The Guy Mafia, Agency Affiliates, Mini Katanas, and More

Episode 404: Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) binge on business ideas in this episode. They discuss becoming the next member of the Twitter Guy Mafia to going through Anand Sanwal's treasure trove of ideas - the good and the bad, plus much more. Want to see more MFM? Subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here. ----- Links: * Anand Sanwal * Yardstiq * Guy Dealership * Luxury Watch Guy * Franchise Wolf * Mobile Home Park Guy * Mini Katana * Isaac of Mini Katana Store * 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: (03:10) - Anand Sandwall, CB Insights, and Yardstiq (10:45) - Anand Sandwall business idea list (20:35) - IDEA ALERT: The Guy Mafia & Car Dealership Guy (35:30) - Agency affiliates (37:35) - MFM Back Office (40:55) - The Katana Story (50:40) - The application for Sam's researcher ----- 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.

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  Okay, next one. Hosted buyer meetings on a plane. B2B decision makers get a free vacation if they agree to have X number of conversations on a flight. It's like the time share idea. It's like, so you get a free flight, but you're gonna get on a plane full of vendors. It's like that movie Snakes on a Plane. Instead of snakes, it's just B2B software vendors just waiting to just barrage you for the next seven hours on your way to Maui.

• 0:35Sam Parr?

  So here's, I'm gonna tell you about something that's interesting. There's a guy who I love and his name's Anand. He started CB Insights. Do you know him?

• 0:43Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, listens to the pod. Love the guy.

• 0:45Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he's a great guy. He's one of my good friends and I was thinking about this. So there's a lot of things that second time or third time entrepreneurs think about that mostly first time entrepreneurs don't think about. One of them being distribution. So they'll think like, oh, I'm just gonna make a cool product and it'll somehow get into people's hands. That's false. You gotta have marketing baked in or like, it's gotta be part of like the ideation phase marketing. The second thing is pricing. They think, oh, I'll just charge $5 a month and I'll get like millions of people to buy this. And then you actually start doing and you're like, wow, this is incredibly challenging to get thousands or tens of thousands, let alone millions of people to buy something. That's really hard. And so I've been thinking about that pricing thing. So things that fit my wants and my needs and my skill sets. So for example, content, there's industry dive, which probably only has five or 10

• 1:29Sam Parr?

  million people a month reading their website, but they make shit for like people who own grocery stores, like content for people who own grocery stores versus BuzzFeed, which makes stuff for stay at home moms who like cat videos. BuzzFeed worth 100 million. Industry dive does the exact same thing, way smaller audience makes or sold recently for 500 or 600 million dollars. So like, I've been thinking about like those, that price just like that, that different ways of packaging. And so Anand from CB Insights, he's got this company that's brand new. It's only 90 days old. It's been way low key and under the under wraps. And I recently discovered it and I asked him. So it's called Yardstick. So go to Yardstick.com and tell me what you see. It's called Yardstick. So it's the word yard, like a backyard and then stick is S-T-I-Q. He's getting a little cute on us.

• 2:14Shaan Puri?

  Uh, let's see. Okay. So Yardstick powered by CB Insights. Learn what software buyers really think about their vendors. Great title, great headline.

• 2:22Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 2:23Shaan Puri?

  And then it says access thousands of analysts led conversations with software buyers to quickly understand pricing, competition, evaluation criteria and subscription and satisfaction. So basically they interview software buyers and they get the scoop on how do you really feel about X tool? And then they summarize it so that you can, you can see how other people think about this tool before you buy it.

• 2:45Sam Parr?

  Exactly. That's it. And they charge like something like 30 or 40. They charge, yeah, it's really smart and I'll explain how this works, but they charge like 30 or $40,000 a year for this. And I think this could be a hundred million dollar a year business and they're just not, I'm, I'm downplaying, but right now the MVP is just interviewing people and showing transcripts. Eventually I'm sure they're gonna have.

• 3:05Shaan Puri?

  This is really smart. I remember you talked about this back in the day because there's that website, what is it G2 Crowd?

• 3:10Sam Parr?

  Yes, exactly.

• 3:11Shaan Puri?

  And there's basically like software is a massive category and people are like, oh, which CRM should I use? And it's like, oh, you know, it's HubSpot fighting with 10 other people to try to be the answer to that question. And so reviews is always this thing that people are trying to like. I think people in general want the idea of a review, but it's hard to trust reviews nowadays. You don't know if the reviews are faked. Uh, you don't know if they're from people like you who have the same problems as you. Uh, and the website like, you know, G2 Crowd and these other ones, they're pretty bad. And I've seen, I've seen several people try to create a new software review site to compete with them. And they have to do two things. One, they have to actually be better at the reviews and two, they have to rank higher in

• 3:52Shaan Puri?

  SEO for when somebody searches for, you know, whatever X tool alternative or what's the best?

• 3:59Sam Parr?

  Which is hard.

• 4:00Shaan Puri?

  Sales tool for me to use. And it's really hard to beat their SEO. And so they're fighting a very uphill battle. This I think is smart for two reasons. One, they already have a bunch of customers that they could just sell this, sell into with this. Two, the idea of instead of saying, okay, well, whoever reviews it, hopefully they're good reviews. They're like, no, we're just going to hire people to do these conversations and like the math works out. If we get these brands to say what they think about these tools, you know, we might only need to invest, I don't know, $200,000 into the, to the, to the collection of that data. And that gives us like, like a better review, a better, um, content system.

• 4:40Sam Parr?

  And you've nailed everything. And there's a third thing, though, which is basically G2 or softwarereviews.com or a lot of these websites, the way they typically work is they give an affiliate fee or some type of like advertisement fee. They collect that from the brand who wants to advertise on the website, which means they have to go and get traffic and they've got to convince these brands to give money. Whereas this business, Yardstick, it does exactly what I said before, it changes the way they package it. And so they just go, no, you're the customer, you're going to read this and you're going to get value from this, you're giving us 30 grand a year. And so we're just going to make shit for you. And it's just, that's our, that's our, that's our exchange. And so that's what we're going to do. And so basically, the background behind this business is, uh, this is something that I didn't know about until recently, and

• 5:21Sam Parr?

  probably you didn't either, because we both had small companies. And so a small company in this definition is anything that's below a billion dollars in market cap or value, meaning typically the people who buy this shit have 500 employees. And the reason that's important is when you buy a software provider, or you buy a CRM, or you buy like some type of, um, what's it called where you, uh, like, uh, your customer, like you do give customer feedback, like, or you, uh, like interact with your customers and your customer service agencies use it?

• 5:49Shaan Puri?

  Doing business? I don't know. Customer happiness?

• 5:51Sam Parr?

  I don't, you know, whatever, like the software is like a Zendesk or something like that. So, but like, picking the wrong software, if you are a 500% company, it will cost you like so much money. And so you have to do actually a fair amount of research, including like, who invested in this company? So I know they're not even going to go out of business. And I never even a million years thought about that. I'm like, dude, I'm just going to Google, like, what's better Gusto or Zenefits? And like, we'll just pick one and then we'll switch if it sucks. And so what Yardstick is doing is they actually have just, it's Anon and seven other employees are the early people starting this company. And they basically just ask like seven questions to people who have bought software, uh, in the last two years. And they say like, who else did you consider? Who'd you pick? What price did you pay? Would you renew? What's your customer satisfaction?

• 6:34Sam Parr?

  And then, um, the people who purchased this Yardstick product are either investment bankers, so people who are like making investment decisions for the public markets or, or private markets, and they want to know what the customer satisfaction is, or people who are going out and buying software and they could see these other reviews. And it's just like a really interesting business, because there's, there's a companies like GLG, you know, GLG? It's like, uh, you get paid two grand an hour.

