#184 - Making Millions Improving Mobility, How to Beat Linkedin & Why You're Early Even When You're Late

Canva is awesome, so why hasn't anyone pulled off Canva for video? Shaan (@ShaanVP) and Sam (@TheSamParr) dive into the opportunities in this space and how a huge company can be built by making it easier to create videos. The guys then talk mobility. This is a huge market opportunity with companies like GOWOD and The Ready State making millions helping people improve their mobility. Next, the guys brainstorm on creating a better Linkedin and a few companies doing it. --------- * Want to be featured in a future episode? Drop your question/comment/criticism/love here: https://www.mfmpod.com/p/hotline/ * Support the pod by spreading the word, become a referrer here: https://refer.fm/million * Have you joined our private Facebook group yet? Go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion and join thousands of other entrepreneurs and founders scheming up ideas. --------- Show notes: * (11:42) Canva for video explained * (24:25) Why we need super joints * (39:37) The local Linkedin? * (45:08) How to build a better Linkedin * (1:00:03) Even when you're late, you're early

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

• 0:00Sam Parr?

  With this guy Ben from Knees Over Toes, I bet you he's doing 10 million a year in sales and he doesn't even have his own app.

• 0:19Sam Parr?

  Let me give you some updates real quick. Podcast numbers. Some people-

• 0:23Shaan Puri?

  Can I tease, can I tease some ideas? Because I think people might be like, oh, why do you guys keep telling us about the podcast and get to the ideas? So let me tease the ideas and then you say your thing. All right, I have, I have four good ideas today. One, I'll just say the names of them. How to beat LinkedIn, Superjoints, you're gonna like that one, or you're gonna hate it. That's another topic. Canva for video. All right, so those are three that I'm gonna throw at you that we're gonna talk about after this. You might have some other ones. Okay, now go back to the podcast update.

• 0:51Sam Parr?

  Just really quick, I'll make it quick. All right, last month, we are at, uh, last month-

• 0:57Shaan Puri?

  560, right?

• 0:58Sam Parr?

  Last month, no, last month, we were at 430. This month, we were supposed to be at 550. I think we might get 600, just so you know.

• 1:06Shaan Puri?

  That's right.

• 1:06Sam Parr?

  So I think that's gonna happen. So 600,000 listens a month. Some more update stuff. Tomorrow, I'm recording with Andrew Wilkinson. I'm doing another one of his things. His things are always the most popular, so I'm gonna do another one of those. Originally, I signed up to do this because you just had your baby and I wanted to record more and you couldn't do it. So we're gonna continue doing that. Tonight, I'm flying to New York. I had this guy reach out to me, some, just like, a guy named Loeb. He started, what's his first name? I don't even know his first name. Michael Loeb. He started Priceline and he invited me and he like somehow listened to the podcast or something like that.

• 1:45Shaan Puri?

  He's the one with the Billions House.

• 1:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So I'm gonna fly to his house tonight and I'm gonna interview Andrew from New York tomorrow. But June 3, Sean and I and a bunch of people on my team are gonna be in Austin. We're doing a live event. I think it was sold out like right away, but we're gonna see what we can do. And then the next-

• 2:07Shaan Puri?

  We should do, we should do something else, because it sold out so quick. If there are more people who want to do it, we should- I don't know, let's capture their info somehow and let's just do like, I don't know, a hangout. We'll just, I don't know, let's go to a park, let's go wherever. I know we may not have a venue, but let's meet and greet some people who want to hang out or something. I don't know, let's do something. Let's go to a bar. Who cares?

• 2:29Sam Parr?

  And then the next day, we're going to do Miami. So we got

• 2:32Shaan Puri?

  June 3rd, Austin, June 4th, Miami. If people want to attend, Austin is already sold out, but there's an Eventbrite for it. Miami, we're putting up the Eventbrite.

• 2:43Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and that one can seat 150 people. So that'd be cool if we sell it out, but maybe we won't. Who knows? So it should have plenty of room. Last thing, we've got some cool

• 2:53Shaan Puri?

  By the way, on the pod, we shouted out, we said Mayor Suarez to the mayor of Miami. We said, if you're listening to this, we need a venue, we need blah blah. He replied on Twitter, he goes, I got you, let's talk. And then somebody else came through and was just like, here's the venue. I don't know if we want to shout out their name. Somebody hooked us up with a sweet

• 3:11Sam Parr?

  No, we'll hook them up. We'll shout them out next time because I've asked them exactly what they want us to shout out.

• 3:16Shaan Puri?

  Gotcha.

• 3:16Sam Parr?

  So I've already asked them. Last things. All right, we got a couple of guests coming up. The first one, Mark Lor. So Mark Lor started Jet.com, which he sold for billions, I think.

• 3:28Shaan Puri?

  Three billion, I think.

• 3:29Sam Parr?

  So that guy's cool.

• 3:31Shaan Puri?

  And he started something before that. I think, what was it, diapers.com?

• 3:34Sam Parr?

  Yep. And he just bought, he just bought the Timberwolves NBA basketball, NBA. Dude, I'm such a dork. I don't even know.

• 3:41Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, with A-Rod. A-Rod bought the Timberwolves.

• 3:44Sam Parr?

  And then we have Mike Maples coming on, who people probably don't know, but he's a pretty big name VC. And he's funded a lot of, a ton of stuff that you all know.

• 3:55Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 3:56Sam Parr?

  And then finally, Bill Smith. This name, generic name, but do you know who Bill Smith is?

• 4:02Shaan Puri?

  He, you love this guy, dude. You're, this is like your new, your new obsession is Bill Smith.

• 4:08Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I'm going to tell you why. So he started like a credit card company in his twenties and he sold it right away for millions of dollars. Then his second hit was starting Shipt. So Shipt was based out of Alabama. It was basically very similar to Instacart, but he self-funded it. And then he sold it for like $600 million. Now he's got another thing, and the guy's only like 33. He's got another thing called Hello Landing that I think is really badass. So that guy's coming on soon. But that's the updates. We just hired this guy yesterday. What's his name of, Brad, Dan?

• 4:42Shaan Puri?

  Dan. Off to a great start. Yeah, I think it's, uh, Dan, I think Kerners is last name.

• 4:49Sam Parr?

  I don't need to.

• 4:49Shaan Puri?

  We here at the hustle have a tremendous culture. We really care about our people.

• 4:54Sam Parr?

  Dude.

• 4:54Shaan Puri?

  After you're hired, we find out your name. And after that, we.

• 5:00Sam Parr?

  Do you know, you want to hear something funny? You know, Siava?

• 5:03Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 5:03Sam Parr?

  One of my best friends, like one of your closest friends I've known.

• 5:07Shaan Puri?

  No, he's my best friend, dude.

• 5:08Sam Parr?

  Well, I've known him for 10 years almost. I can tell you how to say his last name.

• 5:14Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, see, because it's a key. Siava Russian name.

• 5:18Sam Parr?

  So I don't think it's important to.

• 5:19Shaan Puri?

  Sam, what's my last name?

• 5:23Sam Parr?

  I have no idea.

• 5:24Shaan Puri?

  What's his first name?

• 5:26Sam Parr?

  Well, I'm Brayu Andrad, but I don't know how to say it.

• 5:29Shaan Puri?

  You definitely called him a brew for a while.

• 5:34Sam Parr?

  I just don't think you need to know someone's name. I mean, I try really hard to remember people's name. I hate when people say I'm bad at remembering names. So I always try to remember someone's first name, but I don't think you need to know someone's name really to like know them well. I'll just call them Bob or Chief.

• 5:48Shaan Puri?

  Those are the two, Bob and Chief.

• 5:53Shaan Puri?

  Uh, you have something in your hand. What is that? That's an idea. Is that a stress ball?

• 5:57Sam Parr?

  I didn't know you could see this. No, it's just chapstick. I'm just trying to put chapstick on.

• 6:01Shaan Puri?

  Are stress balls still a thing? I remember when I was a kid, I went to my mom's office and her and every other person had a stress ball on their, uh, on their desk. And now that I think about it, I haven't seen one of these in like 10 years. And what a great idea. What a genius name and invention to just be like, how do I sell this like five cent item to every worker in a cubicle in America? Uh, let me call it the stress ball. Let me tell you that this gets rid of your stress and just make it kind of fun to fiddle with and play with. Why aren't more people doing that? Right? We have fidget spinner for kids. We need the stress spinner for adults. I need, I want to invent the next little silly putty gadget thing that you feel addicted to playing with on your desk.

• 6:49Sam Parr?

  Good luck. I mean, if anyone's going to be able to do it, it's going to be you.

• 6:54Shaan Puri?

  I had these things on my desk, uh, that I used to fiddle with. I think it annoyed everybody because it kind of made a little bit of a sound, but, um, That's who I am at work. I breathe loud. I chew. I eat at my desk. You know, I'm, I'm that guy you hate at the office. So I had this thing. There's like these magnetic. It was like a little magnetic toy or something. I don't know what it was. There's a bunch of like tiny little blocks that are magnetic. So they stick together and then you just, whatever you, whatever shape you put them in, it just like sticks in that shape. Or you can pull them apart and stick them back together like a magnet. And these things are so addictive. They weren't for playing with at your desk, but they're really effective. So maybe I will, maybe I will come out with a line.

