Wordle Copycat Loses It All, Introducing Milk Road, and Guru Shaan on Finding Your Next Project

Sam Parr (@theSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) are joined by Ben Levy (@BenMLevy) to discuss the story of the World copycat who topped the app store charts and then lost everything, Shaan and Ben's new project, Milk Road, and how to pick your next project. Find out more about Milk Road at MilkRoad.com. ----- * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. ----- Show Notes: (00:25) - Why Sam is only eating fruit and meat (04:00) - Wordle copycats (24:00) - The many businesses of Pomp (35:30) - Why what you do and who you do it with is more important than how hard you work (42:15) - Focusing on the things that give you energy ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

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

• 0:07Ben Levy?

  Yeah, so got a crazy story for you guys. So you might have seen the app Wordle recently. Have you guys seen it?

• 0:13Sam Parr?

  Yeah, New York Times just bought it.

• 0:14Shaan Puri?

  You play?

• 0:15Ben Levy?

  Yeah, so New York Times just bought it, but about two weeks ago, one of my friends, he's a great mobile app developer, bootstrapper. He basically was like, oh, Wordle is going viral and there's no mobile app that everyone's using. So like the Wordle guy had put out this crazy story. He put out this story about how he was peer. He didn't want to monetize it. It was just a toy for his girlfriend. It went viral out of nowhere, which I don't know if I believe because he works at mischief. And like, I'm not sure I totally buy that story. But that was a story to the media. So my friend was like, holy shit. There's a huge opportunity for someone to build the mobile app. This guy doesn't own the trademark of the name. It's kind of like riffed off an old game show. So my friend built an app over the weekend, called it Wordle the App.

• 1:01Ben Levy?

  Went viral. So basically like over the weekend, got like 30,000 organic downloads, was top of the app store. And my friend's one of these guys who likes to build in public. So he tweets everything he always has. He used to like put his portfolio up so you could see everything he's doing. And what is it?

• 1:16Shaan Puri?

  Sam, by the way, this is, this is going to support your build in public thesis. By the way, this is like the perfect case study of why, of how you feel about building public, which is, I like it in theory. It's like the face tattoo thing, right? I like that other people do it. I don't want to do it. And here's why. Here's the cautionary tale. Like when, you know, when the dare officer brings like, you know, someone who's like been in jail for drugs to the classroom to tell the story.

• 1:37Sam Parr?

  This is like a before and after of meth.

• 1:41Sam Parr?

  But Sean, explain what Wordle is because all I know, I don't play word games. I play real sports. And so

• 1:50Sam Parr?

  I'm not trying, I don't waste my time with that. So when, when people are, what is this game?

• 1:57Shaan Puri?

  It's a game. Okay. So this is a simple game. You, you literally, if you, the way I get to it, you just Google Wordle, first link, you click it and it's just five empty like letters, like five squares where you gotta guess, guess a word. There's no clues. It's not like a crossword. It's literally just like guess, guess a word. So you type in a word, you might type in like, I always start with irate because Dharmesh from HubSpot said the word irate has three vowels, plus the letter T, plus the little R. So you're getting a lot of common letters there. So it's a great start word. So you type that, that word in and then it'll tell you either, it'll either show up gray, which means the letter's not in the word, yellow, which means it's in the word, but you got it in the wrong spot, or green, which is, this is the right letter in the right

• 2:41Shaan Puri?

  spot. And then you have, I think, five or six guesses to be able to, um, to get the word in the end. And then the, the beauty of it is at the end, it's like you got it, you feel the sense of accomplishment. The whole thing takes you like two minutes to play the game. So it's like really easy to play in that sense. And then if you get it right, it lets you share that you got it right, but it doesn't share what the word was. It shares like the, like imagine what you're looking at now, which is like the word and all these colors, but take the letters off, it just shows the colors. So it'll show somebody else, oh man, I started off not having any of the letters. Then I got the T at the, and then I got one letter at the end. So that's why you see that grid of green, uh, squares posted on Twitter and it started going viral on Twitter.

• 3:25Sam Parr?

  And, and what, what's like the score? Okay. So I'm

• 3:29Shaan Puri?

  Ben just got it. Moist. Ben, did you really just play that? Or are you watching a video?

• 3:34Ben?

  I think this morning, I was trying to just do like an illustration, you know, just trying to get some accurate B-roll.

• 3:39Sam Parr?

  All right. So I understand. So people have been sharing this like crazy and Dharmesh, the founder of HubSpot.

• 3:44Shaan Puri?

  He plays a daily.

• 3:45Sam Parr?

  And he even built a competitor to it as well. And so your buddy, Ben Levy, what's, what's this guy's name? His name's Zach Shakad. And what's the name of the app?

• 3:54Ben Levy?

  It was called Wordle, the app. So, part of the story, basically, so he goes and builds its app. He tweets like, "Holy shit, this is the fastest growing app I've ever built." You know, "I've built ten other businesses, they've all done really well, but this is the only one that's like growing organically like crazy." And he basically, the Wordle creator sees it and he's like, "Yo." He gets on the phone with him, he calls him and he's like, "Hey, this just doesn't feel right."

• 4:19Shaan Puri?

  By the way, this whole thing's just happening in a Twitter thread. Ben sends me the first tweet, he's like, "Yo, Zach's..." Because I've met Zach through Ben, he's like, "Yo, Zach actually cloned Wordle." Next tweet, "Look at this shit, he's tweeted out a graph, it's going crazy." Third tweet, "Someone, someone says, 'Dude, you just ripped off Wordle, like you're gonna get whatever sued or something.'" And, you know, "You don't own the trademark for this." He goes, "What trademark?" And so I'm seeing the tweets play out in real time, and he's bragging. He's bragging about how good it's doing and he's like, "Ha, like there was no app, now I'm dominating this, I'm getting all these free downloads, this is amazing." And he's just tweeting update after update. Okay, so Ben, pick it back up. So then somehow, the Wordle guy gets in touch with him.

• 5:00Ben Levy?

  So, the Wordle guy DMs him and he's like, "Yo, let's get on the phone." And my friend Zach is like, "Hey, like, you don't own the trademark, I know nobody owns it, there's a bunch of other apps called Wordle before this." But like, "Let's partner or something." And the guy's like, "Eh, I don't like..." You know, he basically said some version of like, "I don't do this for money, this is just fun." You know, ironically, he sells the New York Times like a week later, but that's separate. So, my friend gets off the phone with him. And he's like, "Alright, I'm gonna talk to a lawyer, I'm gonna figure out what I should do, like, clearly there's no ability for us to work together here." And then like twenty minutes later, some big tech reporter dunks on him pretty aggressively and he's like...

• 5:36Shaan Puri?

  Dunks on who? Your buddy or the original creator?

• 5:39Ben Levy?

  Dunks on Zach, my friend, and he's like, uh, he basically says something like, "Wow, like, app developer has no ethics, clones Wordle, bragging about how he's at the top of the App Store." And then, you know, when that happens, everyone goes and looks at Zach's past tweets, and he ironically had two tweets. So, like, six months ago, he tweeted, "I hate app clones, like, someone's cloning my app and I'm gonna..." Like, you know, he basically like disputed every app that was cloning his old app and posted a big thread about how app clones are the shittiest people.

• 6:10Shaan Puri?

  Didn't he call them like scumbags or something?

• 6:12Ben Levy?

  Yeah, he was like, "They're the scums of the earth that you're copying my app." And then he also had-

• 6:17Sam Parr?