• 6:58Shaan Puri?

  GLG calls back in the day.

• 7:00Sam Parr?

  Yeah, you get paid two grand an hour to like answer questions, but that's one to one. And so what they're saying is like, no, we're not going to do one to one, but we'll just make it so you could just read like dozens and dozens of interviews. So anyway, interesting company for all, everything I said, but secondly, it's an interesting company because this business is only 90 days old. And I think if you go and sign up for their email list now, it's kind of like you can watch like a big business being built in real time.

• 7:22Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, this is really good. Like I'm jealous. I didn't think of this idea.

• 7:28Shaan Puri?

  I kind of wish he had just done this outside of CB Insights. I feel like this could have been his next hit. I think it's going to be as big as CB Insights. So I think there's a slight, you know, although it's good to be able to sell into those same customers. I think it would have been worth it to, uh, you know, spin this out, but you know, that's a, that's a more complicated decision. By the way, this guy Anon, he has a giant list of startup ideas. Have you seen this?

• 7:53Sam Parr?

  No, where?

• 7:55Shaan Puri?

  I'm trying to find the list. I remember seeing it on, um, Twitter one day, but, uh,

• 8:01Sam Parr?

  Here, well, why, look for a second. The, the background behind Anon is he started CB Insights. They're close to a hundred million in revenue. He's kind of a shithead in a really good way. For example, he signs, he, he writes their daily newsletter and he signs the newsletter with, I love you. Or in his Twitter file, it's profile, it says, please sign up for CB Insights. I owe people money. And like, he is like, like kind of like a cheeky, like mischievous guy and very, very likeable. And that's, and his content's amazing. And so that's, Anon's really interesting.

• 8:32Shaan Puri?

  If you, if you want to know what speaks to our heart, you gotta be somebody who's trying to do something. So you gotta be ambitious or successful in some way. And the second thing is a little bit of a shithead. So, you know, like have that, I don't like to eat my wings without sauce. You gotta have a little dipping sauce to your personality. If you're gonna, if you're gonna get me on board and he's got the sauce. All right. So let me tell you some of these ideas. So I don't have the full list. I remember seeing this like a year ago or something like that. We should get them on the pod, but let me just read a couple of the ideas that were tweeted out from this list. Okay. So. First one, tough mutter for kids. So here's what he says, really any sort of manufactured adversity

• 9:14Shaan Puri?

  for semi affluent or affluent kids. Parents talk about wanting their kids to have perspective, resilience and reduce their entitlement and get them off screens. Tough mutter for kids. Super high margin. Unsure if, you know, unsure exactly how it worked, but money to be made for sure. Okay.

• 9:31Sam Parr?

  Dude, Spartan races now, Spartan races, I'm signing up for one. They actually have a kids version right now.

• 9:36Shaan Puri?

  Tiny Spartans. I don't know if this house is called, but you know, we can pretend.

• 9:39Sam Parr?

  That's a good name.

• 9:41Shaan Puri?

  Startup idea, Duolingo for teaching finance or accounting. Teach the principles of accounting or finance via gamified Duolingo style app. What do you give that one?

• 9:49Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that's cool.

• 9:50Shaan Puri?

  Okay. Next one, hosted buyer meetings on a plane. B2B decision makers get a free vacation if they agree to have X number of conversations on a flight. It's like the timeshare idea. It's like, so you get a free flight, but you're gonna get on a plane full of vendors. It's like that movie Snakes on a Plane. Instead of snakes, it's just B2B software vendors just waiting to just barrage you for the next seven hours on your way to Maui.

• 10:19Sam Parr?

  It just tons of coke and just everything that like a 45 year old guy named Todd who wears tight blue jeans and brown shoes, whatever they need to like.

• 10:27Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. This is Jennifer. She wants you to call her Jenny and she happens to like you.

• 10:34Sam Parr?

  I think it's actually, I think you actually could build a business that way.

• 10:38Shaan Puri?

  If you sign up for a free trial, you get to go to first class, that'd be great. Yeah, this is actually kind of a genius idea. Okay, here we go. Buyable Google Doc travel itineraries. So friends often share their travel plans via Google Docs. You know, here's what I did in Iceland. Since they're friends, I check their judgment. You know, the idea would be let me just buy the whole itinerary with a buy now button. My vacation plan is done.

• 11:00Sam Parr?

  Awesome.

• 11:01Shaan Puri?

  Big reaction?

• 11:01Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 11:04Sam Parr?

  That's a small business, but cool.

• 11:06Shaan Puri?

  Win-loss reporting for employee hiring and attrition. So when somebody doesn't accept your job offer, the service would dig in and find out the real reasons why. When somebody leaves, the service digs in and finds the real reason why. It would maybe anonymize or synthesize the insights over time. Today, the process is very ad hoc. That's a great idea.

• 11:26Sam Parr?

  That's a great idea.

• 11:26Shaan Puri?

  That is a really good idea. Wow, that's a, that's a solid one. Okay. Here's a not so solid one, but more fun. The Nike of baby diapers. So create high performance, premium diapers. Use sodium polyacrylate to make them super absorbent like astronaut diapers. Other tech to increase comfort, make cleanup easier. Why? Because parents spend a stupid amount of money on their kids. Okay.

• 11:49Sam Parr?

  Dude, anytime, anytime you say it's a Nike of something. It's like when I see a restaurant on the side of roads says world's greatest coffee, or like the best pie in town, I automatically buy it. That's my rule. If it says it's the world's greatest, if you're just bold enough to think that I, I'm going to try it. I bet.

• 12:04Shaan Puri?

  Dude, I had the same realization yesterday where I was listening to some talk where Johnny Ive was talking. And, um, and I, I knew somebody who met Johnny Ive, like used to hang out with Johnny Ive regularly. They like live near each other in San Francisco. And I was like, oh, what's Johnny Ive like? For those who don't know, he's basically the, the head designer at Apple for like all the great products. iPod, you know, whatever Macintosh, uh, you know, iPhone, all that good stuff. So this guy's like the, basically the greatest product designer in the world. He's the guy Steve Jobs trusted the most at Apple. I was like, what's he like? And they're like, oh, you know, he's kind of like you would expect. He's like, you know, he's, he's got a sort of a dry, but, but funny personality. He's a, he's a pretty focused individual. Like he's not like effing around a whole lot.

• 12:48Shaan Puri?

  Um, you know, he works really hard and, um, they'd be like, yeah, they'd come to me, they'd be like, yeah, Johnny had an idea. I was like, oh my God, what's this Johnny Ive idea? Now, I don't remember the specifics. This was like eight years ago or so.

• 12:59Sam Parr?

  They just set up for every idea.

• 13:00Shaan Puri?

  But it'd be like a closet that's beautifully designed.

• 13:06Shaan Puri?

  What does that mean? And then I realized I started using this. I'd be like, you know what you guys should do? Like I was giving somebody advice the other day. I was like, you know, in your, when you guys is an econ brand, I was like, when you send your package, you should put in there just like beautiful pamphlet, just like super well done. That just will make somebody, they'll read it, they'll know your story, but just, just a beautiful pamphlet. And then I realized, I was like, wow, if you just say like a beautiful thing, a beautiful, and then just like generic thing and say just super well done. The idea goes from like a whatever idea to like, that's a great idea. Yeah, I could see that.

• 13:40Sam Parr?

  It's like when.

• 13:41Shaan Puri?

