How FTX Scaled A $30 Billion Company With Only 30 Engineers!

Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) talk about the problem of over hiring (example FTX), party planning tips from entrepreneur Nick Gray's new book, and one successful egg carton business. Also, want $5,000? Check out the My First Million Clips contest. ----- Links: * Nick Gray * 2-Hour Cocktail Party book * The 2-Hour Cocktail Party Amazon link * Streamyard * SSSTIK * Eggcartons * Sam's Tweet about Whole Foods Entrepreneur * 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: (03:45) - Party takeaways from Nick Gray (24:40) - Colin and Samir recap (32:15) - FTX and not hiring many people (52:50) - Egg Cartons (58:00) - Whole Foods tweet ----- 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.

• 0:01Shaan Puri?

  I read something very interesting that FTX as a $30 billion company only has like 200 employees or something like that. And I believe you, you know, for the first year, the product was built by just two engineers. And even now, you only have sub 20, sub 30 engineers. A, is that true? And B, what the hell is going on? Like, do you, is FTX, he's like, he's like, I can only think of one of two things. Either FTX is simply like, you have a unique set of problems. So you could do, you can operate your business differently, or the rest of us are doing this completely wrong. Which is it? And, and he goes, the latter.

• 0:46Shaan Puri?

  What up, birthday boy?

• 0:48Sam Parr?

  Thank you.

• 0:49Shaan Puri?

  How's it going?

• 0:51Sam Parr?

  Uh, it's going. Okay. I, um,

• 0:54Shaan Puri?

  You didn't pick up my FaceTime. I was gonna sing to you.

• 0:57Sam Parr?

  You FaceTimed me?

• 0:58Shaan Puri?

  I FaceTimed you earlier.

• 1:00Sam Parr?

  Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't even get the notification. I was, I had personalized.

• 1:06Shaan Puri?

  But you did miss out on what would have been a good serenade. Actually, can I tell you a funny story about that?

• 1:11Sam Parr?

  Wait, was your kids there?

• 1:13Shaan Puri?

  No, it was just me and Ben. Um,

• 1:15Sam Parr?

  Oh, man, what a bummer. I'd rather see your kids. So I've got baby fever.

• 1:19Shaan Puri?

  Oh, nice. Yeah. Well, actually, my son was there, but you know, before the age of like two, they're kind of just like an inanimate of an object that you just carry around.

• 1:27Sam Parr?

  So I was, I was working out and when I work out, I put my phone on like focus mode or whatever. So I'm sorry, but thank you.

• 1:35Shaan Puri?

  Swole mode. So, uh, how old are you now?

• 1:39Sam Parr?

  33.

• 1:41Shaan Puri?

  33. Okay, you're getting up there too. All right. I like it. So you're, I think, a year younger than me. We, um, I was at a birthday party, uh, like two weekends ago. Uh, had to leave the house. It was crazy. And, um, we get there and this guy did this thing that I saw and I was like, oh, what an amazing little life hack. He basically had, so it's like some kid's birthday party. They sing happy birthday. It's time to blow out the candles and cut the cake. And the guy grabs the mic and he's like, hold on, hold on. We got a special birthday song for you. And this guy, apparently, because my wife knows him, she's like, oh my God, he's doing it. He always does this. And it's like, he has his own version of happy birthday that he sings.

• 2:24Shaan Puri?

  But it's not like a singing thing. It's more like, um, like he's Indian. So it's kind of got like an Indian vibe to it, but let's just pretend it's sort of like, when I say happy, you say birthday, happy. And everyone else is like, birthday, happy birthday. He's like, he's like,

• 2:35Sam Parr?

  Which are always, I always love all those.

• 2:39Shaan Puri?

  Of course. It's like, you know, there's something in my body that just like can't help but become like, you know, the, the, the, follow the leader during that moment. And he'll be like, you know, who's the birthday boy? Sam, Sam, Sam. Right. And it's like, it'll make you feel good. And then, um, and I was like, what a life hack to just be the life of the party is to simply have a cool version of happy birthday that you can do. That's amazing. That's like having a joke that just always kills.

• 3:03Sam Parr?

  So listen to this. I've got this friend named, and Jonathan, we'll get, we'll get to the Samir thing in a second, but I have this friend named Nick Ray. Uh, Sean, do you know who Nick Ray is?

• 3:14Shaan Puri?

  I know of him. I don't, I don't think I've ever met him, but I've seen his like, uh, his like website and like you've told me about him. And, uh, he looks like, he's like an entrepreneur, but he kind of looks a little bit slick. I don't, I don't know who, who he is.

• 3:27Sam Parr?

  So I, I call him grown up Dennis the Menace because he looks like a 40 year old Dennis the Menace. Like if you think of like what Dennis the Menace would look like when he's 40, that's like dick. He had a company called, uh, he, he had one business that was like, it worked as the aviation industry sold it. Then he started this thing called Museum Hack, which was like, you pay like $25 or something like that. And you get a group museum tour, like a private museum tour, whatever. He sold it. And then he loves hosting parties so much that I believe he used scribed like you did. And he wrote a book on how to host the perfect two hour evening party. And this guy, yes, I'll, I'll, I'll try to find the, the title.

• 4:11Shaan Puri?

  Have you read it?

• 4:12Sam Parr?

  I have it. It just came out like two days ago and he just sent me a copy. It's called, uh, here, I'll find it, but it, uh, it's like, uh, it's like how to host the perfect cocktail party. And this guy, whenever he hosts parties, he brings name tags to all, every time you're with him, he has a name tag, a kite, a frisbee and a blanket. I'm telling you, this guy is like a 12 year old. That's why I call him growing up Dennis the Menace. Because he just like, he's like, these are the best things to bring to like a park party. And, uh, they just, it just works. And so he brings this to like all of his parties and it's hilarious.

• 4:46Shaan Puri?

  I bring the rule book to the game Red Rover and it's a great icebreaker to play the game Red Rover. It's been working since preschool.

• 4:54Sam Parr?

  And he brings like a harmonica and when he goes, he'll like play the harmonica and he goes, all right, everyone come to the circle. And he like does these icebreakers. It's hilarious. So the book is called, uh, the two hour cocktail party. And it's just a book on hosting a two hour cocktail party. He's been working on it for like two years. So I give him a shout out, but I actually wasn't, I'm only bringing this up because we were talking about hosting the perfect party and everything. It's hilarious. And he's, and it's like, might actually become like a brand around host. It's like, you know, like Maria Kondo made like putting your clothes away into like a Martha Stewart style business. That's what this guy might be doing for like a cocktail party.

• 5:31Shaan Puri?

  Oh, wow. Okay. So I have three instant reactions to this. Number one, what a great idea. What a great idea.

• 5:40Sam Parr?

  You think so?

• 5:40Shaan Puri?

  Because when you first said it, I laughed, which to me already means this is kind of remarkable as a product, meaning you, you had to remark on it. It was worth telling. So that's already like a good thing. Second thing is it's actually a real problem. Like nobody teaches you how to do things in life that are life stuff. And so if you can hone in on a piece of life stuff, like, you know, the classic example is like, you know, the book, the game, which is like, you know, about how to like pick a woman. Like, how do you approach a stranger that you're interested in like? You know, can you get a date? And like, we all laugh and say, oh, man, that's so, uh, you know, people will sort of point at it, be like, you know, the sort of a loser thing.

• 6:18Sam Parr?

  Right.

• 6:18Shaan Puri?

  In reality, bestselling book. It was one of the best books I've ever read. Um, and like, really, a lot of people who literally don't know how to navigate this social situation that they get put in.

• 6:27Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I, dude, I think it's awesome. Yeah, so, by the way, look at the link I sent you. I sent the link in Riverside, and I didn't realize this, but look at the reviews. The reviews are all of our friends. So it's Nick Huber, it's Kat from Best Self, it's Ben, the guy who, uh, I think he started, uh, what's that group on deck?

• 6:47Shaan Puri?

  Sarah, is that your wife?

