#142 - Digital Meet and Greets, A Little Known $30m Empire, And Shaan's Twitter Controversy

Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) discuss: - 02:52: A home security idea - 06:02: Wynter.io and other powerful simple plugins - 15:24: Kevin Systrom's and Mark Zuckerburg's transcripts from the Instagram acquisition - 22:01: Shaan discusses his controversial Tweet - 40:21: A digital meet and greet idea - 47:15: Syed Balkhi - The little known entrepreneur with a ~$30m empire Thank you to our sponsor this episode, Flatfile! Spend less time on Excel and more time building your business by easily importing data using Flatfile. Check them out at flatfile.io/hustle. Have you 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. Editing thanks to Jonathan Gallegos (@jjonthan) 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.

• 0:21Shaan Puri?

  What up Sam? 2021?

• 0:23Sam Parr?

  Congrats. Happy 2021. The best ad that I saw recently, it was a match.com ad. And you see the devil in Central Park just waiting. And then a woman comes up and she goes, hey, are you Satan? And he goes, yeah, are you 2020? And they like, it's like 2020, Satan, Satan meeting on a date and they fall in love with each other.

• 0:47Sam Parr?

  It was the best ad that I've seen in a long time. It was awesome. It was by match.com. And it was how 2020 and the Satan met. It was wonderful.

• 0:56Shaan Puri?

  So you just signed up? You're like, fuck it?

• 0:58Sam Parr?

  Great, great marketing. It worked.

• 1:00Shaan Puri?

  I'll do that. If I see a great ad, I'll give it a click. I'll go add something to cart just so that they, you know, just to reward, reward the ad a little bit.

• 1:08Sam Parr?

  Now that I'm officially like a dad homeowner, I'm not a dad, but I'm definitely acting like one. I've made a few purchases. The first thing, Sean, tell me if you've made this purchase. A hatchet. Do you have a hatchet?

• 1:21Shaan Puri?

  For protection or for work?

• 1:24Sam Parr?

  For everything, for breaking down boxes. I bought a hatchet. I like, I love buying things on Amazon that only cost 10 or 20 or $30. And they're just shit that is cool, but you're not sure if you're going to need it. So bought a hatchet. I got a nice sharpener for my pocket knife. Pocket knife, so useful for boxes. What else did I buy? You can buy a blowtorch on there. I bought a blowtorch.

• 1:44Shaan Puri?

  There being what? There being the internet?

• 1:46Sam Parr?

  On Amazon. Bought a flashlight that pretty much goes like five miles in the sky.

• 1:53Sam Parr?

  I've just been buying all gadgets.

• 1:55Shaan Puri?

  Wow. Okay. I think there I made some of those purchases, but I feel like yours are like half prepper, half homeowner. Like not all of those were just homeowner things.

• 2:05Sam Parr?

  Well, they're all I admittedly, I love gadgets. So they're all gadgets, but they do kind of have a little protective vibe, but I'm not going to kill someone with a hatchet, but I am going to break down boxes. And like I just got like a I got something delivered to me and it was came via a pallet. And what are you going to do with the pallet? Like you gotta like pay money to throw it away.

• 2:23Shaan Puri?

  Dude, it sucks when they give you the pallet.

• 2:25Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So I bought an axe to break that down, figuring out I'll be able to break down many things.

• 2:29Shaan Puri?

  What's the difference between a hatchet and an axe?

• 2:32Sam Parr?

  An axe, you use two hands. An axe has a long handle and use two hands. A hatchet is a one hand, like it's a hammer with a with the axe head on it.

• 2:41Shaan Puri?

  Okay, great. Yeah, I have like a box cutter that's small and looks like a pen. So I don't think I'm ready for all this.

• 2:47Sam Parr?

  Do you have an alarm system?

• 2:51Shaan Puri?

  We do.

• 2:52Sam Parr?

  What do you have?

• 2:53Shaan Puri?

  It was just like, I rent this place. So it just came like with the place. I don't even know what the brand is. It's kind of like an old school one. And then, yeah, we have a bunch of like Nest cameras set up everywhere.

• 3:03Sam Parr?

  So we talked about Deep Sentinel recently, right?

• 3:05Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 3:06Sam Parr?

  I went to Noah Kagan's house for New Year's and he had one and it's pretty cool. It's pretty badass. I want that for a ring where I just have these folks, I don't think they have to be in America, they could be anywhere, that monitors the camera and then just says something like, hey, who are you? Do you know the owner? Like the police are on the way. You know what I mean? That would just be lovely. I want that service.

• 3:27Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, why don't you get it? It's available.

• 3:29Sam Parr?

  I've only found it on Deep Sentinel and I would do, I would use them, but I've already installed the ring. And I imagine more people, definitely more people have ring than that. So I'm, I don't understand why that doesn't exist yet.

• 3:42Shaan Puri?

  Right, right, right. I think they don't get the live feed in the same way, something like that. I'm not sure. But yeah, that seems like a hack. If you could just do the Deep Sentinel thing without the hardware.

• 3:51Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And the Deep Sentinel thing, it's expensive, but we should get the founder on it because I bet you it's a killer business, but it seems pretty cool. And you could also like give, you know, I love these industries and businesses where you can give people like relatively low skilled jobs to people and they can kind of learn stuff and get better and improve. And like, that seems like you can do something for, you know, someone who just gets out of jail or something like, look, you just sit here and monitor these cameras and maybe eventually you learn something and can do something else.

• 4:18Shaan Puri?

  I told my mom a job at user testing as a user tester. When I first moved to San Francisco, I was like, you should do this because I was using user testing. And I was like, this is a great service, right? You build a product. Basically, you just send your website or app to users. You input in user testing, you pay like $15 per user test. And basically, it's somebody going to use your product and it records them using it. And they have to talk out loud and you can give them tasks. You'd be like, try signing up, try sending a message, try like, look, go to the pricing page. Talk aloud as you go to the pricing page and what you think about it. So you get to see just normal people going through your website and it's all recorded. And they're speaking out loud as you can see what's confusing, what's not, how people react to certain things. I found it super useful.

• 5:03Shaan Puri?

  So I told my mom, I was like, this is great. You can do this from home. It takes zero skill. Like it's even better if you're like not super tech savvy. So you're like more like a real user, essentially. All you have to do is just go to the website. And if you're confused, good, you're confused, just say it. If you know what to do, great, you know what to do. There's zero skill involved. And so she did it for a while. And then she got hired by them as a reviewer of the testers. And that business is a great business. They're doing really, really well because they were able to tap into the stay at home mom workforce of people who just they're at home, they have a computer, they have their phone and they want to make 10 bucks per test. They can do, you know, two or three tests in an hour. They can make 20, 30 bucks in an hour if they're, if they're user testing at home.

• 5:46Shaan Puri?

  It's way better than, you know, going and doing something that's a lot of manual labor.

• 5:50Sam Parr?

  I think that company's a billion dollar business.

• 5:52Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 5:53Sam Parr?

  So there's this guy, I'm trying to find him right now. What is his name? He's in the trends group. His name starts with a P. I think he's Estonian. He's a copywriter and he originally had this thing called like copy XL or something. Maybe a brave, you can search his.

• 6:08Shaan Puri?

  Conversion XL, is that what you're thinking about?

• 6:10Sam Parr?

  Conversion XL.

• 6:11Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 6:11Sam Parr?