  Wait, you said, you said the word ironic. So was he being serious?

• 6:21Ben Levy?

  No, he was being serious. It was ironic that he tweeted that and then he was doing, you know, and then he was being opportunistic. And then he also tweeted like, at the beginning of the year, I have two goals for 2022. It's like be more vulgar and make $10 million this year. So he just gets like proceeded to get dunked on really aggressively and people start buying his domain and were like, you know, I'm gonna start like, I'm gonna dispute every app you've ever made. I'm like, gonna make sure that everyone knows you're the worst of the worst. And like, so basically that's what happens. Apple ends up pulling down every single Wordle app.

• 6:57Shaan Puri?

  He calls you right somewhere in the middle here. He calls you for some advice, right?

• 7:00Ben Levy?

  Yeah, so he calls me in the middle of this and he goes, hey, this is crazy. Like, app is doing really well. I think this is a big business. Like, you know, I know, I know how much these apps convert, like free to paid. This is just growing organically. This is a 10 to 100 million dollar mobile app here. What would you do? And I was like, well, I think, you know, ethically, I'm not sure. I think you did kind of copy him. But I get that like this is version one and you're gonna make it better. Like, I could buy that. But right now, you're probably stuck. Like, the mob has you. But he's like, well, maybe there's a Trumpian version to this where like, you know, I kind of own that like this is my approach and like I'm doing it and there is no trademark.

• 7:39Shaan Puri?

  Apologize, apologize, put up the white flag, take it away, right? These are options on the table, right? I could just say, sorry, I did wrong. I could say, you know, sorry, I said what I said and I'm gonna make these, I'm gonna change the name. I'm gonna make some concessions. And then there was go full Trump and full Trump was like, just lean into it and-

• 8:01Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but you could do that in a non, in a non like douche way. What you could say is, yeah, like, look, we're not claiming to be innovators here, but we're executors. And so we find things that are great and we make them available for the masses. Sue me.

• 8:16Sam Parr?

  Like, you know, that's like the way that you could take this. That's what that's what Racket Internet says. They go, we're not innovators. We're executors. We're operators.

• 8:23Shaan Puri?

  So how did the conversation go, Ben, when you guys talked about these options?

• 8:27Ben Levy?

  Yeah. So basically I was like, you know, I think those three options are on the table. And he was like, yeah, but I don't think, you know, I don't think we're really doing anything wrong. Like, you know, yeah, there is no mobile app. So like, while people can think that, I think it's fine. So he basically was like, I'm going to double down, you know, I'm

• 8:43Shaan Puri?

  By the way, this other guy didn't create Wordle. There was a, you're saying there was a game show back in the day that was the same game. He created a web version of it. Is that right? Cause I think that changes it too, which is like, this guy also copied this show, right? Like,

• 8:56Sam Parr?

  And it looks like this guy Zach, did he redo the app, but call it Word Love?

• 9:02Ben Levy?

  Well, that that's later in the story. That's like after Wordle got shut down in the App Store. He recreated a new, you know, another word game.

• 9:09Shaan Puri?

  So Apple literally just shut down all the clones?

• 9:12Ben Levy?

  Yeah. Yeah. They they shut down everyone that was using the name Wordle after that. And to clarify, yeah, there was, there was a game show that Wordle was based on. And I think the guy's story was like, I did this for my girlfriend. It wasn't for profit. So he didn't get crucified for it.

• 9:28Shaan Puri?

  So and what did Apple say? Why did they say they could just take down all these things? Or you don't know, you don't know why they just took it down?

• 9:32Ben Levy?

  There was no statement. They just took down every Wordle app and said, you know, you don't own this trademark. Like you're being taken down because we do decide what we do with the app store.

• 9:39Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So I'm not a lawyer here, obviously, but I have done some trademark-y stuff and I'm almost positive that if someone's going to correct me, but I'm almost positive that even if you don't own the trademark, if you're like, and you can make the argument, if you're like the first or the most popular, and if there's like a general consensus that like, yes, when people think of this name, they think of you. And these other clones or these other people are trying to like steal, you know, like act like they're you. The courts tend to favor your side, even if you don't own the trademark.

• 10:15Sam Parr?

  So like, just because they don't literally have that trademark, there is probably some like, you know, you would probably win.

• 10:24Ben Levy?

  Yeah, I think, I think that's probably true and like he, he knew that, uh, like there was some argument that there's been other apps called Wordle, but it was pretty clear that like they would have a good case. Uh, so he proceeds to kind of double down on it, gets dunked on aggressively. Like basically, you know, he doubles down a little bit, like says like, no, like this is based on the game show. You don't own a trademark. I'm looking at it now. Uh, versions of that. And then it goes completely viral, like 10,000, you know, it gets like 10,000 people in the tech Twitter circle are dunking on him. There's articles-

• 10:56Shaan Puri?

  Wait, can we stop for a second? Why, why was his goal be more vulgar for 2022? Why was that a goal? That's such a random, you know, you said that? And my, my mind is still wondering, why was that his number one goal?

• 11:05Sam Parr?

  Does that mean like be more aggressive?

• 11:07Ben Levy?

  I think he meant like be more aggressive. Like when he sees opportunities, be more assertive and like, you know, be as aggressive as possible and opportunities present themselves. Uh,

• 11:16Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 11:16Ben Levy?

  Which clearly was what this was. Uh, so he went, he went hard. He got dunked on. And basically what happened was, people bought his dome, people squatted on his names, zachshaked.com. They were like, we're going to go vote down every single app you own. We're just basically going to attack you.

• 11:33Sam Parr?

  Oh, and so how's this, how's this end?

• 11:36Ben Levy?

  So, I mean, basically it ended with him shutting the app down as you'd expect. And now he's like making a new word game, uh, cause he likes the word game space. But I think his, like, when I was talking to him about it earlier, he was like, you know, the biggest thing for me is building in public is not always good. You know, like the fact, you know, by building in public, like I just assumed I, you know, this was great for me. And this is the really dark side of me building in public.

• 12:00Shaan Puri?

  Well, let's be more specific. He had $10 million in his hands and decided that the tweet love for talking about what he was doing was, was worth that because if he just stayed as an anonymous developer, he just put it under some shell company developer name, left it in the store, didn't brag about it. It wouldn't have got picked up by journalists as like, the story isn't that other people, there are apps in the store called Wordle that are owned by different people. That's not the story. The story is, look at this guy cloning this thing, ripping- It off bragging about it and then getting shit on on Twitter. That's the story. So if you just didn't do that, then that doesn't get to Apple. Like, I think there's a pretty good chance. He gets away with it because I know there's a, the App Store is full of clones.

• 12:46Shaan Puri?

  Like Flappy Bird had tons of clones, every slot machine game. There's. People don't know this, like random apps like slot machine apps are what like produces the most revenue in the, in the App Store. And, um, and you know, nobody really cares about it. They're under these like.

• 13:00Sam Parr?

  Because you don't talk about it.

• 13:02Shaan Puri?

  Because you don't talk about it.

• 13:03Sam Parr?

  When you're crushing it, you shut up.

• 13:05Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's when you're not crushing it that you want to talk about it. As soon as you start crushing it.

• 13:09Sam Parr?

  Zip. Yes. When you're doing well, you, you only talk about it when you're not doing that well. Or when you are doing so well that you think that like, you know, you can't catch up.

• 13:20Shaan Puri?

  That's why people are always like, why don't you talk about your e-commerce thing? Like, why is working? What do I need? What do I need to tell you guys about it for?

