I don't read TechCrunch or any of that shit.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  Sean, what are some of the ideas that you've seen in India that you're surprised haven't happened in, in North America yet?

• 39:48Shaan Puri?

  I'll give you an example. So this guy, I should shout him out because he's kind of amazing. I actually am going to just turn this into a newsletter. There's a guy who knew how interested I was in India. And he just, he said, I'd love to tell you about it. His name is Sumitra Sangupta. So shout out to him. So he sends me this thing every week. So I said, send me one interesting business every week. And he just does. And he was like, I'll send you a report. And I was like, no, no, no, just DM me on Twitter. Three things. What's the name of the business? What's the one line description? Give me three bullet points of why you think it's awesome and screenshot it for me because I don't have an Android phone. I don't want to download this app and like get it all set up. And so he does exactly that. So like, he told me that just last night, midnight, he says,

• 40:26Sam Parr?

  God, I fucking love that.

• 40:27Shaan Puri?

  Business called Cred. The founder is this guy Kanal. The idea is to create a virtual club, like a credit card club, like, like, I forgot. Diners Club used to be a popular one. My dad had for the 1% of India. So they launched in early 2019. They've raised 175 million. They're already processing a billion dollars of payments. They have 2 million users and it's valued at $500 million. This all happened in essentially one and a half years. And then he's like, here's why it's awesome. Here's my two cents of where it might be weak. And I just think it's great.

• 40:54Sam Parr?

  Hold that up. Hold that up. Let me read that. Steph, let's make this a section in the trends email each week where we like list four things in non-American countries that are doing stuff interestingly. Sean, we had Nike reach out to us and ask us to pay us money to build this corporate, like paid information thing. And all we do is talk about shit going on in different countries.

• 41:15Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think it's great. And so I'm, I'm super interested in about this.

• 41:19Sam Parr?

  Hold that up. I want to see how he writes it.

• 41:21Shaan Puri?

  All right, let me show you.

• 41:25Shaan Puri?

  So he's got little emojis next to certain things. I don't know if you could see it.

• 41:29Sam Parr?

  Oh, my God.

• 41:31Shaan Puri?

  And then it's just like, oh, wait, there you go. And then he has like at the bottom, he has like a little screencast where he walks me through the app.

• 41:39Sam Parr?

  Oh, my God. I love this.

• 41:41Shaan Puri?

  Like this is business school. This is why you don't need college because you could do this. This guy does this in, you know, one week and I'm learning from it. So anyways, there's a lot, infinite ways to learn if you're motivated. That is amazing.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  He just does this for fun, the guy.

• 41:52Shaan Puri?

  I don't know why he does it. He, he loves the podcast. He reached out and he, he was like, how can I help? And I was like, hey, I want this. And then he did such a good job of it that I'm like, okay, we're going to turn this into a thing so that you can, like, more people should read this. It should not be locked in my DMs. Like, more people should benefit from this information.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  People are saying they'd love to see it in the chat, so.

• 42:12Shaan Puri?

  This is a problem. I always end up competing with the hustle here. Now you guys are gonna do it. This poor guy is gonna get ripped off.

• 42:18Sam Parr?

  Well, hey, no, there's a newsletter called Stenocism, I think it's called, and all they do is talk about this type of shit, but in China. And I bet you that guy makes a million dollars a year doing that.

• 42:29Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 42:29Sam Parr?

  So I think that if you like could, we wouldn't analyze this crap. I mean, maybe we would. But like, one person could do like a weekly newsletter just on the landscape of India, but for an American, and a lot of people would buy that.

• 42:42Shaan Puri?

  Yep. Okay, what else we got?

• 42:44Sam Parr?

  Uh, let's say, uh, I want to find something that is different.

• 42:48Speaker 02

  Here's one in the, in the chat. Um, I know you guys talked about the RX bar in the past. So someone, someone did a test with their friend to imitate the RX bar in Europe. How would you approach differentiation in protein, in the protein bar market when there's already so many products that are super similar?

• 43:05Sam Parr?

  We want to talk about what we talked about yesterday, Sean?

• 43:07Shaan Puri?

  Go for it. You do it.

• 43:09Sam Parr?

  No, you, you're better than me at.

• 43:12Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so we, did this podcast get released? Did, I don't know if our podcast from yesterday.

• 43:15Sam Parr?

  No, tomorrow.

• 43:16Shaan Puri?

  No, it gets out tomorrow. So we did a podcast with the founder of Liquid Death. And, um, which is a water, a canned water drink that's taken a totally different brand. And he was like, you know, this whole business, uh, for us is about branding because clearly, you know, people don't buy water really because they, you know, if you did a blind taste test of 10 bottled waters, people wouldn't be able to tell which one is which, which one's better than the other. So really you're working on form factor, you know, the bottle and the brand. And so they have a new form factor, cans. Um, RX bar did the same thing. Their packaging is very, very distinct and unique. And then the second thing is like, brand, what do we stand for? Right? Who are we speaking to? What do we stand for? For his thing, he was like, you know, the water brands all try to speak to like yoga moms purity. It's a picture of a mountain.

• 44:02Shaan Puri?