• 6:50Sam Parr?

  Is she on there?

• 6:52Shaan Puri?

  It says Sarah, might be her.

• 6:54Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it could be her. And then David Perrell's on there. They're all like the, isn't that hilarious? They're all like the reviewers or whatever. Uh, I don't, yeah, I agree. It's a pretty, pretty funny niche to own.

• 7:08Shaan Puri?

  So my first thought is, it's actually, what a great idea. Helping people know how to host a party, just like fun in a box. It's like, look, you don't have to be creative. You don't have to have experience doing this. Like, I will help you know the like three or four things that will make you look awesome when you do this. I think that's kind of great. Second reaction, what a terrible idea. Why is this a book? Why isn't this a Twitter thread? Like, if there's ever a thing which is like, this book could have been an email, um, like, this book could have been an email. I guarantee it. And so, that's my second reaction to this. It's just like, love the idea of creating a brand and content on this topic. A book? Wow, overkill. Like, a book takes more than two hours to read.

• 7:50Shaan Puri?

  Uh, like, you know, the book shouldn't be longer than the full party would be in this case.

• 7:54Sam Parr?

  I, I kind of agree with you, but I think you have to forget that most people don't have charisma. And although I think I definitely have like a little social anxiety, I think you do too. Like, I don't like leaving my house that often. And I don't want to like talk to like strangers that often, but like, I could, like, I can turn it on and be like, all right, fine, I'm in that mode. Uh, I think most people, like, all of our like nerdy ass friends, I just don't, they just like stand around like, what do I do with my hands? Like, they don't know like where to hold their hands. They don't know anything.

• 8:27Shaan Puri?

  Actually dude, I still remember. So I've been to a bunch of like startup events. I was in this accelerator called the Mass Challenge back in the day. It's like a Boston based like startup accelerator. I don't even know how I ended up there. And I've heard, I would say at this point in my life, I've heard at least 500 in person like talks to entrepreneurs. Okay. 500. If you want to know what's the most memorable one? It was this guy, this old school guy who came, he was probably in his late 60s. And he's like, he did two things. The first one was, he goes, alright, um, you guys are all entrepreneurs.

• 9:07Shaan Puri?

  Somebody stand up and pitch me your business. Tell me what your business does. And somebody would stand up, they'd be like, hey, we, uh, I'll go, I'll go. Right. It's like a bravery contest. I'll go, a thousand hands go up because it's entrepreneurs. You got it. You gotta be the one who's like courageous. So everybody raise their hand, pick the first guy. Um, Sam, I hope, uh, you know, I'm CEO of the Hustle. We're a media company for millennials who love to learn about business. He just, no, you're not. Actually, I forgot the very first thing. The best part of the whole thing is he started the talk from the back of the room. And he was like, he's like, and everybody's looking at the stage, all the chairs face one way, right? And he's like, I'm back here. Entrepreneurship, you gotta adjust.

• 9:46Shaan Puri?

  It's like, you know, dodgeball. You want to dodgeball, you're gonna dodge the wrench. So this guy was like that guy. And he's like, I'm in the back of the room. What are you gonna do? And he's like, uh, he's like, all of a sudden, you gotta adjust. Turn your seat around. Are you stuck to what the ways that the society works? Are you just gonna do what makes sense? And so that's how he started. Then he goes, and he's like, pitch your business. And if, if you just said like, I'm Sean, um, you know, we're the Milk Road. We, uh, you know, we, we're a, a, a web three focused newsletter that does. No, he would just cut you off. But he wouldn't tell you what you're doing wrong. And it's process of elimination. Everyone is trying one thing. And then finally some guy said it right. He goes, we're Smart Shade. You know, when you're in a room and it's too bright through the window,

• 10:30Shaan Puri?

  we help you make sure that you have a shade on there that doesn't make your room look ugly. And the guy was like, yes, that's exactly right. You explained the situation and you use the key word help. Your business exists to help someone do something. Help someone get some outcome, some benefit. He's like, all of you guys think you're entrepreneurs and you couldn't tell me who you're helping do what? And then we're all like, oh, we're like reeling. And then he transitioned into, he goes, put up a diagram of a, of a, of a meeting room, of a bunch of six-chair table or like an eight-chair table. He goes, biggest meeting of your life, where do you sit? Hey, smart shade guy, where do you sit? Ah, I don't know. The chairs had numbers on them. And you're like, three? And he's like, no.

• 11:14Shaan Puri?

  He's like, you sit in chair two. It's the corner of the table. So you're not the head of the table, but you're the corner of the table. You have like, you know, sort of like 80% of the visibility as the head of the table, but you now have both angles. You're kind of at the wide angle where people can see you and talk to you. And then he showed another diagram of like another, a round table. What do you sit in a round table? If this is the door, where do you go sit? Uh, then he's like, you have five minutes before the, uh, your meeting is about to start in 10 minutes. Not everybody's there. You have 10 minutes to talk to the number two person. What do you say? And he was like giving these like real world social and business situations.

• 11:47Sam Parr?

  Where did you sit and around?

• 11:50Shaan Puri?

  I don't even remember that one. It was like, you know, uh, you, you go to the other, you basically go like, I don't know. It's like, you don't have your back to the door. You kind of have a side facing, uh, thing to the door. You don't want to be directly facing the door because then you're like a little child sitting in your seat, waiting for the teacher to come around. Like, you know, you do that. And like, in your small talk thing, he's like, do you talk about the weather in sports? No. Uh, he's like, you've done already eight hours of research on this person. You already know A, B, C, D, E, and you are going to bring up this topic. And so this guy was like so opinionated, so crazy, but I remember it because he was answering things that I felt like nobody had instructed me how to do. And it was the, where do I, what do I do with my hands while I talk? Problem, which is like, I definitely run into these situations and I've received zero guidance in my life

• 12:35Shaan Puri?

  on what I'm supposed to do. And if you have like the solution in a box, I'll take it.

• 12:40Sam Parr?

  That's interesting. Well, Nick's gonna freaking love that because, uh, You know, like cocktails, parties is such a niche thing, but I'll probably do well. He's pretty successful. So we want to talk about Colin Samir, Jonathan. So Colin Samir, that episode went live.

• 12:56Shaan Puri?

  People probably don't even know who Jonathan is.

• 13:00Sam Parr?

  So we have, it's Sean and me and Ben typically, and Jonathan, most of the time is actually on air. I actually don't know, Jonathan, why you're on air, like why you're here, but I know what you do as a job. You grow the podcast, but I don't know like why you actually need to be sitting here. Why, why do you stay here?

• 13:18Speaker 02

  One, because this is fun and two, this is the only time I can get like FaceTime with y'all to talk about these types of things. So it's like my only time I can actually carve out time on y'all's calendar.

• 13:30Sam Parr?

  Our calendar, we are the issue?

• 13:33Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he slacks us, he asks us to do stuff and we just never respond. It makes perfect sense. It's like, you know, why did you open the sushi restaurant? Because like, because I knew you love sushi and I just needed to get your approval on these three things. It's like, damn, we're that much of an asshole? Sorry, sorry, Jonathan. I apologize that we are not very responsive in general.

• 13:53Sam Parr?

  And so he came on and you said, you said, hey, talk about the Colin Samir thing because A, it was interesting. And what was the B?

• 14:02Speaker 02

  I think there's just like some good takeaways that we should probably implement.

• 14:05Sam Parr?

  Into our YouTube strategy?

• 14:08Speaker 02

  YouTube and the podcast as well. But first of all, I've hosted a Nick Gray party and it was awesome. And like, like you just described, Sean, like there's so much nuance to, you know, like hosting a good meeting and like where you sit and how the experience is for everyone else. And so you kind of do need a book to like piece all that together. Chapter one, here's the pre, you know, party stuff and all that. But yeah, email templates and all that stuff are kind of necessary and all that.

• 14:33Shaan Puri?

  Wait, wait, you said you hosted a Nick Gray party? What does that mean? You, you did his method or you attended a party?