• 7:35Shaan Puri?

  By the way, I'm, I've kickstarted a task to make us dope merch. Not to make money, but because I just want to wear our own stuff. And I figured out the first two, first two items that we need to have in our merch line.

• 7:51Sam Parr?

  Well, the first one is easy. That one's a notebook. So like the joke that we get in the comments, which is like, you know, don't listen while driving because you want to take notes. You'll crash.

• 8:01Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, we are known to be more dangerous than drinking while driving. So it's actually in several states. It's outlawed.

• 8:07Sam Parr?

  I hope a notebook is one of the two.

• 8:09Shaan Puri?

  A notebook. Okay. Notebook is one, and that's actually in motion. So I, for the course I'm making, I found this illustrator, Yanis, who's amazing. I put out this tweet. I said, who's the next Jack Butcher?

• 8:20Sam Parr?

  I saw that.

• 8:21Shaan Puri?

  And then I got a bunch of replies, found this guy. He's amazing. You know, don't tell Jack, but I think his stuff might be better than Jack's, you know, Jack's more clever, but this guy's actual illustrations are amazing. I told him, I said, hey, I've been using this thing called the self journal or something like that for a long time. I think the founder of that listens to the pod. I forgot. Do you know her name? Catherine. Yeah. Great product. And yeah, we should come up with like a limited edition notebook thing. So I got that in motion. I'll run it by you. But the, this merch stuff that I was thinking about was when Bology came on and we were trying to beat around the bush and be like, so you're like super rich, right?

• 9:00Shaan Puri?

  And then he was like, yeah, the most humble way possible was like, I'm post economic. And then I was like, oh, fuck. That is. That is it. That is the best phrase. So now I'm getting hoodies made that just say post economic and you know, those will go out to anybody who wants to buy a post economic hoodie. So that's the best one.

• 9:21Sam Parr?

  That's a good one. And is that the so notebooks?

• 9:25Shaan Puri?

  Uh, the other one that I was thinking about, uh, you know how we have our Harvard shirts? Because we visited the campus.

• 9:31Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 9:32Shaan Puri?

  Uh, so I think I might sell some bootleg Harvard merch before they shut me down. And all it is is it's Harvard. Yeah, I've been there. Like, you know, love that campus or?

• 9:42Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 9:44Shaan Puri?

  Was there in oh, four? Like Harvard oh, four. And on the back it says, you know, like tours. So maybe a Harvard one, but the, the real one that I want to make there is, you know, the like, kind of like, like, take the Harvard style of a sweater, sweatshirt or sweater, where it kind of looks like, you know, you're a scholar, right? I went to this school. That's where I learned. That's where I got my education. That, but it's just going to say the internet. It's just going to say internet. Or it seems to YouTube because that's where I learned everything. And there's a lot of other people that are, you're like that too, where everything you learned was just through the internet. That's, that's who we should really be giving credit to for our education. So I'm going to make a university looking piece of apparel. That's just either calling out the internet or YouTube or Twitter or something.

• 10:29Sam Parr?

  I think the post economic thing will make money.

• 10:32Shaan Puri?

  Well, it has to. That's by definition. All right. So anyways.

• 10:36Sam Parr?

  Do you want to talk about Canva for video? Or do you want to talk about super joints?

• 10:40Shaan Puri?

  No, let's do Canva for video. So, um, so stole this idea from my buddy Suli. He tweeted this out. He said, who's creating Canva for video? And I've had the same idea. So if you don't use Canva, you're probably not going to fully understand this idea. Not just because of the metaphor, but you're going to be like, when I describe it, you can be like, that sounds simple. Like, I'm sure there's stuff like that that exists. No, there's not. So Canva, why don't you give the download on Canva? I'll talk about why Canva for video needs to exist.

• 11:07Sam Parr?

  Yeah, Canva was started in Australia at this point. It's maybe eight years old. Uh, I, I went and did some research there. You have $15 billion valuation, $500 million in revenue. And what's cool is that this CEO, I think her name's Melanie, this woman named Melanie, she's like, A superstar, you hear her talk and you're like, oh, I will, whatever you say, I'm in. And her and her husband are the two co-founders, which is pretty badass because collectively they own 30% of the company, even though it's at a $15 billion valuation. So they crushed it. But basically, the product is, you can make really simple images. So a lot of times people use Google Slides, like I do, and you like put an image on there and then you could write some text on there and then you stick a screenshot and tweet that. With Canva, it's all a little bit more intuitive and you can make really, really simple, like

• 11:50Shaan Puri?

  Good-looking design.

• 11:50Sam Parr?

  Good-looking design. It's like Photoshop for an eight-year-old like me.

• 11:54Shaan Puri?

  Yes, Photoshop for people who don't know Photoshop. That's the best way of describing it. So before, when you wanted to make a marketing brochure, a flyer for your event, you know, an Instagram ad, a whatever, any kind of image or graphic to go alongside your product or your event or whatever it is, you would be like, great, let me ask my designer friend to make one, or let me go into like, you know, Paint or one of these, you know, Google Slides or PowerPoint or whatever and try to make one myself. And it always came out looking budget like you made it yourself. Or you had to overpay somebody who knows Photoshop, who has graphic design skills, who knows that this should go at this angle and that this is a cool way to do a collage and like to do a mask and whatever. So what they did

• 12:38Shaan Puri?

  was, they just created this enormous library of templates. So you go on there and you say, great, I want to make an ad for a sale. Well, guess what? A lot of people have that problem. And so what they did was they just created or surfaced hundreds of templates of sale, you know, how to, how to present a sale if you're a store. So now I don't need a designer, I just go in there myself, I change the text, I drop my image into where their image is, and it's like nicely cut into a circle automatically, or it removes the background automatically without you having to know how to do that with the magic wand in Photoshop. So, so that's what Canva does. It's amazing. It's grown like crazy. Like you said, 500 million in revenue, done very well. I think it went public not long ago. So Canva does that for

• 13:21Shaan Puri?

  images. And they kind of have some like animation stuff, but nobody has done this for simple videos. So I'm talking about

• 13:30Shaan Puri?

  The whole world has moved to video, whether it's long form like Netflix, medium form like YouTube, short form like TikTok, even shorter form like a Facebook ad or an Instagram ad. And it still requires people who know how to edit video in order to make a simple video. And that's crazy to me. And so there's people who've tried to attack this from many angles. I would say that what a lot of people try to do is they try to make Figma for video, which is like they take iMovie and they say, no, it should be in the cloud. You should be able to have multiple people using it at once. And you see each person's mouse moving around the screen and it saves it all to cloud, blah, blah. No, I think you need Canva. I think you need off the shelf, ready-made video, like short video clips,

• 14:15Shaan Puri?

  that you just swap and replace your text and your images or your video clips into those. And there's some things like this that exist, but nobody has cracked this nut. I think Canva is most likely to do it. I'm sure they think about this all the time. You know, they're, it's not like they're listening to this and saying, oh, my God, genius, we never thought about video, right? But like, I do think it's a gnarly problem. And I think if you are focused on this, you can outflank a lot of people just by finding the right library of templates and then getting the UX right, where you can make it easy to swap out text and images with your own stuff.

• 14:49Sam Parr?

  So I think that this might be a great idea, but I'll, I'm going to default to pessimism just for the sake of argument. I think that there's a few reasons why this would be really hard. The first reason is that, well, this is actually the main reason, which is more people use videos, use image-based stuff and they do video-based stuff. So at a company, most everyone would, not most everyone, but a very large percentage of employees would want to use a text-based stuff, whether you're making just a silly graphic for an internal email, whether you're making a sign that says happy birthday for your employees, all the way up to you're making the social post, so you're mocking up a website, yada, yada, yada. Um, by the way, someone made fun of me for saying yada, yada, yada. I'm not going to say it anymore. But anyway, there's like so many different instances of that, right?

• 15:36Sam Parr?

  Is there actually that many people that would

• 15:40Shaan Puri?

  Huge need dude.

• 15:41Sam Parr?

  For videos?

• 15:42Shaan Puri?

  Yes. Yes. Okay. It's the internet. Text is massive. Images is massive. Video is massive.

• 15:48Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 15:48Shaan Puri?

  They're all massive. They're all super massive.

• 15:50Sam Parr?

  How many people write words on Facebook and Twitter than make videos on YouTube?

• 15:54Shaan Puri?

  Like, it's a business, it's a business use case. So if you're a business, you need to be doing all three. You need to be creating text content. You need to be creating image content and you create video content and you do them at different times. The video content is often the one that you need, that's the highest value to you and it works the best in terms of getting, getting people's attention. And so there are tools to do this. So I shouldn't say that there's not, right? Promo.com is one of them. So promo.com, it has a bunch of templates to let you do videos. I've used it. It is good. It is probably the closest thing to Canva video. There's a startup called motionbox.io. They're doing this. It looks pretty cool. I haven't, I haven't actually had a chance to play with it yet.

• 16:39Shaan Puri?

  Capwing is a big one.

• 16:40Sam Parr?

  I've heard of that one.

• 16:41Shaan Puri?