  You know, crystal geyser, like all that shit.

• 44:03Sam Parr?

  Luxury.

• 44:04Shaan Puri?

  It's luxury, all that stuff. And he's like, you know, he himself was a punk rocker and was on tour and they used to, you know, be promoted by Monster Energy. And he talked about how on the Monster can. You know, they would be chugging these things. He's like, dude, the tour schedule is brutal. How are you out here in a hundred degree heat drinking Monsters like? And they're like, oh, this is water inside. It's called on the bottom of the can. It says Monster Tour, like tour beverage or something like that. And tour beverage means water in a Monster can. Um, and you know, so what he was just trying to think of like, you know, it's true. There's no water brand that speaks to uh fun and there's no water brand that speaks to these different demographics.

• 44:42Shaan Puri?

  Um, who don't necessarily want to be holding the sort of purity, clean, you know, brand while they're doing things like being on stage.

• 44:50Sam Parr?

  He said, like, we want to be like water that when you're smoking weed, like, go ahead, do like, smoke weed or get drunk or do drugs, like do something that maybe isn't always physically healthy for you, but it's exciting. And also drink our water.

• 45:03Shaan Puri?

  Right. And you see this all the time, right? You uh, there's medical drinks to replenish and rehydrate you that are electrolyte drinks. And they look like a Pedialyte and they look like a medical drink to rehydrate you. And then Gatorade came out and just refocused that same thing with the brand of this is what the top athletes in the world's in the world drink. And then, you know, there's you could, so you just take a customer first. And then you say, okay, to this customer, is there already a brand in this category that speaks to that customer? That that that is uh fits that customer's lifestyle. And if not, go for it. Uh, but you know, you need to have that clear insight about this customer uses this product or wants this product. But there's not a brand in that category that knows how to speak to that audience.

• 45:48Sam Parr?

  I wanna, we have forty three other questions. We're not gonna get all these, but I definitely want to try. How, how can we do that stuff?

• 45:55Speaker 02

  Let's just power through them.

• 45:56Shaan Puri?

  Do people want rapid fire or do they want in depth of a few questions? I don't know. Okay. We'll try this from Justin's side.

• 46:02Sam Parr?

  Wait, hold on. Let's look, let's look at the chat. Let's, you, Sean asked a question. Sean said, do you guys want rapid fire?

• 46:09Shaan Puri?

  Rapid fire. Okay.

• 46:10Speaker 02

  People are rapid fire. There we go.

• 46:14Shaan Puri?

  Okay, Steph, you want to read us a question that we just rapid fire? Sam, you can go first on each one.

• 46:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay, so with work from home becoming more prominent after COVID, what are your thoughts on the work from home economy? They seem to think there will be a market for benefits, company benefits at home.

• 46:30Sam Parr?

  The big market, I think, is going to be in helping set up different entities in different states. It's still very hard. We have a full-time woman who works at our company named Edie who helps us with this. It's hard.

• 46:39Shaan Puri?

  I totally agree. There's a big economy. I don't think it's around benefits. I think it's around things like teleconferencing, work collaboration tools, software like that, things like you talked about, HR, things to deal with this new world. Or I advise this company called FirstBase, which is providing actual like hardware to your home office. The company needs to give you a computer, a desk, and a monitor and a webcam so that you can actually work from home. And companies don't know how to do that. They don't want to deal with the logistics of that. These guys are doing it for them. And I think that's an awesome business, too.

• 47:10Sam Parr?

  Facebook going remote with 20,000 people, the hardest thing is, I think, is it going to be taxes? It's how to handle the taxes. That's so hard.

• 47:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay, cool. So another question, any advice to one to four years just out of college, young, ambitious people who are affected by COVID, either furloughed or laid off? Is it worth trying to intern? Or should they focus on finding a full-time job? What do you recommend to people?

• 47:35Sam Parr?

  All right, I'll answer first. If I was in that position, man, it's so fucking weird right now. I kind of was in that position and I moved to San Francisco and it worked out well. The second thing that I did, and it also worked out really well, is I learned a skill. Most college kids don't have a skill. I learned the skill of copywriting, which means I was always able to have a job. So I would learn a skill set and I 100% would intern.

• 47:58Shaan Puri?

  I think there's two answers. There's one, if you're in the top 5% of people and your goal is to be sort of entrepreneurial, or if your goal is to get on the career track, then go get a job, go get an internship and start climbing that ladder. And so if your goal is more entrepreneurial, which I'm assuming it is if you're in this community right now, then I would learn how to make money on the internet. I think that's an incredible skill that's going to be useful for a long time. And I think it takes a lot of trial and error. And I would be like, okay, I'm going to live like a cockroach, very cheap, and I'm going to find a way to just cover my bills every month and I'm going to learn how to make money on the internet. It might take me two years to figure that out, but I'm going to find every model of how people are doing it and I'm going to learn how to make money on the internet.

• 48:38Speaker 02

  Cool. Someone's asking, Sam, you said yesterday that you'd like to use research coming out of trends to eventually launch a business. How far would you deviate from the hustle or trends model? Basically, like, how far would you deviate from media, which we're in right now?