• 13:26Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And, and I also think that.

• 13:28Shaan Puri?

  Transparency, like, yeah, cool. I, I favor transparency, uh, with people I trust. That's strangers on the internet. Like.

• 13:34Sam Parr?

  I don't value transparency.

• 13:36Shaan Puri?

  Well, it's like if it's my wife or my family or my coworkers. All right. I'll give you transparency. I don't owe you my Twitter follower or even my podcast listener to tell you my every detail. I'll be very honest with you. I tell people things when it's beneficial to me and I don't when I don't. And I actually recommend that strategy to anybody. There is no like a force that is, there's nobody forcing you to tell everybody everything. Uh, when there's no gain to be had for you.

• 14:03Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 14:04Shaan Puri?

  And there's actually clear downsides.

• 14:05Sam Parr?

  And this guy just totally screwed it up. If he should have shut up. You just got to shut up sometimes and that's really hard. This is the building in public thing, man. And also it impacted the Wordle guy. Now he got all this competition and he had a lot of stress. I think that like, when you're doing well, you just shut up. You don't talk about it.

• 14:21Ben Levy?

  Yeah. And I think, you know, part of it becomes your identity. Like I'm the building public guy. So like I do everything in public. And I think he was just like, you know, type of guy. It's like, I'm a really good at growth and I'm really good at building apps and wanted some love for it, you know?

• 14:35Shaan Puri?

  And then by the way, I recommend this guy's blog or Substack because he actually, he does a good job of building in public. Like he, Ben, what was the one that we were, we were reading? And I remember telling you, I was like, dude, this guy's stuff is actually really good. He had like no followers, but like, or like, you know, not no followers, but he had a very small following, but I thought his content was actually really interesting. He would talk about like, all right, I'm going to build this product because of this reason. So first thing I'm going to do, I'm going to go to, you know, lean domain search. I'm going to get a name generator for this. Okay. I got the name. Boom. Now I'm going to go do this. Boom. Here's how I do this. Boom. All right. I'm going to fire up some paid ads. Look, here's the dashboard. And like, he was actually making progress. So he wasn't just like, you know, stuck in, he wasn't just talking theory, like he was actually getting users getting revenue.

• 15:16Shaan Puri?

  And he was very, again, he was giving out a ton of value. And so I was like, oh, cool. I like to learn all this stuff. Great. Thank you very much. And in those projects, the trade probably worked, right? He got interest and respect and attention and he gave up, you know, just a little bit of knowledge. But in this case, it did not pay off.

• 15:36Ben Levy?

  Yeah. And he like openly shares all of his app numbers, like that link I just dropped. Zach dot SO slash dashboard. You can see all of his app numbers, all the churn. So it's a big part of his identity and he's really good at it. But you know, sometimes it doesn't always pay to be to build in public.

• 15:53Sam Parr?

  Dude, cornrows and face tattoos. It's cool that other people do it, but not for me.

• 15:59Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. The other thing is like identity, be real careful what your identity is because your identity comes with like, you know, some serious trade offs. People have an identity and then they'll like, you know, they use it to build a little prison for themselves. Here's the, here's my walls and chains that I put on myself by like labeling myself in this way. I like to, I like, people will be like, oh, I thought you said this the other day. I'm like, yeah, changed my mind.

• 16:22Sam Parr?

  Speaking, well, listen.

• 16:23Shaan Puri?

  You know, done.

• 16:24Sam Parr?

  Speaking of prisoners and building an identity, I saw that someone did a survey, like a reputable source, but I forget who did a survey and they asked, they did a survey and they asked young folks, Gen Z, who they follow for crypto and NFT advice. And it was like, I think they surveyed hundreds of thousands of people. Pomp was number one for the most trusted person. Pomp is like our friend and started out like just a guy on Twitter. Now he's like, pretty official. How on earth does this guy do so much? So he's got a 200,000 person email list who he talks to, I think, every day.

• 17:01Shaan Puri?

  Every day.

• 17:01Sam Parr?

  He's got a daily business show and I think he has.

• 17:04Shaan Puri?

  Which is like multiple hours of.

• 17:05Sam Parr?

  Like three hours.

• 17:07Shaan Puri?

  It's a professionally produced morning show, meaning like he's there on camera with his brothers. They got an agenda, a rundown of stories they're going to cover. It's like a news show, business news show. I think it's called the business news show or some shit like that.

• 17:18Sam Parr?

  The best business show.

• 17:19Shaan Puri?

  Best business show. And he does it for multiple hours in the morning, every morning.

• 17:26Sam Parr?

  And I think I was with him and his wife a while ago and she was joking. She's like, man, he writes all of it. I don't know how he does it, but he writes really fast. How on earth does this guy have this much output?

• 17:39Shaan Puri?

  I, I have a tremendous amount of respect for that because I know how hard that is. And I know there's, there's not usually people I look at and I say, I can't, I couldn't do that. And I know when I look at that, I couldn't do that. There's no way I could maintain that level of output. At the same time, I would not want to do that. That is not a.

• 17:59Sam Parr?

  I don't want to do it either.

• 17:59Shaan Puri?

  I want to build for myself.

• 18:01Sam Parr?

  I don't think he's going to be able to keep it. He, he won't be able to sustain that for more than two or three years.

• 18:07Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's crazy.

• 18:08Sam Parr?

  His, he's got like an empire. What do you, what do you, how big is his empire, you think? You think he's making more money from selling stuff as opposed to actual Bitcoin?

• 18:17Shaan Puri?

  We speculated on this before, so let's, I don't know if we, we've kind of done this before. You want to do it again?

• 18:22Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 18:24Shaan Puri?

  Okay, fair enough. So he's got a couple of components, right? He's got the paid sub stack. So he's got the free, there's like a free version of it. But the daily one, I think, goes to a paid group. Ben, do you know roughly what the paid size is? I think it's like, I think it's something like 70,000 people paying like $10 a month or something like that. I want to say it's like 70K ish. So that would be what 700,000? By the way, the, the, I don't do public math. That was stolen from pump. Pump said that I thought it was fucking hilarious and stole it because I think it's amazing. It's amazing rule to live by. So he's got about 200,000 people total on his list and he's got, I think, 70 that are in the paid group. Let's just call it that.

• 19:04Shaan Puri?

  Then he's got a job board. I think the job board we had heard either heard or we had kind of investigated. Looked like he was doing about a million dollars a year. That's cryptojobs.com or something. So then he said, all right, you learn about crypto from me. You want to work in crypto? Boom. He also has sponsors on all the new, on all the newsletter. So at the end of every newsletter, it's like, thanks to these 10 companies. He like rolls the credits.

• 19:26Sam Parr?

  And if I had a guess, that would be, if he has 200,000 free subscribers, that'd be around between 100,000 to $200,000 a month in sponsor revenue.

• 19:36Shaan Puri?

  So we're at that, I think, I think what we've just added up to is about two to two and a half million dollars a year.

• 19:43Sam Parr?

  And then that's the, his videos.

• 19:45Shaan Puri?

  He does about a million dollars a year on his Bitcoin course, which I don't think he even shows up for, or maybe he does, but like, I think, I think he's got teachers. It's like pretty automated. So let's add another million there. That's let's say three, three and a half million on the course. Then there's investing. So investing is probably where the real money is to be made. Very hard to say kind of what both crypto investing, so like buying Bitcoin and other tokens, as well as investing in companies that serve the crypto economy. That's kind of like, and he had a fund. The fund was pretty big, Ben. How big was the fund? But he closed, he returned all the investors money. Hundred? No, that was the fund he was at before this.