  Really popular. It's, that one's more for memes. So they made it really easy to make video memes. We talked about pinata farms also to make video memes.

• 16:49Sam Parr?

  When I, when I was moving out of San Francisco, the guy, I posted on Twitter that I was selling my gym and the founder wanted to come, try to come and buy all my gym equipment. That's how I met Capwing.

• 16:58Shaan Puri?

  Founder of which one?

• 16:58Sam Parr?

  Capwing, yeah.

• 16:59Shaan Puri?

  Nice. That's great. So I think, so here's my take of what's the opportunity here? The opportunity here for me is I should be going to try to invest in all of these companies. I think they are all like, this space is going to be big. They, these are all viable companies. They're all at different stages. I'm going to go try to put a check into all of these because I'm such a big believer in that space.

• 17:18Sam Parr?

  Really?

• 17:18Shaan Puri?

  But the other things, yes, for sure. The other thing is if you're building, how would you differentiate? I think one of the ways to differentiate, the one I would do is I would focus on Facebook ads. I've talked about this before, but if you think about, Facebook's one of the largest companies because it makes a shit ton of revenue. What, how does it make its revenue from advertising? Who's advertising? You know, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of, of, of businesses that advertise on Facebook. And if you can do things to help them advertise, either save them time or make their ads better, you're going to make money on either one of those two axes. And I've found that Facebook ad tech is sort of, of course, there's companies in that space, but it's much

• 18:01Shaan Puri?

  less than you would think. There's a lot of people that build, that try to build on top of platforms. And I think that the Facebook ad platform is a great place to build products because if you make someone's life better, you're making them or saving them a lot of money. And so it's not hard to capture, you know, your hundred dollars a month if you're able to do that.

• 18:21Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I think it's cool. I think that there's a, there's a, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna default to bad stuff because that's the dynamic we're taking right now. But the dude, selling stuff for $200 a year, that's software is so freaking hard. So go to, you're on your computer right now? Are you on your phone?

• 18:40Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, computer.

• 18:42Sam Parr?

  All right, Google Buffer Revenue. Okay. So Buffer is this awesome company. I mean, it's kind of awesome. And they're one of the first people that made famous sharing their revenue. So if you're listening out there, type in on Google Buffer Revenue and you're going to be taken to a, I don't know what the platform's called, but it's some type of platform where you can show all their revenue. What's their revenue look like, Sean?

• 19:04Shaan Puri?

  So this post that was 2019, late 2019 was revenue is 21 million. They have 75,000 customers. And they make a quarter million dollars per employee.

• 19:16Sam Parr?

  Go to, go to buffer.com/revenue.

• 19:20Shaan Puri?

  Right. So their current one, yes, actually, this is, yeah, so flatlined out. So that number I said 2019, that was the peak, 2020 was the same, 2021 is the same. So still at 21 million.

• 19:31Sam Parr?

  If you're listening, go to buffer.com/revenue and they're going to see all their revenue. It's pretty amazing.

• 19:35Shaan Puri?

  Well, it says $26 of revenue per account.

• 19:38Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And so what you're gonna see, here's what you're gonna see, the revenue on this buffer thing, the revenue goes up really fast and then it plateaus. And that is what happens when you sell shit that costs 20, 50, $100. It's incredibly hard to keep going. It's really hard to keep going. And that happens, and I, I study a lot of these graphs. So like there's ConvertKit has another one. There's a lot. And if you look at the metrics, there's, if you Google like average price, price, price for SaaS, there's a lot of research on where they look at companies that go public and they look at how much their software costs. There's this dead zone of like $200 a year or $300 a year or something like that. Like, and it's like, it's incredibly hard to build a big company when shit costs

• 20:21Sam Parr?

  that much. Some people have done it. Mailchimp has done it. Canva has done it. I think it's almost impossible for most other types of people to do it.

• 20:30Shaan Puri?

  Well, we are talking about Canva for video, so I'm going to hope that it falls into that category. I actually just want Canva to do this because.

• 20:36Sam Parr?

  Am I wrong, though? Am I wrong?

• 20:38Shaan Puri?

  You're not wrong in that there's an effort to acquire customers. It costs money and it takes time. And if your size of the prize is $26 or $99, it is very hard to get to the point you're talking about, which is going public or being a, you know, a multi-billion dollar.

• 20:55Sam Parr?

  Hey, no, but my point, though, is not necessarily if you're listening to this and you want to build something, that has to be the goal. My, but when I think about stuff, sometimes I think, now, this isn't always, but sometimes it's far easier to be a small fish in a massive market than it is to like be a big fit, like, you know, like I, I'd rather be like the shitty person in something that's booming because I, it'll be way easier to crush it.

• 21:21Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, although you also say, um, you know, niches get riches type of thing, right? Where you'd rather be a big fish in a small pond.

• 21:29Sam Parr?

  Well, I, I said, I don't always think that way. I'm saying like, if I want to build something that can just make a good like living, then yeah, there, that's one thing. If I want to create something that could take off, I would probably want to do the other way.

• 21:39Shaan Puri?

  Right. And I think, you know, the thing you just said that's important is you said a market that's booming, that's different than a big market. So a big market is a already big market. A market that's booming is a growing market. And so if I was going to rank the three, I would say small fish in a booming market, then big fish in a small market, and lastly, small fish in a already big market.

• 22:03Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I think I agree with you. Can we talk about super joints?

• 22:07Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 22:08Sam Parr?

  I looked it up while you were talking and I have a lot to say about this.

• 22:11Shaan Puri?

  Okay. Well, I don't even know what you looked up. This was my own name of an idea I had. So is there.

• 22:17Sam Parr?

  Super joints is, do you remember? So we talked about the book Happy Body.

• 22:21Shaan Puri?

  Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah.

• 22:22Sam Parr?

  Super joints.

• 22:22Shaan Puri?

  Let's go here first.

• 22:23Sam Parr?

  Super joints is also the name of a book. Google super joints. It looks just like the happy body.

• 22:30Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it looks exactly like it, like 1970s or 80s like design.

• 22:35Sam Parr?

  But we don't have to talk about that. I, I thought.

• 22:36Shaan Puri?

  Well, the thing I was thinking about is, so my mom is staying with me right now. She's been here for the last few days and you know, my mom is like always got some ache and pain and and she does a good job of like, like trying to exercise and stretch and you know, like whatever, do the things that she can do to, you know, we bought a special pillow for the bed so that like, kind of if she's in bed, watch TV, like she's not in a crappy posture or whatever, we try things. But this is every aging person problem is that, you know, you get bad back, bad knees, bad hip, bad shoulder, whatever, right? Like you wrist pain, this stuff comes up. And I started thinking like, okay, you know, I think that you, this is gonna be,

• 23:17Shaan Puri?

  this is a massive, massive market that nobody really is able to do much with. And so I thought, well, what is the, what is the solution? I think there's two solutions. I think the end solution is fixing it from the inside. So that's some version of like stem cells or like regenerative therapies where you're able to, to regrow cartilage or strengthen, strengthen the tendons or do something like that to reduce the irritation, inflammation. Okay, I don't know too much about that. I don't know where we're at in the stem cell world. Then there's the fix it from the outside. And I thought, oh, this might be actually easy. So I was watching somebody move a couch, you know, my neighbor had a truck and they're moving and like, you know, it was one person just with a dolly, just moving this like huge couch and bookcase and all this stuff.

• 24:02Shaan Puri?

  And it got me thinking like, man, with these simple tools that we've made, that man has made, you have so much leverage, you can lift heavy objects. Why don't we just have these like, as like a little knee brace that people wear, that just helps you when you're trying to get up? It's just like a little spring action that is like a super joint. It is, and it is a sort of an, an external fix to the problem of joint pain.

• 24:28Sam Parr?

  That sounds like such an infomercial thing. I can, I can, I can imagine this now in my head.

• 24:32Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. That's exactly what I thought of my head. I see the old lady sitting on the couch. She's trying to get up and she's struggling and then it like fades.

• 24:39Sam Parr?

  The black and white, yeah.

• 24:40Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, fades to black and white and she's in pain. And then it's like her again on the couch and she gets up and she just gets up effortlessly because she's got this little thing she wears around her knee that essentially like, as she does this motion, it's a spotter. And I just thought, why don't we have spotters for our own, carrying our own body weight?

• 24:56Sam Parr?

  So.

• 24:57Shaan Puri?

  What do you think of this?

• 24:58Sam Parr?

  I think that that you're cool.

• 25:01Shaan Puri?

  This sounds like some shitty Alibaba product that you.

• 25:03Sam Parr?

  I think you're thinking about this totally wrong. So like what you're talking about is like a silly brace. I want to like actually solve the problem. And there's three companies that I've been paying attention to that are in this space. And they're all centered around mobility. So what I've noticed amongst my friends and like the people in Austin now is a lot of them are less focused on lifting heavy weights and more focused on this manly version of yoga that we call mobility.

• 25:32Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 25:32Sam Parr?

  It's yoga. I mean, it's.

• 25:35Shaan Puri?

  Doing mobility training?

• 25:36Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 25:37Shaan Puri?

  Are you stretching?

• 25:38Sam Parr?