• 48:52Sam Parr?

  Well, we're gonna have this business. We do trends and hustle, and that will be one thing. And then we will invest in stuff. Our company has not invested in anything. I, Sam Parr, personally have invested in some stuff that we've discovered. And I think that's what I want to do, is either have a fund underneath our company arm, or use our profits to invest in that. And we would invest in anything. We just, me and some guy built this hotel that Sean and I were riffing on the other day. And I need to see if the economics of that are as good as it looks. But like, something like that, I totally would invest in, and I have. I've invested fifty, fifty or seventy thousand dollars collectively in interesting stuff like that.

• 49:31Shaan Puri?

  Sam, where'd you get your shirt? Somebody wants to know.

• 49:33Speaker 02

  Mark wants to know.

• 49:34Sam Parr?

  So, I have, I don't even want to reveal so much. Anyway, I got it from Target. Yeah.

• 49:44Shaan Puri?

  Okay, great. What's next?

• 49:46Speaker 02

  Cool. So, someone's asking about second, third order effects of COVID, and obviously the protests. What do you see in terms of business opportunities, given where we are?

• 49:56Sam Parr?

  I think cities with good living, but typically where like, sea level cities like Denver or Charlotte are gonna just fucking explode. And San Francisco and New York are gonna crash.

• 50:09Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, this is too, too hard to do rapid fire, but we talked about this on the podcast, I believe, and there's a great PDF somebody put out there of second order, third order effects. Someone in the community found it after we talked about it. And we'd look at that, and there's a bunch of ideas in there.

• 50:24Sam Parr?

  Yeah, Emmet, the guy, his name was Emmet.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  Okay, another question. So, Sean, you mentioned on Facebook group, angel investing, and now you're talking about buying businesses. What platforms would you recommend people find internet businesses?

• 50:38Shaan Puri?

  We talked about this a little earlier. Quiet Light Brokerage is where I would start.

• 50:43Speaker 02

  All right.

• 50:46Speaker 02

  So George is asking, can you guys, this isn't a quick one either, but talk about some of your biggest failures, what you learned from them.

• 50:53Sam Parr?

  I'll just say this, I haven't had many failures because I have not really probably swung as hard as I should.

• 50:59Shaan Puri?

  I'm the opposite, I feel like I failed on everything. You know, the last, even the company that we just sold in all reality was a failed company. Like, our ambition was to be, you know, the next Twitter, YouTube, Twitch, etc. And then instead, we ended up selling to Twitch. And, you know, it wasn't like some mega, mega home run, you know, F you money type of exit or anything like that. So, from my perspective, I feel like my capability is here and my results are here. And I'm trying to bridge that gap. And I would say like, every business is that way, your capability is here and here's your reality. Every person is usually that way. And you should be trying to, you should be trying to figure out how to climb up that gap. You know, the first thing I did was this restaurant business.

• 51:42Shaan Puri?

  You know, it failed.

• 51:44Shaan Puri?

  You know, the second business I did, got a bunch of progress and a bunch of funding from a strategic person. I left and it failed later.

• 51:55Shaan Puri?

  I did an idea lab for five years where we were swinging for the fences to build the next big social thing. We, I do not own the next big social thing, so in that sense, I failed. I want this podcast to be the biggest podcast in the world, and that sense, I failed. You know, like, my goals are here and my results are here. And that's, the good news is my goals are so much higher than the average person, that even when I'm failing, my results are so much higher than the average person.

• 52:15Sam Parr?

  And I completely agree with that. I've never failed though, because I've failed in that, there is still that gap. But I've never had like a run out of money failure because

• 52:24Shaan Puri?

  Also, kind of corny.

• 52:26Sam Parr?

  I played it safe.

• 52:27Shaan Puri?

  Kind of corny, but there's a great book called Win or Learn, that was written by Conor McGregor's coach. It is an amazing philosophy to adapt. You don't need to read the book, read the cover. It's called Win or Learn. And all it says is, whenever you do something and there's an outcome, there's a result, you just gotta say, did I win or did I learn? There is no lose. And it's corny, but the reality is that that's, the best people, they act that way. If they fail, they don't worry about losing or failure. They just say, what did I learn? And then that's winning in a different way.

• 52:55Speaker 02

  Cool. Someone is launching a D to C product. Will be in the market in beta in a couple of days. They're wondering if they should do Kickstarter and their concern specifically is whether people might steal their idea or basically launch it faster than them if they choose to do a Kickstarter.

• 53:13Sam Parr?

  I'm not going to talk about that. You can go ahead, Sean. I don't know anything about that.

• 53:16Shaan Puri?

  It sounds like if your product's ready to go to market, you don't need a Kickstarter or you don't need to raise capital. You already got to the starting line. You use Kickstarter to get to the starting line. Like, hey, I need some money to build the thing so I can get to market. It sounds like you're already there. So just start selling it, see how it goes. If it's going well, people will want to invest. If it's not going well, Kickstarter's not going to save you either. So it sounds like you're already at the start line. It's time to go.