• 14:39Sam Parr?

  Dude, he's like famous and awesome.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  He did like a beta launch for his book. And so a few people, myself included, hosted one of like the beta parties.

• 14:49Shaan Puri?

  Wow. Wow. Wow. That is, you're blowing my mind right now. Hold on. Wow. Holy shit.

• 14:57Sam Parr?

  Dude, he's like famous in Austin. It's hilarious. Which by the way, we gotta give him a proper shout out. So it's Nick Gray, G R A Y. I believe his website is nickgray.net. So if you want to go and learn, whatever, go ahead.

• 15:09Shaan Puri?

  So you were like a pilot for this thing. First of all, how much of a friggin early adopter are you that you like, you know about a book that's not even written yet? And you were like, I'll be one of your test cases to test your, your party thing. Okay, wait, well, give us the rundown. Give me like one or two of the golden nuggets that like you wouldn't otherwise have done at a party that Nick kind of like helped you try out.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, so Nick, everyone just kind of knows Nick in Austin. If you're kind of running in the same circles. And so I went to another guy who hosted a Nick Gray party. And I was like, this is awesome. And so I knew the guy. So I was like, let's co host the next one. And we had it at my house. I got like a backyard and everything. And so the takeaways were.

• 15:48Shaan Puri?

  I went, I bought a house. I got ready for the party.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, we got pizza and it was just, it reminded me of kind of like a prom party just to begin with. But the pieces that were kind of crucial are, one, like the icebreakers. So like, you start the night with like, you know, everyone's getting their drinks and getting comfortable and stuff like that. And then you blow the harmonica or whatever you're like, you play, you strap the banjo or whatever it is, you strum the banjo. And you get everyone's attention, be like, hey, we're doing icebreakers, say your name. And then like, the fun fact would be like, what was the first thing you did for money? And so it's kind of gets people like, you know, to get a little bit deeper and then that can lead into the next conversation and so on and so forth. So there's like two or three of those throughout the night. And then, you know, it's just like the email before, the email after, and like, how you nurture those people, I guess, and like, actually, you

• 16:37Speaker 02

  know, connect them and all the little things like that. But. I feel like there's like a bunch of little hacks like like

• 16:43Shaan Puri?

  emailing is part of this template. I didn't even

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:46Shaan Puri?

  Think about an email as part of the experience.

• 16:48Sam Parr?

  Dude, he's got a whole shit about it. And the funny thing about Nick is he's like, he's very flamboyant. Like, he's like gregarious, but he's like loud. And a lot of people think that he's gay. And he gets more girls than anyone I've ever met. And it's mostly because of this party, this party stuff. He like, he like dates so many, like, well, I won't say that. I'll say, girls love him. Women love this guy. And it's partially because

• 17:15Shaan Puri?

  It's called straight up gay. How to be a straight man and use gay, being gay to your advantage, whatever. His next social hack that he's got.

• 17:24Sam Parr?

  He kills it. Like, he kills it. This guy is very interesting.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  That's another huge thing about this is like, when you become the connector, when you're hosting these parties like once a month or once a quarter. Like, that's really valuable. When you're able to like, kind of be that person, they're like, oh, I'm gonna reach out to Jonathan because he knows X, Y, and Z. Or whatever. So that's like, kind of what you did in San Francisco, I feel like with the Hustle Need Uts, right?

• 17:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and it is a hack. It totally works. And Sean did the same thing, because we hosted like all of our events at his house, like at his office. So he was like by proxy was like the man.

• 17:58Shaan Puri?

  Dude, so I know we probably have other things to talk about, but I'm so mind blown by this, and I just have so much more that I need to know. Okay, so. Uh, give me, okay, so give me something that is, you wouldn't, um, expect it, right? Like, let's say, uh, maybe like, I don't know. Okay, like email kind of counts. The harmonica is a great example of this. Like, have a little instrument that will help get people's attention and like, you know, just kind of like lightens the mood a little bit by just hearing this, like, you know, great sound. Give me another one that I wouldn't expect.

• 18:26Sam Parr?

  Let me give one, Jonathan. He hosted a party one time called a petting zoo party. And he hired like a mobile petting zoo for like $400. Or I don't even know what it was, but it wasn't like a big deal. And it like, was the most fun at a party. I just sat around and petted like rabbits and like guinea pigs. And it was awesome. So he like does themes, like then he'll have a dinosaur theme where you wear like dinosaur themed clothing. Which I don't know what that means, but what else, Jonathan? What else does he do?

• 18:54Speaker 02

  Again, I've only been to like one or two, but it's if it's not that like you really don't need to put a theme around it if you're just doing something super simple like I did. But like you want to make it a little more memorable like, yeah, I feel like he's done like, uh, he just did a paddleboard thing where like everyone went out to like Austin and were on their paddleboards and like did a whole thing there.

• 19:13Sam Parr?

  And he had a thing where he gave numbers. He gave a whiteboards to three different people and he said, we're having a diving contest. So the best, the person who does the best cannonball off of their paddleboard. And he goes, the contestants are, and he had already planned, he goes, they're this person, this person and this person. You guys get up front and do your cannonball and we're all gonna, and these three judges are gonna give you a review. The second or third thing that he does is he has a very specific end time to the party. So he goes, come on over. The party's gonna end at eight o'clock. And at eight o'clock, he goes, all right, everyone, thank you for coming. The party's over. You don't gotta get, you don't gotta go home, but you gotta get out of here. And he's like, parties need to end, otherwise they drag on for too long and people don't want to go anymore. And so he always has an ending to his parties. It was actually pretty great because I go, because I'm like, I don't gotta sneak out. Like it's gonna end at a very particular time. So.

• 19:57Shaan Puri?

  Two hour cocktail party. Dude, we, okay, I don't know if we're Oprah, but I feel like we just sold the shit out of this book. Like, uh, you know, this, this guy is gonna get a lot of sales from this, uh, from this, this plug because this was incredible. But honestly, I'm genuinely interested in this topic. Uh, you know, I had heard something once like, um, Charity Water is kind of known for their events and they raise a ton of money for charity. And like most charity events are kind of the same old stale, like dinner gala, you sort of go, it's sort of a drag. And Charity Water's events, you feel like you're, you know, you feel like you're at some like Hollywood party, basically. And it's not because they spend more money. It's like, they're just more creative with like the way that they, they like create memorable things. And so, and every year they top themselves, which is

• 20:41Shaan Puri?

  like this impossible standard. It's like, last year, the Super Bowl halftime show was this. This year's gotta be even bigger. That's how they treat their annual events. And they raised like, I don't know, $75 million in a night doing that. And that funds clean water for a lot of people. And I remember asking Scott, I go, well, so what's like, how do you think about these events? Like, how do you, everybody always raves about these. I've never been to one. What is the secret sauce? Like, well, how do you guys think about this? And he goes, oh, that's my wife, uh, Victoria. That's, that's her, her thing. He goes, she has this phrase, which is. It's about the moments in between the moments. Like it's the moments between the moments that matter. And so it's like, everybody thinks of when they planned their event. Okay, for dinner, we're gonna do this. And then for the dancing, we're gonna do this.

• 21:23Shaan Puri?

  But they don't think about the like 20 minute period right before dinner. When it's like getting set up or served and like the, the five minute walk between this place to this place or whatever. And if you do something there, people feel like, wow, I'm having a like a 10 out of 10 experience. Like what? They thought of everything like they thought of, like I know for Charity Water, it was like, they really thought about like the walk between, like where the cocktail hour was and the dinner. And they were like, okay, yeah, you could just like traverse through this like, you know, hallway. But like, what can we do in the hallway that will like send the message? And they basically created like, I don't know, like a visual light show of like, I don't know, a woman in Africa, a real woman. She starts when you start and she's carrying these like 60 pound gallons of water.

• 22:06Shaan Puri?