  Conversion XL, that was called, yeah. What's that guy's name?

• 6:14Speaker 02

  Danavir Surya.

• 6:16Sam Parr?

  Peep Laja. Sorry, Peep. I know I'm screwing your name up. So he's got-

• 6:21Shaan Puri?

  Zero chance his name is Peep Laja.

• 6:23Sam Parr?

  It's P, P E E P, space, L A J A.

• 6:31Shaan Puri?

  Okay, that's Peep Laja. They might be Peep Laja.

• 6:33Sam Parr?

  Sorry, Peep. I talked to him before. He's badass. Anyway, he's got this great company called Winter. Let me pull it up. And it's Winter with a Y and W Y N T E R. I don't even think you could find it. But anyway, what they're doing is actually pretty cool. It's so user testing is a multi-billion dollar company and it's exactly what Sean is explaining of someone just going onto your website and telling you what they think it means. Well, they're doing the same thing, but specifically just for copywriting. So if you go to wynter.io, W Y N T E R dot I O. And you tell them what type of customer you're trying to attract and they will go out and find people who fit that demographic.

• 7:17Sam Parr?

  And they will tell you what they think of your messaging and product positioning. And it's really cool because I actually do this all the time. Whenever I'm writing copy for a sales page, I'll find people who fit my demographic and I do this just because I've got a lot of friends in the space and I just send them my Google Doc and I say, tell me what you think about this. And they hate doing it, but it is so like, you know, they don't want to waste time reading my shit, but it actually helps me so much. And so you could be like, I'm targeting homeowners, parents, men, women, certain ages, US, not US, senior marketers, marketing managers, founders, copywriters, and you could send them your landing page and they give you their, your opinion of the copy and positioning. It's pretty cool.

• 7:55Shaan Puri?

  Have you used this one or not yet?

• 7:57Sam Parr?

  No, it's brand new. For a long time, you couldn't even sign up. I signed up for beta. And so if you go to like, become a tester, it just goes to a type form page. So I think the business is less than a year old. I don't even know if they're letting new people in yet. It's a really interesting idea because I thought that that business of user testing is pretty amazing. I think there's another one called the user voice, right?

• 8:16Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think they acquired user voice now.

• 8:19Sam Parr?

  And I believe they've raised like between 50 and 100 million, like in that ballpark. And I think they've said publicly they're north of 100 million in recurring revenue. So it potentially is a multi-billion dollar space. And I think it's pretty cool. I imagine they're hard to make. I guess, what's the moat there? Having

• 8:36Shaan Puri?

  A huge pool of testers and quality control. So just like any marketplace, you know, you need the supply. And so their supplies, you can say, I want, you know, women on iPhones who speak English, who are in this income bracket or whatever. There's some targeting you can set. And then they basically ping out the network. They're like, hey, test available. And then like within minutes, people have taken up all the tests. Uh, cause they want to make, you know, a quick 10 bucks. And so they hit, yeah, I'll take this test. They have the software that does the whole thing. And then they basically deliver you with no work. You don't have to go recruit, you know, recruit users and get the feedback. It's like just, it's there and then you watch it. And then you can basically, you know, send it to your teammate, your coworkers little clips. And be like, look, on this page, they have no idea where the button is. That's true. It's, it's hidden.

• 9:21Shaan Puri?

  And now that, now that we're seeing them get frustrated and it's so painful, you're cringing because you're like, ah, just see it's just do the thing that we want you to do. And they don't know how to do it. That cringe is where products get better.

• 9:33Sam Parr?

  I don't know what you'd call those. Maybe we need a category, maybe there already is, but there's a handful of services where one person at your company signs up and does it. And then other people do it and you're like, oh, well, we have a company account. Go ahead, just do it. And the initial thing only costs 50 bucks, but you keep, you get used to it and it removes this small task. So you just keep like using it and using it and using it. An example is this user testing, user voice service. So it's like, well, instead of just asking Joe all the time, like what he thinks of like this button color and if this just makes sense, I'm just going to use user testing. Oh, it's only $50. And then over time you like start spending tens of thousands a month. Another is rev.com. So for transcriptions, you're like, oh, I don't feel like transcribing this. I'll just sit through and do that. With like, I know a lot of law firms and they actually have associates who transcribe it. And then

• 10:17Sam Parr?

  I don't know if a law firm can sign up for it, but one person at our company signed up for Rev. Now I look at our bill, I'm like, oh my God, we're spending so much money on that. Another one is Fiverr. So like one person did a logo on Fiverr and then everyone at our company is like, oh, well, I'm just putting this internal document together. It's only five bucks. I'll just use our.

• 10:35Shaan Puri?

  And then he keeps this up. Bottom bottoms up virality, basically. So you don't need to go to the top and sell the company to adopt this thing. That's too hard. You just need one curious person to sign up and then the nature of the product is that you're going to share the results. You're going to share the outcomes and then that spreads it through the company.

• 10:52Sam Parr?

  Another example, so look, user testing, Abreu just said they do over a hundred million in revenue and they only have 2,000 organizations who use it.

• 11:00Shaan Puri?

  Right. They started with, you know, we were using this six years ago as a tiny startup, you know, like we're spending maybe a couple thousand bucks a year. But now it's like Coca-Cola and Hilton Hotels and it's like, you know, all these giant brands that, that they need their website tested. They get a lot of traffic and they want to do usability testing and they want to do it consistently. And they, they have all kinds of crazy stuff that like, they can do like live sessions where you can be there with them. It's pretty cool business. I actually think there could be more businesses like this. So when I used it, the majority use case I was using was not actually the usability of our website. Well, you know, do you know where to go? Is this confusing to you? But just, do you like this? Do you like this concept? Does this resonate with you?

• 11:38Shaan Puri?

  Do you like, I can see, for example, somebody doing this with e-commerce or D to C products where it's like, go shop here and just tell me, what do you think of our selection? You know, what do you think of the, what do you think of the way that this, you know, that, how do we compare to other stuff that you use when you shop? And just try to get into the mind of the buyer. It could be even where you send them a physical thing. It's like, we're going to send a sample out to 250 people and then they're going to record themselves unboxing it, using it, reacting to it. And then you're going to get 250 videos back of your product, um, you know, for $10,000 or whatever it is. You could see how this concept of a large pool of customer feedback could be useful for other business ideas.

• 12:17Sam Parr?

  Totally. I think that you would, I mean, this is a shit we talk about all the time. You just niche down and get super specific and I think it's really cool. I would imagine what you'd want to do is create like a Google plugin, like a Chrome plugin. And when you're, you know, you're an employee at a company and you're on a page, you're like, review this page, click. Just like, why you're like, you know, this page looks a little wonky. Is it just me? Well, let's see what someone else.

• 12:38Shaan Puri?

  What do people think? Yeah.

• 12:39Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Click like review, what type of review, who, boom, done. Great. Well, you'll hear from us in two hours.

• 12:46Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 12:47Sam Parr?

  Dune, done. Move on to the next task. You just spent $50 to even realize it.

• 12:51Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's actually pretty cool. You could do that, like, kind of even in a micro payment way. So you could do it on the other side, too. If you did a Chrome extension like Honey, but it's for people who want to get paid like a couple bucks just to give their quick feedback on a website. So you go and if the, if the website has the Pixel installed, it'll flash like $3 for you to give this feedback right now. It's going to take less than two minutes and you click like, yep, accept. You do the, like, it just pops up in your webcam, you use the website and then you hit done. Video sends to them. You get your three bucks in your little piggy bank and you just continue on, go on browsing the internet. And you could get a bunch of people who would install it as testers as well.