• 20:26Sam Parr?

  Right, sorry.

• 20:27Shaan Puri?

  His personal fund, which is like the pop rolling fund or whatever.

• 20:30Sam Parr?

  Oh, yeah.

• 20:31Shaan Puri?

  I think was like 25 million a year or something like that, which is the equivalent of a hundred million dollar fund. So I think he was doing 20 to 25 million a year. Again, these are all plus or minus 50%.

• 20:42Sam Parr?

  And then his YouTube got four million views in the last 30 days. And then his podcast, I bet, is around where we are.

• 20:47Shaan Puri?

  But dude, YouTube at four million views is like $4,000 or something. YouTube pays like nothing on just the views. But maybe his sponsors, he's probably, because I think his best business show has a main sponsor that's like.

• 20:59Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's SoFi, because one time I got in trouble because I disrespected them when they were.

• 21:03Shaan Puri?

  They're not a sponsor anymore, right? So can you tell the story?

• 21:06Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So basically, one time the Hustle wrote an article about SoFi's CEO getting in trouble for, I don't remember what, what did he, was it sexual, was it a sexual thing or was it fraud, something like that? And he, in the headline, we wrote SoFi, more like so fucked. And they bailed as a sponsor. And I told that story on his podcast and he got really, he wasn't mad.

• 21:29Shaan Puri?

  Uncomfortable.

• 21:30Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I was like, well, you just tell them I said it. You know, you didn't say it, I said it. So SoFi can't.

• 21:36Shaan Puri?

  You're like a menace to the SoFi like marketing team. They're like, God, everywhere we go, this guy comes in and hits the same SoFi so fucked.

• 21:45Sam Parr?

  It's a good joke. It's a good joke. So anyway, I would get, I would, so at this point, I would say he's in the huge range of five and seven million a year, just off like pop.

• 21:54Shaan Puri?

  That's income, right? Then not even counting the sort of equity value that's, because there's also Bitcoin Pizza, which was his like ghost kitchen he launched. What else is there, Ben? He's got merch? Is he a merch? I think he's got merch.

• 22:06Ben Levy?

  Yeah, he's got merch.

• 22:08Shaan Puri?

  What other part of his empire, of his pomp empire? He's got his brother. So he's, I really respect that. Anybody who takes, you know, anybody who's got the when I eat, we all eat mentality, I respect that. And he brought his brothers along. So there's one brother, Joe. He does awesome content about the business of sports. His other brothers are his co-hosts for the best business show. Because when I asked him, I was like, dude, why are you signing up to do this morning show? Like, that's so much work to do YouTube show every day for multiple hours. He's like, yeah, but I'm just like, it's me hanging out with my brothers, shooting shit, busting each other's balls and talking business. Like, that's kind of what I would. If I just said, what's my ideal life? It's like, I'll just hang out with my brothers and like.

• 22:45Sam Parr?

  I mean, I get it. I could do that. The problem is, is like, let's say you want to take like a three week vacation. You know?

• 22:50Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, there's a difference between I like to do it and I have to do it.

• 22:53Sam Parr?

  Right.

• 22:54Shaan Puri?

  And he's in, he's in the have to do it. It seems like right now with where, you know, you're committed to a schedule.

• 22:59Sam Parr?

  Um, all right. You want me to tell you about an interesting company?

• 23:03Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, actually one plug there. So while Ben's here, so we, uh, I don't know when we're gonna talk about the milk road. I want to talk about my new, new, new project that me and Ben have launched a new company. But there is a version of this, which is the, the one we were like, all right, this is a great idea. But there's one drawback, which is you have to write this email every day. And it's the same thing. It's a prison. It's like, and we, we were very conscious about it. It's like, Ben, you want to sign up for this? This is the prison we're gonna choose to be in like if, if this is, if this is what we choose, fine. But let's not get here and be surprised because, uh, because that's the commitment we gotta make. We were every night. And so Ben at, you know, midnight after the babies are asleep or whatever. It's like, you know, he's like, hey, here's the draft for tomorrow morning's email.

• 23:47Shaan Puri?

  And then I, I was up till 2am last night editing the thing. And so there's definitely a pain in the ass component to it. That's, uh, you know, that I'm experiencing, which is one tenth of what Pomp does, but it's more than enough for me. And you did the same thing with the hustle.

• 24:00Sam Parr?

  Man, it's hard. I like, I loved it. I mean, it, to me, it's like, I think I told you, it's almost like running a marathon or like being in a fight or something. It's like, you're scared to do it. You do it and you get in the thick of it and you like, kind of enjoy it. And then you get, you get to a point where you could take a break and you're like, this is horrible. I never want to do this again, which is how I felt like last year. And then you get like six months out and you're like, fuck, I missed the, I missed the action. I need to get, I need to get into it. And so it's really hard to, to write a newsletter every single day, to do any type of content creation every single day for more than a year is very, very, very hard.

• 24:37Shaan Puri?

  Really tough. And we're only what? Less than a month into it. Ben, what's the, uh, where are you at in the grind? Like, I think we're, we're giving it a year for like, how long you, you could tolerate this and, and sustain this pace? Where are you at right now? You're only in month one.

• 24:53Ben Levy?

  I'm at the still exciting, still fun to research and write, but I am at the holy shit, Sean's a way better writer than I am point. But I'm still, it's still fun.

• 25:04Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, sometimes I go into edit. I'm like, oh, let me just touch up this little wordsmith and then like, I overhaul the whole thing because I'm like, oh, no, I think this could be better. And I'm like, actually, it was fine before, but like, I just can't help myself. Like last night, actually, this is an interesting point to talk about at S and M, actually. So, so we should say two things. What we'll talk about what this company is and why we started it. Basically, every year, me and Ben have started one company. Last year's company was the e-commerce company and we grew that from zero to about 10 million in revenue profitably. And we and to do that, like, never had done a physical product before. Never like never knew how to get things manufactured and all that. Never had been spending like, you know,

• 25:48Shaan Puri?

  $200,000 a month on Facebook ads and being responsible for that return and making sure you don't grow broke. So, uh, so that was the adventure last year. This year we were like, what do we want to do? And we basically were like, whatever it is, it's got to be in either crypto or like, kind of like teaching slash audience building. That's the stuff I like to do. Crypto is like the topic me and Ben are obsessed with. And that's why we came up with this thing called the milk road, which is basically it's an email you get every day. And we just say, it's kind of like, um, it's the way I got, it's the way I got good at crypto, which was my buddy Furcon, who's way smarter than me. He was like, he, you know, he bought Ethereum in the crowd sale. He bought, he was mining Bitcoin back in the day. Like this guy's just been ahead of the curve on stuff. He's an engineer.

• 26:32Shaan Puri?

  And every day he basically just sends me like three links. He's like, yo, check this out. You seen this? I'm always like, no, I haven't seen it. And then I'm always like, wait, what is this? Why is this interesting? And he's like, oh, so the reason this is cool is because ABC, he just breaks it down. Super simple for like a dumbass like me. And I was like, dude, if I could just take that idea and provide that like as a newsletter, like Furcon doesn't care. He's never going to create a sub stack or a newsletter. He's like too smart and too cool for all that shit. But I was like, if I could take that idea of like a smart friend, just showing you one or two cool things a day that's going on in crypto and explaining it in simple, plain Jane English. I think that that would actually be useful.

• 27:08Sam Parr?

  How many subscribers do you guys have?

• 27:10Shaan Puri?