  Honestly, it's not totally BS. There is something to it. If you said like, you know, let's just make like a really like just a hilarious YouTube video. It's like, actually, that is the correct strategy.

• 13:55Shaan Puri?

  But there's not much more to it. It's just a question of can you, can you do something that's actually beautiful or really well done or really funny? But honestly, that's not a bad business plan for most things to just say, just beautifully done. Just all the details nailed.

• 14:08Sam Parr?

  It's like when Andrew Wilkinson, Andrew Wilkinson says, we try to buy wonderful companies.

• 14:13Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 14:14Sam Parr?

  And like our beautiful businesses. We want to buy beautiful businesses.

• 14:17Shaan Puri?

  It buys like a job board.

• 14:19Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like wonderful. You're right. That is, it's wonderful.

• 14:24Shaan Puri?

  He's like, okay, we're gonna bake this cookie, but it's just gonna melt in your mouth. And they're like, okay, all right, all right, I'm in. It's like, you know, otherwise it's just a cookie. And so I think there's something to this, but all right, I'm gonna keep going. By the way, I feel like I'm reading this guy's diary. And just, you know, I feel, I feel wrong just taking all these startup ideas here. So rapid fire. This could be like 12 episodes of content for us, but I'm gonna kind of burn through it.

• 14:47Sam Parr?

  Don't read it. Let's just steal it.

• 14:50Shaan Puri?

  Well, I know, but I'm like, I want to just use them all now. I want to binge eat this whole like tub of ice cream right here. Let me give you a couple more.

• 15:00Shaan Puri?

  Happy cam. A highlight reel of the best moments of your life. How? A wearable camera that records audio and video only when you're laughing. It captures the conversation of who you're with and great moments. All right. fictitious.

• 15:11Sam Parr?

  Even the great ones are gonna miss once in a while.

• 15:15Shaan Puri?

  Just to show a little balance here.

• 15:20Shaan Puri?

  Okay, how about?

• 15:24Shaan Puri?

  Let me pull up another one.

• 15:29Shaan Puri?

  Okay, how about this?

• 15:32Shaan Puri?

  He also wrote bad startup ideas, I think. So bad, but sexy. So startup ideas that suck you in, but they're actually bad startup ideas. Here we go.

• 15:40Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 15:41Shaan Puri?

  Personal CRM.

• 15:43Sam Parr?

  Always a bad one.

• 15:44Shaan Puri?

  Preach into the choir.

• 15:45Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 15:46Shaan Puri?

  Curated news recommendations.

• 15:49Sam Parr?

  Well, in most cases, it's bad. But hey, look, that's what you, me, and Austin

• 15:53Shaan Puri?

  We gotta get that one.

• 15:57Sam Parr?

  It's something gonna be like a college campus, like Craigslist, and then like laundry on like delivery laundry.

• 16:05Shaan Puri?

  Here's one. What are my friends up to right now? Apps. These apps, I promise you, hey, what if your friend was two blocks away? You didn't know this with this app, you could have met up with them. No, wrong.

• 16:15Sam Parr?

  Dude, by the way, did you know that girls share their location on their iPhone with other girls? Like, my wife does this with her friends. Do you know people do that?

• 16:23Shaan Puri?

  For like, safety purposes?

• 16:25Sam Parr?

  I don't know why they do that. But like, I was out with like, my wife and a bunch of her friends, and they all did the same thing with themselves, like that group of friends and other people. Like, they know their where their real time location is at all times.

• 16:37Shaan Puri?

  Hold on. Why, honey, why you going to the car? My friend's going to the restroom, but she wanted somebody to go with her.

• 16:45Sam Parr?

  Dude, it's crazy. They

• 16:46Shaan Puri?

  I don't even know how to use that feature. I don't even know where the feature is on a phone.

• 16:49Sam Parr?

  I don't know. You click a thing, and it says like, share location for an hour, or share indefinitely.

• 16:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, seems like a trap.

• 16:55Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's not gonna happen.

• 16:57Shaan Puri?

  To do list software. Yep, that's one classic startup idea that everybody does. Glass door for VCs, a website that reads VCs. Nobody really cares very much about VCs. They're infrequent decisions for most entrepreneurs. They'll take money from who they can get.

• 17:10Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 17:11Shaan Puri?

  In most cases. Founders are lucky enough to have a good choice. They probably already know who's good. Okay, so those are some of his bad startup ideas. But he's got a bunch here. I'm not gonna

• 17:21Sam Parr?

  We should have him on. The guy's interesting. He's pretty

• 17:23Shaan Puri?

  He's earned his, he's earned his spot for sure.

• 17:26Sam Parr?

  I forgot to remind you, these last few times, you being the listener, about our gentleman's agreement. So like, have you ever, yes, there's like, have you ever gone to 7-Eleven, and you've seen like, like an Alzheimer's, or like, a sick children's like bowl, and you like, leave a quarter, and you take a piece of candy?

• 17:42Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 17:43Sam Parr?

  So that, that whole thing works. And they use this thing called an honor system, a gentleman's agreement, where you put down a quarter, and you take a piece of candy, and it's just, it just works. That's kind of what our podcast is like a little bit with subscribing to our YouTube channel. So Sean and I spend all this time, we talk about stuff constantly about what we're gonna do on the pod. I live an epic life, actually, just so I can talk about it on the pod. I dedicate my life to this. And all I want in exchange is not even a quarter. It's just for you to click subscribe on YouTube. So if you're listening to this on iTunes or Spotify, whatever, just go to your YouTube and just click subscribe. That's all we want, because that helps.

• 18:16Sam Parr?

  The algorithm, we get a little bit higher and then we'll just, it helps our ego. I mean, that's really all it is.

• 18:21Shaan Puri?

  Today, if you're making the choice between Alzheimer's children and us, make the right choice. Choose us.

• 18:27Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's free.

• 18:28Shaan Puri?

  It's crazy. 60% of our YouTube views come from people who don't subscribe. And all I can ask them is, are you not entertained? Do you not want more of this? Click subscribe. Alright, so that's that. Gentlemen's agreement reinforced.

• 18:42Sam Parr?

  And everyone's been doing it lately, so if you don't do it, you're gonna, you'll look silly. So I think you should do it. Alright.

• 18:47Shaan Puri?

  Okay, I want to talk about a different little trend that I've seen on Twitter. And I call this the guy mafia.

• 18:54Sam Parr?

  I saw that line. I thought that was really funny. I mean, I would have called the guy mafia, just the mafia, but the guy mafia.

• 19:01Shaan Puri?

  Well, so what, what am I, what am I calling the guy mafia? You've probably seen this trend. I feel like it's kind of new, but it's basically a whole bunch of Twitter accounts that are branded like car dealership guy, mobile home part guy, strip mall guy, self-storage guy, right? There's like, and they're basically just saying it's an anonymous account. So you don't know who's behind it. The promise is basically, hey, I'm in, I've been in this, this, this space for a while. I got, you know, I've been doing this for 10, 20 years. I will share insights, but also kind of like industry secrets about the way our industry works, the, you know, the, the, the dirty laundry.

• 19:44Shaan Puri?

  And these accounts are blowing up. They get really big, really fast. I just bought a car from car dealership guy.

• 19:52Sam Parr?

  Did you really?

• 19:53Shaan Puri?

  I don't know who this guy is. I just, I just dropped.

• 19:56Sam Parr?

  Dude, I almost bought a car from him too. I almost bought a car from him too. Tell people who he is.

• 20:01Shaan Puri?

  Well, I don't want to say his, his identity. He did, he did eventually tell me his identity.

• 20:05Sam Parr?