• 13:26Sam Parr?

  You know what another service is in the same ballpark as us and you and others shot me down so hard, but I, I think it's so interesting. It's printing.

• 13:35Shaan Puri?

  Oh, physical printing.

• 13:36Sam Parr?

  Physical printing, printing stuff, of course, you would need a 24 hour delay, but physical printing stuff using a Chrome extension.

• 13:43Shaan Puri?

  What does that, oh, Chrome extension. Okay. I was like, what does that do with testing?

• 13:46Sam Parr?

  No, it's just like mindless stuff that you just set it and then you can come back in a few hours and your task is done. It's so interesting to me.

• 13:54Shaan Puri?

  I feel like for printing, maybe somebody's going to do like an Airbnb for printing, like in my neighborhood, I'm sure 40% of the houses have printers. And so if you, if you just created a network of people who have printers and don't, but are in very close proximity. And you said basically, yeah, like.

• 14:08Sam Parr?

  FedEx.

• 14:09Shaan Puri?

  I'll, I'll pay for this print job, but yeah, but it's without the FedEx, right? You don't need FedEx. You just have your neighbor who has a printer and they're like, okay, yeah, I'll take a buck for this.

• 14:17Sam Parr?

  Can we talk really quick about two things that, one, one thing that you've brought up a bunch that I found something that was great. So you have said that you love looking at internal emails of people describing stuff that was unknown at the time. But now it's like a huge deal and you like seeing like the early stuff.

• 14:36Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 14:37Sam Parr?

  So I had two things that happened. The first, there was, I don't know why, maybe it's for an anti-monopoly case. For some reason Zuckerberg and Kevin Systrom, is that his name?

• 14:46Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 14:47Sam Parr?

  The founder of Instagram, their messages were released. I have a feeling it was on Facebook Messenger. And you can read a five or 10-page transcript of them talking, saying like, hey, man, cool hanging out. Let's talk about buying your company. You know, like, I'm thinking 500 million. What do you think? And Kevin replied, like, you know, that's not really what I'm interested in. I was thinking more 2 billion. And then Mark saying like, look.

• 15:13Shaan Puri?

  I know. He goes, he goes, you can tell, because there's some gaps, right? Because they're like, let's meet in person. And then they come back online and then you get the transcript and that part was like, Zuck was like, look, I can't get to 2 billion. Like, you didn't know where the 2 billion came from, but he's like, look, you said 2 billion, you know, just being honest, we can't, we can't get to 2 billion. But, oh, blah, you know, so if that's your number, then we shouldn't continue. And then Kevin's like, no, no, you asked me what's my, you know, 2 billion was my yes, absolutely number. So that's my yes, absolutely number. But, you know, I'm willing to talk.

• 15:41Sam Parr?

  And then they say like, well, look, you want to meet up? Sure, let's meet up. And then one guy goes, uh, fine, let's do dinner.

• 15:47Shaan Puri?

  And Zuck goes, the dinner thing was so fucking funny, dude.

• 15:49Sam Parr?

  And Zuck goes, yeah, okay, let's do dinner. Then he replies, you know what? I've already eaten. Like, like he was going to cancel the meeting because he had already.

• 15:58Shaan Puri?

  He's like, you know, I already, and the other guy's like, I was like, yeah, you know, we probably shouldn't go to a restaurant and be like seen, you know, together talking about this and pal out there or whatever. Uh, so like your house, yeah, dinner, yeah, we can order. I already ate, actually. Okay, I'll eat before I come then. It's like, dude, like, did your mom pack your lunch? Why are you talking about?

• 16:16Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's like, dude, just shut up.

• 16:17Shaan Puri?

  Just shut up and show up. And if you, I just eat fucking again. It's a $2 billion deal. You don't need to like, be like, okay, do you have gluten-free options at your house? Or like, should I?

• 16:26Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it was so funny. And then he says, uh, oh, by the way, there's like, you see him texting along the way. He's like, sorry, stuck in traffic in San Mateo. Gonna be 15 minutes late. It's quite funny. And, uh, it's a good, but it's a good thing to read. Like, it was pretty funny because. In your head, you are like, oh, wow. Look, these billionaires are just like me. They're just messaging each other. Then you're like,

• 16:47Shaan Puri?

  They get stuck in traffic, too.

• 16:48Sam Parr?

  Yeah, they get stuck in traffic.

• 16:49Shaan Puri?

  Also, there was a large amount of like, nice threats embedded in there. So it would be like, you know, you guys have a great thing going. So first of all, any acquisition, it always starts with like, we should just work together more closely. Like, yeah, we should discuss like a partnership. And both sides kind of know what that means. He's like, you don't really want the partnership, but you can't just say, I want you to buy me, or I want to buy you. And so it often starts with that. So they're like, they're talking about it. They're like, yeah, you know, it'd be great to have you partner more deeply with, with OpenGraph, which is like Facebook's kind of newsfeed protocol. So he's like, you know, it'd be great to do like a deeper integration so that all the Instagram photos show up on Facebook. And then the Instagram founder's like, yeah, but like, you know, kind of don't know if I want all the Instagram photos just to get sucked into Facebook.

• 17:32Shaan Puri?

  Like, that kind of defeats the purpose of Instagram a little bit. And then Mark's like, no, no, no. Like, look, think about it this way. And he's like, you could do this, but like, we're also working on our own mobile photo, you know, app with filters. So like, we'll just have to figure that out. The guy's like, yeah, totally want to figure that out. But really what they're saying is like, Zuck's basically saying, I'm gonna fucking kill you with my app unless you do this. And the other guy's like, I don't want you to kill me, but I also don't want to like, give you the gun and let you shoot me. So they're just like going back and forth in this like pseudo, like, it'd be great to discuss what a tighter integration would be while really the Instagram guy is just like, I really hope Facebook doesn't crush us. And Zuck's basically like, we can totally crush you. You need to sell to us.

• 18:13Sam Parr?

  Meanwhile, Kevin Sis from the Instagram guy is having a conversation with a former Facebook executive, who's now an investor of Instagram.

• 18:22Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 18:22Sam Parr?

  And Kevin goes, Mark's gonna destroy us, is it D? I think it's Matt Koller. He was said something like, yeah, probably. Like, if he sets his eyes on it, he's gonna like, attack.

• 18:33Shaan Puri?

  And he's like, what do I say so he doesn't go into destroy mode?

• 18:36Sam Parr?

  That's what it was. Destroy mode.

• 18:39Sam Parr?

  That's what it was. So anyway.

• 18:40Shaan Puri?

  I loved reading this thing. It's on your Twitter if people want to find it.

• 18:43Sam Parr?

  It was really good. It was also good. I don't know what Kevin Systrom's background is. I don't know if he came. I mean, if I had a stereotype of him, I would imagine he already came from a somewhat comfortable, wealthy family just because he's like a tall, good-looking Stanford kid. Who knows? So maybe I have no idea of his background, but the fact is, is that he was working on this business for two years. They had a million in funding at first and then two or three or 16 million, like a mild amount at first, a substantial amount at second. But if he is in fact self-made, he wasn't definitely rich because it's not like that money was going to him. And after a year and a half, Zuck offered him 500 million and he had the nerve to say no. So that's pretty amazing.