  So we've been doing it for, I think, three weeks now and we're at sixteen and a half thousand as of today. So it's grown like last week we're at ten thousand. So this week alone, we've grown about fifty percent.

• 27:20Sam Parr?

  What was the cause?

• 27:23Shaan Puri?

  Two things. We turned on paid ads and so you referred or you have, you know, a guy who is good with this stuff. He's been helping us out. He's really good. Actually, like way I've tried like five agencies for Facebook ads. This guy's like better than all of them.

• 27:36Sam Parr?

  How much are you spending to acquire an email?

• 27:39Shaan Puri?

  Um, right. I don't want to say that right now, but it's in the good range. Remember when you were like, dude, back in the day it used to be X. Now it's Y. We're getting it for X still, but we also aren't spending a ton. So maybe as we spend more, that's going to go down. But honestly, there's such a big appetite for learning crypto because people know, people kind of know, all right, this seems like the next big wave. Like, you know, there was the internet, it was mobile phones, it was iPhone. And now like crypto seems to be the big wave, super hard to keep up with. And I know there's money to be made. So I think the appetite is there where I think we're going to keep getting subscribers for pretty cheap because the appetite, I've never seen an appetite for content like this in my, in my life because I've been trying to make content that people want. And I'm always talking about shit I'm into and like, you know, it's often like.

• 28:20Sam Parr?

  I think the name is good. I think the name's pretty good and you're using that platform Beehive. Is that any good?

• 28:26Shaan Puri?

  Beehive's pretty good. It's pretty new. So like, there's a lot of features we need where we're like, yo, we need to be able to, for example, if I do a partnership with somebody or what, or somebody plugs us in their newsletter, we may, or let's say Facebook ads, we pay for Facebook ads. I need to know if that subscriber like worth the same as an organic, like are they still opening it 20 days later? You know, I need to know like, based on where they came from, are they still opening it to know where I should put my energy, spreading the word? And so they don't have features like that yet, but we're kind of working with them to be like, yo, help us like, we need X, can you build it? We'll be your best customer if you can kind of like help us get what we need.

• 29:03Sam Parr?

  Sick. I think is, I think it's going to work. It just. I think that you'll start seeing, well, you've already seen progress. After one year, you're going to see a lot of progress. And then if you continue to do it for three years, then shit really starts to accumulate. The media really does compound. I didn't believe that it did compound because I'm like, well, it's not like subscription revenue necessarily. But then I realized like, yeah, but if I like, just continue doing this and like get known, you like, it becomes, it compounds in terms of cultural relevance and that usually translates to revenue.

• 29:36Shaan Puri?

  That's a good point, and I've always said this, and I've always fucked this up. That's the reason I keep saying it is mostly as a reminder myself. Like the best advice I give, the advice I give the most to others is the advice that I've had. This is the lesson I've had to relearn five times because I just can't like get it through my thick head. And that's that what you work on and who you work with matters way more than how hard you work. And to put that another way is the most important decision you make is what project to work on. And so like, I'll tell you, like, I've worked on some really shitty projects. Like we did a hackathon and we built this app called Beer Hunt. And it was like, every time you drink a beer, you like, take a picture of it, you check it in.

• 30:13Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but you don't give a shit about that.

• 30:15Shaan Puri?

  And it's like, and people got excited. Why? Because oh, beer, everybody loves to like, it would get a big reaction. Anytime we told somebody about it, they'd laugh and they'd, they'd be like, oh, that's cool. I'll send it to my buddy or whatever. And so people liked it who were especially craft beer types, but I wasn't a craft beer type. And also like, I didn't have the filter of like, dude, if I'm going to do anything, it's going to basically take up all my time for like three years minimum. Is this the one?

• 30:40Sam Parr?

  Right.

• 30:40Shaan Puri?

  And, and I was treating it like a, you know, like a hookup. And I should have been treating it like marriage because projects are more like marriage. Really, when they like, once you decide to do them, you're going to do them for multiple years. Right? Like, and so, so I've chosen a bunch. I did a sushi restaurant, horrible project, beer app, horrible project. Tried to build the next big social network and messaging app. Worked so hard, built cool shit, but like the fucking hardest industry to like, you know, you're just running around with a bottle, trying to catch lightning. So my project selection has been horrible to date. The best project I ever selected was this podcast. And then the, you know, the e-commerce one was okay, not, not great. It's like, it's successful, but it's more successful just because I got better at business. It's still a really hard business to be in and kind of a roll up your sleeves type of business to do.

• 31:26Shaan Puri?

  I think this is probably the, the next best, like, I think I finally did project selection right. And the reason why is.

• 31:34Shaan Puri?

  I think that crypto is as important as like, you know, mobile apps and iPhone was in kind of like 2009, 2008, 2010, maybe. And as important as like the internet was back in like 1999. I think that's true. And when there's a huge wave happening, it kind of doesn't matter exactly what you do. You just need to make sure you're out in the water paddling with your board. And I had been kind of like, I'd been investing and thinking about it, but like, it wasn't my job. It wasn't my job to think about it every single day. What this newsletter does, like, I don't know if the news, I don't know if the media business is gonna be amazing. I think it could be. But even if it's

• 32:15Shaan Puri?

  not, the fact that my job is that every day I have to learn two amazing things, like two interesting things about crypto and be able to explain it to tens of thousands of people. That is like, that is a job that I think is gonna pay off in weird ways. I could think, I think we're gonna get into good investments because people are gonna be like, oh, cool. Yeah, you guys got that big distribution. Yeah, we want you in this project.

• 32:36Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I mean, that's what happened with the hustle.

• 32:39Shaan Puri?

  Right. And it's like, I'm gonna find cool projects because I'm literally, I have to say something interesting tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m. when this email goes out. I'm not gonna say something boring. So that means I gotta learn something every day. So that means I'm turning myself into kind of like a learning machine. So that is why I think this is the right project. And the reason I share this is because I think it's the most important decision you make in any project you do, in any endeavor you do is just at the beginning, what project you decided to go for.

• 33:04Sam Parr?

  Dude, I, that's wonderful. I'm reading three, two, two books on this topic. The first is called Wanting, which is, Andrew suggested it. That's why I bought it. He suggested it on this pod. It's called Wanting, and it's about mesmeric desire.

• 33:18Shaan Puri?

  Memetic.

• 33:19Sam Parr?

  Sorry, memetic desire. And the second one is The Daily Laws. And this, it's this daily, it's about the 48 Laws of Power and Mastery and all these great books by this guy named Robert Greene. But you read just one page a day. And the whole first section that I'm continuing reading is like, how do you find what you care about? And it's really great because the, the, the thing is, is you wanna find, you wanna find stuff where you are able to, when you get into it, you actually get more energized. And I've done a lot of stuff like copyrighting stuff, which I think is fun sometimes, but when I do it, I'm like, oh, I gotta like, I'm, I'll be like, fine, I'm gonna get this done by 1 o'clock on Monday. I gotta get this done. And then I realized, one time, a couple of years ago, I moved apartments.

• 34:02Sam Parr?