  I know who he is too.

• 20:06Shaan Puri?

  So he's car dealership guy on Twitter. He basically, he's always just tweeting out about like, you know, insights into the car market, right? Which I like following, right? Cause I want to know about the car market without doing any work. So

• 20:17Sam Parr?

  Here's one that he just tweeted. He said, market is literally flooded with Buicks. They're rotting on car lots like trash. You could score a deal on these if you're willing to suffer the embarrassment of being seen in one. Buicks are on 100, Buicks are at 121 day supply. For context, Toyota is less than 30 day supply. Ridiculous. The simple people terms. Day supply means the number of days it would take to deplete the current new car inventory at the current rate of sales. And so immediately I went, let's go look at a Buick.

• 20:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, these guys are very influential. I'm telling you, I spent a lot of money on a car through this guy that I never saw. So what he's doing with his like

• 20:55Sam Parr?

  What did you buy?

• 20:56Shaan Puri?

  Service, which so, okay, let me give you the full idea, then, then I'll break it down. But here's, we'll use him as an example. So he creates the car dealership guy. And I don't think he's been at it for very long. So

• 21:07Sam Parr?

  No.

• 21:07Shaan Puri?

  Pull up kind of the

• 21:08Sam Parr?

  December 21.

• 21:10Shaan Puri?

  So December 21. So that's one year, basically. He added 93,000 followers in the last 30 days.

• 21:18Sam Parr?

  Oh my God, he's at 225,000 now.

• 21:21Shaan Puri?

  Literally when we wrote this thing, like, you know, two days ago, we did the research for this. He was at 219. So like, two days he added 6,000 followers. This guy's blowing up.

• 21:31Shaan Puri?

  And what he's doing is tweeting out insights like, okay, here's what the used car prices are doing. Here's what the market is. Here's which models and makes are hottest right now. Here's why G wagons are selling for this. And here's where I think that's going. Here's what's happening with auto loans. And here's what that means for the industry. All that good stuff. Okay. So he gets the following because he's tweeting out interesting stuff. Secondly, he then says, okay, well, what do I do with this? What do I create a newsletter, paid community? You know, people are like the Sam and Sean playbook. You know, they open up their little like red, red book and they're like, is this what I want to do? But actually, he got some good advice from a buddy of mine who said, screw that. Don't, don't make a newsletter and then try to find ads and sponsors are paid. He goes, just help people buy cars.

• 22:12Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 22:12Shaan Puri?

  You're building up a load of trust on Twitter. People will buy cars from you. In fact, go buy me a car. So my buddy is like, I want to buy a Toyota Sequoia. And I think there's like Toyota Sequoia, he was telling me is like some crazy things where it hasn't been updated in like 15 or 18 years or something like that. Like the last update was like in 2004 or some shit like that. And there's like a hundred thousand person waiting list for the Toyota Sequoia. Something like crazy number like that. And he's like, yeah, but I bet there's got to be one somewhere in the country. You know what? I'll get, I'll buy in any color, any goofy color. And this guy, because car dealership guy is a, has a background as a dealer, he can

• 22:51Sam Parr?

  At least we think.

• 22:52Shaan Puri?

  Access the car dealership, the car dealer network. So basically they can buy cars. They have like their own little MLS system, right? So they can buy cars out of auction and, uh, and what, that's how dealers acquire cars. And then they could sell those cars at a retail markup. And so what he's doing is he's just buying cars out of the auction, not really applying the retail markup and just charging a flat fee as a concierge for purchasing the vehicle.

• 23:17Sam Parr?

  Which we talked about before. We talked about negotiating, uh, negotiating car price as a service from a guy who like knows the in and outs of car dealerships. And he knows the time of month, who to talk to, what to say, things like that. This is like that, but more in depth.

• 23:31Shaan Puri?

  So I told the guy, I was like, hey, um, I want an Escalade. And he's

• 23:35Sam Parr?

  You wanted Escalade?

• 23:36Shaan Puri?

  I said, I want an Escalade. By the way, hilarious thing. I go, I was like, you know, let me just, I was like, I'm not going to go test drive these cars, nothing. So I was like, let me just go read the reviews online real quick. But if you search for like reviews, you get these like, it's like, dude, is this just like some SEO optimized websites? I go Reddit, let me go to Reddit and see what people are saying. Let me tell you how people on Reddit feel about car dealerships. The same way that people in prison feel about pedophiles. Like people on Reddit do not like Escalades. They are like, dude, I've never met a non jerk in an Escalade, right? Like

• 24:10Sam Parr?

  Yeah, you're gonna start smoking cigars.

• 24:12Shaan Puri?

  Drug dealers and desperate housewives. And then I was like, hey, guys, category number three, Indian podcasters.

• 24:21Shaan Puri?

  Here we go. And so.

• 24:22Sam Parr?

  Wait, are you getting the hybrid one or the electric one or something like that?

• 24:25Shaan Puri?

  No, no, no, you gotta go full on.

• 24:27Sam Parr?

  But they have good self, you know, they have great self-driving technology. I actually looked at one too.

• 24:32Shaan Puri?

  I didn't do that much research to be honest with you, but um, just got the, the big one. So the, the extended version. So anyways, the, my point is a lot of trust, but anyways, bought a car with this guy. So.

• 24:42Sam Parr?

  Dude, you live in the suburbs of San Francisco and you drive an Escalade, you are warping into something. I don't know exactly what it is, but there's definitely a stereotype that you're fitting into. You're like the Tony Soprano of Danville.

• 24:59Sam Parr?

  I can't believe that. That's so funny.

• 25:00Shaan Puri?

  Let me tell you some of these other guys. So we have strip mall guy who you know, he's basically.

• 25:05Sam Parr?

  I love him.

• 25:07Shaan Puri?

  Little strip malls are like, I don't know. I don't know what you'd call it. Like these little like B-class shopping centers. There's the wolf, uh, franchise wolf. Franchise wolf is a guy who talks about buying franchises and what franchises doing, oh, crumble cookies, exploding like crazy. Here's what's going on with that franchise. That's a great, that's a great niche to be in because interested franchise buyers are super, super valuable. That's that customer, a lead who's interested in buying a franchise is worth tens of thousands of dollars to these companies.

• 25:37Shaan Puri?

  Secret CFO, another great name.

• 25:40Sam Parr?

  That's a beautiful name.

• 25:40Shaan Puri?

  Didn't go with the guy, but I like secret CFO. So I like franchise wolf. I like secret CFO. These are great names, great brands. And I think they work for a couple of reasons. Number one.

• 25:49Sam Parr?

  Wait, what about um, the, the watch guy? I talked to him. I almost bought a watch from him. He just posted.

• 25:54Shaan Puri?

  Didn't even know about him.

• 25:55Sam Parr?

  Yeah, there's a, it's a, he's, it's a watch guy. It's called um, I think just watch guy, actually.

• 26:01Shaan Puri?

  I see a new one like every day right now. And by the way, this whole tactic is gonna get flooded. It's already getting flooded because people see it. Now that we're talking about it and breaking it down. Everybody who's like, I am a dental hygienist, dental hygienist guy, you know, like there's gonna be like, just like a ton of these coming out, but honestly.

• 26:18Sam Parr?

  And they all use cartoons as their avatar. By the way, I sent you in the Riverside chat, the luxury watch guy. And he does the exact same thing. He goes, here's what I'm seeing. This Rolex retails for 20,000. It's an eight-month wait. And so therefore what we're actually seeing is people are buying it for 35,000. Or this month, mostly because of the crypto guys, this particular uh, model of Rolex is going way down because they're selling it because they need to afford rent.