• 53:39Speaker 02

  Cool. I'm going to go through some of these rapid fire ideas. You guys let me know what you think of them. So one of them, hotel living. Team of cleaners come every day to do small things. Make your bed, take your trash out, fresh towels, to give you that quote unquote hotel feeling. What do you guys think?

• 53:53Sam Parr?

  Love it. Don't think you can make the economics work.

• 53:55Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I don't think the economics work unless you can get an entire neighborhood to do it.

• 54:00Speaker 02

  All right. What's your take on whether companies will or should start to move away from gig and 1099s and move to W2?

• 54:09Sam Parr?

  I don't have an opinion on that. I don't feel like I'm educated.

• 54:12Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I agree. I don't have a real opinion on it. I would just say generally, I think the world, I forget those labels. I think the world as a whole is moving more towards freelance and free agency than full time one company. Like, we already broke the paradigm of work for one company for 40 years and retiring on your retirement plan with that company. That's gone. Average tenure in any high-growth industry is like, you know, two years or less. So that paradigm already broke. The next paradigm is breaking is working from an office. When you're not working from an office, you're not going to have the same sort of identity and tie to one company at a time. So full-time employment with one company is probably going to go away too. I think the ideal world is where you're paid for output and production,

• 54:56Shaan Puri?

  and you can be working for one or more companies at any time. You can be one person or you can be a gang of four people who are known to be awesome at doing X, and you're more like an agency. So I think the world moves more towards on-demand gigs, and you get paid based on merits and output.

• 55:15Speaker 02

  Nice. Okay.

• 55:16Sam Parr?

  We have to answer a few faster.

• 55:18Speaker 02

  Okay, next idea, apartment rentals by auction.

• 55:23Sam Parr?

  I don't know.

• 55:25Speaker 02

  Okay, cool.

• 55:28Speaker 02

  Sam, what's your advice for building a newsletter from scratch?

• 55:34Sam Parr?

  Start, uh, figure, uh, fuck, I don't know. Advice, pick a professional-related topic. So for example, something that employees use, not something that is like sports or for fun, because you'll make more money that way and start very, very, very niche. So like people who are-

• 55:53Shaan Puri?

  Have any sports newsletters worked?

• 55:57Sam Parr?

  To, to become huge?

• 55:59Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Are there any really big sports daily newsletters?

• 56:02Sam Parr?

  Well, maybe Barstool started that way.

• 56:06Shaan Puri?

  Oh, they did? Okay.

• 56:09Sam Parr?

  That I know of? No, but Thrillist is a $500 million company and they started out as like newsletters for like men's clothing. So you definitely can do some of these fun stuff, but if you want to make more money and make it faster, do B2B.

• 56:23Speaker 02

  Okay. Rob is asking about sourcing manufacturers, whether it be in China or North America. Seems like it's a blur to him to actually get past that step. I've heard that a lot from other people.

• 56:34Sam Parr?

  I can't talk about that, Sean. You can't?

• 56:36Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I've been through that process. It's hard. I think it's good that it's hard, otherwise there would be so much more competition. You know, so if you're in the game, you want that barrier because only the few who climb over that wall will figure it out. I actually think that the bigger opportunity is to break down that wall. So if I was somebody, rather than trying to start a product company like that, I would say, oh my God, it's so hard to get through this manufacturing process and all the uncertainty. And, you know, like yesterday I wired 50 grand to China. You know how hard it is to wire 50 grand to China? It's like not easy to do these types of things. So, you know, there's so many pain points, finding a supplier, knowing if they're good, getting samples made, wiring money to them and trusting that you're going to get your product back, figuring out how the hell shipping works.

• 57:20Shaan Puri?

  Like all of that stuff is super complicated. I think somebody should create, and there probably are already, like Sourcefy is one of them, but you should create more companies that help people not need to know how to do that. Just like I can launch a website, I don't need to know how to code. AWS made it, so I don't need to know how servers work. I can just get to my end goal. So I would do, I would focus on that rather than building one. If I really wanted to go big, that's what I would focus on.

• 57:44Sam Parr?

  Someone in the Facebook group asked why I don't like the horse business. They said, I hate it. I don't actually mean that. I don't truly hate it. I have very, very, very little experience with it. I just hate the idea that someone's paying me money for something and they're only paying me one time versus providing value and getting paid all the time.

• 58:01Speaker 02

  All right. There's still a lot of questions in the chat, but why don't you take a second to scan through Sam's show and see if there's any that you want to answer because we only got a little bit of time left.

• 58:11Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. If we can just grab these questions, we could even do a podcast episode answering the spillover ones.

• 58:16Speaker 02

  I can send these to you guys after.

• 58:19Shaan Puri?

  All right, I'm gonna scroll. I'm gonna try to find a good one.

• 58:21Sam Parr?

  What opportunities do you guys and galas see between community and law enforcement right now?

• 58:27Speaker 02

  That's a good one.

• 58:28Sam Parr?

  That's a good question. I don't have an answer. I, I, I'm sick to my stomach every single night watching the news.

• 58:33Shaan Puri?

  How many police officers are there in the country?

• 58:37Shaan Puri?

  Let's just Google up a count. How many?

• 58:39Sam Parr?