  And I remember the mover coming and I planned for a week. So I was like, all right, we're gonna get all these boxes. We're gonna stack these boxes here. This is how we're gonna move it. The movers are gonna come at eight o'clock. I'm gonna be there. I'm gonna lift us up. And then I was, I, I, I got up at 5:00 AM because I couldn't go to, I couldn't sleep. I was like, I'm so excited to move and to like physically move these things and set up the new place. And I was thinking about that when I was figuring out what I'm gonna do next. And that's one of the reasons why I'm getting into short-term rentals right now is because I just got, and, and I think that the, the, the point I'm trying to make is when you're thinking about what gives you energy, it doesn't have to be, you said it, but I don't actually think you meant this this way. You said, I think this is a big deal. And I don't think that's why it excites you. It excites you just because the, the, I don't know why it excites you, but like the, um,

• 34:46Sam Parr?

  literally just like, it's a new money. That's kind of interesting. I don't think it would matter if like everyone's talking about it or not. Like, I, I don't know if you, if that's what excites you. What excites you is like literally the tiny minute details. For some reason, it's, it's, it just, if maybe the math, maybe like you're overthrowing the system. Something about that is really interesting to you. Right? And so for me, I was like, I just love moving these fucking boxes and moving into a new apartment. I don't know why I love doing that. But like, I love going out on the street and hunting for places and talking to the guy at the bar. Like, what do you think about this neighborhood? Are all the hipsters moving here? Like, I love it. I get obsessed with it. And like, I, what I was trying to do, what I should do next is I was thinking about what do I just get so much energy of? And I remember I cannot sleep the day before I've got to move because I'm so excited.

• 35:29Shaan Puri?

  That's so funny, but I think most people hate that, but you love it, which is why it's even more valuable. Uh, when you, when the thing you get energy from is things that drain other people's energy, like bingo, you're gonna outcompete everybody. Because for them, it's gonna be working for you. It's gonna be play. Like, uh, my coworker, this guy Paul Gebheim told me this once. He goes, he was like, um, I hadn't really thought about this. I was really young at the time. I was maybe 24, 24, 25. And he goes, um, He goes, yeah, so you should, you should go talk at this event. And I was like, why is it gonna like, give growth to the, to our app? Or like, are we gonna recruit people? He's like, no, you should go talk because you love talking, right? Like, he's like, talking gives you energy. So you're gonna love it. And I go, what? He goes, he goes, yeah, it's like, you know, for most people, if they had to go give a talk in front of a bunch of people,

• 36:13Shaan Puri?

  they would like, they'd be drained by the time they even get up on the stage. And then afterwards, there'd just be like, finally, some relief from the anxiety I've been feeling. He's like, you're the opposite. I was like, I noticed that. He goes, he goes, yeah, it's easy. He goes, it's like going to the gym. You know, you go to the gym and like, if you just look at the math, it's like, well, there's a lot of energy expended working out. But how do you feel after you work out? You feel, yeah, you feel physically a bit tired, but you feel like your actual spirit feels energized. Uh, like you go give energy and somehow you get energy in that moment. And he's like, so you know, there's some stuff that's energy drains, even though it's not that taxing. It's like just thinking about your, think about filing your taxes for like the next 20 minutes. Watch, you'll feel fucking awful by the end of it. You'll go need a nap or a drink.

• 36:56Shaan Puri?

  Um, and it's like, on the other hand, if you do stuff that gives you energy, you know, blah, blah, blah. And so, you know, you can audit your calendar and say, I'm gonna highlight in green, the things that I do that give me energy and put in red, the things that, that suck my soul. And, um, and you know, if I want to have a better life, I should probably just do more of the green shit.

• 37:13Sam Parr?

  I think that's, that's great. I think that I, I've talked into a ton of people right now who are method. They're like, you know, I've, I've made a little bit of a name for myself.

• 37:21Shaan Puri?

  What should I do?

• 37:22Sam Parr?

  By my career, but like, I don't even like it. What the fuck do I do? And I'm like, ah, yeah, it's tough, but you gotta find where, where, you have to find what gives you energy. That doesn't necessarily mean what makes you happy, by the way. But what gives you energy?

• 37:36Shaan Puri?

  Totally. Cause it can be really challenging and frustrating at times. And, you know, uh, it'll have highs and lows. In fact, I, I add this channel to every Slack that I do. So like, I just put it in our e-commerce one. Cause we just had like a big low where we got effed over by this like crazy unforeseen circumstance. It's like, oh, well, here's another one. And so, you know, my team, they get so bogged down by these highs and lows. And I was like, guys, remember like, we, we stood in line to get on a roller coaster. Why are we surprised when there's highs and lows? That's what a roller coaster does. Like, if you didn't want the thrill, like, you know, we can go sit in the grass over there. We don't have to be on a roller coaster.

• 38:12Sam Parr?

  That's such a good line. I'm stealing that.

• 38:13Shaan Puri?

  And it's like, you know, so I create a slideshow called highs and lows. And I say, well, now we have a place to put it, which is in itself like therapy. It's like, ah, dude, this is gonna be an epic low that I put in there. And we went, we wrote the low. And then we started writing some highs that we've had. And like, it just, it's what you should expect. Don't be surprised when the roller coaster goes up and down. When you you stood in line to get on the roller coaster, you were excited about going on this roller coaster. Um, you know, that's, that's what you wanted. You wanted the adventure. And so, um, and so, you know, that's how, I think that's like a good tip for really any business.

• 38:45Sam Parr?

  That's a great line.

• 38:46Shaan Puri?

  With the milk road, which milk road's the name of the, the crypto email that me and Ben sent out every day. And like you, you go to milk, milkroad.com about the domain, by the way, for $2,000. I think it's a pretty good, pretty good buy, right?

• 38:57Sam Parr?

  Good buy.

• 38:57Shaan Puri?

  Two grand.

• 38:57Sam Parr?

  Two grand. That's a great buy. You, I'm, I would, I would have thought you had to get the dot co.

• 39:02Shaan Puri?

  We had milkroad.xyz and it was like just such bullshit. Like people couldn't even like the thing wouldn't even load. I don't know why. But like milkroad.com. So when we started writing this, I was like, all right, I found my thing. Now I found my thing when I was probably like 32 or something like that. Right? So it took me 12 years, maybe to figure out what's the thing that gives me energy. And mine was, I just want to get paid to be curious. And it's like, what does that mean? It's like, I don't know, like, like every day I hear about different stuff. I'm reading about things. I'm talking to people. Wouldn't it be great if just like going and learning that thing was somehow? How I got rich and fa- rich and famous? Like, wouldn't that be dope?

• 39:41Shaan Puri?

  And like the podcast does that. It lets me just be curious. I can be like, oh, someone's making a bunch of money selling turnkey tailgates to universities? How does the economics of that work? Right? Like, that shouldn't be something I'm, I get, I get the license to go spend three hours figuring out. But the podcast gives me that license. I'm cool. It, it gives me money and fame for, for doing it. I get power and influence. Great. Uh, as a byproduct. Then the second thing, the e-commerce one, for example, does not give me this. And that's why I don't think long, long term. It's for me because it's not me being professionally curious. It's like more of an opportunistic thing. Milk road is that because every day I'm like, I like, for example, yesterday, this guy came out with this thing that I think you'll find interesting.

• 40:22Shaan Puri?

  So most of the time, people talk about the prices, people tell us, spend a lot of time talking about price of crypto, which is kind of annoying. Once you stay in it for a while. But like, let's say the price of Ethereum right now is about $2,600 per ETH. And

• 40:34Sam Parr?

  Was that the thing where it says it should be 5,000?