• 26:42Shaan Puri?

  And by the way, if anybody wants to do the the NFT guy, you know, for for crypto, you know, we'll hire you for the bill card. We'll pay you to build this account if you're good. So so so basically, this is the trend. Okay, so why do I think this works? Number one, the the value proposition is in the name. You don't even need to click to the bio. They're a walking billboard for what value they're going to provide to you, what what they're going to teach you about. I think that sets them apart from just like, oh, this is Steve, you know, Steve Irwin. You know, you don't know that he's the nature guy, right? Like, you don't know that you have to. There's still a leap of faith. You have to click in, read the bio, then you get the then you understand the value.

• 27:23Shaan Puri?

  Here, it's right on top. Second thing, they promise basically data, insights, and industry secrets. And people really like industry secrets. And so you can go viral with some of these, like, here's the dirty little secrets about buying a used car or about what happens when you walk into a car dealership. I sat in these rooms for 30 years. I know what conversations the seller is having when you walk in like a fish. And it's like, I gotta click this. I gotta read this. And at the end of it, I'm going to trust them as a niche expert. So I think those are the two kind of like core reasons that it works. It's also just a focused feed. So versus my account, sometimes you're going to hear me talk about sports. I'm going to crack a joke. I'm going to complain about my kids. And sometimes I'm going to tweet tech stuff.

• 28:07Shaan Puri?

  And in reality, people just kind of want you for one of those things at upfront. Upfront, a focused feed is going to do better. So I think that's why these are these are working. And I think all of these people who do this are going to make at least low millions of dollars. And a few of them who've really learned how to capitalize on this will make tens of millions of dollars of a business that basically the core of their business is just this Twitter account where they are the, you know, the gas station guy. Like I saw one yesterday, it was mobile home park guy tweeted one interesting thing about mobile home. I insta followed. I have no real desire to buy a mobile home park, but I kind of want to know about it, be smarter about it. And then

• 28:49Shaan Puri?

  Turns out the guy DMs me, it's my friend. I'm like, you, you do this? He's like, yeah. What the hell's going on here? And so, you know, you never know what's going on.

• 28:59Sam Parr?

  It's your dad. Your dad's doing this side hustle.

• 29:03Sam Parr?

  I think this is a really, really good insight that you've had. And I completely agree. I think someone like a car, the car guy, I think could make tens of millions of dollars.

• 29:13Shaan Puri?

  Now, let me give you, now let me give you the, so what, what I do about this? Let me add to it, right? So, by the way, another good thing about this, you can have ghostwriters or contributors because you're just under this anonymous umbrella brand. So that's another benefit here. Okay. So what can you do with it? So first, I think avoid the, you know, let me do shout outs. Let me do paid ads in a free newsletter. Let me do a community. Like if somebody says the word community, you should stiff arm them in this, if you're doing these. You got like, you want to do it where you actually, you actually get towards the transaction. Maybe a high ticket course can work, but like, I do think you want to be more like the car dealership guy who's actually doing this. Or you want to be the strip mall guy and you want to raise a giant fund off of that.

• 29:58Sam Parr?

  Well, dude, have you asked why? Cause I'm the same way. I would, I almost sold my car recently and I had him give me a quote on it to tell me how much they're selling for. And then I go, oh, and I made a hundred thousand dollar plus decision because of his advice. Have you asked yourself, why do we trust us these guys? Like they don't even, they use a cartoon.

• 30:17Shaan Puri?

  It's the same reason people trust us from this podcast or from Twitter, which is that I think when you get to see somebody think out loud, which is what writing is, or talking on a podcast, and they're not talking to you, you're overhearing them. And they're not selling you anything. They're just giving, give, give, give, give, right? This is the Gary V playbook, right? The jab, jab, jab hook is give, give, give, ask. And so that's what they're doing right now. They're just in give mode. And I think that's the absolute right way to be. Give, give, give, give, give insights, insights, insights. And then there's a surprising number of wealthy people who will say, hey, can you help me? I want to do this. I want to buy one of these or I want to get your opinion on this.

• 30:57Shaan Puri?

  And they will come to you hat in hand, like me and you did to these suckers, like suckers to these guys. Okay. So that's the first thing.

• 31:06Shaan Puri?

  Secondly, I think that I would get away, I called it the guy mafia, but I'm calling it right here. It's time to start the gal mafia. We need, we need car dealership lady. We need strip, strip club queen. We need, we need the female version.

• 31:24Sam Parr?

  MLM queen.

• 31:25Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. We need the, it's called, uh, network marketing or some shit like that. By the way, that's how that it's like, when you meet somebody who's proud of being in an MLM, you're like, wait, you know, you're in MLM. They're like, yeah, I'm a, I'm a, I'm great at network sales. What the fuck is network sales?

• 31:43Shaan Puri?

  If you can say the word, I have a downline. Like if those words have come out of your mouth.

• 31:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 31:49Shaan Puri?

  You're a pimp.

• 31:50Sam Parr?

  That's what the, that's what the, that's what the Twitter profile should be like. Does, does the word downline make you weak at the knees? If yes, you're at the right place, my friend.

• 31:57Shaan Puri?

  Right. If I presented you the shapes, circle, square and triangle, and you immediately gravitate towards triangle.

• 32:06Shaan Puri?

  It's like those like psych tests, the roshak test or whatever. Um, okay. So I think you should brand it as a woman, whether you're a guy or a girl, to be honest with you. Um, I think, you know, catfish away. Go, I think, I think that's the first opportunity. Um, second, you gotta go find all, all the valuable niches. So luxury watch, sneakers, cars, gas stations, real estate. I mean, what else? There's franchises, there's.

• 32:30Sam Parr?

  Dude, but are women using Twitter? I surveyed my audience and I go, select if you're a male or a female. And it was, it was 93% male. It was all dudes. There's probably all dudes looking for a father figure. Like it was all young men. Our, our, like, have you, me and Sahil did the meetup. It was like, uh, literally a hundred to one, men to women. It was crazy. If you're a single woman, you gotta come to our meetups. You will love it. Um, do you have any women followers, you think? Like it's, or is all Twitter this way?

• 33:02Shaan Puri?

  No, I think it's more us than it is all of Twitter. I think Twitter probably skews, but not to the 90%. That's like, that's kind of a crazy ratio there. But, okay. By the way, so here's, here's my crazier ideas. Okay. So first of all, I think Twitter's the wrong place to do this. I think it works on Twitter for sure. But I also think LinkedIn, I think that there are other networks where you should probably be able to do well with this. I don't know if LinkedIn allows like anonymous accounts or like fake names, maybe it doesn't. But the second thing is, honestly, I think there could be a whole social network that's basically just, yo, you join here and there's just verified like people who are industry insiders that you get to read their content from and subscribe and follow them. I think you could literally,

• 33:44Shaan Puri?

  like, it is not likely to work, but it's more likely than a lot of stupid social app ideas, because it has really clear value prop. So anyways, that's my like, long shot idea around this.

• 33:57Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I think this is a really, really good insight that you've had. And I completely agree that there's a massive opportunity here. I tried to make the argument this summer that there's going to be a billion dollar empire started on Twitter, just like there has been on YouTube and all these other things. And I think one of these people, it wouldn't, it's not out of this world that one of these folks could be that person. Another thing that I've noticed on Twitter, and I didn't entirely plan this, but because you brought up, I'll bring it up. Have you noticed people doing affiliates for agencies? So basically, who, a question that you and I probably get asked a lot is like, who's a good accountant, accounting firm? Or who's a good growth marketer for newsletters? Or, you know, there's like eight

• 34:42Sam Parr?

  questions that you and I get asked all the time. And I did this with my body tutor. So my body tutor, they were like, hey, do you just want to like, earn money every person you send to us? Because you're already sending tons of people. I go, hell, yeah, give me a link.