  And there's one on the, you see her carrying it and then 15 steps in, there's one sitting on the ground that you could pick up. And you could try carrying and then by the end of it, you've had like, it's like, dang, that was heavy and that was hard. And I only walked 54 steps. She does that for three hours a day just to get clean water for her family. And you're like, are you likely to donate by the end of that? Yeah, right. It's like, but they just use the hallway as this, by the way, I made up this exact example because I didn't go to the event, but like, That was a really good example. That was great. Yeah, I had to put the disclaimer because I was like, damn, I just made up a really vivid ass lie about what they did at their event. And like Scott's big on integrity. So let me be clear. That's not exactly what happened. That's what I kind of remember from him telling me while we were drunk six years ago.

• 22:50Shaan Puri?

  And he was telling me like what he did. So, so yeah, but if the moments between the moments is just a good, like phrase to remember when you're gonna host an event. I might write my own book. Fuck you, Nick Gray.

• 23:03Sam Parr?

  All right, let's talk about Colin and Samir. So these, these guys came on, they're like these YouTube. I don't exactly know how you describe them, but they're popular on YouTube and people seem to like it in the comments. You know, my takeaway was, Sean, do you think being a YouTuber is a good life or not? I can't decide, actually.

• 23:23Shaan Puri?

  I think it's a good life, the way they did it. So the, the daily vlogger style, I think is a, is a tough one. And I think the, uh, like gaming streamer who's gonna sit in their chair, play video games for seven hours a day, every day. Is not a good, not a bad, nor is the Mr. Beast like, I have to up my pranks or my stunts. Like, I gotta come up with a new miracle every month, or I lose relevance. That to me is like stressful. And to be fair, that's like 75% of YouTube success is like daily vlogging, stunts and pranks or like gaming. So, you know, if you're not that, good for you. Colin and Samir, for example, not in that, they're in an interview show. That's like paced out, well, they do, you know, like whatever, one or two a week or something like that.

• 24:08Shaan Puri?

  It's not as treadmillly as other content things.

• 24:13Sam Parr?

  What I'm learning about through them, what we need to do and what more people should do, that woman Rebecca, I keep calling her like that woman. Rebecca texted us and she was like,

• 24:23Shaan Puri?

  Our friend Rebecca.

• 24:24Sam Parr?

  Our friend Rebecca, sorry Rebecca. Uh, she, uh, told us that this guy she worked with, I won't say the name, went from zero to eight, was it eight million subscribers in eight months? Or was it like three million and eight, I forget the number, but I think it was eight million.

• 24:40Sam Parr?

  In how many months? 12 months?

• 24:41Shaan Puri?

  Like a year, a year, yeah.

• 24:43Sam Parr?

  And all from shorts. Is that crazy? All from fricking YouTube shorts. I never watch YouTube shorts.

• 24:51Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I, I, I do. I actually watch YouTube shorts, but the thing, the, uh, once I've worked inside a tech company, I was like, oh, I get it. Like,

• 25:01Shaan Puri?

  I'm YouTube. The biggest threat to my company is TikTok. Every day, like, you know, somebody, there's like every, every quarterly offsite, we're hearing about the latest TikTok numbers. Wow, their growth is crazy. Wow, they're blowing us away. Wow, the stars are going there. You know, like TikTok is your like, kind of like main priority. If you're one of these big social media companies right now, beyond like, you know, your core business, like if you're going to think about growth, you're going to think about TikTok. And so you release a competitive product, Shorts, and you announce it to the world and you put your best people on it. And like, you can't let that feature fail right away. And so you like, you gotta pump the engagement. How do you do that?

• 25:43Shaan Puri?

  You're like, all right, you know, engagement was a 10 out of, you know, 10 out of 100. Okay. Uh, if we put it at the top of every time you open the app, it jumps to a 40. Okay, now we're also going to add it every three scrolls. We're going to add another little Shorts banner. Oh, also, we're going to like, you know, make it one of our, we're going to change our recommendation engine to just recommend a short after a long video. And so you're gonna try to game the system to give yourself the best shot at that feature becoming successful. And so at least in the short term, if you're a creator, you say, oh, their priority is pushing like, you know, oh, Instagram's priority is pushing stories and then reels. Then I'm going to make great reels and stories because that's what they're pushing right now. That's what the algorithm wants to, they're gonna, they're gonna favor that in the UI and the algorithm.

• 26:27Shaan Puri?

  And so, um, I'm going to get faster growth because I'm sort of like piggybacking off of their priorities.

• 26:33Sam Parr?

  And I think that's actually a really good strategy for like, if you and I or my first million wanted to get popular on YouTube is just like exploit the ego of the social media platform.

• 26:46Sam Parr?

  Like it totally works. Just, just give them exactly what they want. And not always, but sometimes they'll give you exactly what you want, which is, you know, more followers.

• 26:55Shaan Puri?

  But are we gonna do it? Maybe. It's clearly a good idea that we may or may not execute.

• 27:01Sam Parr?

  Just more work.

• 27:04Shaan Puri?

  Hilarious thing that I saw. So, uh, there was like some page that's like, uh, you know, like these meme pages on Instagram that get like a bunch of followers. So it's like, I had like Friday beers. I think this is the one it was. It's like Friday.

• 27:15Sam Parr?

  I love. I follow so many of them.

• 27:18Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, they're great. They're very humorous. They post great memes, whatever. So they did a collab with something called like, it was the word entrepreneur, but it was spelled like super whack. Cause like, you know, the word entrepreneurs, like kind of a whack word in general. So it's like, and train you poor, poor. And like, that was like the name of the account or something like that. And I went, I clicked on it and the bio cracked me up so hard. It was like cultivating that trillionaire mindset, that multi trillionaire mindset. And then the next line was, uh, mindset is grindset. Hashtag grindset.

• 27:51Shaan Puri?

  I have decided that on this podcast, our new intro is going to be about cultivating that multi trillionaire mindset, hashtag grindset. And I'm going to start every single podcast by saying that. And somebody who doesn't know what I'm talking about, they're going to be so turned off. But the people who listen to this podcast are going to know that that is the funniest thing ever. Cause it is.

• 28:11Sam Parr?

  That's amazing. What were we saying, Jonathan?

• 28:17Speaker 02

  I, I love that. They always, they always also say, they always also say, uh, read that again. Like they'll do the post and then all the copy. And then it's like, read that again.

• 28:29Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. All right, guys. That's the show. Listen to that again. Go back. You know what you gotta do now? Rewind for the two time, double time, get double, get triple trillionaire mindset, hashtag grindset. Go back and listen again.

• 28:45Sam Parr?

  What, what was that phrase?

• 28:46Speaker 02

  Read their latest post says.

• 28:48Shaan Puri?

  Read that again.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  Their, their latest post says, you keep your money in the bank. I keep my, my fish in the tank. Think about it.

• 29:00Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Picture of Keanu Reeves. Like, you know, we named this my first million and the reason we get flack for that and reason we give ourselves grief for that is because my first million is in the middle. It's like neither, um, it's not like trying to be humble and like, um, you know, thoughtful about life. It's like, no, you want to make a million dollars, but it's only a million. When you say we're, you know, we're all about that trillionaire lifestyle, you, you, all of a sudden it's like, hey, we are not trying to be that guy who's trying to sell you a dream of making a billion dollars. And so I think I realized the mistake in the name. The name should not have been million. Uh, the whole brand should have been. It should have been my first trillion. Mindset. It should have been my first trillion.

• 29:42Shaan Puri?

  We're, we're a community, we're a community of future multi trillionaires, uh, who gather around, you know, to, to trade stories.

• 29:54Speaker 03

  Our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot? See, most CRM's are a cobbled together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM. Our software is the best. HubSpot, grow better.

• 30:09Sam Parr?

  Where do you want to go from here? Did you have anything on, did you have, do you have topics? I've got one or two. Do you have any?

• 30:16Shaan Puri?

  I have a couple.

• 30:17Sam Parr?

  What do you have?

• 30:17Shaan Puri?