• 40:37Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, people, people come out and they should be, they're like, oh, like ETH is going to 5,000, ETH is going to 10,000, ETH to the moon. And like nine times out of 10, this is, you know, either hopes and dreams. Or it's like, just clickbait. Like if I say, I think Bitcoin's going to 5 million a coin. Guess what? That's going to get covered by a bunch of people and like a bunch of people are going to share it because it's outlandish. Uh, and hey, you know, please don't hold me to it. What are you going to do? I'm just making some far fetched prediction about the future. Um, and the last one is they are like using some weak ass logic, like, like people do this with Bitcoin all the time. They're like, there are 55 million millionaires in the world and there's only 21 million Bitcoin. There's not enough Bitcoin for the millionaires to all have one. So price is going to go way, way up.

• 41:20Shaan Puri?

  And it's like, okay, like I understand the general idea of what you're saying, but like, that's so unsophisticated compared to. And this is why like Warren Buffett comes out and says Bitcoin is rat poison or it's pure speculation. There's no fundamentals. That was like the, that's the common narrative. So what I thought was kind of cool was, um, was that, um, Ben just linked to an article in the chat where I did the clickbait thing. Where I said, I'm putting 25% of my net worth into Bitcoin. This is like, you know, a year and a half ago or something like that. And I was like, because there's a, there's a wave of institutional capital coming in. I'm going to front run the wave. And it just sounds great. And guess what? Like, you know, these, these news, news websites, you know, look at this like cringey. My face of a Bitcoin.

• 42:05Sam Parr?

  What was the thing that happened?

• 42:07Shaan Puri?

  All right. So this guy came out, he's a, he's like a, kind of like a crypto quant investor. He's got like his own fund or whatever. And he said, You know, I actually think that there's a way to value Ethereum like you would value any stock, any stock of a company. He goes, so how do you value a company? You value a company based on its cash flows. Well, guess what? Ethereum has revenue. So what's the revenue of Ethereum? Ethereum has revenue because there's transaction fees. And you know, this is not new, but there's something new of like Ethereum changed what it does with the transaction fees. So now you can value it. So for example, Bitcoin has transaction fees, but the transaction fees get paid to miners. So as a Bitcoin holder, you don't get that revenue. And the miners all have different expenses. One guy's in Greenland, his expenses

• 42:52Shaan Puri?

  are low because electricity is cheap there, whatever. So you could never really get the profits, the net profits of Bitcoin transactions with the Bitcoin network because it really wasn't, that's not, it wasn't, it was apples to oranges. But Ethereum has changed what it does with the fees, which now lets you create a valuation model. So what happens? All right. Ethereum transaction happens. Let's say it's a hundred dollars for the transaction fee. 70% of that is called the base fee. And do you know what they do with the base fee? You know where that goes?

• 43:19Sam Parr?

  No, I don't know anything what you're talking about, to be honest.

• 43:22Shaan Puri?

  Okay. So you, okay. Well, I'll, I'll explain in the most simple terms. When there's an Ethereum, when there's a transaction Ethereum, there's a fee, right? That's cool. Visa, Mastercard, everybody has a fee when you do a transaction. The Ethereum fee gets broken into two parts. There's the base fee, which is just burned. So they take 70% of the transaction fee, and they just get rid of it. Why would you do that? Well, this is like when a, when a company buys back stock, it's a share buyback. They basically buy stock on the open market and just get rid of it. What does that do? It makes, it shrinks the supply of the stock, which makes the price go up, right? There's less supply, but there's the same demand, so price goes up. So Ethereum started doing this thing last year, where it takes the fee and it just buys back Ethereum and gets rid of it,

• 44:06Shaan Puri?

  which drives the price, it drives the supply down, price up. Okay, cool. That's the first bit. The second bit is there's like a tip, that's 30% of the fee. Today that goes to miners, but there's a, like the way Ethereum, there's like Ethereum 2.0 coming out, when it does that, that's going to go to the holders of Ethereum, to the long-term holders of Ethereum. So that's like a dividend being issued out. So now you have, now Ethereum has revenue, which last month that was 1.3 billion in fees. So real significant revenue. And we know that that accrues, the value accrues to the, to holders of Ethereum.

• 44:37Sam Parr?

  So what price target did, did he put on it?

• 44:39Shaan Puri?

  So he does a model, he does a discounted cash flow model. And he basically says, based on this revenue, based on this multiple, and based on the, this, this discount rate, the price target for Ethereum right now, right now, the present value of Ethereum according, according to this model is $10,000 per ETH. ETH is trading at 2.6, 2.6K. If you believe this guy's model, he's under valued currently by about 4X. And he put the model out there. So anybody can go change it.

• 45:04Sam Parr?

  What's his name?

• 45:06Shaan Puri?

  Uh, his name is, uh,

• 45:07Sam Parr?

  What do I Google to read it?

• 45:08Shaan Puri?

  What was his name?

• 45:09Ben Levy?

  Ryan Alice, A-L-I-S.

• 45:13Shaan Puri?

  And, um, and so you could say, okay, maybe he's got really like aggressive assumptions in his model. Well, actually he just used the average price to earnings multiple of the S and P 500. Um, and he assumed 25% annual growth, uh, for the Ethereum network over the next 20 years, which is not like super aggressive, right? It grew like a thousand percent last year, 400% this year, like, you know, it's growing much faster than that right now. So you've used pretty conservative estimates. Now there's always risks, right? Any, I, I have this phrase I put in my, I put in the newsletter this morning, which is that, you know, more fiction gets written in Excel than in, than in books. You know, because, uh, you, you can make an Excel model dance and make it look great just by tweaking two little variables. So you always have to be careful with this stuff. You gotta do your own homework.

• 45:58Shaan Puri?

  But I found this to be really interesting because the common narrative is, oh, it's all speculation. It's got no intrinsic value. There's no fundamentals. There's no analysis you can do on it. Uh, you're just guessing what the next guy's gonna buy. And that actually is true for most coins and it was true for Ethereum until now. And one of the best things you could do as an investor is spot when something, you know, a common narrative is now no longer true. Uh, those are usually pretty big opportunities. So anyways, I was, I'm up till 3am last night because I'm learning what this guy's model looked like. I'm kind of checking it for myself. Does this make sense to me? And I'm putting that in the newsletter. It's like, hey, let me make this simple for you to understand. Like this is kind of cool.

• 46:36Shaan Puri?

  And so even though that's a lot of work, that's a prison of my own making that I'm happy to do because I I would rather be doing nothing else.

• 46:41Sam Parr?

  You're gonna be into this though for years. I think you will be.

• 46:44Shaan Puri?

  That's the big TBD.

• 46:45Sam Parr?

  But that's the, that's the, I think you will be.

• 46:47Shaan Puri?

  For now, I'm into it. I'm providing a fuck ton of value. Nine months from now, 28 months from now, am I gonna feel the same? I don't know, but hopefully we can hire a writer who doesn't feel the same.

• 46:56Sam Parr?

  I think with most people, even the shit they love, it does get boring sometimes. And then what you do is you walk away or you chill and then you you fall in love again. I mean, I have to imagine that even Steven Spielberg is like, I don't want to make a movie this year.

• 47:09Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 47:09Sam Parr?

  You know what I mean? I, I think, is that how they feel? I wonder what like Nadal or what's, what's the tennis player or the

• 47:17Shaan Puri?

  Rafael Nadal.

• 47:18Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I wonder like what he thinks about like tennis or something like that. I mean, I like Usain Bolt was like, I don't even like training, man. I'm just doing this because I'm good at it and it like, I like winning, but I don't really love, I'm not in love with this right now.

• 47:31Sam Parr?

  And like

• 47:31Shaan Puri?

  I think that's normal. I think that's natural.

• 47:33Sam Parr?