• 34:52Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I feel like you're tweeting a bunch of like, a bunch of shout outs. I was like, are you getting kickbacks here? Or what's going on? I feel like you've tweeted a couple of these.

• 34:59Sam Parr?

  I haven't. I just started doing it for my body tutor, because they're like, dude, you've sent us so much, like, we'll just give you some money if you want. But no, I've, I've not. Who have I tweeted out lately? I just, I just call out cool shit.

• 35:10Shaan Puri?

  It was them. And it was one other one that I saw that I was like,

• 35:14Sam Parr?

  Jason Yanowitz.

• 35:15Shaan Puri?

  It was your.

• 35:16Sam Parr?

  Oh, Diego, my video guy?

• 35:18Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:18Sam Parr?

  No, no, I, no, I just like, I'm just like, fuck it, dude. You've done, well, what I told him was, I go, hey, if you're good.

• 35:23Shaan Puri?

  He does it for free for you, right?

• 35:25Sam Parr?

  I go, do it for free for me, and if you're good, I'll tell people about you. And so I made him do it for free for me for six months. And so, and so I was just like, I'll just share you with you. But then you and I have friends and I've seen people do this. And I think they're making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by referring people to certain agencies. And the right way to do this is to find a product or a service that you're already a fan of and ask for an affiliate, or go and start the thing with someone and just be an affiliate. And I think that there's like this world, we had Neil Patel on the pod, and he basically founded an agency. And the reason why he was considered the founder was he did start it, but he wasn't running it. But a lot of the early leads and probably a lot of the leads to this day came from neilpatel.com because people were using his website to search like SEO stuff.

• 36:09Sam Parr?

  And we haven't seen people do that on Twitter, but it actually is really good because Twitter, unlike the other social media platforms, is ideal for link clicks. And that makes it really easy to attribute growth. And I think that there's a lot of people making a significant amount of money referring people to these high-ticket products. And I think we can continue to see that and it might be a lot, pretty, quite, quite big. I've thought about doing this.

• 36:32Shaan Puri?

  So one thing I've been thinking about doing is post-Milk Road. Okay, we sold the Milk Road, got some time. What do I want to do next? I kind of want to focus on the pod, make the pod bigger, better, all that, all that good stuff. One of the ways I think, but the pod, you know, the pod itself is free. If you're listening to this right now, you've paid me, you know, $0.00. So how does this ever, you know, become something that, that you could justify saying, I'm not going to go build another business, I'm going to do this instead? And one way is that can the pod basically provide some kind of win-win value for people? And so this one thing I was thinking about was like, I kind of want to buy a bunch of businesses that like, of people that I've worked with, like either, you know, like go to my accountant or go to my lawyer

• 37:13Shaan Puri?

  or go to my estate planner and basically buy the majority stake in their firm. And in exchange be like, cool, there are a lot of other founders like me who also want estate planning, who also want legal help, who also want trademark help, who also want accounting and basically just build a MFM style like back office. Set of businesses and instead of an affiliate, like actually own them, make sure that they're they're great, like trust in them and and then drive a bunch of value to the to those businesses. And then in return, there's a bunch of people, founders like me who are constantly asking for recommendations about like, yo, I'm trying to find a good blank. And I've burned through seven accountants before I found one I like. Same thing on the estate planning side, same

• 37:58Shaan Puri?

  thing. And so it's like, not everybody should have to redo that work. And so that's one thought I've had as to like, a cool business to build that just kind of helps kind of founder entrepreneur, you know, types.

• 38:13Shaan Puri?

  And yeah, just like own those, own a, own a collection of those businesses that, and then, you know, have audience, you know, people in this audience who want that, want those same services, be able to just go find who we use.

• 38:25Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And the, the cons are like, can you possibly vet the right people and have like actually quality? But the pros are like, this is pretty much what Richard Branson did with Virgin. And so it's definitely possible. I often wonder why, like more celebrities, like the Kardashians and stuff, like, why don't they own an equity stake in more things than they do? It doesn't seem like they do for a lot. They have done for one or two things that ended up being quite big. And so I wonder like, what's the strategy? Like where's, where does, because every celebrity has thought about this too. And so I think like, well, where's the down, where's the, where's the mistakes?

• 39:01Shaan Puri?

  Like, you know, how much, how many, if you're going to take equity stakes, you know, how much, how many things can you promote? And how many things can you, you know, you're better off basically in those cases, like you're better off. Finding the one or two product categories that you can own a large chunk of and go big, right? This is like SKIMS for Kim Kardashian. This is Kylie's lip stuff. This is Conor McGregor's whiskey, Irish whiskey. It's like, you know, he took the Irish whiskey thing and was like, I'm just gonna put this on blast. I'm gonna own a chunk of this. I'm gonna put this on blast. I think they sold it for 500 or 600 million within three years, something like that. So, you know, that was like worth a lot more than like affiliate linking out to 20 services or trying to own tiny chunks

• 39:45Shaan Puri?

  of 20 businesses and then have to use your clout to promote 20 different businesses. That's kind of exhausting. So I think that's why.

• 39:51Sam Parr?

  Well, I, yeah, I, well, let me brainstorm. Or do you want to go to, is your pain for tainment really good?

• 40:00Shaan Puri?

  Both of my things here I think are pretty good, but I can save them.

• 40:02Sam Parr?

  All right, go, go, go, go.

• 40:04Shaan Puri?

  Which one do you want? Painful tainment?

• 40:06Sam Parr?

  Yes.

• 40:06Shaan Puri?

  Or the katana store?

• 40:08Sam Parr?

  The katana store is a horrible name. So what is that actually? I've seen this. Is this the guy who keeps tweeting about his YouTube page?

• 40:15Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 40:16Sam Parr?

  Yes, I thought that was beautiful. And I kept, I'm like, wait, katana, is this a joke? Like you literally just sell swords?

• 40:24Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. Okay, so I see this guy. I've been, I've been seeing this guy for a while now. And so he sells, I think his website's called mini katana.com. So it's mini katanas.

• 40:34Sam Parr?

  But what does that mean? Like a tech deck? Like a, like a, like a tech deck, but a sword?

• 40:38Shaan Puri?

  It was a tech deck. I don't know what that is.

• 40:40Sam Parr?

  You remember the mini finger skateboards?

• 40:41Shaan Puri?

  No, no, it's not that simple. It's like, you know, like two feet in length instead of like a full samurai sword is like, you know, five feet or whatever. This is, this is, you know, like half the size of a normal thing. Maybe, you know, two feet instead of four.

• 40:54Sam Parr?

  I didn't know this. I didn't know the standard size of a katana.

• 40:57Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I realized I said that. And like, you know, the katana guy is gonna come after me here. And that's not who you want on your bad side. All right. So if you go to this website, you'll see that it does about one to two million monthly visits, which is a lot. That is a lot of traffic for an e-comm store. He tweets about their revenue sometimes.

• 41:16Sam Parr?

  Wow. The, the website is actually awesome. It's like the supreme of like swords.

• 41:23Shaan Puri?

  That's a good, that's a good thing. So I think this business does, it does, he said eight figures. It does at least 10 million a year in revenue. I think it's probably closer to 20. So I think it's probably closer to 20 based on the traffic. And one of the main ways that they do it is through YouTube. Okay. So really, there's two kind of like. Hardcore takeaways that I have out of this. So this I'm calling my, um, I'm calling this my new theory, my updated theory on what it takes to have a great econ brand.