  I have a couple, I have a couple of good ones. Okay. So, uh, what do you want to do? You want to do, okay, I'll, I'll give you three options. A really interesting, uh, thing I heard that I, I want to get your opinion on, like a, like a thing about how a company we, a big, famous company runs their company that I thought was kind of mind blowing. Number two is an idea that I don't really even understand as I don't know what the hell they're doing, but maybe it's cool. And then, um, the third is, uh, you know, random business idea. Which, which one would you like to go, go through? Number one.

• 30:51Shaan Puri?

  Number one. Okay. So the interesting. Okay. So we, uh, so the milk road, our main sponsor right now is FTX. And I don't know if you like, do you know what FTX is?

• 31:00Sam Parr?

  Dude, in my, on my topics, I have a thing about how they run their company and how it's weird. Go ahead. Yeah.

• 31:07Shaan Puri?

  Okay. So it's probably the same thing then. Is it about how many employees they have and how many engineers they have?

• 31:12Sam Parr?

  Yes. Look at the doc. I have the exact same topic. Go ahead.

• 31:16Shaan Puri?

  Okay. So, so it recently, so we, we were like, as part of the sponsorship, it's like, okay, we tell people, you know, hey, FTX is a great trading platform, blah, blah, blah. And in addition, we were like, hey, we want to do a deep dive on you guys. And I was like, but here's the thing, you don't get to tell us what to write about. I'm gonna like, I'm gonna talk to your head of strategy. I've talked to whoever. And, um, whatever's the most interesting thing to me, that's what we're gonna do the deep dive on. And so I ended up doing it on, um, like the, the like, kind of like the seven, like growth hacky strategies that they use to grow because they went from zero to a $30 billion company in like three years. And so I thought that was kind of amazing. I wrote the whole thing. And then I discovered, I discovered something even more amazing, which is that they built the whole, they built like for the first year or something,

• 31:58Shaan Puri?

  they had two engineers. And even now, to this day, they have like, I think 25 to 30 software engineers.

• 32:06Sam Parr?

  It's amazing. And I think they only have 250 people.

• 32:09Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. And so he did this, um, he went, uh, this, the guy Sam Baker Fried, he did this talk at the Sohn conference. And so Sohn, I don't know if people know, it's spelled S O H N. It's like this big, kind of like economic, uh, annual conference or whatever. And what happens is the big shot like,

• 32:25Sam Parr?

  Sam, Sam Bakeman Freed is the 29 year old, like 20 or $30 billion founder, well, he was before the crash, but like, yeah, Decca billionaire guy. Uh, and he started this Coinbase competitor, which is called FTX after he got rich in Bitcoin.

• 32:43Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's a platform for people to trade crypto and now stocks and other things. But basically, he talks there. And if you've ever watched these, have you ever watched other SONE conference talks? They're very interesting to go back and look at.

• 32:55Sam Parr?

  No.

• 32:55Shaan Puri?

  You get the, it's like a TED Talk for, it's TED, but just for like investors, just for like finance and Wall Street people. So like Bill Ackman will go on there and you could look at his old videos. And by the way, if you go watch these, so here's what, here's my journey. I'm like, Bill Ackman, man, this guy's really smart. And our buddy Andrew Wilkinson loves Bill Ackman, says he's the best. And I go back and I go look for old YouTube videos of Bill Ackman. I see his SONE conference talk and it's like, I don't know, 10 years ago. And he goes on and he talks about, what's the name of the, it's like the Howard Hughes Company? It's like a home builder.

• 33:31Sam Parr?

  Tool, tool bit or something. Yeah, I know what you're talking about.

• 33:35Shaan Puri?

  No, I think it's called the Howard Hughes Company. It's basically like, whatever, that famous guy, Howard Hughes or whatever. And he's got this company, they build homes. And he'll give a talk. And so what you do is you go give a talk about like, a thesis that you are really bullish on, basically like a big bet you're making, or you've already made, basically. And you go pitch your case for that bet. And this kind of has like twofold effects. One, if you're in the audience, you get ideas on investments, like, you know, why this person's so bullish on this thing. It's interesting to hear their case. Two, it's only like the who's who that talks, like, it's like the top, top guys that go and talk at this thing. And then the third thing is that like you, for the speaker, they get to kind of like, build their brand, but they also get to pump their bag. So like, they've already made this bet. Then they go talk here,

• 34:18Shaan Puri?

  they get a bunch of attention, a bunch of other people are going to invest in it, and it may cause the price to go up, which is like a good thing for them. So they're helping propagate the narrative that helps their case. So anyways, you go hear him talk. By the end of the 40 minutes, you're like, there's never been a better investment on earth than the Howard Hughes Company, right? Like, you're like so convinced, because these guys are very convincing and they have a great track record. So you're like, wow, whatever. Now, if you actually go look at the results, it's like, I remember Chamath went and spoke and he talked about how Box, like Box.com is like, like of all the tech companies, I, we have identified one winner that is going to benefit the most from this cloud movement and AI, ML, and it's Box. And you go look at the stock chart for Box since that day, uh, it's like down into the right. You know what I mean? It's like, it has not done well.

• 35:01Shaan Puri?

  Uh, but they, they put together very convincing cases. And of course, occasionally they're, they're, they're correct. So anyways, at this year's SONE, there was a really interesting talk, which was Sam Bankman-Fried talks to, I think Patrick or John Collison, what the, the Patrick Collison's, uh, one of the brothers who started Stripe.

• 35:16Sam Parr?

  Redhead or?

• 35:17Shaan Puri?

  You know, whatever.

• 35:20Shaan Puri?

  Uh, the redhead one, I think they're, are they not?

• 35:22Sam Parr?

  Patrick. No, Patrick.

• 35:24Shaan Puri?

  Okay. Yeah. But they both actually did interviews. One interviewed Stanley Druckenmiller. Awesome interview. Go watch that.

• 35:30Sam Parr?

  That was the other brother.

• 35:31Shaan Puri?

  The other one interviewed Sam Bankman-Fried. And first of all, the one thing that stood out is kind of like, um, when you watch these guys do an interview, it's basically like, what if you had like a world-class brain? Become a podcaster for like, you know, like, like I'm talking world-class. Like these guys are some of the smartest, most well-read, best executors, most like, most well-connected people on the planet are the Collison brothers.

• 35:55Sam Parr?

  They see everything.

• 35:55Shaan Puri?

  They do. They were millionaires at like, I don't know, seven, they big built cool shit at 17 that like they sold for a million dollars or whatever. There's, now they built like a hundred billion dollar company and they're like the best of the best. Like they're the best YC founders. And YC is the best group of founders, right? So they're amazing. And you hear them give an interview, they hear their talk to how they frame questions. That alone is like worth the price of admission, just to see that. But then they ask questions and they're, and so he asked a question to Sam Bankman-Fried. He goes, I read something very interesting that FTX as a, you know, $30 billion company only has, um, like 200 employees or something like that. And I believe you, you know, for the first year, the product was built by just two engineers. And even now you only have sub 20, sub 30 engineers.

• 36:38Shaan Puri?

  A, is that true? And B, what the hell is going on? Like, do you, is FTX, he's like, either, he's like, I can only think of one of two things. Either FTX is simply like, you have a unique set of problems. So you could do, you can operate your business differently. Or the rest of us are doing this completely wrong. Which is it? And, um, and he goes, the latter.

• 37:01Sam Parr?

  That's a really good way to frame a question.

• 37:02Shaan Puri?

  Exactly.

• 37:04Shaan Puri?

  And so he goes, he goes, he laughed. He's like, I think it's the latter. And he goes, you know, we, he's like, the more I looked at tech companies, I looked at Facebook, Google, you know, successful tech companies. I think, I don't know for sure. I can't say like, you know, I don't know their exact business, but from what I can gather, they, they employ an order of magnitude more people than they need to. You know, and then he's like, how many, he's like, how many people do you think Facebook would have optimally? And he's like, you know, he's like, he's like, I don't know if, let's say they have 50,000 employees. You know, that's somewhere between, you know, like five to 30 times too many.