• 19:20Shaan Puri?

  Kevin Systrom, his mom was an executive at Zipcar and also worked at Monster during the dot com boom. And then his dad was a vice president of human resources at TJX, which I think is, I think that's TJ Maxx.

• 19:36Shaan Puri?

  So definitely, definitely affluent, went to Stanford and then like jobs were basically like Google at Twitter, basically. And then went off.

• 19:44Sam Parr?

  So like at worst, upper middle class, more likely upper class background. So.

• 19:49Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, for sure. Upper class. Yeah.

• 19:50Sam Parr?

  He had money, but that's still.

• 19:52Shaan Puri?

  Who cares? Yeah.

• 19:53Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 19:53Shaan Puri?

  You're just saying, how do you react to, to a $500 million or a billion dollar offer?

• 19:57Sam Parr?

  Well, I think that you, some people will react to it differently if they're poor, right? Like if you're entirely self-made, you're like, look, like I'm, I was living paycheck to paycheck recently. I didn't have anything. You know, I really would love this security. That's one thing. It doesn't matter though. It's still ballsy that he said no to 500 million. And it, and it's a really cool story and you could read the memo and then I found there's this guy. You probably know how to say his name. Is it called Sriram?

• 20:22Shaan Puri?

  Sriram. Yeah. Sriram is his name. S R I A M, I think.

• 20:26Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So he has a website. It's called S R I R A M K dot com. You go there and you click memos and he has dozens of, of these style memos that he's collected and they're really good. So he's got memos from Steve Jobs explaining to early employees about this and that. He's got memos from the founding of Hulu, the founding of MTV of.

• 20:51Shaan Puri?

  I'm putting, I have a section like this I'm making on my website as well. I was working on it yesterday, which is called the museum. I think about what the last part is like, it's like the museum of badassery or museum of the internet or something like that, where I'm just putting these like, kind of like, things I found like, oh, the first pitch deck for this company or the first memo for PowerPoint or whatever, just putting them all there.

• 21:11Sam Parr?

  That's cool. So anyway, wanted to bring that up. It was pretty awesome. Not an idea, but pretty awesome.

• 21:16Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so I have two ideas and then I have, I want to talk to you about the tweet I did last week that had a little bit of controversy. So I want to do that.

• 21:24Sam Parr?

  That's what I was gonna ask you to bring up.

• 21:25Shaan Puri?

  Which one do you want to do first?

• 21:26Sam Parr?

  Let's do tweet so we can get it out the way.

• 21:29Shaan Puri?

  Okay, you want to give the context or should I?

• 21:31Sam Parr?

  I would like you to say what happened.

• 21:33Shaan Puri?

  So I don't remember when this was, maybe a few days ago, four days ago, something like that. I went on Twitter and I basically tweeted out a thread of just highlighting a bunch of Twitter accounts that are like my favorite Twitter accounts. And so I was basically saying, here's a bunch of Twitter accounts. If you follow these, you'll get smarter. I followed them for years and really enjoyed their thoughts. And I kind of broke it up into groups. I was like, okay, you know, here's a bunch of billionaires that just like, don't give a fuck. They say interesting things. Here's some people who buy businesses. Here's some real estate people. Here's some people who publish frameworks, et cetera, et cetera. And I published this list. I hit send. I'm just on my phone. This is like after my workout. I just tweeted this thing out, hit send, forget about it, go eat lunch. And then I look at my phone and my phone is blowing up and I'm like, oh, cool. People liked that thread I did.

• 22:18Shaan Puri?

  And it was true, like definitely people liked that thread, but like, I think it had like, I don't know, a few thousand, I had 5,000 likes or something like that. So it definitely did well. But then I saw a whole bunch of people who were really angry in the thread also. I was like, what are people angry about? And basically there's a whole bunch of people who were like, oh my God, you just published a list of 27 people that are like, you know, must follows and not one of them was a woman. And then people just started getting really pissed. They were just like, oh my God, this is what's wrong with tech. This is what's wrong with, you know, the world. This is what's wrong with Sean. This is, this is just what's wrong is you could publish a list of 27 Twitter accounts and not a single one was a woman. And so I wanted to get your reaction when you saw it and then I'll tell you kind of like, I don't know where I'm at now. Let's start with this.

• 23:04Shaan Puri?

  Big deal, little deal, no deal.

• 23:06Sam Parr?

  Little deal.

• 23:07Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 23:07Sam Parr?

  Little borderline no deal. So like, I think that it all is about intentions.

• 23:15Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 23:16Sam Parr?

  Your intentions were not bad at all. You shouldn't.

• 23:19Shaan Puri?

  Which, which nobody would know, right? Nobody knows anyone's intentions. I know, you know, because you know me, but.

• 23:23Sam Parr?

  Yes, your intentions were wonderful. Your intentions were actually the opposite of bad. They were good. You were trying to help people.

• 23:29Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 23:30Sam Parr?

  Now, I, I do like, want to promote diversity and different backgrounds and different ways of thinking and things like that. But you are just saying who your favorite bands are. Or who your favorite authors are. In the same way that behind me, you, the readers, listeners can't see this, I have eight people on my wall who, who inspire me. Most of them are like athletes or like boxers and like a rapper.

• 23:53Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 23:54Sam Parr?

  And.

• 23:55Shaan Puri?

  All men?

• 23:56Sam Parr?

  All men. Actually, all.

• 23:58Shaan Puri?

  No, no white man?

• 24:00Sam Parr?

  All black men.

• 24:02Sam Parr?

  And so I think that when it comes to naming your heroes or your tastes, I don't, I think that it's unfair to say that you should have or shouldn't have a certain type of person.

• 24:12Shaan Puri?

  Right. So that's what I thought too. So I'll tell you what I went through. So first was, I was like, oh, this is interesting. Like first, A, I didn't realize, like, you know, I didn't even think about, it's not like when I was writing it, I was like, let's make sure this list is diverse. That's not a thing I think about personally. Uh, some people will say, that's the problem. You do need to be thinking about that. I personally disagree. I don't want to be thinking about, when I'm thinking about my favorite things or things that I think are really great. I don't want to be thinking about things that are really great that hit a certain quota of diversity. That's not like personally what I want to do. And I'm okay with people thinking that that's fucked up. What I'm not okay with them thinking is that, that's fucked up and the only answer is that it's fucked up. I think we could disagree on that if people think that I should be thinking about diversity with that.

• 24:55Sam Parr?

  But there is one, there's one big caveat here. And I think, and this sounds so lame for me to say, I think you and I have just crossed the threshold of regular person to having a little bit of influence. Not that we're certainly not even close to famous, but we do have some type of audience and some crazy enough people look to us for some type of feedback and advice. And I agree with not having quotas. I agree with all that. And for a long time, my opinion has slightly changed. Like, well, if I have a voice, I should like, I should get what interests me. And I don't think being a bro brand is bad. Like, being a bro brand is not bad. Being a chick brand, or whatever the opposite of a bro brand, is not bad either, right? Like, there's like Cosmo Palatine Magazine, and then there's Max and Magazine,

• 25:38Sam Parr?

  whatever. Both are great and serve a purpose. I don't want to be a male brand. I want to be anyone who's doing cool stuff brand. And so I do think it is up to us to have different types of people, promote different types of people.