• 41:51Sam Parr?

  By the way, these are dope. I'm, I'm finna buy me a fucking sword. These are sick.

• 41:54Shaan Puri?

  You went from making fun of this to add to cart in like six seconds. Okay.

• 41:58Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I'm gonna buy me a gold sword. Who doesn't like that?

• 42:01Shaan Puri?

  I call this the stranger things law, which is basically if you want to make it an econ, one of the things you gotta do is find people who are strangely and unapologetically obsessed with a certain lifestyle. And then you just need to sell them things. So, uh, so you know, that's, that's the whole model. All right. So here's an example, katana store, right? So it's like, you have this people, you have people who are just obsessed with Japanese culture for some reason, and they're always white.

• 42:27Sam Parr?

  Like it's like the fedora.

• 42:28Shaan Puri?

  You'll never find anybody being guy who loves Japanese culture, right? Like you, you're finding white people who are super into Japanese culture, not Japanese people. And, and so you're like, um, and, and there's people who are really into something that's kind of irrational. And I remember me, one time I met this guy who was the first product guy, first product manager at Twitter. He joined when Twitter was maybe like 10, 15 people, uh, total. And I was like, I remember talking to him and I was like, so was it obvious at that time Twitter was gonna be huge? He goes, no, no, no. Like Twitter was, it was like basically nothing at the time. It was very small. It was just kind of this thing the tech people were doing, but even the tech people who were using it kind of felt like, well, this is stupid, right? Like we're all just text messaging what we're like, what we're having for lunch

• 43:11Shaan Puri?

  right now. Like, that doesn't seem like the next big thing. And he goes, but luckily I had learned a very valuable lesson, which is anytime you observe a weird behavior, people doing a phenomenon where people are in mass, just doing this thing that makes no sense. I first, your first reaction is say, that's weird. And you kind of judge it. He goes, but I've learned you gotta lean into that phenomenon. If people are doing it.

• 43:35Sam Parr?

  Like people playing video games.

• 43:36Shaan Puri?

  There's a reason. Exactly. This reminded me of my experience when I was in college. I remember freshman year of college, I walk into my buddy Tofik's dorm room and I was like, I see him playing video games and he's got his back to me. He's playing, uh, I don't know, Starcraft at the time, I think. And then I'm like, yo, Tof, and then he turns around and I'm like, oh, sorry. I didn't like, I didn't realize you're in a game and it cause he took off his headphones. He turned around and I noticed that the game is like still going. And he's not, he's not touching the mouse anymore. And I was like, what are you, wait, what are you doing? What are you just like in like a demo mode? What is this? He goes, oh no, I'm not playing. I'm watching. I know you're watching. This 2010, I'm like, uh, 2000, uh, no, 2007 or something like that, 2008.

• 44:18Shaan Puri?

  And um, I'm like, you're watching somebody play video games? And he goes, yeah, I have, I always do this. I am like, you woke up. I was like, it's eight 30 in the morning. You woke up at eight 30 in the morning and started watching somebody play Starcraft. Why don't you just play? He's like, no, this is, this is like one of the best players. I just want to watch him. And I was like, nerd.

• 44:40Shaan Puri?

  I was like, hold on, let me go get four friends so we can make fun of you together. Cause this is not going to be fun alone. And I literally, when I got, grabbed my roommate, I was like, come see what Tofe is doing. This guy's literally, I was like, do you know, is this your friend?

• 44:51Sam Parr?

  He's like, Well, you start like making fun of him, but you actually like sit next to him. You're like, well, hold on, hold on, let me like,

• 44:55Shaan Puri?

  I'm like, why is he doing that with his dragon? You know, like,

• 44:57Sam Parr?

  Yeah, well, why did he go left? He should have gone, he should have gone left. He went right.

• 45:02Shaan Puri?

  He's like, this guy is the best player on the Korean server. So they, they played this match last night, Korean time, whatever. I'm watching it now. And I was like, you are the weirdest nerd. And this guy is the weirdest guy. Uh, he, he does like many, many weird things. This was one of them. And I remember just laughing at him, making fun of him. Fast forward 10 years.

• 45:22Shaan Puri?

  I go and I, I'm like announcing in our, our LinkedIn or whatever, like, hey, we sold our company Bebo to Twitch. Super excited. Join the exec team at Twitch. He called, I get this call from Tofe. Tofe calls me, uh, you know, twice a year. I get this call from Tofe. I pick up, I'm expecting congratulations. He just goes, you little bitch.

• 45:43Shaan Puri?

  And I'm like, what? And he's like, you used to make fun of me for this shit. And now you're Mr. Twitch? And I was like, oh yeah, that's right. I forgot about that. Dude, you were way ahead of the curve. I should have listened to you like, I could have created Twitch if I had like, if I had leaned into this insight that people want to watch other people play video games.

• 46:00Sam Parr?

  God, I love a guy who holds a garage for 10 years, by the way.

• 46:03Shaan Puri?

  Dude, he was, he was ready.

• 46:04Sam Parr?

  I like the cut of your jib guy. I'm about it.

• 46:08Shaan Puri?

  And so anyways, that, that's kind of the, the, the, the learning of if you see people doing this strange behavior, right? Like, I remember seeing people wear those Vibram five toe shoes where you're like, you're gonna run barefoot? Why do you do that? Like, yo, and they're like, super into that lifestyle. I saw a video of Joe Rogan talking about people who hunt white bucks or some shit like that, like, you know, some certain type of deer, I guess. And he goes, dude, people don't realize how crazy this lifestyle is. And he started explaining that people will build fields of like food and like lounge areas to try to attract these bucks in to hunt. They like spend months building these like, you know,

• 46:53Shaan Puri?

  man caves for bucks just to attract them. And then they hunt them, right? And I was like, that's crazy that I bet.

• 47:00Sam Parr?

  Are people who getting, people getting cold ice baths every morning?

• 47:03Shaan Puri?

  People, ice baths every morning, just like you. People who, um, I met a guy yesterday makes $5 million doing a woodworking course.

• 47:12Sam Parr?

  No way.

• 47:14Shaan Puri?

  And it's like, why? Because people who are into woodworking are not just kind of into woodworking. You can only be really into woodworking. And, um, so this is crazy. If you see the strange obsession, that is the basis for a store.

• 47:31Speaker 03

  Our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot? See, most CRMs 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.

• 47:46Shaan Puri?

  So that's the first thing. Second thing, these guys are crushing it with YouTube organic content. They built their YouTube channel up to 2 million subscribers.

• 47:55Sam Parr?

  Oh, my God.

• 47:55Shaan Puri?

  This is one of those like really cool growth activities worth going and looking at where they just do these unboxings. They got like, you know, like cute girls who are into katanas, like nerding out about katanas as they unbox them. It's like, yeah, I can see a bunch of dudes who are getting really into this channel. That makes sense to me. Like, I think that's gonna be like, I think there's a lot of people who are gonna like this brand and like this content there. And so I think they're just doing a really good job. I think it's really good execute like 10 out of 10 execution at like a 5 out of 10 opportunity. But like, you know, still nonetheless, a lot, lot you can kind of learn from this.

• 48:28Sam Parr?

  Dude, I'm looking at their YouTube. I don't understand a lot of these references because it's like anime based, but they don't do that many videos. It looks like they do one or two a month and they all kind of hit. This is crazy.

• 48:41Shaan Puri?