  Let me guess. I think in New York, there's 20,000.

• 58:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, so there's 17,000 agencies. So I wonder if there's like, um, like a messaging app or some kind of like, uh, secure messaging app that you could build for that industry, like Discord built a messaging app for gamers. And there's enterprise messaging apps like Slack. But I wonder.

• 59:05Sam Parr?

  I just would never want to. I would never want to sell to a government. That would be a pain in the ass, not because I'm pro or anti-government, but so much bureaucracy. Oh, my God.

• 59:15Shaan Puri?

  So I have an idea I'm gonna talk about on the podcast, uh, next, next episode, which is around things like this, which is this model where really hard sales cycle to get in, get in, they, you never get out. Exactly. George said this in the chat, they're sticky. So, uh, there's a class of businesses like this. I've always resisted them because I'm impatient and I can't imagine dealing with the sort of bureaucracy and the sales cycle there. But then on the other hand, the reality is that stickiness and durability in a moat is what makes your business valuable over time. So I'm gonna share a couple of examples of businesses that have done this well on the next podcast.

• 59:47Sam Parr?

  Great. Let's talk about recommended book recommendations. If I had to recommend one, to me, it's a biography of John Rockefeller. It's called Titan. The reason why I like him is he was a ruthless businessman. Yeah, he was a wonderful father and a wonderful husband. And my issue when reading about biographies, I typically read about men because I'm a man and I identify with them more. And they are either a good businessman.

• 1:00:08Sam Parr?

  There rarely are they good at business and great at being family and he was that. That's why I like it.

• 1:00:15Shaan Puri?

  Nice. I'll give you three quick ones. The Happiness Hypothesis, good book, story worthy, great book if you want to become a better storyteller. And the last one is The Game. I think The Game taught me more about people and psychology than any other book.

• 1:00:30Sam Parr?

  I bet Steph, have you read The Game?

• 1:00:32Speaker 02

  I haven't.

• 1:00:33Sam Parr?

  Oh, my gosh. It seems like something you would read. It's so fun.

• 1:00:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. Have you read Ender's Game? That's like a...

• 1:00:40Shaan Puri?

  I've read Ender's Game too, yes.

• 1:00:41Sam Parr?

  Is that also about like?

• 1:00:43Shaan Puri?

  Two very different books. Ender's Game is a sci-fi.

• 1:00:46Sam Parr?

  No, The Game is about this like underground world of pickup artists.

• 1:00:50Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting. No, I have not read that.

• 1:00:52Sam Parr?

  That's so fascinating.

• 1:00:55Speaker 02

  Mary has asked this a couple of times and I want to make sure we get to her question. What's the best way to validate a healthcare related business specifically geared towards users aged 50 to 75? And she's basically, she's asked a couple of times, like, how do you target that user base? What's the best way to do that?

• 1:01:10Sam Parr?

  Well, Facebook advertising, but I don't know like the legal. Like if I'm just selling like bullshit online that is not like FDA approved or won't kill you or something. I just create landing pages even if the product doesn't exist and I accept payment form it. That's what I did with Trends. It didn't exist and I accepted payment forms. And then I returned the money and I called them and I asked them why they bought. And I would do this, but when you say health related, I don't know, like you can't like pre-sell certain medicines. But Facebook, you can find them all on Facebook.

• 1:01:40Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Facebook is basically the best way to reach most people on earth.

• 1:01:44Sam Parr?

  And that demographic, did she say women between 50 and 70? That's probably like...

• 1:01:48Speaker 02

  Not necessarily women, just...

• 1:01:50Sam Parr?

  Oh, just people? That is the best place to reach that demographic.

• 1:01:56Speaker 02

  All right. How are you guys doing for time? I know we're a little bit over.

• 1:02:00Shaan Puri?

  I can spill over. I have, I think.

• 1:02:05Sam Parr?

  I could spill over a little bit. How about this one?

• 1:02:07Shaan Puri?

  15 minutes.

• 1:02:09Sam Parr?

  I can go, yeah, I can go about that. How do you start becoming an advisor, payer, equity to companies? Somebody asked me and Sean this the other day.

• 1:02:18Sam Parr?

  We got lucky, start a podcast and people email you and I say no to most every single one, even people who pay me money.

• 1:02:26Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I don't know if the question is, is how do you become it? You know, if you want to become an advisor, you gotta like done something. So like in this case, both me and Sam have built companies that are, you know, Sam's still running his companies. It's worth tens of millions of dollars. I sold mine for tens of millions of dollars. So, you know, do something that shows that you probably know what you're talking about or know you're a level above wherever they're at in terms of, you know, if this was martial arts, you want to be a brown belt or a black belt. That's how you get the opportunity. And then the real question is like, is it something you want to do or not?

• 1:02:59Sam Parr?

  Have you heard of these expert networks? Are you an expert in that? I'm part of these, one of these expert networks. It's called like GLG. They give you a thousand dollars an hour or $500 an hour to talk to like a banker. I used to do that and it's so funny, even though like that's a lot of money. I'm like, oh my God, I don't want to do that. It kills me.

• 1:03:15Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, those are great. They've reached out, but then it's never come through. So I never got paid on them yet. We'll see.