  And you see even like fighters like Dustin Poirier, when he beat Conor McGregor, he was like, man, I'm over this. I don't want to do it.

• 47:39Shaan Puri?

  Doing this anymore.

• 47:40Sam Parr?

  I don't even like this anymore.

• 47:41Shaan Puri?

  Tom Brady just retired yesterday, right? And he is like, basically he's, he's what? He's 44 now. So he's been doing this for like, you know, 20 plus years. Professionally. And he was like, football is, he's like, I still love the games, but football is a 365 days a year commitment for me. I don't know if you know about Tom Brady, but he like sleeps every day at like 8pm.

• 48:01Sam Parr?

  The guy who started like the T12 or whatever his thing is called, the T body or whatever his thing is called, wanted to come on the pod.

• 48:08Shaan Puri?

  Oh, really? His, his trainer?

• 48:09Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 48:10Shaan Puri?

  That guy Alex?

• 48:11Sam Parr?

  I don't know if it's trainer or business partner, but like he branded himself as the guy who started it.

• 48:15Shaan Puri?

  TB2, the TB12 method. So, uh, yeah, I think people do get burnt out. Tony Robbins has this thing he says, which he goes, people's number one need in life is certainty. So like you need to know where your next meal is coming. If you got a roof over your head, where you're gonna sleep. That's why we love relationships because we love the certainty and comfort of knowing who's gonna be there, who you talk to, what you do every day. We love routines. He goes, but you know, God in her infinite wisdom made it so that, uh, the second biggest need we have is uncertainty, which is variety, which is, it's like a seesaw. What do you do as soon as the thing is balanced? You start jumping around to mess it up, right? And like, you gotta know that about your nature and And there's like, you know, it's, it's completely normal to enjoy a structured routine.

• 48:59Shaan Puri?

  And then at the same time crave variation doesn't mean you don't like the thing or it's not cool anymore. Uh, it's just that that's how humans are wired.

• 49:05Sam Parr?

  All right. Sick. Let's wrap up here because I've got, I've got some stuff that I wanted to cover, but we didn't get to today. And so we'll save that for Monday, right?

• 49:13Shaan Puri?

  Okay, cool. Producer Ben, what'd you think of the app?

• 49:18Ben?

  Good episode. Uh, oh, good episode. Ben Levy, good addition, good story. Uh, yeah, solid episode.

• 49:26Shaan Puri?

  Ben, your, your meme was amazing. He did this meme, which is like, walks into Sean's office for interview. Is your name Ben? Yes. You're hired.

• 49:36Ben?

  We're putting together a team. If your name's Ben and you're talented, get it, get at us. We're.

• 49:40Sam Parr?

  How's your, uh, what were your, what were your numbers in January? Ben?

• 49:44Ben?

  Oh, I need to look it up. It was, uh, it didn't beat my best month, which was, um, like just below a hundred. My best month was 97 or something like that. And this was just below that.

• 49:56Shaan Puri?

  Come on, dog. What, what's the latest, uh, who are you profiling right now? What story are you telling?

• 50:01Ben?

  Uh, well, I'm still in the middle of Walt Disney. I haven't put out part two yet. Um, so I'm in the middle of that.

• 50:08Ben?

  And also I'm, I'm a, I'm a bigamist. I'm a cheater when it comes to research. So I'm also doing a little research on other stuff too. Yeah.

• 50:15Shaan Puri?

  So I know a fair bit about Walt Disney. What's like, give me one tidbit that's like, bet you didn't know this, or this is super, what I found super fascinating. Give me one. I haven't listened to that.

• 50:25Sam Parr?

  He's optimistic and he went broke and bankrupt a few times, right?

• 50:31Ben?

  Yeah. I mean, that was the most amazing thing to me. Um, actually the, the tidbit that like has blown my mind the most,

• 50:40Ben?

  is there's this story where basically they're inventing cartoons of sound and like they're showing it to this audience.

• 50:49Ben?

  Audience is going crazy, right? So they keep showing it to him again and again and again. And finally, a couple of his animators are like, we can't do this. It's six hours. They've been showing it to him. It's two in the morning. So they just like go outside of the theater a little bit and they're like smoking and talking. And he comes out and he goes, yeah, what are you guys gonna do? You stand out here talking about babies or you're gonna come inside and change the world? And it blew my mind because I was like, if you just told me that that quote out of context, I would have told you it was Steve Jobs. Like it was, it's so similar. And then I just like started putting it together.

• 51:22Shaan Puri?

  I would have thought of Sam Parr when he said, uh, do you want your kids to have braces?

• 51:28Ben?

  And so those are just like two stories that I'm breaking this down now in the second episode. The similarities between their stories are actually like kind of uncanny. They have a lot of weird similarities.

• 51:39Sam Parr?

  Yeah, isn't it? I've always thought that like you could, with all types of people that you could basically, there's like, I was always trying to think, how many categories are there of people? Cause I remember meeting some people and like, oh, you are this, you are exactly this human being. And after listening to your podcast, I remember listening to Edison and I'm like, oh, Elon is exactly like that. And if I study Edison, I bet you I can like make sense of a lot of what Elon's doing and help predict what he might do. And I wonder if you could do the same for like a Jobs and a, uh, a Walt Disney, where you just put them in the same category. You're like, I bet I can understand a lot of stuff because of.

• 52:11Shaan Puri?

  Ben, this is perfect for your, your consulting business that you, that you've created off the pod. You know, those DISC personality surveys where it's like, you're a dominant, you know, indifferent or whatever, you know, like some bullshit like that. You're a red, blue, and you can get along with greens. You just need to do that with like great, great people in history. It's like you're 42% Jobs and actually like, you know, you're 42% Jobs and you're 60%, um, you know, like whatever, uh, you know, Walt Disney. And it's like, what does that mean? It's like, well, you're like Jobs in this way. And everybody just gets a compliment. It's like, oh yeah, I'm, I'm 82% Edison actually, and I don't work well with Disney's.

• 52:52Shaan Puri?

  I'm 32% wasniacs. I need to find my job.

• 52:56Ben?

  Yeah, yeah. Do some like Myers-Briggs over the top of it. I like that.

• 53:00Shaan Puri?

  Um, all right. I'm all about making up fake personality quizzes. I think that's great.

• 53:04Sam Parr?

  I gotta run. I gotta go get my workout in. It's about to snow and get freezing in Austin. Like the first time in a long time. So I gotta get.

• 53:11Shaan Puri?

  Doesn't Austin like shut down when it snows?

• 53:13Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's stupid. Like last year we were shut down for like a week, but I didn't have power and water for six days. And it was like 20 degrees. So it was kind of warranted.

• 53:22Shaan Puri?

  By the way, speaking of one liners, you said an amazing one after we recorded last week, uh, the like, you know, he was just saying that Walt Disney quote. What was the one that you said that our, our buddy said?

• 53:31Sam Parr?

  He goes, um.

• 53:31Shaan Puri?

  I remembered the line.

• 53:32Sam Parr?

  He goes, and this guy's like worth a hundred plus million dollars. He said, um, people hate on get rich quick schemes. Are they crazy? Getting rich quick is the best way to get rich. Why would anyone hate on that? I love get rich quick.

• 53:45Shaan Puri?

  I only want to get rich quick.

• 53:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah. He goes, you got a good get rich quick scheme for me? I love that. And this guy like sold his company in like two years. So like it was a get rich quick scheme.

• 53:55Shaan Puri?

  It worked. Uh, so funny. All right.

• 53:58Sam Parr?

  See you guys.