• 37:45Shaan Puri?

  And like, and so, you know, it's kind of shocking to hear this. And it's something, I liked it because I've believed this for a long time, which is that you, like, most tech companies are completely over hired. I've told the story before, which is that when I interviewed at Twitch for our acquisition, they did, you know, the part of the interview is they get, at the end of the interview, they're, you know, hey, do you have any questions for us? And this was my first, my one, I said, how many employees does Twitch have? They said, 1800, 2000. How many do you think is the right number for Twitch? Like, what do you think is, is, how many people do you actually need to be like firing on all cylinders? And like, I would get basically three reactions. The first was sort of like, just like shock, like, what are you even saying?

• 38:29Shaan Puri?

  And are you insinuating that like, I shouldn't be here? Or like, we shouldn't hire you, or that we hired too many people? We don't know what we're doing, like, you know, the people were just like, what? I don't get what you're getting at, but it's not good. Whatever you're getting at, it's not, no matter what interpretation I have of this question, it's a pretty bad. The second was a genuine answer, which was like, you know, probably like, you know, 15 to 20% less, but we, you know, you don't know, you don't know over time who those top performers are. You figure that out and like, you know, it's good to have buffer and redundancy or whatever. And then I asked Emmett, the CEO, and he was like,

• 39:06Shaan Puri?

  I think 2,500 and like, you know, because his plan is like to hire and grow and he's like, you know, he, he and like, we didn't get into a big debate about it. I was just curious what he would say. And so what was your reaction to this thing where you found out that FTX has like, you know, 20 engineers and is running this

• 39:22Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 39:22Shaan Puri?

  pretty large tech platform and everybody else has thousands of engineers.

• 39:26Sam Parr?

  I think people over hire. And so I wrote a tweet that said, you know, I'm really fascinated with the idea of just hiring less people who are higher quality and paying them a lot more versus hiring a ton of people and most of them by definition are pretty average and you pay them a medium or market rate. I like that idea of doing the first thing, but is that actually practical? And what are some examples? And the reason why I wasn't sure if it was actually practical is like, even if you get the highest performing people in a room, does it just become natural still where it's like the 80 20 where 20% of the people does 80% of the work and it just always and I think actually maybe that would actually would still exist, but at like a higher caliber.

• 40:11Sam Parr?

  And then also I was like, I actually understand why you want redundancies. I understand why if you rely on five people and three of them quit, like you're really screwed. But let me give you the, and someone tweeted out, and I found two good examples. One example was Sam Bankman Fried with FTX. And here's what he said. Here's the tweet. He actually tweeted this out. I guess after that talk, kind of summarizing his thoughts, he goes, I've looked into hyper growth companies and time and time again, growing from 200 employees to 2,000 doesn't seem to 10x your productivity per year productivity as a company. In fact, sometimes it doesn't even one extra productivity. Sometimes the more you hire, the less you get done. So why exactly is it that hiring doesn't scale the way it should? A coordination becomes really hard and B diffusion of responsibility. Five people could theoretically do something.

• 40:56Sam Parr?

  Maybe no one will actually feel like they have to get it done and have to do it. And then he just goes on to say that basically companies hire more or sorry, companies lower the bar as they hire more and over time, the average coworker, people at work becomes a worse experience and incentives become harder to align as people have less and less of a sense of what each person is doing. And I completely agree. I think that the I'm not smart like these guys where I can actually come up with a number, but I think a large percentage of jobs, at least in the tech world, and if I would say most companies are bullshit jobs, I'd call them bullshit jobs. And they're only there because the person who's running this particular division has

• 41:36Sam Parr?

  to request more budget and hire more. So they get more responsibility and more credit, and they seem more important. So then when they go to their next company, they get paid more and they can climb the ladder because it seems like, oh, well, like, you know, you manage 200 people, you must be legit.

• 41:52Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 41:53Sam Parr?

  That's why I think it happens.

• 41:54Shaan Puri?

  The number of people under you is a is a power consolidation technique inside of of large companies. And even if people aren't doing it for malicious reasons, it is the incentive. Like, you get paid more.

• 42:05Sam Parr?

  It's just the game.

• 42:05Shaan Puri?

  A larger of a group of people that you can manage. And so your incentive is to hire people, promote them to managers, have them hire people, have them promote them to managers and have like layers and layers of people. Because if you were if you were, if everybody got the same budget, and then you were just measured on how much you got done, and you got to keep the extra, I think companies would work wildly differently than they do today. Right? And he says something, he goes in that tweet, he goes, Sam says, he goes, as far as I can tell, this is the most common reason that successful companies decay. It's a race between how quickly new employees can understand the culture and how quickly people are hired. The faster you hire, the harder it is to keep everyone on the same page. And, you know, if you're growing at 50% a year, maybe you could still

• 42:48Shaan Puri?

  mentor each new recruit and get them, you know, to learn how you guys work. But if you're going 300% a year, each employee only has four months to learn before they have to start teaching. And meanwhile, we, you know, you have to also figure out how to make sure compensation is fair, coordination keeps happening. Like, I remember this inside of even a startup, even a very small company. When you go from one people to two people, generally productivity increases like almost every time. One person to two people is almost always a win. Two people to three people, usually a win, but there's usually a cost, which is, oh, now we have to have meetings. Whereas before, like one person, the whole project's in your head. You don't have to talk to anybody.

• 43:30Shaan Puri?

  Two people, like by default, you're going to basically share everything with the other. Everybody, because there's only one other person, knows everything that's shared. Once you have three people, no longer does everybody know everything that's going on. And basically, I think there's this rule, which is that for every,

• 43:47Shaan Puri?

  for every double of your employee base, you square the amount of communication required. Meaning, so if you go from four to eight, you don't, that doesn't double the communication. It four X is the communication or whatever, right? Like, I don't do my public math there, but it's basically like a nonlinear, like it's a nonlinear investment you have to make in communication and coordination. And like, suddenly it's like, oh man, we have a 12 person team and like, it's really hard to keep everybody on the same page. And now I'm having to do extra meetings that are all hands meetings or things like that, just to keep 12 people organized. Now imagine that at 1,200 and imagine that at 12,000.

• 44:22Sam Parr?

  Miserable, miserable. It's miserable. So the other example, by the way, that's one, I don't know if anyone replied or how I found this, but have you heard of the company called StreamYard?

• 44:34Shaan Puri?

  StreamYard? No.

• 44:36Sam Parr?

  They're in your world. So go to Stream, I think it's StreamYard.com. So they're in like the streaming world.

• 44:41Shaan Puri?

  Are they like Canadians?

• 44:43Sam Parr?

  Maybe.

• 44:44Shaan Puri?

  So easy way, it's the easiest way, they say to procreate a professional live streams. Okay. It gives you like a, it's like a broadcasting tool for live streaming. Okay. Cool.

• 44:53Sam Parr?

  So this guy, it was two guys, one guy's named Gage and I don't remember the other guy. Amazing name. Gage is the first name. He, yeah, Gage and Dan. Yeah. Gage like rode a dirt bike to school when he was a kid and.

• 45:05Shaan Puri?

  Gage and Power.

• 45:08Sam Parr?

  Yeah. This guy's amazing. So he, um, so he started this company with Dan and they were basically, I think, just making it a way for like, I think it was like Twitch folks, you know, or just like streamers to stream. But then eventually they kind of pivoted a little bit so it could be like a professional stream. So like, I don't know who actually would do a quote professional stream. I guess like a company, but like, and had all these like, it had all these like options. Yeah, so you just make it look cool and really easy. Well, anyway, they launched this in 19 or I think even 20. And it was just them two and they got up to 3 million in ARR. Just these two guys. Then the pandemic hits and in one year they go from 3 million to 30 million annually recurring revenue.

• 45:52Shaan Puri?

  Wow.

• 45:52Sam Parr?