• 1:03:22Speaker 02

  This is an interesting one. Ray says that he's created decent and engaged following on Instagram sharing do it yourself, healthy baby food recipes. He's not sure what product he can launch. He thought maybe an app with a baby meal, with baby meal plans, but there's a lot of those already in the app store, potentially also recipe books. But those aren't very profitable. So any thoughts there?

• 1:03:44Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, DM me the page. I don't know what you mean by decently engaged following. That can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. You know, if you're talking about a page with a million followers and you're getting, you know, a lot of action that you have different opportunities than if you're at 9,000 followers, which is definitely good. It's not zero, but you still have a long way to climb. And I talked about this, I think on the last podcast that I did solo, which is, don't do bank shot companies or double miracle companies. It's like, first I need to make a super influential Instagram account. And then I need to make a super, super great product after that. Like, don't plan for that. If you find yourself in that position, great. But like, if that's your plan, you should just go do the one thing that's valuable and put all your effort into that.

• 1:04:29Shaan Puri?

  Because otherwise you're going to put all your effort into one thing and you're still not going to be at the promised land. You're going to have to then go do this whole other really hard miracle thing just to get some value out of it.

• 1:04:37Sam Parr?

  Unless you can throw money at the problem and you're like willing to burn through tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars like like a Tesla or something.

• 1:04:44Speaker 02

  Well, let's get, uh, Nassim has been, hasn't, he's had his hand raised for like an hour. Uh, he's in the hospitality business, seems to be hit hard by COVID. Nassim, feel free to talk to us live.

• 1:04:58Speaker 02

  Just gotta unmute yourself.

• 1:05:05Speaker 02

  Oh, well, I can read out Nassim's comment in the chat and said, so he said, we're in the hospitality business, invested in a web mobile platform. Uh, we were getting ready to raise money, uh, but now with COVID, all hospitality is, uh, you know, not going so well. Many venture-backed hospitality startups are going through rough times. We made two million in annual revenue, but now with COVID, we're down, uh, I'm not sure how much they're down, but they're just doing okay in the last three months. Uh, thinking of pivoting, uh, can you talk to how you might grow the user base, uh, and customers for a marketplace such as this?

• 1:05:41Shaan Puri?

  Uh, that's a really specific question. We need to know more about what, what you, what value you actually provide in the hospitality space.

• 1:05:46Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I don't even want to touch that.

• 1:05:49Speaker 02

  All right.

• 1:05:50Sam Parr?

  Well, it's just, it's, it's, it's, I, I don't ever, uh, I'm thankful people listen to some of our advice. I would be very, uh,

• 1:06:00Sam Parr?

  nervous about saying something and someone believing it.

• 1:06:04Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, we just need more context to even ask questions there. So that's a longer discussion.

• 1:06:09Sam Parr?

  One time, um, Gary Vaynerchuk said something in like some fucking thing and I really admire him and I like thought that that was like, and I like built a business. Like I did like something like I based a lot of my life on there and like bet money on there. And then when I was on his podcast, uh, this year, I asked him about that and he was like, what? I go, yeah, yeah. Remember that thing? He goes, I don't know, dude. I was probably just shooting the shit. I don't know. I was just saying shit. And I was like, fuck. Uh, it's, uh, I don't want to, uh, I've always been nervous of doing that same thing with other people.

• 1:06:39Speaker 02

  All right. Looks like Edgar's got his hand raised. He has a question about the.

• 1:06:43Sam Parr?

  Sorry, Nassim, by the way, but you, hopefully you get it.

• 1:06:48Speaker 05

  Hi, hello. Can you all hear me?

• 1:06:50Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 1:06:51Sam Parr?

  Hey.

• 1:06:52Speaker 05

  Okay, hey, how are you? Everything well?

• 1:06:55Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, sure. What's up?

• 1:06:56Speaker 05

  Awesome, awesome. Hey, um, so I've been, I've been watching you all for a while. I appreciate what you do. This is super sick that you guys had these conversations. Um, I'm, I'm in San Diego. I'm twenty-one years old. Um, I run, um, a family, uh, business. We have two restaurants. Um, so of course, you know, we've had restrictions and so we're, we're only doing carryout as of now. Um, but I, I understand how, you know, or I guess I'm really intrigued on how psychology works. And people are gonna stay home more often. Uh, we hear about a lot of, uh, company shifting to, you know, to people staying at home and working from home.

• 1:07:35Speaker 05

  Um, so I know that, for example, Uber Eats, Grubhub, DoorDash, all these, um, delivery applications. They, um, they charge a high commission for a lot of these restaurants, especially, you know, these are mom and pop restaurants. Um, so I was thinking, you know, how can we, um, I guess, bring that

• 1:07:57Speaker 05

  to more of a, um, I guess, how can we, um, support small businesses, per se, in the delivery, in the delivery form? So how can we bring power back to the small businesses? So they can, I don't, I, I believe it would be some type of a platform that allows, um, the community to connect to that certain business.

• 1:08:20Speaker 05

  Does, does that make sense? Or I'm, I'm all over.

• 1:08:23Shaan Puri?