  A lot of TikToks, maybe. So I think they do, they do TikToks. They basically just move their Facebook ad budget into hiring a full-time female creator to do this content and that sort of thing. And so, uh, yeah, I think there, it's a really cool, really cool brand. So I just wanted to share.

• 48:55Sam Parr?

  Give the guy a shout out because I forget his name, but on Twitter, he's like showing all the backend, like he's taking screenshots of their YouTube and he's a really, really good follow. He's really been fascinating. I forget his name, too.

• 49:08Shaan Puri?

  I'll find it in a second, but.

• 49:09Sam Parr?

  He said something like, um, he said something like they, uh, they got something like 2 or 300 million views in the last year and they only started this past year. Uh, and he's like, we're getting 8 million a month. Isaac was his whole thing.

• 49:25Shaan Puri?

  His name is Isaac. He's the Isaac Med, M B D. And his bio says, scaling a sword brand to nine figures with organic video marketing. Well, if that ain't exactly what we just described, like perfect description.

• 49:39Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he did a really good job.

• 49:40Shaan Puri?

  He's really cool. Also, I like his profile picture a lot. He kind of looks like a madman. He did like a good, clear headshot, but he kind of looks like a madman instead of like a tryhard. And I just appreciate anybody that's not a tryhard. By the way, pet peeve. I feel like all of Twitter is so cringe and try hard. And I don't know if anything changed or I changed. But do you feel this way? Like, I feel like 90% of tweets and including my own tweets. I'm like, is there a tweet that's not cringey?

• 50:09Sam Parr?

  I think that we were the tryhards and now we're over it. And we're making fun of people that are doing the exact same thing that we did.

• 50:18Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I love that. You you use the ladder, climb up, and then you pull the ladder up behind you.

• 50:23Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's what we're doing, you know?

• 50:25Shaan Puri?

  When I did it, it was cool. But when you do it, that's small boy stuff.

• 50:29Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I think I think we're just being haters, which is cool. Uh, which is fine. It's a natural, that's a natural thing. Let me explain. I'll wrap up with one quick thing. Um, I posted a researcher job. So basically I don't really have a researcher. You do, and I'm envious of that. I want that. I need a little help because you're you're you always come with fire. I need a little help coming up with good content for the pod. And by the way, if you want to see the job, just go to my Twitter and like scroll down. You'll see like a Google form. But so I tweeted this out. I got like 300 applicants. And in order to apply, I was very specific. I was like, if you screw up one thing on these directions, like I'm not even going to consider hiring you. I was like, you have to like put your LinkedIn here.

• 51:11Shaan Puri?

  Job application.

• 51:13Sam Parr?

  Well, yeah, because I was like, dude, if you're not going to sweat the details on this, then you're not gonna. That's what I said. If you don't do a good job on this, I I don't believe you'll do a good job on anything else. And I made people, I was like, I was like, really simple. Come up with three ideas and make it in a Google Doc and put the Google Doc link in this form. Make it so it's readable. So I just click it. If it's not readable, I'm not even going to ask to like, I won't even look at it. And um, I got hundreds of applicants. About half of them follow directions and about a good chunk, 25% were actually pretty legitimate. What do I do with like these hundred like? Decent people, you know, it's kind of like an interesting, this is like an interesting business problem or an interesting problem. If you have people, so we did this with apartments.

• 51:57Sam Parr?

  So our, my first business that was an online company was basically, look, in San Francisco, an open bedroom for a $1,200 a month apartment, an open bedroom in a three bedroom house, that gets like 500 applicants and all 500 are interested in living in the same neighborhood. They're all interested in this ad, so they clearly have similar interests. We should just group them into their own thing and move them into their own apartment. And that was the premise of my first company. With this, I'm like, man, I got like 300 people, 100 are somewhat qualified. What do you do with this group of people? If I can, it kind of seems like such a waste that I'm just using one of them. You know what I mean?

• 52:32Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Unfortunately, not a lot of people need a researcher like this. So I think you just need to translate it to like something, like most people don't have a podcast that requires researching random business stuff. So what could these people do that's, what's a job that's more common that these people would be really good for? Is it like chief of staff type roles? Is it like something like that, you think?

• 52:52Sam Parr?

  I don't know. I have, I just started thinking about this ahead of time, like right before we started recording. But I did think this is like the, the application process is, and this is just a little small thing. Imagine if you're Burger King or something, or some huge company and you get like, you know, a million applicants a year. It's like kind of interesting where if you, you can only hire a couple of them. And so you're like, are wasting 98%, you know, in the same way that Ford decided to make charcoal out of their burnt wood that they were using to heat their furnaces when they were making iron. Can I, what can my charcoal be of these 299 applicants that I don't actually hire?

• 53:31Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's a great question.

• 53:33Sam Parr?

  I don't have an answer. I don't have an answer. Sorry. Yeah. Sorry, people. Like, this is a letdown, but yeah, it's an interesting question.

• 53:41Shaan Puri?

  The thing to do would be like, what, what common job do these skills translate to? And then you have now a cohort or a pool of people that are, you know, somewhat vetted that you could create like a job board or some sort of like matching marketplace or service where people could just hire, you know, People like this for for that common job, but I'm not sure.

• 54:01Sam Parr?

  Well, I wonder like, like the people who have enough probably don't care, but but like the people who like the the engineering companies or some someone who's getting like a startup that's getting an engineering company or getting engineers to apply, what they should do is just like, be like, hey, I'm sorry, you didn't get the job, but here's like five other gigs that are kind of cool and just take like the $30,000 referral fee. Do you know what I mean?

• 54:23Shaan Puri?

  So our buddy Ryan Hoover kind of did this. He he was hiring in a researcher or like an analyst for his fund. And he's like, dude, I got like hundreds of applicants. I interviewed them. And he's like, these, I forgot how many, let's call it 30, just for an example. He's like, these 30 were really good. I just, I can't hire 30. I only needed one. And so he emailed me and a bunch of other people who had funds. He's like, do you need an analyst? Like, here's our kind of vetted analysts that we thought were good. If you need one, like, I'd love to help these people get a job. Like, he wasn't asking for any money because Ryan's a nice guy and, you know, this is not how he's looking to make money. But like, it was kind of great. At the same time, I was sort of like, I'm not looking for the sloppy seconds. Like, these, these people weren't good enough for you. Why, why are they good enough for me? There's a part of me that's like that, too. So I think you have that challenge. If I'm a tech company, I'm looking for engineers.

• 55:08Sam Parr?

  That's fair.

• 55:09Shaan Puri?

  And I hire these people and you didn't hire me, but, you know, Facebook didn't hire you, but Google should. I think Google's got a little problem with that. So you have to find some way around that.

• 55:17Sam Parr?

  That's fair.

• 55:17Shaan Puri?

  Signal problem. Same thing with investments. If I send an investment to you, I'm like, hey, great deal. Not doing it, though. You should. You should invest in this. It's like those are the worst, those are the worst emails because it just, sometimes it's true. It's like, oh, this is just your niche, or it's your stage or whatever. But a lot of times, it just adds like a negative flag to it for no reason.

• 55:38Sam Parr?

  Well, and the answer to this might be, there's nothing I could do. Fuck them. Sorry, guys. Like, you gave me, you did all this work for me and you're just not, you're not going to get the job. And there's some guys who have applied for like eight jobs that I've had throughout the years. And I feel so sad. I'm like, sorry.

• 55:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you missed again. We're not hiring that many people, right? So it's just a hard, hard thing to do.

• 56:01Shaan Puri?

  All right, let's wrap it up there. Good episode. And we have a see you guys.