  Yes. It's a little bit more interesting than yoga and I do it a lot as well. So there's three things that I like. There's one called the ready state, the ready state.com. There's another one called, I actually don't know how you pronounce it, but it looks like it's, it's go wad. So the word go, and then I think it stands for workout of the day. I'm a paying subscriber of it. It's great. And then the third one is the knees over toes, knees over toes guy. Have you seen knees over toes guy?

• 26:04Shaan Puri?

  Dude, I'm all into this.

• 26:05Sam Parr?

  I've done the whole program. It's wonderful.

• 26:07Shaan Puri?

  Oh, you did?

• 26:08Sam Parr?

  I've done the whole thing. It's so good. So basically.

• 26:10Shaan Puri?

  Did your vertical leap go up?

• 26:11Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but I, yeah, it all works wonderful. I love it. But basically the first two that I've described, so go wad and the ready state. It's an app that you pay a hundred dollars and the founders of go wad, I've actually talked about on this podcast two years ago, I think, or a year and a half ago, and they messaged me and they said, you're, the numbers that you're, it was someone who works there. So the numbers that you're saying are way smaller than we actually are. And I think I said they were doing half a million a month in sales.

• 26:37Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 26:37Sam Parr?

  And so they're both apps where you spend 30 minutes a day and they just do stretches. It's just the simplest app ever. It's just a video that shows you a stretch and it counts down from 60 seconds. The other thing is this guy named knees over toes guy. That's like his handle is knees over toes guy. His name's Ben Patrick and he got, he went viral on, on, on.

• 26:57Shaan Puri?

  Tik Tok.

• 26:58Sam Parr?

  On Tik Tok and Instagram. I found him on Instagram and it's basically this crew of guys and he's like the leader, but he's, they're like these quote manly men, like they, like they, they like are strong looking and fit and all that, but they.

• 27:13Sam Parr?

  Like stretch a ton and they're really focused on one-legged pistol squats and being able to touch your toes and

• 27:22Shaan Puri?

  We should say he's he's called knees over toes guy because in classical kind of like training anytime you train they're always like don't let your knees go over your toes because they thought that's how you get injured that's when you're doing a squat wrong or a lunge oh no you're not lunging right you want your knee to never go past your toe if you're biking they always say the same adjust your seat height so your knees doesn't go over your toes and this guy was like hey I blew out my knee I tore my ACLs and and you know I started trying to figure out how do I actually strengthen my legs how do I strengthen my knees so that I don't get injured again and in fact he ended up getting stronger through like so he did some self experimentation and whatever and then now he's I don't know 43 45 years old he's got like a I forgot how old he is he's in his 40s or even maybe even his like maybe he's 50

• 28:07Sam Parr?

  No, is he that old?

• 28:09Shaan Puri?

  He's got a 43 inch vertical leap he can dunk he's like he jumps higher now than I did in his 20s and he's been athletic the whole time it's just that now he strengthens his leg in this this way that breaks all the rules so his stuff is intentionally let your knee go over your toes why because we want to stabilize our knees when they're in these uncomfortable compromised positions we'll do it in a controlled way now so that you don't get hurt later so that's the theory behind his stuff

• 28:34Sam Parr?

  And this guy has almost 500,000 followers on Twitter or on Instagram and he is putting on an absolute masterclass in marketing I followed him and like I because I'm a internet guy I know exactly what he's doing and I'm like it's working it's working I bought it he charges $50 a month and the reason he charges $50 a month is because the churn is probably astronomical so the average user I bet only stays for three months because when you do the program like I did I just wrote it down I'm like oh I know exactly what to do it's just like right it's as basic as a PDF so like I know what to do But he got my 150 bucks over three months. I got results. I loved it. And the way that this guy's getting, he's basically doing, you know, the best person I've ever seen at this fitness marketing is that woman Kayla. It's new, I think her name is. And she has

• 29:18Shaan Puri?

  It seems.

• 29:19Sam Parr?

  And she has an app called Sweat that scaled to 100 million dollars in sales. If you're a guy, you probably don't know who she is. It's my wife Sarah used it and she crushed it. And all she did was sell PDF and then eventually it went to an app. With this guy Ben from Knees Over Toes, I bet you he's doing 10 million a year in sales. And he's not even, he doesn't even have his own app. There's all these apps called Trainerize and similar apps where what you do is you just put your program on their thing and you give them a little tiny cut of the revenue. It's a pretty amazing business. I mean, the high churn, but like, it looks like a really fun lifestyle business to run.

• 29:52Shaan Puri?

  Totally. It's what we were talking about with Judge Judy and Michael Buffer. Last episode, I think it was, we talked about building a personal monopoly and finding your niche.

• 30:03Shaan Puri?

  That's what this guy did. Brilliant branding, knees over toes guy, right? Beautiful, beautiful branding to latch onto that. It's a different, it's sort of, I don't know if you remember, but I, one of my kind of core content beliefs came from the guy who writes Wait But Why? And actually his buddy, there's two guys behind it. So this is not Tim Urban, it's the guy who helps him with his business, Andrew. Right? He was nice enough, took a call for me one day and I said, yeah, I'm thinking about my content and what's the strategy? What's the brand? And he goes, I have a really simple way of thinking about it. And he goes, you know, in the matrix, we have, Morpheus reaches out and says, do you want the red pill or the blue pill?

• 30:46Shaan Puri?

  Meaning like, you want to keep living in your fantasy land of the way that you were told things are? Or do you want the truth? That's the red pill, the harsh red pill that you gotta swallow. And Neo chooses the red pill because he wants to know the truth. And he basically said, that's what, the best way to build your content brand is by giving people red pills. So people, you know, people think one way or society tells you X, I'm going to tell you the truth and here's why. And so that's what knees over toes guy did. It's a perfect red pill. Everybody says, don't move your knee over your toe. I'm the knees over toes guy. And so he built his niche there. He built his brand there. He went viral on TikTok by showing some pretty amazing stuff. And then he's translating that into a business. Now, I have a quick opportunity for somebody who wants to do this.

• 31:28Shaan Puri?

  So one of the things that he does in his program, you tell me you did the program. My trainer takes pieces of the program and gives it to me. But did you buy that gadget that you that you wear on your foot, the monkey foot thing?

• 31:39Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 31:40Shaan Puri?

  And who did you buy that from?

• 31:42Sam Parr?

  The monkey foot guys.

• 31:44Shaan Puri?

  Uh, it's, I think it's called Animal House Fitness. Is that who you bought it from?

• 31:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 31:48Shaan Puri?

  And is that his brand or is that somebody else's brand?

• 31:50Sam Parr?

  It does not appear to be his, but I didn't.

• 31:52Shaan Puri?

  Not his. Correct. Okay. So knees over toes guy, if you're listening, this is for you. Uh, or if you're not going to do it, we can pair you with a hustler who's going to do this. You need to be selling this device. Okay.

• 32:02Sam Parr?

  No, wait, yeah.

• 32:04Shaan Puri?

  So what this thing is, is the boot, it's like, imagine a ski boot that you put on your foot. You step into it and under the boot, you can put a tiny little dumbbell. So you can put like a five pound, 10 pound, whatever, 15 pound dumbbell into it. And so then when you do leg extensions or calf, uh, sorry, like knee raises, things like that. You have like weighted resistance and it helps you build strength faster. And so it's one of his like core things. Did I miss anything on it?

• 32:29Sam Parr?

  Yeah. He also makes slant boards. So yeah, I, I think that like there's an entire brand to be made around this. Like I, I wouldn't call it masculine because I think women like this too, but a non yoga-esque. Uh, like I would, I don't want to go as far to say it's feminine, but you guys get the idea, like a, a.

• 32:47Shaan Puri?

  It's gotten cooler because Tom Brady, you know, the greatest quarterback of all time came out with the TB 12 program. The Tom Brady 12 program and people like, great, Tom Brady, you're still playing. You just won the Superbowl last year. I don't know what he is, 42, 43 years old. So it's the oldest, you know, quarterback to win a Superbowl. How are you still playing? Um, and you know, he, he credits basically like he eats super clean. And then he doesn't do like strength and explosive training. He does all flexibility, mobility, pliability. That's what he, those are his focuses that he's like, that's how I don't get hurt.

• 33:20Sam Parr?

  Brother, and we talked about this a year and a half ago. I was all about this.

• 33:25Shaan Puri?

  You were talking about the subreddit you visit, right? Which is a mobility subreddit, right?

• 33:29Sam Parr?

  Yes, I've been all about this. The reason I'm all about this is you can feel it in your body. Um, like I, like I, I do different athletic challenges and I have done challenges where I try to get incredibly strong. And I know how I feel. I'm like, oh, I feel kind of swollen. I feel bloated. I don't feel awesome. And then I do these things where I just try to squat all the way with my butt in the ground with no weight. And I'll just sit there for, you know, 10 minutes or I'll just work on flexibility. And I'm like, oh, I feel so, I feel alive. I feel so much better. And so I've been talking about this forever. I just sent you an Instagram of a guy named The Flexi Bowl. That's another amazing name. I love The Flexi Bowl. You immediately know what it is. It's a strong person that's flexible.

• 34:09Sam Parr?