  I understand what you're saying. Uh, so, so I definitely understand what you're saying. Uh, just to rephrase, you're basically saying, hey, restaurants need to, uh, adjust due to COVID. We're trying to do delivery. The current delivery platforms take such a huge rake. It's not great for the restaurants. They're still struggling.

• 1:08:38Sam Parr?

  By the way, is that the sentiment? Is that restaurants are angry at Uber?

• 1:08:44Speaker 05

  Um, I'm not, I wouldn't say that we're angry, but uh, the restaurant industry is pretty hit by the commissions. Um, these delivery apps are charging, especially, you know, the average um, food margin for a lot of restaurants is around anywhere between twenty-five to thirty percent. Uh, Uber and and DoorDash, you know, at the end of the month are taking around maybe a thirty, forty percent commission, um, you know, total. So it's, it it it is a, it is a big, a bigger hit for them. So, so what I'm, what I'm trying to propose is, is an idea um, for, for a platform where actual businesses, actual restaurants can begin to create

• 1:09:27Speaker 05

  a, a, I guess, to collect per se, different uh, addresses, phone numbers of people who would want um, their food to be delivered to a, to a home.

• 1:09:38Sam Parr?

  No, no, look, so I understand what you're saying, and I, I think that what you're, you're saying, you're saying the problem is, is that restaurants are upset with Uber. Sam, what you're really saying is restaurants are hurt and they need to make more money. And I actually don't think that the solution that you're saying is actually the right solution to the problem. And I don't, I'm not in the restaurant industry, so it sounds like you are. I would actually wanna know, has anyone ever made you happy as a restaurant owner? Are you ever happy at Yelp? Are you happy at Groupon? Are you happy at Uber? Like, who has done something that has made you happy? Because that's what I would be curious about, what solutions do make restaurant owners happy? Because whenever someone talks about Groupon, my belief is that they hate it.

• 1:10:22Sam Parr?

  My belief is that restaurants hate Yelp. My belief is that restaurants don't like Uber, but what, who do they like?

• 1:10:28Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I, I, I agree with him. I think, I think we should, we should move to the next question, but I think, I think Sam said the right thing, which is the solution you're proposing, I think, has a lot of problems. I don't wanna sort of go into each one of them right now, but um. It's true, the aggregators in the middle, DoorDash, etc., they have a lot of power. They're going to continue to have a lot of power. There's not really much the restaurants can do against that. But you should try to figure out, instead of trying to create a new platform with one, one millionth of the resources that they have and, you know, no head start. Instead, just figure out what's something we could do to make money as a restaurant. What, what assets do we have that we can leverage to create, create value? And then focus on that. So.

• 1:11:09Sam Parr?

  That's my point, Edgar, which is, I, the, the, I do not think the solution is to take 10% instead of 30%. I think the solution is, what, to me, it's like you're obsessed with the solution. You're not obsessed with the, you might be, but you, you are also obsessed with the solution and you are also obsessed with the problem. Fuck that. Only care about the problem. And I think you need to come up with a creative way. Groupon has one way to do that, but that doesn't make people happy. It seems like Yelp has one way to do that, doesn't it? So find some other way that like, maybe like someone's already kind of in that industry and it's kind of making them happy. And I would definitely like, you, get out of this lane. You got to get out of that lane a little.

• 1:11:44Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:46Sam Parr?

  By the way, Uber Eats, Uber Eats is a shit business, I believe.

• 1:11:52Speaker 05

  Um, I, one, one last quick question before, before I let y'all leave. Um, what, if, if I do want to go into the wholesale, uh, industry, like the food, uh, wholesale industry, I, I would like to put, um, I guess one of my recipes, you know, on, it would probably be some type of like beans, uh, that we have that are really, really good. Uh, how would I take steps to, to start going into that lane?

• 1:12:17Speaker 05

  Do you know?

• 1:12:18Shaan Puri?

  I actually couldn't hear what you said, Edgar, but why don't you just email me or DM me? And we can go further there, but I want to make sure that we're able to talk to more people's questions.

• 1:12:26Speaker 05

  I understand. Thank you so much.

• 1:12:27Speaker 02

  Thanks, Edgar.

• 1:12:30Speaker 02

  All right. Um, I think a lot of people in this call will find this, your answers to this one interesting. So it's targeted specifically at trends, uh, Sam, but I, I think we can expand it to like, how you guys think about ideas for the podcast. Um, so the question is, what's on your radar for upcoming research reports? And specifically what inspires you, uh, to basically say like this topic is worthy of researching or sharing on trends and similarly for the podcast?

• 1:12:55Sam Parr?

  Sean and I have a doc called MBD and we just fill it out. I just think that people are overestimating how little of a seed of an idea will come across and then we'll just put it in there and then just go down this rabbit hole. I don't think people realize how much information you can get on Wikipedia or off of a tweet. Like, we just see a tweet and like, go to Wikipedia and then Google it. So I think people are actually overestimating our skillset. Something on the docket is something Sean and I have talked about a lot is J.D. Power and this business model of licensing your approval for trends.

• 1:13:40Sam Parr?