• 25:50Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 25:50Sam Parr?

  But when you're listing out your preferences, I think that's nonsense.

• 25:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, so that's so I basically tried to respond because at first I was like, oh, who cares? Some people are upset. It's the internet. Nobody cares. But then I was like, this was probably the first time that I, because I don't, it's not like I'm out there trying to be controversial all the time to get a bunch of attention. So I was accidentally controversial in this case. So I started getting a whole bunch of mentions, people DMing me, emailing me. And I was just like, what is all this? And so I was kind of like fucking up my day. So I'm trying to go about my day. It was like right before New Year's or whatever, spending family time. And I couldn't help but check. I wanted to see what was going. It was like a fight. I couldn't stop like turning my neck. I wanted to see, oh, someone's saying some shit about me. Then these other people are coming and defending me. And I wanted to see the fight. And I couldn't look away. And the thing that was

• 26:35Shaan Puri?

  bothering me was, fuck, I feel like my mind should be stronger than this impulse to just keep fucking checking this thing. And so I just felt so weak because I was like, oh, I'm just like all these other people who just care what everybody else thinks about them. And so that really bothered me. And I couldn't look away. But it was my first thing. I was like, okay, I think I will get hardened to this. But man, I'm not there. I would have thought I'm there already. I'm not there yet. The second thing was, I was like, all right, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong, right? If I screw up, I'll just be like, okay, I screwed up. I should have done this. And I was like, well, I think it's fair for people to be upset about it. I also think it's fair for me to not feel the need to hit diversity quotas when I'm listing my favorite stuff.

• 27:17Shaan Puri?

  I gave the same analogy. I was basically like, if I say my favorite authors or musicians or athletes or whatever, I should not have to be like, oh, my favorite basketball players. Here's five from the NBA, five from the WNBA, five from the Chinese Basketball League. Like, that's crazy to me. And I even tweeted this out. I was like, you know, all my favorite basketball players are black men. Don't cancel me. Uh, because, you know, I just felt like someone's taste, their personal taste should not have to do that. Now, I think other people totally think, other people would totally disagree. And so I wanted to get a sense check of like, am I, am I just being hard headed about nothing? What, Bray, I'm curious what you thought about this too.

• 27:52Sam Parr?

  Let me say one thing real quick, which is no, I don't think you're being, I don't think you're wrong. But we do have to be, we do have to recognize that there is some bit of influence that we've created. And having different voices is important. And I'm not necessarily saying by gender or by color. I'm just saying like, having open minds is actually important. And I do actually think we owe to a lot of people and we could serve as a good example. But Bray, you go ahead.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  No, that's basically what I was gonna say, Sam. Like, yeah, I think it is important to kind of be inclusive. But at the same time, it's like, I read that list. I didn't like think twice that they were all men. I mean, maybe that's part of my ignorance, but you should like who you like. So.

• 28:32Shaan Puri?

  So then I'll tell you the, okay, Evil Sean. So Evil Sean is reading these comments and.

• 28:37Sam Parr?

  That's not Evil Sean. It's someone's being mean to me. I want to fight back.

• 28:40Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. So I was like, oh, excellent. Time to clap back. And luckily Ben was basically, Ben has access to my Twitter as well. And so he was like, he's like, don't fight back. Like, hey, you're not going to change anyone's mind about anything. So you know that, first of all, like, you're too smart to think that you're gonna change these people's mind. In the same way that they're not probably gonna change your mind about what you believe. And, you know, the, the second thing is you have a lot more to lose than you have to gain. And, uh, like just coming back at people and like calling them out. So for example, uh, somebody was like, here's a better list. And then they listed a list like full of women. And then like, there was no, there was no black person on the list. It was like, dude, uh, what a hypocrite.

• 29:22Shaan Puri?

  Like, you are trying to come in here and be a white knight and be like, oh, here's a real list. And then you only include white people. And so I thought that was funny, but I had to restrain myself from like commenting on it. Cause I was like, I agree. There is no, there's nothing to benefit. I do have more to lose than I have to gain through any of this stuff. And it made me really just be like, you know what? Kind of like fuck social media and fuck the like fear people have like. So I would say I thought it was stupid. I were like, not stupid, but like, it was kind of like, oh, what a shame. Like I can't say back what I really think because you know, in trouble, I might get canceled basically. And I was like, what does that do in the end? All it does is make people fake being a certain way.

• 30:06Shaan Puri?

  And then really think what they think on the inside and like in private channels, share that stuff, but not in the public forum. And so the like, the whole cancel culture thing, I don't think it actually helps because people get afraid of being canceled. So they just hide their thoughts from the public forum and they just keep it in private and they hold resentment. That's how I felt. And so, I don't know. That was kind of my reaction to the whole thing.

• 30:24Sam Parr?

  It's a tough situation. I had something not nearly as controversial happen, but this weekend I, um, one of my biggest pet peeves is people who collect domain names and never start anything.

• 30:34Shaan Puri?

  I saw this. Yeah. So you tweeted out something like, don't collect domain, don't go buy your domain, like go get customers. So it's kind of like your point. It's like, don't sit there and try to get the right domain.

• 30:43Sam Parr?

  And the point was like, look, if you know you're going to execute and you know, you're going to do something and you have a history of executing. Yeah. Go beat your domain name, make a pretty site, do this, do that. But a lot of people are in the habit of collecting.

• 30:54Shaan Puri?

  And what you meant was, what you meant was like going and paying to get a certain name. Is that what you meant? Or like, it's like, obviously going to go daddy for five seconds and just hitting buy for a $9 domain. Like no harm done. It wasn't actually about getting a domain. It was about getting the right domain, right?

• 31:08Sam Parr?

  It was 100% about not getting like, who cares if you don't get the right domain name? And also like, who cares if you don't even have a domain name? Just use like Gumroad, use WordPress. You could use these free ones, get like a little bit of traction, talk to some customers and then like go make that domain name. And in fact, domain names aren't even that important early on. I mean, you can like go and get customers without a website. But like, just get a little bit of traction to shows, the shows that you're actually going to follow through versus all the other people who go and get an LLC, get business cards, get a logo, get a domain before they're, they even have started and they end up doing that. Literally 50 times in one year.

• 31:43Shaan Puri?

  I call that playing business. It's like when you're a little kid and it's like, oh, let's play house. It's like, oh, welcome, you know, to the fake tea party. It's playing business when you, when you do everything except for the key part, which is get customers and like make a product and get it to customers. It's like, I got my domain, I got my business cards, I got my swag. So you're just playing house.

• 32:00Sam Parr?

  Right. I had hundreds of people in the domain industry tweet at me being so angry. One domain blog, like domain king.com, wrote an article about it. And they're like, if you want to see some of the most nonsense advice of the day, check out Sam Parr's advice to people. It was crazy how angry these people got. And I did the same thing where I was trying not to be a smart ass and reply, but it slipped a little.

• 32:25Shaan Puri?

  What's ironic is I tweeted out, hey, here's the people I follow on Twitter that like make me want to open the Twitter app and like check it 10 times a day because there's a bunch of smart people saying interesting things. That was like the intent of my tweet. Ironically, then every moment I opened Twitter, I saw the exact opposite. I saw the thing I hate about Twitter, which is the mass easily offended crew just running around trying to like police the fucking internet. This is the opposite. These are the people to me not to follow compared to these people I said, say interesting things. The least interesting thing you could do is going around trying to police the internet.