  And so anyway, I'm all about this niche of, I don't know what we're going to call this, like, uh, uh, flexibility culture, whatever it is. I think that these things are the best. I think there's a bunch of interesting things going on in this space. I've seen a few people, I've seen this one guy, watch this thing called The Human Garage and they go there, you go there and they stretch you. So I love all these things. I'm totally into them.

• 34:30Shaan Puri?

  I also have seen that the tests, the mobility tests go semi-viral. So I saw something, or I don't know, me or my mom, I don't know. One of us saw it, then they shared it with the other, and then everybody in the family did the test. And all it was is this get up test. So you sit on the ground.

• 34:46Sam Parr?

  Indian style.

• 34:46Shaan Puri?

  Cross-legged.

• 34:47Sam Parr?

  Oh, sorry. Is Indian style not PC?

• 34:50Shaan Puri?

  I think it's about the Native American Indians. So, you know, you might piss off two groups if you say it. But, uh, yeah, you sit on the ground, Indian style, as we used to say back in second grade. And, uh, and then you're supposed to get up and the idea is that you, I think you like, for every part of your body that you have to use to touch the ground to get up, you sort of deduct a point. So like for me, when I have, when I'm sitting like that, first of all, I can barely even sit like that. Second of all, if I have to get up, it's like a fucking process, dude. It's like roll to the left. Now I'm laying down. Elbow on the ground, forearm on the ground, hand on the ground, second hand pushes me. Now I'm in a push-up position. Now I get to my knees. Now I stand up. I stand up like an 80-year-old. And the test says you're basically have the fitness of an 80-year-old. You have the mobility of an 80-year-old.

• 35:33Shaan Puri?

  Cause I lose, it's like you start at seven points and you deduct a point for everything that touches the ground, something like that. And so then I did it and then my mom did it, my dad did it, my sister. It's like everybody does it. And so there's something interesting there of, let's say you wanted to build a program like this or sell a tool like this. There's something interesting like we talked about last time of personality tests, uh, IQ tests, horoscope tests. People's most interesting subject is themselves. Similarly here, I think you could build a following or an audience, um, by, by giving people a simple diagnostic, a simple test. Can you like? It's like the kind of can you pat your head and rub your belly at the same time? It's like, everybody wants to try it when they hear, oh, that's hard. That sounds easy. Right? Um, I saw one the other day that was like, take your arms to the side, reach them straight above your head.

• 36:18Shaan Puri?

  And then like, do they, um, like, keep your arms straight? So do it. Yeah. Keep your arms straight. Yeah. So you, okay, you're not so bad, but like you're tight. You can see your tight.

• 36:28Sam Parr?

  Tight my.

• 36:28Shaan Puri?

  So his is like, if your bicep is able to like, touch your ear while maintaining the straightness and like crossing, you're able to cross your hands.

• 36:35Sam Parr?

  Oof.

• 36:36Shaan Puri?

  Then your shoulders are like adequately, you know, flex flexible and mobile. Uh, and if not, then you want to do these three exercises to improve that. And so I love this model of sort of diagnose the problem and then prescribe your solution. And, uh, I think that would be a cool way to kind of grow this, but I'm with you that, hey, flexibility, mobility, pliability. I think these are where the fitness trends are going, uh, right now.

• 36:59Sam Parr?

  And to wrap it up, I'll say it's never been easier to make money off this type of thing. This guy, uh, Ben knees over toes guy, as I said, he doesn't have his own app. He's using Trainerize, this other app. You can literally launch this today, today, uh, with 20 bucks. Um, all right. You want to talk about, uh, LinkedIn stuff or, uh, what do you, Google?

• 37:20Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, let's do LinkedIn stuff. So you said something the other day. You go, this guy lives like down my block and he created, I don't even know, what was it? Some, some guy who's done something cool. He's built some cool business.

• 37:31Sam Parr?

  Student loan hero.

• 37:33Shaan Puri?

  Right. And you were like, he lives, I don't know how long, he lives like down.

• 37:36Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like 10 doors down.

• 37:37Shaan Puri?

  10 doors down. All right. So great. So I don't know how you found that out, but.

• 37:41Sam Parr?

  I'll tell you, it's pretty funny. I tweeted a picture of myself in front of my new house and he DM'd me and he goes, I don't want to be weird, but I, I know that house. I lived on the block.

• 37:48Shaan Puri?

  So that, and that's a cool moment. You met somebody who's like, kind of professionally relevant to you. That's also locally relevant to you.

• 37:55Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 37:55Shaan Puri?

  What does that mean? I think that there's an opportunity to build a location-based professional network or professional networking tool, especially now that the world has gone remote. So you've got a bunch of people relocating. You have people getting out of offices where they would normally be seeing kind of like peers and coworkers and stuff like that all the time. And most people think the answer is create a coworking space or some kind of like flexible workspace where you go and you work and that's where you're going to get professional interaction. Well, I've actually seen kind of this other trend, which is you discovering people who live around you that are like, kind of like interesting business people that you would want to meet with and you guys kind of both opted into being like.

• 38:35Sam Parr?

  Who are you learning this from?

• 38:36Shaan Puri?

  Well, I'm saying I had a similar experience the other day. Did a call, guy's like, where do you live? I said, oh, I live in this, this little place right outside San Francisco. He goes, oh, my friend just moved there or my friend lives there too. He's the, you know, chief product officer at blankety blank company.

• 38:52Sam Parr?

  Which company?

• 38:53Shaan Puri?

  Oh, sick. Well, I don't want to get out of this identity or whatever, but like a company, don't worry about it. It's kind of like a well-known company. He's like, oh yeah, he lives up there too. I was like, great, I'll interview you guys. You guys should hang out because like, it's like, oh, like, you know, we're sort of like, we could be friends and we live near each other. So that's the excuse of why we might actually hang out. So I thought that's kind of interesting. What if you could get people to basically just say, here's my job and here's where I live or here's where I, where I am. And it just notifies you about other people that are also there that are kind of like professionally relevant to you. If you could kind of figure out people's like, I don't know, without being a douche, but like if there's a CEO, you kind of want to talk to other like C, C-level people.

• 39:38Sam Parr?

  Serious guy.

• 39:38Shaan Puri?

  Not like the product manager of some other company that's not like super relevant to you. So I think that would be kind of cool as a way to, as a, as a cool product to bootstrap a new style of professional network and a new style of interaction.

• 39:52Sam Parr?

  And first of all, let's even mention that LinkedIn's freaking, everyone says the same thing. LinkedIn sucks. How does everyone use LinkedIn? And yet we all use it or a lot of people do. I don't use it anymore, but you get the idea.

• 40:03Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's, it is used and it is still the number one, even though we all say how much it sucks. And I think it's true. What I think that, what I think that it means is. You have to find an angle that's not a direct angle. You can't beat LinkedIn by just building LinkedIn again and being like, but I have better features. I have better design. That's not going to work.

• 40:23Sam Parr?

  So the best angle, so every time, all right, I see so many companies that are trying to beat LinkedIn, and I think it's a worthy thing to try to do, I think, because I think it can be done. And I think that you can build a big business. And if you can't unbundle them or whatever, crush them, you could do pretty good. And the only times I've seen people do it that seems any traction is they divide it up into subgroups. So it's typically race and it's typically gender.

• 40:47Shaan Puri?

  Or it could be industry, like Angelus did it with startups. Angelus basically took the whole startup companies, jobs and candidates off of LinkedIn and just said, we can do this better.

• 40:57Sam Parr?

  I've never seen it done really with industries. I don't agree with your, I don't totally agree with that assessment because you're kind of right. Yeah, I guess you are right, but I do, I haven't seen many. I've seen a ton of women.

• 41:10Shaan Puri?

  Attempts.

• 41:11Sam Parr?

  Women focused ones. So there's Girlboss. There's this other one called Levo. I think it was called L E V O.

• 41:18Shaan Puri?

  Like also Girlboss failed, right? So to be fair.

• 41:21Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's Chief, chief.com, which I have no idea if it's succeeding or not, but it certainly seems like it is. There's, and there's a lot of black focused ones. I don't remember all their names, but I remember seeing them float around and they seemed mildly successful, like they have some traction, but obviously I'm not a user. But I've seen race and gender LinkedIn.

• 41:39Shaan Puri?

  So here's the ones that I think have worked. I think Angelus worked, right? Three to four billion dollar company. And if I'm a startup, I might have a LinkedIn, but I'm, with all of my startups, I've found better luck finding jobs and candidates through Angelus. Dribbble did this.

• 41:58Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 41:58Shaan Puri?

  So Dribbble was like, oh, if you're a designer, LinkedIn is kind of like, it's hard to show that you're a good designer there.

• 42:04Sam Parr?

  I would say Behance did it better than Dribbble because they had $175 million exit.

• 42:08Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So, so design, let's just say where you're putting your portfolio up there, you're networking with other designers and then other people can come find. They find images and then they say, who's who made this? And then they basically hire you, right? So I think that was kind of, that was kind of successful.

• 42:21Sam Parr?

  Git, GitHub?

• 42:22Shaan Puri?