  I'm trying to get Trung to write about that for the brainstorming sessions. Sean, he has this whole idea about business or sales channels that are really hard to go into, but once you get in, they're the best. He already said that earlier.

• 1:13:55Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Yeah, basically, if you want to be interesting, be interested. So whatever you're interested in or something that catches your curiosity where you're like, huh, that's interesting, I never heard about that, or wow, it makes that much? Anything that sort of evokes that type of reaction, just boom, write it down and then start researching it. That's how I do it. But I think Steph does most of the research anyways for trends, so really Steph, that's your answer.

• 1:14:21Sam Parr?

  For trends, I don't fucking touch it. I read it the day it comes live.

• 1:14:25Speaker 02

  My answer for trends is basically like, if you see something and you think, if I shared this with 10 random people, if any less than two people would already know that, then it's interesting and it's worthy of trends or potentially my first million. But just think about like, if I shared this with someone, how many people would already know this? If it's like more than 50%, it's probably not that interesting, because most people already know it. One question from Ellis, how could you imagine, this is an opinion question, but how could you imagine one of the FAANG companies being unseeded and specifically, which one do you think is most likely to be unseeded if that were to happen?

• 1:15:05Sam Parr?

  Right now, Facebook.

• 1:15:08Sam Parr?

  The amount of frustration people have towards them is quite high. The angle that I think someone's gonna take them is gonna be two different angles. The first is, I think there's gonna be an extreme version of saying, everything, all free speech is okay. Anyone can come on this platform. That's gonna attract one group of people. And then the other end, it's gonna, someone's gonna create a version where it's gonna be like, we don't notify you too much. We curate your feed so you're not overwhelmed. It's more intimate. I think something like that will happen. I would not be surprised if DuckDuckGo gets huge. I'm very fascinated with DuckDuckGo. I think privacy is very important to people, to normal, to normal people in America now, whereas before it wasn't.

• 1:15:55Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I actually don't think any of them will be unseated.

• 1:15:58Sam Parr?

  Oh yeah, me too, by the way. I don't think any of them will be.

• 1:16:01Shaan Puri?

  I think these companies, they already sort of got disrupted three or four times and survived. You know, mobile was a huge shift. Google buys Android. Facebook pivots the whole company and puts it in lockdown mode to get its mobile apps up. You know, social networking gets disrupted by, you know, photo sharing and messaging. Facebook spends $23 billion acquiring companies in that space, right? Like, these companies-

• 1:16:26Sam Parr?

  Yeah, Facebook's gonna be like four. They're gonna be around for 100 years, I think.

• 1:16:30Shaan Puri?

  And so, you know, I think what ends up happening is not that these companies lose what they have, but actually that a new thing comes up that just turns out to be more important, or more relevant of where the puck has gone. And so, the old phrase is, when you have a castle and it's got a big, deep moat around it, the castle doesn't die because somebody sieges the castle. They cross the moat magically and then take over the castle. It's that somebody finds a small little shack on another piece of land, you know, 10 miles over, and that land actually has more fertile soil. And then, your castle becomes irrelevant. Nobody cares about taking your castle over. Everyone's more interested in that soil over there. So like, you know, this is why Facebook's trying to launch its own cryptocurrency, Libra, or whatever they renamed it to, because-

• 1:17:13Shaan Puri?

  You know, it turns out that Bitcoin was the biggest value creator in the last 10 years. And who could have thought it didn't look like a photo sharing app, right? Uber, Airbnb, these didn't look like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft. They didn't look like any of those companies. So the big opportunity was in a totally different space. And those companies missed it because they don't do that. That was, that's not what their castle was about. So really it's about finding the next, next fertile soil where the next castle will be built. And hopefully over time, these castles become less relevant and less powerful. Because there's more castles out there.

• 1:17:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I would also say that a lot of, like, all the FAANG companies are way more diversified than I think we give them credit for. They're making like a ton of acquisitions every single month, especially during COVID when prices are down. And so you might think of Facebook as just like the, the community product that it is, but it does, it's invested in way more than that. So VR takes off, they, they own Oculus. If, you know, like they own Instagram, they own WhatsApp. So they're not just Facebook. And so even though I do think there's concerns, obviously with that company, it's, they're not just the platform that many people imagine them to be.

• 1:18:18Sam Parr?

  My computer's on 1%, guys, I'm gonna have to jet.

• 1:18:21Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:22Speaker 02

  I think we're at time anyway. Thanks so much for staying over, Sam, Sean. Thanks for doing the podcast every week. I listen to it every time. I'm sure everyone on here does too. So yeah, thanks everyone for joining.

• 1:18:32Sam Parr?

  Do you feel like you know me even more because I'm in your ears?

• 1:18:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:38Sam Parr?

  We've had like people come up to it. I, I had this white kid come up to us and call me a little bitch. And I was like, dude, I don't know you. And I, and I forgot that he thought he knew me and that we are friends and he called me a bitch.

• 1:18:48Speaker 02

  That's funny. All right, well, thanks everyone for joining. See you next time.

• 1:18:52Shaan Puri?

  See ya.

• 1:18:52Speaker 02

  Bye.