• 32:59Sam Parr?

  Is your wife on Twitter?

• 33:00Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 33:01Sam Parr?

  Sarah's trying, is getting into Twitter now and she's trying to get a little bit of a following and figure out who to follow. And she was like, there are no women on here. It is all dudes. I mean, we're in like the tech scene. So she was like, it's all tech guys. There's no tech women. And so if you're a woman listening to this, I definitely think there's opportunity there. There, she's totally right. It is all a bunch of dudes. It's pretty crazy. I mean, I don't know if it's all, it's definitely not all of Twitter. I think it's just our little, I have no idea though, of our little tech world, what percentage of that is of Twitter? Obviously, it feels like it's like 80 or 90% to you and me. I have no idea what the reality is. Maybe it's mainstream, but it is a lot of dudes.

• 33:40Shaan Puri?

  There's definitely a lot more dudes in, that are prominent on Twitter. And so. So the other thing that's actually like, it's funny, it's not funny, but it's funny at the same time. In my kind of like, uh, my follow up, I won't call it an apology because I didn't apologize. But I was basically saying like, hey, here's how I think about it. Like, oh, interesting. Here's the reaction. Okay, here's my thoughts. And like, here's my honest thoughts. So I was like, look, there are a bunch of, uh, you know, like people who are female on Twitter that like, I like to follow that I think are really interesting to say interesting stuff. And I, I mentioned a few of them. Steph Smith, who works at, at the hustle. And I mentioned this girl who's at Julie four and this person, this, uh, this one at post underscore market. I just casually mentioned a few. I was like, yeah, there's a bunch of interesting people. I just, I don't know. Like when I was tweeting,

• 34:23Shaan Puri?

  it didn't come to mind as that. And also, I mostly shouted out people that I've been following for years. I've been on Twitter for like, eight years. And so some of these people are like, you know, they don't know me, but they're like a mentor, right? Because I've been following your, if I've been following your thoughts for seven years.

• 34:37Sam Parr?

  Right. You feel like you know them.

• 34:38Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, like you've really genuinely helped me. And that's why I'm just giving some kudos back and saying, hey, you might help some other people if they follow. I wasn't saying here's the best people on Twitter to follow. Like here are, here are the, here is the definitive list of 30, like, you know, top people. I was just saying who I liked, uh, who had helped me. And so then ironically, somebody was like, by the way, you know, post market is not a woman. I was like, what? It's like the picture's a woman. It's like, yeah, it's like a student, like a synonymous account. So fuck. I was like, okay, good thing that, you know, like, didn't know that either.

• 35:08Sam Parr?

  Whatever. It's all about.

• 35:09Shaan Puri?

  I'm not judging it. I don't think about it that way. Like, I don't think about it in men and women. And like, how many Muslims did I tweet out? And how many like Christian people did I tweet? I don't think about it that way. This is not how my brain works. It's just, who's interesting consistently.

• 35:22Sam Parr?

  It's all about intentions. And now you have 44,000 people. Like, I feel like just last week, it was like 20,000.

• 35:27Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, dude, I added 20,000 followers this month, which is crazy. And in fact, this tweet storm is insane. So multiple people on this, six or seven people who are, who I tweeted out, they, they were like, what the fuck is going on? So I have people who had 300 followers before this that now have 10,000. So the average person that I tweeted out on this added nine, eight or 9,000 followers just from this thread in the, the following 24 hours.

• 35:51Sam Parr?

  How? Oh my god.

• 35:52Shaan Puri?

  I added, I got 4,000 new followers. I got 4,000 new followers. The average person from this got 8,000 or 9,000.

• 35:59Sam Parr?

  What was the reach? How many people did it reach?

• 36:01Shaan Puri?

  I don't know. And I also don't like believe any of these reach numbers that Twitter. Twitter will be like, oh, half a million people saw this. It's like, oh, what does that mean?

• 36:07Sam Parr?

  What do you mean? What does that mean? It's not that hard to understand what that means.

• 36:10Shaan Puri?

  It's just like, okay, that's a huge number. Like, what? So what? Like, is that, does it matter? Like, this has 900,000 impressions.

• 36:16Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that I believe that. What do you mean? What do you don't? What do you understand? It's just a list of people. It's just a list of people who.

• 36:21Shaan Puri?

  But it's like, you're just scrolling on the timeline. Who cares? You know what I mean? Like, so total engagement, 622,000 engagements, 591 detail expands, 591,000 detail expands. So over about 600,000 people clicked into the tweet, I guess, which is pretty crazy.

• 36:36Sam Parr?

  Yeah, do more of that.

• 36:39Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's insane. Like, you know, Nikita Beer, he's one of the people I put in like the memes category because he just tweets out funny stuff all the time. He was like, dude, you need to start an agency. He's like, I started this morning at like 16,000 followers. I have 25,000 followers like in one day.

• 36:53Sam Parr?

  What? Yeah. Well, good job.

• 36:56Speaker 02

  Sean like tagged me there. All he said was like, Aubrey, check this out or something. I gained like 20 followers from that.

• 37:03Shaan Puri?

  I am officially an influencer now, and I officially need to have diversity. Because of my power comes great responsibility is what I'm what I'm hearing.

• 37:11Sam Parr?

  Aubrey, is this good? Are the listeners gonna like this nonsense or not?

• 37:15Speaker 02

  Who knows? But I like it. I like.

• 37:16Sam Parr?

  All right, then if you like.

• 37:17Speaker 02

  I need to expand like a new group every week. We got Big Domain, we got Twitter.

• 37:23Shaan Puri?

  Oh, yeah, that was my other point, which is like, hey, controversy definitely works. It wasn't my intention, but shit, that that shit worked. This thing blew up. Nice. Did you see the hilarious email from the king at the end? Can I read this?

• 37:35Sam Parr?

  Oh, my gosh. I don't even want to laugh at that person. I feel bad. They're clearly insane.

• 37:40Shaan Puri?

  Someone DMs me and they're basically just like, bro, no women. I was like, oh, yeah, like, sorry. Uh, you know, he was just tweeting out a list of accounts I liked. I didn't even think about it, but that's it. They're they're like, and then they started going one by one through the people on the list. And they're like. Keith's not even interesting. His tweets, I just went back through his timeline. It's not even interesting. So I, I think less of you now because of that. I was like, okay. They're like, and plus he's, his dad was rich. So he basically got it all handed to him. I was like, all right, that's not relevant. Nor is that like true really. So, okay. And he's like, just kept going, just tweeting about me, just DMing me about each person on the list. I was like, dude. I go, dude, if you don't like the list, just ignore it. No need to waste my time critiquing everything on the list. He goes, then block me. Yeah, I'm just challenging you to think of the other side. If I'm wasting your time, why do you keep engaging?

• 38:24Shaan Puri?

  And I was like, dude, I was trying to be polite and not block you because you've DM me before. But like, all right, fine. See ya. And then he emails us. I block him and then he emails me, biggest mistake ever. Subject line. And then you just fucked up blocking me right now. Say goodbye to owning five to 10% of a deck of corn, which is I guess what his company is going to be a $10 billion company. He goes, I'm going to continue to email you updates. So you know, you made the biggest mistake of your life. Imagine being the investor who blocked a future king. That's what you did. He just went on and on. And I was like, what is going on? And I got a bunch of these like, kind of like, I got a handful of these messages.