  GitHub for developers. Exactly. That's another one. And then there's the low end where it's like Upwork, right? Where it's just like, they went, you know, kind of like geography, like you were saying. And Upwork basically says, here's a way to find, you know, workers can find jobs and jobs can find workers. But we're going to go for like, kind of like outsourced labor arbitrage type of thing. So I think those have all worked. Now, here's a different like take, here's what, here's a company I invested in that I think has a cool chance of beating LinkedIn. I want to describe their strategy, but I don't want to use the Silicon Valley jargon. You know this word orthogonal?

• 42:58Sam Parr?

  No.

• 42:59Shaan Puri?

  Have you heard people say this? That it's like, yeah, you have to take an orthogonal angle or it's an orthogonal.

• 43:04Sam Parr?

  Was that like Orwell, Orwellian?

• 43:06Shaan Puri?

  No, it just means like, you don't go directly, like you don't beat LinkedIn. Like, okay, here's the example. Let's say you think PowerPoint sucks. You're like, I'm going to build a better PowerPoint. The way to build a better PowerPoint is not to make slides that are easier to make. It's to look at the fact that people use slides to give their bosses presentations about how like, how the business is doing. And actually, the orthogonal way to attack that is to build dashboards that automate them, that are always automatically updated, that your boss can just check. And now you don't even need slides, right?

• 43:39Sam Parr?

  Right, like in order to build, to build the best hotel business, you don't create better hotels necessarily. You get other people to list their homes.

• 43:46Shaan Puri?

  You get Airbnb, exactly. So, so orthogonal just means sort of attacking it from another angle. So here's, here's an orthogonal attack on LinkedIn. There's this company called pallet.xyz. Have you seen this?

• 43:57Sam Parr?

  Pallet, how do I spell it?

• 43:59Shaan Puri?

  Pallet, P A L L E T dot X Y Z. I think that's the name. You're not going to learn too much from this, but I'll tell you kind of like where you could.

• 44:08Sam Parr?

  How did you find these guys? Dude, how do you find all this shit, man?

• 44:12Shaan Puri?

  Bro, I've already given people the secret sauce, which is be super curious and then surround yourself with interesting people and then share it, right? Like my, my crew, I think Ben found pallet or maybe Zach found pallet. I'm not sure. If somebody found pallet, I talked to the guy behind it. He's awesome. He's like a 23 year old ex Stanford guy. Like you just talk to him, be like, oh, okay. You're gonna win. Yeah. Like it's whether it's this business or the next one or the next one or the next one. Like you're gonna win. You're clearly super smart. You're way ahead of your time in terms of just like polish as a CEO and you're an engineer and you recruited under other good engineers. Great. But what he's building is actually pretty cool. We found him because I am pretty interested in like what I'm calling like, kind of like the creator stack or

• 44:56Shaan Puri?

  basically like the solopreneur's playbook. So I look at people like Pomp, right? Pomp is a creator. He creates content in the niche of crypto.

• 45:06Sam Parr?

  Say who Pomp is. I actually don't think everyone knows.

• 45:10Shaan Puri?

  Okay, Pomp, his name's Anthony Pompliano. He's a kind of like a friend of ours. We don't know him super well, but he's friendly. He's come on the pod. We've been on his pod and he's super well known. He used to work at Facebook, then he was like, I don't know, chief something at Snapchat, left really early on or like, kind of like that didn't last very long, went on his own and started creating content about Bitcoin in like 2016, 2017 ish. And as Bitcoin got more popular, he got more popular. So he's got like, I don't know, a million followers now. He's got a sub stack with 170,000, you know, like subscribers or paid subscribers.

• 45:43Sam Parr?

  He's a Bitcoin media personality, but like.

• 45:46Shaan Puri?

  He's on CNBC to talk. Anytime Bitcoin happens, Pomp, tell us, is it good or is it bad?

• 45:50Sam Parr?

  And he's kind of a troll on purpose. Like I like Pomp, but he like, he like fucks with people.

• 45:55Shaan Puri?

  I don't call him a troll. I think he's, um, somebody said this and they said it in a way that was derogatory, but I actually think it's like a good description of like people like this. They called him a carnival barker, which is basically like a hype man, like somebody who's going to just keep, keep pounding the pavement and keep, keep knocking on doors and saying, saying the message.

• 46:14Sam Parr?

  And I don't mean to call disrespectfully. I mean, like, he's funny. Like he's like, he's a shithead.

• 46:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. And he has a good time. He's got a good personality and he's. Extremely talented with content creation and branding. So we'll talk about one of his other projects that just came out. But anyways, my point is, Pom created this job board called Crypto Jobs, or something like that. Like, he's like, you want a job in crypto? And I'm a trusted guy in crypto? If you want to work in crypto, here's my personal job board. I thought, oh, that's kind of interesting. Like, we've talked in the past about job boards. Andrew Wilkinson talked about how good of a business job boards are. And I thought, I wonder how successful individuals, creators, job boards could be. And the reason I'm interested in this is because, A, that's like, kind of like, my career path is being a creator. And I think about, like, the previous wave, like, Tim Ferriss and those guys, they didn't have any of these different business models. They

• 47:02Shaan Puri?

  didn't have rolling funds. They didn't have ghost kitchens. They didn't have job boards as like, a way to capitalize on their audience. They just sold books. And then, like, that was kind of it. And now, creators have a whole different arsenal of ways to make money, one of which is a job board. So he did this with Pom. Palette does this with, you know, Lenny, the kind of, like, the product management guy. So Lenny's got a job board. If you want to become a PM, well, you could just go to, like, LinkedIn or Indeed. But if you're a PM and you follow Lenny and you love his content about being a better PM, kind of makes sense to find a job there. Palette is the job board software that all these creators use.

• 47:41Sam Parr?

  Bro, you think that's gonna be a huge thing? I've created job boards. It's a WordPress plugin.

• 47:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, so here's the difference. This is like a classic, I think this is a classic mistake, which is like, Webflow, dude, I could use Wix, right? Like Shopify, I could do this on Squarespace. It's like, there is a benefit to when something really focuses on a use case and a niche, and attacks it from in a different way. So what they did was, they built this job board thing to go to creators or communities. So like, for The Hustle, you guys could be, The Hustle could be, you guys have a job board or no?

• 48:15Sam Parr?

  We, yeah, we launched one as a test.

• 48:18Shaan Puri?

  How did it do?

• 48:19Sam Parr?

  It didn't do well, but I wouldn't say it's because the idea is bad. It's just that we were, when we were deciding between trends and something else, that something else was a job board. And we were like, yeah, let's do this other thing.

• 48:31Shaan Puri?

  So, these individual creators, guess how much they're making off their job board?

• 48:35Sam Parr?

  I would love to know. I don't know.

• 48:38Shaan Puri?

  Give me a guess. What do you think Lenny's making off his job board?

• 48:41Sam Parr?

  A hundred grand a year, at most.

• 48:43Shaan Puri?

  So I don't want to blow up these guys' own economics, but let's just say I looked at 10 of these. And I looked at, okay, how much money do each of these make? People of their level of fame, which is like, they're not truly famous, they're like niche famous. Yeah, internet famous. Quarter million dollars and up. Really? Pomp, Pomp, I think is gonna make about a million dollars off his job board this year. He's gonna make more off his job board and, and he doesn't have to create content every day. He doesn't have to, you know, get on, right? So his newsletter, he's gotta write a fucking newsletter every morning, right? Like that, that's his, people pay him $9.99 and he gotta write the newsletter every morning. The job board, that's just for free after already building the audience. So what's the, um, what's the business model for Pallet?

• 49:26Shaan Puri?

  So they basically take a percentage of whatever the creator's making, so. And so how does the creator make money? Creator makes money because the companies who want to access talent in that niche, go and they pay the $500 or a thousand dollars to, um, to post their job. And so they pay, let's say a thousand dollars per, per job posting. They're gonna get candidates that are highly qualified. The creator can sort of like do two things. They can take some of the jobs and they can sort of like boost them and basically say, if I was, if I was you guys, these are companies that I would go work for. So you can endorse the jobs. You can also endorse the candidates. So you can take your audience and just instead of just saying, hey, my full audience is this.

• 50:06Shaan Puri?

  You can say, hey, these 400 people are like, kind of like the, the, the top, the cream of the crop in terms of my audience. These guys are like, kind of like the superstar talent. And so you actually have to pay more to access them. Or when they match with this, I'll, when you post a job, I will actually specially message those people. Um, and that's like, kind of like a premium offering. So, so they basically give you the software to do this. The reason I think this is interesting for LinkedIn, LinkedIn is one giant central. Like job board, basically, right? So like, that's the way LinkedIn makes money is.

• 50:38Sam Parr?

  I forgot we were even talking about LinkedIn.

• 50:40Shaan Puri?

  So, so I think this is a distributed version of LinkedIn. It's basically saying, nobody, nobody's going to build a 500 million person social network for professionals, professionals again. That's LinkedIn's advantage. But what if instead of 500 million people on one network, you had 500, you know, you have 50,000 people on whatever, 100 networks or whatever it is, do the math. And so you, you, you, you split it where, um, like one example they have is, um, there's a, like a community of, of developers who all write, let's say Angular. Angular is a JavaScript like framework. So they have a big discord of thousands of Angular developers. Well, they should have a job board for people who are trying to hire developers who write Angular, right? Who Angular developers.