  Zero outside money, just these two guys. And when they they eventually sold at the uh so they launched, I think in 19. The pandemic hit when in 20 or 21. Uh but basically in like one year, they went from 3 million to 30 million. And then they sold that same year to hop in for 250 million dollars in cash. And these two guys owned the whole thing. And when they sold, they basically scaled the company uh to 20 million in ARR with five people. And by the time they sold, they had 30 million and they had just hired the seventh person. And this whole business was built with just seven people. Really, it was built with two or three people. And then the second half, they were like, our customer service was just getting out of control.

• 46:35Sam Parr?

  And so we had to have someone manage like an agency who was doing our customer service. Uh and and they're like, it was just like, of course, they did. They they were kind of were already killing it, but they hit a lick with like COVID that like was unexpected. So that accelerated it, but they were doing 3 million with two guys like a year and a half into the business. That's which is amazing for software. Um but it's a pretty ridiculous, it's a pretty ridiculous company. You should uh Google like what the founders look like. I think they're like, they look like they're like 28, like they're like kids.

• 47:05Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I'm pretty sure I met these guys at a conference, by the way, uh now that now that I'm seeing their faces. Um yeah, Gage and Dan, but we're gonna call Dan Dirt. So this Gage and Dirt were the co-founders of StreamYard.

• 47:18Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I love it. This is, I mean, that's that's an amazing story of like, you know, right place, right time, uh you know, and being ready to like surf a wave. Can I tell you like another random business like this that's like

• 47:27Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 47:27Shaan Puri?

  just deceptively big? So my buddy Corey um tweeted this out. He was like, he's like

• 47:33Sam Parr?

  Is that the uh the high school guy?

• 47:36Shaan Puri?

  No, no, this is Corey Levy. This is Corey Nicholson. His thing is Corey N. CEO is his Twitter account. So Corey's a good dude. He's a really young guy. He's like doing an ecommerce thing right now. I really like him. I'm like, he's the one, if we were gonna do Southern Sam Sticky Icky, this is the guy to run it, and he's down to run it. We're just waiting on you if you want to run it. But like, he's a D to C guy. He's really, what he's really good at is he's good at building a D to C product and using TikTok to market it. And like, that's like his current like niche. And so anyways, he goes, he goes, "Next time you're stressing over a business idea, just remember, there's a website that just simply removes the TikTok watermark from a video and receives 37 million monthly visits and has ads everywhere."

• 48:19Shaan Puri?

  And so it's called, it's called S S S T I K. I don't know if you've ever seen this website.

• 48:24Sam Parr?

  S S S T I K. So three S's and then tick. Wow. I'm looking at the traffic now.

• 48:32Shaan Puri?

  Almost 40 million monthly visitors for the last six months straight. And it's just plastered with ads. I don't know. I just like, you know, when you, if you create, TikTok is a great way to create videos, but it always keeps the TikTok watermark in there. And so I guess this is a way to remove the watermark.

• 48:50Sam Parr?

  Because I'm pretty sure if you post a watermark to video from TikTok on a Twitter, I always feel like they like have a way to like downvote it. You know what I mean? So it doesn't get shown to people. Is that legitimate?

• 49:01Shaan Puri?

  I don't know if it, I don't know if it's that. I, I really don't give Twitter that much credit. Like, I don't think they can build a feature that smart. But, but I know for Facebook, I think Facebook, if you upload a watermark video as an ad, because those TikTok videos do great as ads, they won't let you run it because it's got a TikTok thing and you're basically promoting their competitor, right? So you have to like get the raw video.

• 49:22Sam Parr?

  Dude, this is crazy. I'm looking at the traffic now. And so it gets like 40 million a month, it looks like around that. And they're from every country. So United States only makes up 8% of the traffic. And then there's like Colombia, Philippines, Mexico, Peru. Peru's the biggest source, which is makes up 10%. This is crazy. What a crazy business. You think this makes money? Surely it makes some, but you think this is big?

• 49:49Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think it is. By the way, okay, so I tried to get in touch with this, so I don't have the full story on this, but um, go to, you're gonna love this. This is like, I might be telling you about something like, you already know, you're gonna be like, my cousin started this. Go to eggcartins.com.

• 50:06Sam Parr?

  Alright, why would my, I don't have, a cousin would start eggcartins.com? What is this? Egg cartons?

• 50:14Shaan Puri?

  I don't know, this, this is just a Sam Parr special right here. It's just like, did you know there's a business called Egg Cartons?

• 50:20Sam Parr?

  Dude, so many people think that I'm like, I thought you were safer, I'm from the Midwest. So many people think they're like, oh, like, hey, I want to go hunting. Can you like, teach me how to hunt? Like, they think that I'm like, from like, a rural southern area. I'm not. I, I don't know anything about that. Like, I, I, I'm like, when you think of, they, they hear I'm from St. Louis, Missouri, and they think it's the country. I'm like, think of Detroit? That's kind of like where I was raised. Like, that's, it's more like Detroit than it is.

• 50:45Shaan Puri?

  Are you more likely?

• 50:46Sam Parr?

  The rural area.

• 50:50Shaan Puri?

  Are you more likely to go bow hunting or get a pedicure?

• 50:56Sam Parr?

  Dude, well, neither. People from Missouri don't get pedicures, at least men don't. But bow hunting, like, I only know about bow hunting from like, the TV show Napoleon Dynamite, where they talk about like, a bow staff. Like, I don't even know, like, I don't know what bow, I've never killed a animal before. No, I've never done any of that.

• 51:15Shaan Puri?

  And you don't have the, you don't have the urge to?

• 51:18Sam Parr?

  I definitely do. It would be fun to look something in the eye and then consume it. I think that would be exciting. But, anyway.

• 51:26Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so back to eggcartins.com. Alright, so, basically, it's just a website that sells, like, the actual packaging you need for eggs. So every form factor of eggs, you got the 12 one, you got the 24 pack, you got the plastic one, you got the foam one, you got the good for the environment one. And I thought it was really interesting, because this is, this is a multimillion dollar business that just is like wholesale selling packaging for eggs. And they just, like, if you go to the website, it's like eggcartins.com, call 1-888-852-5340, right? And it's like, you know when that's in your logo, that this business prints cash. Because it's like, oh, yeah, we got like, just this, like, you know, every grocery store in America, every corner store in America, they just, eggcartins.com, and they, they

• 52:07Shaan Puri?

  got my number, you know, in their phone book. And it's like, the biggest tell. And so, what was interesting about this, is I was like, who owns this thing? And then, if you look up... Eggcards.com owner, you're gonna see this woman named Sarah Moore. And Sarah Moore, if you go look at her thing, it says, her LinkedIn says Sarah Moore, egg carton and packaging fanatic. And she's been doing this for four years. And before that, she went to Harvard Business School. And so I was like, who is this? And basically, this is somebody who's like an MBA, private equity type, that identified this business that's been around for 20 years. And basically, you know, like went and, you know, either bought it, took it over,

• 52:52Shaan Puri?

  or, you know, did something. I don't think it's like her dad is the owner, because there's this other guy, Paul B. something, who, you know, was the owner of it for 19 years. Now, he says he's semi-retired. But I think she bought it. And I was like, wow, this is a, this is a like fascinating like path to pick for somebody who's just like smart and is like, you know what? I'm gonna go fish where nobody else is fishing. Instead of going to try to build the next social app, or the next crypto thing, or the next podcast, it's like, let me go identify one of these businesses that's like a wholesaler of packaging, buy the company, and then just like, you know, modernize it and grow it.

• 53:31Sam Parr?

  So is this Sarah Moore from Massachusetts?

• 53:38Sam Parr?

  Oh, wow. Are you sure this woman owns? So this woman does not look at all like you're gonna think of a a carton salesperson. This is the owner?

• 53:48Shaan Puri?

  No, like, if you look, if you look at her picture, what? Look at her picture, what's your guess? What does this woman do?

• 53:54Sam Parr?

  Like enterprise sales at Salesforce.