• 39:00Sam Parr?

  That's just insane.

• 39:01Shaan Puri?

  And then he ends it, by the way, with best regards. And then, you know, he followed up a day later. It was like, I was out of line. I shouldn't have done that. You, you don't have to unblock me, but just, you know, whatever. And I was like, dude, just stop contacting me. Like, I'm not interested in any of this, aside from the humor of the thing you emailed me about being the future king. You called yourself the future king. You're going to get made fun of now. You are not off limits because you called yourself the future king.

• 39:25Sam Parr?

  We'll have to have him on the podcast. Well, if you're listening, send Sean an update in a few months. Maybe, uh, we should cover one idea.

• 39:32Shaan Puri?

  All right. I have two. Can I just do them real, real quick? All right. So Cameo is an interesting company. We've talked about. And Cameo's premise is basically like, you know, the insight that, that the guy had, forgot his name. I didn't kind of know the guy came on the podcast, but, Stephen, I think is his name. Stephen Glenis. So.

• 39:50Sam Parr?

  The Cameo founder came on here?

• 39:52Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he was on the pod, like at the beginning, when I was doing interviews.

• 39:54Sam Parr?

  Oh.

• 39:55Shaan Puri?

  And, um, He went to Duke and stuff like that with when I was there too. So

• 39:59Sam Parr?

  I heard that's a billion dollar company, by the way.

• 40:01Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think it is valued around there.

• 40:03Sam Parr?

  With only like 50 engineers.

• 40:05Shaan Puri?

  So, so he, he, he told me on the thing, he goes, well, what I realized was that now when people see a celebrity, they go up to them, they don't ask for an autograph, they ask for a selfie. He goes selfie is the new autograph. So that was kind of like one of the core insights of, well, what if you could just pay somebody to send you a little selfie video, a personalized shout out, that's like worth, you know, that's like a super autograph, basically. That's what Cameo is. So Cameo takes off, Cameo's successful, blah, blah, blah, you know?

• 40:29Sam Parr?

  And you tried to do a cameo where you got Sean Paul to speak at your mastermind group?

• 40:33Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So I do this e-commerce meetup for anybody who's going from a hundred thousand dollars a month to a million dollars a month, you're scaling up. It's called Club LTV and I made it like a club and I got Sean Paul to do the, uh, he's like, I told him, I go, cause he starts everything off where he's like, I don't even know what he says. It's like that sort of Mr. Steal Your Girl intro where he's just like, Sean Paul coming to you live from Club LTV. He's like, you know, where you only go up with it. He's just like doing his like thing. So I got, I got him to make a cameo. I love cameo. Anyways, one of the other things people like to do with celebrities that I noticed is meet and greets. So at TwitchCon, TwitchCon is like the annual conference for Twitch. The star streamers, kind of like the big famous streamers, they're all there in person at this event.

• 41:18Shaan Puri?

  And they each have like a meet and greet session that'll go for like, let's say an hour. So it'll be like a bunch of tables and there's just lines and lines of tables set up and the streamer's sitting at the table. And then there's people waiting like three hours in line just to go up and be like, hi. And the guy's like, hey, and then they like, kind of like, you know, shake hands or they give a high five and then they like, take a photo together and then they're like, oh my God, I'm your biggest fan. And they're like, oh, thanks so much. Like, oh, I love the way you do this. He's like, thank you. All right, next. Like the next person goes up. And so I remember seeing that at TwitchCon and being like, this is wild. These people have hours and hours of lines all day. They could just literally sit here all day and like each person gets their one minute. And they love it. They're like, it's worth standing in line for two hours to get that one minute with your favorite person. So I thought.

• 42:02Shaan Puri?

  Could you do this digitally? Now, I don't think this is a great business, but I do think this is kind of a viral product. Like our friend Greg Eisenberg, who has that little studio Late Checkout, I think he should do this as a fun, simple viral product, like he did with the youneedahaircut.com or whatever it was, where it was like, you know, a virtual haircut over Zoom during quarantine. So the idea is you create an event, like let's say you get 15 TikTokers to say, "Hey, we're doing a virtual meet and greet on this day. Tickets are $10." And then what happens is on the day, the website goes live, you just see everyone's face. You just click to get in line for the person you want to meet. And all it is, is like a Zoom room. That's just two squares. One is the celebrity and the other one's you. And you're just in line and then you get one minute and you're on camera with them.

• 42:47Shaan Puri?

  And you have your minute, you can say whatever the hell you want. They can talk to you. It takes like a screenshot selfie of you guys. You have kind of the memory that you can go share somewhere. And then when the minute ends, it moves and the next person in line comes on. And the celebrity would like, if the celebrity was selling these for $10 or $15 or whatever it is, the tickets for the meet and greet, let's just say it was per person in this case, they could do in one hour, you know, they might do-

• 43:10Sam Parr?

  Well, if it's only a minute, 60, but let's just round down and say 45.

• 43:14Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, let's say they're doing 45 in an hour and they're basically making $500 to $1,000 an hour, I think, depending on what you price it at, which is like not bad for, you know, what I'll call like, "You're Instagram famous, but you're not real world famous," which is kind of where Cameo's sweet spot is too. They have mostly like people who used to be famous, like reality TV stars-

• 43:34Sam Parr?

  Kevin from The Office.

• 43:35Shaan Puri?

  Kevin from The Office, who made a million dollars this year doing cameos. And so for Kevin from The Office, if he was able to make like $800 an hour, $900 an hour, and all he has to do is just sit there, just fans come up and say hi. You know, this is a thing that people do, like authors do this when they go on book tours. This is a thing that hasn't really translated into digital yet. And so I just think it would be a funny, simple idea. And I think everybody would share their moment with their celebrity on their Instagram and their Snap. And so I think you'd get a ton of viral growth just through people sharing their, kind of like their selfie with the celebrity on their own social media.

• 44:08Sam Parr?

  This is kind of like a startup bro-y thing for me to say, but like it is fascinating how you and the Cameo guy, like you're, this framework here is of just like looking at things that you forget. Don't have to happen that way. And you're like, well, what if I just do this on my phone? I mean, that sounds like there's like this meme of this like guy who's high, who's like, what's that meme? You know, the guy who's high like, oh, my God, like if you're wet or if you're a fish, the wet means you're in the air.

• 44:33Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 44:33Sam Parr?

  Like, like, you know, the guy who's high and has these like.

• 44:36Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's what these ideas are. It's like, what if it was that was like digital?

• 44:40Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 44:40Shaan Puri?

  What if that was an app?

• 44:41Sam Parr?

  That's why I'm like, I sound like a pothead, like, can God eat a burrito so hot even he can't eat it?

• 44:46Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 44:47Sam Parr?

  So like, I feel like that right now.

• 44:49Shaan Puri?

  I do think there's just a lot of room to grow with, like, basically giving people, if you make it lightweight enough, like, for example, let's say, let's take even the autograph use case. Could you basically just submit a photo? And then like the person literally just signs it with their finger on their phone. Like this is send it back to you for like $20?

• 45:07Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that'd be your, your cell phone wallpaper, which is like, you know, like, Mr. Do you a girl? Have fun, Sean, Sean Paul. I don't even know these people are.