• 51:22Shaan Puri?

  That would be the business model for running that community, for putting in all the hard work and running a great Angular community. The job board would be a great way. And if I'm an employer, I'd rather go to the Angular community and write on their job board than just post on LinkedIn.

• 51:35Sam Parr?

  Wow. So this is, this company, they've like raised legit money.

• 51:39Shaan Puri?

  Who, palette?

• 51:40Sam Parr?

  Yeah, they're not like a, it's like, I mean, they've raised $4 million.

• 51:43Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's like a startup startup.

• 51:45Sam Parr?

  That's pretty wild. So you kind of turned my opinion on this. Who all, anyone interesting invested in this besides you?

• 51:52Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, a lot of the creators, because a lot of the creators like, holy shit, this is great. Like I will invest in this and I'll, I'll be a user of it because this solves a problem of mine. Right? If I've done all the hard work to build a free audience and build trust with them and build a kind of a niche, I'm, I'm, I'm an authority in a niche and that niche is like a job. Maybe it's design, maybe it's product management, maybe it's, you know, developers or backend engineers, machine learning experts, whatever. And once I've done that, if you have a way for me to monetize that doesn't require me to get up there and either teach or write content every day, I'm in, right? And the economics seem to work. And, and then, and then the more job boards, the more niche job boards that get created through this network,

• 52:32Shaan Puri?

  now they can just, when a company wants to post a job, you can say, hey, you only, you know, you came here to post on the Angular community, but we have these five other job boards that are all for developers. Would you like to cross post? And they can help like get, get more reach on the job and they can help those creators get more money without marketing themselves.

• 52:49Sam Parr?

  So these got, yeah, you changed my opinion. It's pretty dope. And the reason why it's interesting is the way that you described it was far better than what I thought it was going to be is ZipRecruiter. Do you know ZipRecruiter?

• 52:59Shaan Puri?

  I know the ads. I don't, what do they do that's different? They, it's always, that's the same thing. It's one place and they go post on Indeed and they post on all the job boards, right?

• 53:06Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So ZipRecruiter, um, at the time, and still could be the case, they were the fastest growing company out of LA and the largest series A company ever, meaning their valuation was the highest ever for a series A. And I believe it was, it's crazy how times have changed, but like their series A, they valued them at like hundreds of millions of dollars. Now it's like way different. Um, but, um, and what they do is you, uh, so they raised, uh, I'm getting, no.

• 53:33Shaan Puri?

  I think they're, are they not like public? Like they advertise on Bill Simmons' podcast, like.

• 53:37Sam Parr?

  Yeah, they're probably close to, so their series A, they raised at a $300 million valuation, which unfortunately is considered small now probably, but they, um.

• 53:45Shaan Puri?

  They're, they're going to go public.

• 53:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah, they're public size and they, they make hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. And what you do is they make a really, so they, what, what was that term Orwellian? What's that?

• 53:56Shaan Puri?

  Orthogonal.

• 53:57Sam Parr?

  Orthogonal. Uh, that's, it's a good term. I'm going to steal that one. Um, so what they've done is they, they do a couple of things. And if you told me what they were trying to do, I would actually say, oh, wow, this is way too complicated. I don't think this can work, but basically they do a couple of things. The first thing is that they make it really easy to, um, post your job anywhere. So you just click, you upload the job description and it posts in every single place. You don't have to go to each one. And so that's why an employer posts there. The second thing that they do is now, once, once they got all these people to start posting, uh, their jobs on ZipRecruiter, you can now go to ziprecruiter.com and it says, look for a job. And so they get, um, they get, um, recruits right there. And then on the backend, they've now created a way that you can manage your hiring process.

• 54:41Sam Parr?

  And the way that they make money, I believe is by, uh, um, I think it's, um, uh, software. So you, you can, you can, you can pay a fee to get access to, uh, uh, like the CRM as well as they'll post for free. Or you could do one-off, well, they'll post, you gotta pay for it to be posted in all the places. And it's a, the, the, the strategy works really well. So I'm on board. I think ZipRecruiter is, is great.

• 55:06Shaan Puri?

  It's one of those, like, I don't know if this idea is going to work. I thought it was worth a bet, so I invested, right? So I'm talking my book a little bit here, but it's more like. All startups are, you know, it's unlikely that they succeed. I wouldn't say the probability is that they go defeat LinkedIn. It's just that I thought, oh, wow, that is smart. Actually, you're not going to build the 500 million person social network. That's just so hard. You have to, who's going to be able to do that? Instead, if you just say, well, all these individual creators and communities are already building their own little network. What if I created a decentralized job board, the job board, instead of being in one spot, it's actually lives in each one of their little communities. And that makes sense to me because like our friend Andrew, you know, Andrew Chen, you know, my favorite person

• 55:47Shaan Puri?

  who blocks me on Twitter, you're a good buddy. He's got a great growth blog. And then, you know, a lot of, a lot of growth marketers.

• 55:55Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he's supposed growth.

• 55:56Shaan Puri?

  If he had his own, if he had his own growth job board, he would, you know, with essentially zero work, probably make an, I don't know, easily 150 grand a year, 250 grand a year of companies that want to hire growth hackers and growth marketers like Andrew. And so that would be a better, more targeted place to hire somebody from than going to the sort of general sea of job, you know, job applications. And so I think that that, that part is what made sense to me with this. Although I was like you, when, when I first heard this, I didn't even want to take the meeting. I was like, great. Like, you know, bloggers are going to become like blogger job boards. What the hell is that? Right? Like, I remember reading once that, I can't get this out of my head, which is like, they go Substack,

• 56:40Shaan Puri?

  where B players teach C players what A players do. I was like, oh shit, that's so good. That's such a kill shot.

• 56:48Sam Parr?

  Who said that?

• 56:50Shaan Puri?

  I think it was Hunter Walk, I think it was on Twitter. And, you know, but it's such a good call out, right? Like, it's, in many ways, it's true, right? The most successful people, the, the true icons, you know, they're not creating a ton of content typically. And sometimes they do when they retire. Sometimes it's part of their growth strategy. But for the most part, Elon Musk doesn't have a Substack, right? He's not trying to teach you and sell you a course on how to be a good CEO because he just is a good CEO and makes all his money there. So often, it's, it is a B player, teaching a C player what the A players do. And I think that's like a harsh but true critique. And, you know, I myself, you know, feel like that many times.

• 57:34Shaan Puri?

  And I think that's when I was like, from that angle, I was like, oh, will this job board thing work? But once I looked into it, I was like, this actually makes a lot of sense.

• 57:42Sam Parr?

  Can we speak, this is kind of relevant. Can we wrap up with this thing you have here about you're never, even when you're late, you're early?

• 57:51Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 57:51Sam Parr?

  This is a very typical you thing.

• 57:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 57:55Sam Parr?

  So I asked, I asked Sean last week to, we said, let's come up with a 10 minute short episode. This morning I get a message from him saying, I just did it this morning. And I, that's all he said. And I clicked play and it said, the first line was like, I just woke up this morning and lost $500,000. I was like, oh, hooked. I'm in. And that, we can't run this on Sunday. We have to run this right now. And so what, what happened? And I guess what's this, you're not late type of thing.

• 58:24Shaan Puri?

  Do you want me to talk about the, the thing from this morning? Or you want me to talk about this, you're not late thing?

• 58:28Sam Parr?

  This late thing.

• 58:29Shaan Puri?

  Okay, the late thing. So I was, I was looking back and I was doing a little kind of retrospect. I said, so I graduated from college.

• 58:40Sam Parr?

  You did it today when you like lost all this?

• 58:42Shaan Puri?

  No, no, no, this is like a month ago. I was looking back at 2010. And I remember being in college and I, you know, I had an iPhone. So I knew Apple was the shit. I used Google constantly. I used Chrome and I knew, I knew Google was the shit.

• 58:58Shaan Puri?

  I was a believer in Tesla. I think I owned Tesla shares at like, I don't know, 20x cheaper than they are today.

• 59:06Shaan Puri?

  So I saw all these companies and at the time, Google seemed super established, right? Google's been around for, for, Google had been around in 2010 for so many years, right? Like over a decade plus or whatever. Same with Apple was even older, right? 20 years old. They seemed like mature companies. They didn't seem like where all the upside was. And I looked back and I just did a little analysis. I said, when I graduated from college, how big was Google? What was the market cap? If I had just invested that day.

• 59:35Shaan Puri?

  And this isn't like when you say, oh, if you invested in Bitcoin in 2010, you'd be worth a gajillion dollars. Well, yeah. That's because Bitcoin was worth like 10 cents back then. And it was like, nobody knew if Bitcoin was going to be a thing. But with Google, it was clear it was going to be a thing. Apple, it was clear it was going to be a thing. Facebook, it was clear it was going to be a thing. Like, my whole college was obsessed with it. It was pretty obviously going to be, you know, somewhat successful. And so here's some numbers. 2010, when I graduated, Google's revenue was $5 billion. Today, its revenue is $55 billion. And you could do the same thing with Amazon, with Facebook. And if you had just bought those companies back then, you would have made 10 extra money, right? So like, if I had just taken my last year of college tuition, and I just said, hey,

• 1:00:21Shaan Puri?