• 53:58Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. I was gonna say the exact same thing. She sells high-end enterprise software? Or she runs an ad agency? Or, you know, like, whatever, I don't know. She's like, you know, professor and part-time model or something like that, right? It's like, crazy.

• 54:14Sam Parr?

  Yeah, she's like a really good-looking Harvard person, and I would not expect her to do any of this in Sutton, Massachusetts. Like, this is crazy.

• 54:22Shaan Puri?

  If you look at the guy who's the previous owner, you go to his LinkedIn, it's like a dude on, like, he's got his neck sideways, he's on the phone. He's like, guys, computer, he's like, looking up, someone took this photo of him, and that's the best photo he has of himself.

• 54:36Sam Parr?

  Yeah, smoking.

• 54:37Shaan Puri?

  His desk has like, you know. 1970s World Series like, you know, ball from the game he was at.

• 54:43Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and he's got like a marble red in his mouth. That's exactly how I would imagine this. This is crazy. How'd you find this?

• 54:50Shaan Puri?

  So, because I just saw the tweet about the, about the egg carton thing. I went down the rabbit hole. I found a PDF and it says, uh, she purchased it in 2017 after her, after getting her MBA from Harvard. And, um, you know, now she has a private equity. She did that, by the way, in her twenties. Uh, so she's got a private equity company that basically does egg cartons.com fall harvest products. And those both, those both serve the egg producing company, uh, sorry, industry. And, um, and King Supply, which provides plumbing materials to campgrounds and parks. And I was like, what the hell? Like, who is this person? What are they doing? And so, uh, by the way, I might have some of these these wrong because I tried to get in touch with her. I emailed her and I just, subject line, like, holy shit. You know, first line, egg cartons, you know, like, who would have thought this is amazing?

• 55:35Shaan Puri?

  And I sent her, I was like, look, um, you know, I want to know more about you, but I don't want to schedule time and I, for you or for me. Like, here's a Google Doc. Like, would you mind just answering these questions? And so I'm waiting on her to answer these questions now because I have, I must know more. I must know. Where, so was this her family business? Like, how did she get into this?

• 55:53Sam Parr?

  So this like model looking Harvard grad owns an egg cart business? She owns a plumbing supplies business? Is that right? And I don't know what a fall harvest, what is fall harvest products? What, what are you making? You saw that?

• 56:10Shaan Puri?

  I think it's also, it's also for the egg industry.

• 56:13Sam Parr?

  What? This is awesome. This is a really good find. I love Sarah Moore. Sarah Moore, I love women named Sarah. My wife's name is Sarah. I love Sarah Moore. She's great.

• 56:26Shaan Puri?

  That's not where I thought you were going with that one. I love women named Sarah.

• 56:33Sam Parr?

  No, this woman's awesome. I'm a big-

• 56:35Shaan Puri?

  Fun fact for you at a Nick Gray party.

• 56:40Sam Parr?

  My wife's name's Sarah and there's this woman I admire who like with the Harvard and owns an egg carton business who's also named Sarah. She's, I'm fond of her as well.

• 56:48Shaan Puri?

  Founder of, uh, founder of Spanx Pants. Love when pants make you look thinner. Sarah Blakely.

• 56:55Sam Parr?

  Another great Sarah. Yeah, I'm a big fan of this. This is a good find. Why did the person tweet about it?

• 57:02Shaan Puri?

  I don't even know. It was like, uh, what did they say? They go, I think, so the, the thread was like a kind of a golden thread where it was like boring businesses are the best businesses. And, um, and then somebody, uh, Patrick B., Patrick B. Johnson said, I got one that's even better. Eggcurns.com. This is a multimillion dollar business. And that was the only reply to the thread, by the way. This was like a popular thread. Well, so one guy tweeted that first tweet. This guy-

• 57:28Sam Parr?

  Did you DM that guy? He knows something.

• 57:30Shaan Puri?

  It's like a heat seeking missile. Yeah, he knows something. No, I didn't reach out to this guy. Uh, he's got like a picture that makes him look a little crazy. Um, and so I was like, I don't know.

• 57:39Sam Parr?

  I mean, it's not like assault you. It's on Twitter.

• 57:43Shaan Puri?

  Like, okay, let me read you his bio. This is why I was like, uh, if I want to have a conversation right now.

• 57:48Sam Parr?

  Beats up Indian guys.

• 57:50Shaan Puri?

  You know, he goes, Teen Vogue, his, this is bio. Teen, Teen Vogue called me a visionary. Elite Daily called me a genius. Link in bio. Then he goes, at Ramit blocked me is my biggest accomplishment. I'm the founder of Progress Labs. Okay.

• 58:06Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I wouldn't want to talk to that guy either.

• 58:08Shaan Puri?

  Either, either he's awesome or he's completely not awesome and I just didn't have the energy to go find out.

• 58:15Sam Parr?

  This is a badass find. I'm all about, is it egg cartons? Eggcartons.com. I'm all about this. If anyone-

• 58:21Shaan Puri?

  Consider that my birthday gift for you.

• 58:23Sam Parr?

  If anyone can find Sarah Moore, so please find Sarah Moore and, uh, and tell her to, tell her to, uh, join the pod. There's this one woman, I, I don't know if I told you this. Did you see the tweet where I saw this lady at, uh, Whole Foods and I thought it was cool and I just tweeted out a picture?

• 58:39Shaan Puri?

  No, what happened?

• 58:41Sam Parr?

  So there was this lady giving out samples at Whole Foods and the sample was called, I actually don't know what it was, Jeshia, J E S H A.

• 58:55Sam Parr?

  And she, it's like a sourdough, you know anything about sourdough bread? Like, I don't know, like entirely behind it, but like it doesn't. It like, something involving like, it doesn't have yeast or something like, something where like it, you, you actually digest it a little bit easier and it doesn't make you as bloated, at least when I eat it, because it doesn't have like yeast, it like is missing, it's a, there's one ingredient that's missing that just makes it feel, sometimes feel bad on your stomach. So she made sourdough like mix that you can use for like pancakes and like muffins and shit like that. And I was just talking and I just like went to the Whole Foods and I saw her, I was like, oh, let me try some of this. I was like, this is great. Is this your business? She's like, yeah, I just started it like six months ago. And I just cold emailed someone at Whole Foods asking if we could sell in the store. And they said, yeah. And now they're stocking it on all the shelves.

• 59:39Sam Parr?

  I was like, oh, wow, that's a pretty good story. You know, what's your background? She's like, oh, I just worked at a fintech startup for a bunch of years and I just always wanted to do this. And I just saved up a little bit of money and I quit and I just launched it and I cold emailed them and I just kind of figured it out. And I just tweeted that one tweet. It was, it was a picture of her and it was like, you know, worked in fintech, quit, started this in six months, got into Whole Foods, just cold emailed someone. And it got read by like two million people, that tweet. And she like, and I have no idea who she was. I didn't even like know her handle. And she like somehow found, I, at the end of the tweet, I was like, if you know who she is, send this to her. And you know, she'll like know where all the sales came from. Apparently she like knocked it out the park with sales.

• 1:00:19Sam Parr?

  All from just this one little tweet. And then I did the same thing with a pool company, Trek Pools. And they sold a shit ton of pools, I like from, from this mention. It's kind of funny, this, these silly little tweets actually moved the needle for people.

• 1:00:33Shaan Puri?

  So you're saying if you're out there and you'd like your needle moved, your boys are available for hire and bribes. Actually, not even for hire, just bribes.

• 1:00:43Sam Parr?

  Yeah, just money.

• 1:00:45Shaan Puri?

  Send us three awesome stuff or cash in some kind of briefcase and we will move the needle for you.

• 1:00:55Sam Parr?

  Needle movers. 1-800-555-

• 1:01:00Shaan Puri?

  Move my needle.

• 1:01:04Sam Parr?

  All right, that's the episode, I think.

• 1:01:07Shaan Puri?

  Hey, we're just a couple of needle movers cultivating that multi-trillionaire mindset. #GrindSet.