• 45:13Shaan Puri?

  I just feel like there's a lot of, um, there's a lot of room in the, the business model of acknowledge me senpai. Like, I just feel like people want their kind of like famous people. It's a great gag. It's a great gift. And it's great for any super fan to be able to like, reach these people. And if you could do it with less friction, faster, and just for a small payment through your phone, I just think that there's more than, I think, I don't think cameo is the end. I think there's more.

• 45:38Sam Parr?

  I dig it. I'm into it. I don't know if this would work, but I think it's a really easy and cool thing to try. So if you're looking for an idea in a sexy space, which I don't particularly want to work in a sexy space, but if you are, this seems like an interesting thing to give it a shot.

• 45:52Shaan Puri?

  The big problem here is, of course, just like begging celebrities to do something. I hate that. It's like the worst. I've done it so many times. Like, oh, I just get, if I just get influencers to use my thing, it just sucks to try to get influencers to do anything.

• 46:05Sam Parr?

  Why?

• 46:05Shaan Puri?

  Uh, you just, it's just like degrading. It does like basically you, it's so hard to get to them. And then when you get to them, they're like so fickle with their attention. They're just on their phone. And you're like, hey, will you just fucking listen for like a second? I'm giving you the easiest way to make more money. And they're just like, yeah, but like, whatever. And like, then they do it. And then they like, don't follow through. It's just, it's in, you're in a very weak position whenever you're trying to get celebrities to like, use your thing. That's kind of the, the core thing. All right. I want to do a quick idea or a quick kind of cool company that I think is, there's probably more companies like this. So I saw this tool called ucalc.pro. So it's the letter u calc.pro. And all this website does, all this app does is. It lets you embed a calculator on your website.

• 46:48Shaan Puri?

  So calculators are kind of like amazing little things for SEO. So like your boys at NerdWallet use a bunch of calculators like, oh, what's my mortgage payment if I buy this house? Can I afford this house? Or like, you know, how much will I make if I put this much into my retirement account for 20 years? It's just like a compound interest calculator.

• 47:04Sam Parr?

  It's a clean little website?

• 47:06Shaan Puri?

  Clean website. And all this does is just makes it really easy to be like, yo, what is, what is the calculator you want? And so you don't have to have a developer do this. I love this simple idea. I want to buy this company because I think it's a great little tool. Probably makes awesome cash flow, super high margin. People just embed it on their website. They probably don't take it off and they keep paying you the monthly fee of $9 or whatever it is. And so I think it's a great tool if you want to add a calculator to your website, which I do. And so I want to share it for others who want to add calculators to their website as a way to engage your users and a way to like get SEO traffic. And then the other thing is I just think it's a great example of a simple, useful business that is awesome as a bootstrapped little company.

• 47:45Sam Parr?

  It started by a...

• 47:47Shaan Puri?

  It's like a Russian guy. I can't find the guy. He's like nowhere to be found on the internet.

• 47:51Sam Parr?

  I just looked him up. Oh, that's cool.

• 47:53Shaan Puri?

  So if you're listening to this UCALG guy, I want to buy UCALG from you.

• 47:57Sam Parr?

  There's people talking about him on Hacker News.

• 47:59Shaan Puri?

  Interesting. Recently or old?

• 48:01Sam Parr?

  2007, one year ago.

• 48:03Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 48:03Sam Parr?

  Pretty cool.

• 48:04Shaan Puri?

  Is this like a nifty little thing?

• 48:06Sam Parr?

  Yeah, imagine owning about 100 of them.

• 48:09Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, and so that's what I would try to do is try to like, I'd get one and it's like, cool. This thing is profitable, just cash flows every month. This is a class of idea of like simple widgets that you add to websites or simple widgets for, for websites that, you know, you don't want to have to pay a developer to build something custom for you. You should just be able to customize this out of the box. Survey tools are like this.

• 48:28Sam Parr?

  Check this out. There's this guy named Said, how do you spell his last name? Said Balkh, how do you, B A L K H I.

• 48:38Sam Parr?

  Said Balkai. Sorry Said.

• 48:40Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 48:41Sam Parr?

  Anyway, he has a business. So he originally started WPBeginner.com, which is a blog all on WordPress. And it gets like five or 10 million uniques a month. Like it gets a lot because a lot of people are searching for WordPress stuff and he like teaches you how to do everything. Free site, whatever, probably makes 10 million plus a year. He saw which of his plugins were getting the most article views. And then he was like, well, I'm just going to go and buy a plugin like that and promote it here. And so he owns this thing called OptinMonster, which is basically like really cool pop-ups. He owns WPBeginner. He owns Monster Insights, which is like Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. And then he owns WPForms, which I have a feeling I think is the largest one, which is just a form builder for WordPress.

• 49:24Sam Parr?

  He owns WPMailSMTP. That's something technical. I don't know what it means. Then he owns, it looks like, wow, Raffle Plus, which is a, oh my gosh.

• 49:35Shaan Puri?

  So I love this model. So basically, super popular blog, looks at which tools people want, goes and buys the tool because he knows I can funnel a fuck ton of traffic to this. And then owns those tools in each of the categories of like, ah, a lot of WordPress sites need a form. A lot of WordPress sites want to capture emails. So they do, they need OptinMonster. How much do you think this guy's making? This guy's got to be, this guy's got to be really profitable.

• 49:57Sam Parr?

  I heard from a few people, I have no idea if this is true. So it looks like he owns maybe eight. He probably owns outright eight plugins. And then I heard that he owns like a 40 or 30% stake in like 50 more. I heard it's in the 30 to 40 million dollar recurring revenue range. Which is pretty cool and it's probably very profitable. On his personal blog, like Said and then hislastname.com, he talks about buying property. So he owns a bunch of gas stations, which is funny. Our, I think this guy's, I think he's Pakistani. Our Pakistani friends, Sean, also buy, our Pakistani internet friends also buy a ton of gas stations.

• 50:35Shaan Puri?

  This guy is just like ultimate little brown guy. This is a great brown guy businessman. I'm proud of him. He's done a fantastic job.

• 50:43Sam Parr?

  So, and he talks about buying gas stations. And then he talked about buying a bank, like literally the building. He bought like a Chase building and then leased it to Bank of America or something like that. And he was like, I don't like debt, so I just bought it in cash. So the best way, I think, one of the easiest ways to look at how much money someone has is by looking at how big their home is or how big their real estate holdings are. And so it makes enough money to, to have like dozens of properties that he pays for in cash.

• 51:10Shaan Puri?

  Amazing. Uh, okay. Shout out to this guy, Said. I like him.

• 51:13Sam Parr?

  We should have him on. I know that he's quite cagey though. I don't know him personally. I've only shook his hand or, and said, what's up? A couple of times. We have a bunch of mutual friends. One of our good buddies, uh, bought a business from him. Pretty interesting guy. We'll have to have this guy on. I think he's pretty cagey, but maybe we can get something out of him.

• 51:29Shaan Puri?

  I like it. Uh, did you have any, uh, ideas or anything you wanted to do?

• 51:32Sam Parr?

  None that I wanted to discuss now, cause I don't like going too much overtime. I like keeping them, I like keeping them short.

• 51:39Shaan Puri?

  Okay, cool. Yeah. All right. I gotta go.