  Dad, instead of putting that into into college, let's just put it into these four companies that like, we use their products daily. They are already successful. They're not gonna, Google's not going to tank. It's not going to fail. Let's just invest in Google. You know, we would have 10 extra money or whatever by now. I don't know the exact numbers. It's not what's important. The lesson is, even when it feels late, like you're established, if it is a mega trend, mega trends have way more room to run than you expect. Some of the mega trends were the internet as a whole. Internet was a mega trend. Mobile was a mega trend, and Apple's been running on that mega trend for a while. You know, cloud, cloud is a mega trend. And you see AWS. AWS is big, and every year, it just grows at the rate of the fastest growing startup.

• 1:01:05Shaan Puri?

  But AWS was already like, you know, 40, 50 billion dollars in revenue, and it'll just keep growing really fast. And so, so I think that mega trends are not to be underestimated. And I was listening to this Peter Thiel thing. Peter Thiel, who is like, you know, investor, was one of the first investors in Facebook, created PayPal, that sort of thing. Peter Thiel said,

• 1:01:28Shaan Puri?

  You know, there are many money managers out there, you know, financial advisors, investment bankers, mutual funds, and they'll all try to pitch you their strategy, hedge funds, they'll all tell you how they're gonna beat the market, how they're gonna do well. He goes, as an investor, often, it is the simplest and stupidest strategy, the most obvious strategy, that is all you need to do. He goes, in 20, I think it was 2013 or 2012, Jim Cramer, the Mad Money Guy on CNBC,

• 1:01:57Sam Parr?

  who, by the way, I think is like, pretty awesome. I think, I think he's like, a pretty good guy, and his picks are not so bad, are they?

• 1:02:06Shaan Puri?

  Uh, I think, I don't know, I don't, I haven't looked too much into him, I don't know if he's a good guy, I've never met him, but I know that for his, he's an entertainer, right? He's on TV, not because he's the best stock picker, he's on TV because he's, plays really well in the living rooms of America.

• 1:02:20Sam Parr?

  Right.

• 1:02:20Shaan Puri?

  And, so anyways, he did something, which is what entertainers do, he made up a catchy phrase. He called Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google Fang.

• 1:02:29Sam Parr?

  He made that up?

• 1:02:30Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he invented Fang in 2013. And Peter Thiel pointed out, he goes, if you had just put your money into Fang, which were obviously great companies, there were technology companies that were growing, and you didn't even, you don't need to know how fast they were growing, but if you just said, these are solid companies that, you know, seems like everybody in America is using their products, you would have made six times your money in the last eight years. And he goes, that would beat the performance of almost any money manager, or hedge fund, hedge fund, or investment banker that you're, that you're thinking of working with. He goes, the problem is, the strategies are too stupid. Even if, even if a financial advisor thought that that was a good bet, they could never charge you the, you know, 1% of all your assets that they charge as their fees,

• 1:03:14Shaan Puri?

  to just tell you to invest in Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google and go, go, go to sleep, like, don't, don't touch it for 10 years. But in reality, that was the best advice. And he goes, the same thing, he goes, I believe the same thing is true for Bitcoin today. And it's, the, the advice is almost so, so simple, that a money manager would be embarrassed to say that this is their strategy. So they'll come up with a more complicated strategy that will actually underperform.

• 1:03:39Sam Parr?

  Well, I don't think it-

• 1:03:40Shaan Puri?

  Buying Bitcoin and chilling.

• 1:03:41Sam Parr?

  I agree with that sentiment. I don't think it's just a money manager thing, and I would say, look at your actions, and my actions are similar to yours, but we are, we do a lot of silly stuff. You're investing in risky startups. When you're right now, you're pontificating that you think Bitcoin is going to six X in eight years. If you think that it's going to six X in eight years, put all your money in it then.

• 1:04:02Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:04:03Sam Parr?

  Um, so I don't think.

• 1:04:04Shaan Puri?

  To be fair, I pretty much have at this point.

• 1:04:07Sam Parr?

  And I, and I'm using you as an example. I, I'm, I'm incredibly guilty of this. Well, and just, I, I mean, you as in a human being. But basically like, that's what we do is we fuck stuff up because we can't sit still. What, what's like the famous quote of like, all of humans problems exist because we can't just sit silently by ourselves.

• 1:04:25Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, a man can't sit alone in a room for 30 minutes.

• 1:04:28Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And, um, that's kind of the issue here. And it's kind of sucks because I'm in the same boat. I know that if I just put it like, I, I'm even more conservative than Fang. I'm like S and P 500. I'm like, so long as the hundred trailing hundred years repeats itself. Like, if I don't think the trailing hundred years is going to repeat itself, and there's probably like huge problems with America. Right. And so I'm like, as long as that trailing hundred repeats itself, like, dude, I'm like, everything's going to be great. And days like day today happened and I'm like, oh, fuck, gotta do this, gotta do that, gotta do this.

• 1:04:59Shaan Puri?

  Right. Um, yeah. So, so I guess like the, I, I was a little bit long-winded in that. I don't think I really nailed my point. My point is when there's a real mega trend, what feels like, ah, it's already played out. Nope. There's a lot more to go. And the hard part of course is figuring out what's a real, what's a real mega trend and what's not. But in retrospect, they were sort of obvious. Mobile was a mega trend. Video is a mega trend. Internet was a mega trend. And I believe crypto is a mega trend. And so, you know, those are, those are mega trends. And with, you know, I remember I texted my dad today. I go, hey, today's a great day to buy Bitcoin. Bitcoin's 30% off. It's Black Friday.

• 1:05:40Shaan Puri?

  And, uh, and he, because every day he badgers me like, he's like, ah, you've been talking about Bitcoin since it was at 500. And then it got to 2,000. I thought it was too much. Then it got to 4,000. It got to 20,000. I thought, no way this goes above 20,000. And then, you know, recently it's been sitting at 50, 60,000. And he's like, now I can't, if I buy in, I'm buying at 50, 60,000. I should have bought it.

• 1:06:01Sam Parr?

  So did he do it?

• 1:06:02Shaan Puri?

  So I told him, I said, hey, you've been bitching and moaning about this. Like, here it is. It's at 30 something thousand. Go buy, now is the time to buy. And I know what's gonna happen. He's gonna think, well, now it's in the red, now it's not hot, you know, now I'm a little bit afraid because the whole market's afraid. And so now he'll either not do it, or he'll like tiptoe in and then he'll regret it later. Like, I only put in so much. Because that's just like classic psychology of an investor, right? Of a bad investor, I should say. And, and so, so I guess like the thought process for me here is that if you think this is a mega trend, even 50K is it's not too late because it still has so much more room to grow if this is true. Now, of course, could be wrong, could not be, could all over, could fail for many reasons.

• 1:06:46Shaan Puri?

  But I think that when you identify these things, the one of the worst mistakes you can make is either selling too early because you don't ride out the, you don't ride out the winner. And then the second, I think, mistake I think you can make is feeling like you're late. When history tells us that these things play out over like a 20, 30 year arc.

• 1:07:04Sam Parr?

  I agree with everything. I'm, I'm nervous that, because I don't, I'm not, the most education I have on Bitcoin is you telling me, whatever you like, what every, what you tell everyone else is like, this is, this is my education on it. Because it just doesn't interest me other than sticking it to the man.

• 1:07:22Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:07:22Sam Parr?

  And I have doubts, but not, I mean, I'm six figures in, so not that many doubts. But maybe I'll take your advice and do it.

• 1:07:32Shaan Puri?

  Well, I would say like, you know, you never, you know, probably the best advice I could give is never invest on somebody else's conviction. Because when they're wrong, it really leaves a bad taste in your mouth because you didn't believe to begin with.

• 1:07:46Sam Parr?

  Well, I believe in the premise of like, you know, like the government doesn't control it. No one controls it. Like, it's kind of crazy that, you know, yeah, I agree in the high level premise.

• 1:07:55Shaan Puri?

  I think you want to, what I'm saying is, I think you want to take somebody's, if you hear my conviction, the answer is not go do it. The answer is go learn for yourself and ask yourself, how much conviction do I have in this? And then invest proportionate to your conviction. Because then at the very least, when you're right or wrong, you're gonna, you're gonna assign the credit or blame to yourself. And you'll have either a lesson learned if you were wrong, or a lesson learned if you were right, about how much you followed your conviction and if your conviction was based in something real. And so anyways, non-financial advice, that's not my point. My point was sort of like, I thought it was a very interesting observation that. Sometimes it's the simplest investment strategies where you said it and you hold it, you leave it actually will outperform. And one of the reasons people don't do them is it's

• 1:08:40Shaan Puri?

  almost so stupid, it's embarrassing if that's your strategy, especially if your job is to be an investment manager, a financial manager, a financial advisor, then it's really embarrassing to just recommend such a brain dead approach. But history will tell us that often that is the best returns.

• 1:08:56Sam Parr?

  Great. Well, I think that's a great place to end. I always like ending in those rants.

• 1:09:05Speaker 02

  I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.