Codie Sanchez Reveals 4 Profitable Business Ideas Men Are Sleeping On

Episode 512: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) is joined by guest co-host Codie Sanchez(https://twitter.com/Codie_Sanchez) to bring some estrogen up in this b*tch. Today’s episode breaks down 4 businesses women would throw their money at if they existed. Want to see more MFM? Subscribe to our YouTube channel here. Want MFM Merch? Check out our store here. Want to see the best clips from MFM? Subscribe to our clips channel here. — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Try Shepherd Out - https://www.supportshepherd.com/ • Shaan's Personal Assistant System - http://shaanpuri.com/remoteassistant • Power Writing Course - https://maven.com/generalist/writing • Small Boy Newsletter - https://smallboy.co/ • Daily Newsletter - https://www.shaanpuri.com/ Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com/ — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (3:00) Traditional Wife Movement (7:00) Anti-Call Her Daddy (13:00) Business idea: Hobby Lobby 2.0 (21:00) Business idea: Pop-up Seasonal Retail (26:00) Business Idea: Fantasy Werewolf Romance Novel (33:00) Business Idea: Gamified Fertility Tracking (38:00) Business Idea: Helping Gay Male Couples Adopt (46:00) Codie's small business acquisition portfolio (49:00) Codie's first million (53:00) Laundromats: The gateway drug of businesses (59:00) Codie’s Best and Worst deals (1:08:00) Shaan's basic b*tch hobbies (1:10:00) How to be more interesting (1:13:00) American Enterprise Institute and Arthur Brooks (1:17:00) Unpopular political opinion: Govern yourself (1:20:00) Playbook: Creating the Codie Sanchez brand (1:24:00) Content flywheel for business acquisition (1:27:00) Codie addresses her critics — Links: • Contrarian Thinking - https://contrarianthinking.co/ • Codie’s website - https://www.codiesanchez.com/ • Mira - https://www.miracare.com/ • Flo - https://www.flow.health/ • Farmgirl Flowers - http://farmgirlflowers.com/ • Hone - https://honehealth.com/ • Sam’s blog post about ebooks - https://tinyurl.com/mypk8rkb • AEI - https://www.aei.org/ 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. — Other 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?

  I just got a text message that says, let's get some estrogen in this bitch. That's right. We have a guest host today. Sam is out. He had a baby. Congratulations to him. But we have Cody Sanchez here to take his place. And Cody texted me because she says, I got a bunch of ideas for dudes who don't understand the women's market. And they're not playing these games. There's less competition, but these are big opportunities. So she said she's got four ideas that are blind spots for men, but that the women will understand. So for the four female listeners out there, this is your day. Today is your day. The moment you've been waiting for. It only took us 500 episodes to make an episode that is catered around ideas for the market for women. I can barely even say it. I don't even understand. I'm excited to see what she says.

• 0:41Shaan Puri?

  The second thing that I'm going to do is Cody is always on social media talking about buying laundromats. And I'm going to ask her, I'm going to ask her, Cody, do you really buy fucking laundromats? And do these make money? And why are you buying these things? So that's what's coming in the second half of the episode. And at the end, I'm going to ask her about her content game because she's built up a following, got millions of followers now. She said she does 100 million impressions a month across all her channels. And this is all kind of in three years. So she's built an amazing social brand. But with that comes a bunch of haters and people saying that she's just like a business guru or a grifter. So I'm going to ask her straight up. I'm going to say, hey, what's the deal? Cody, are you a grifter? And what's your response to that? Address the haters. And we're going to ask her to address the haters. So that's what's in this episode. Hope you enjoy this episode with our guest host, Debbie Sanchez.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like my days off on the road.

• 1:34Shaan Puri?

  Okay. Um, what's up? We got Cody Sanchez in the house, guest host. Congrats to Sam. He had his baby. He's out on daddy leave, patty leave, whatever, whatever people call it nowadays. He is going skin to skin. He's swaddling. He is diaper changing. I'm sure he's doing all those things. Haven't actually asked him because got to give the man some space. But um, I decided while Sam's out, I want to have guest hosts. So not just a guest, but a guest host. And what I mean by that is here's the criteria. Somebody who I already know and like, so a friend, a friend of the house. Number two is they got to know the vibe. So they live, listen to MFM. They know that what this podcast is all about is talking about ideas, opportunities, or interesting businesses that not everybody knows about.

• 2:18Shaan Puri?

  So they got to come prepared with that. And it's like, oh, so you're taking the role of Sam. Cody, how does that feel? Are you, are you ready to be Sam?

• 2:26Speaker 02

  Do I have to drink hose water? Uh, if I also co-host? Is that?

• 2:30Shaan Puri?

  You know, Sam really, really well. You've hung out with him in person. So I feel like you got his, uh, you know, his vibe.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. Yeah. Uh, no, Sam's a dear friend and so is Sarah. And I think they're gonna make hell of parents. So I'm stoked. But yes, those are big, huge, giant shoes. And he's a giant man to fill. So I'll try to do the best I can.

• 2:48Shaan Puri?

  And, um, for people who don't know, give us like the 30 seconds. You know, who, who are you? Uh, so that, so that people understand who, you know, who they're messing with.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, well, I run something called Contrarian Thinking, which is probably how people know about me on the internet. That's a newsletter, actually like slightly inspired by Sam and our other friends at Morning Brew. Um, it's got a couple hundred thousand subscribers now, hoping to get to a million by the end of the year. And that media company overall gets about a hundred million views a month, like five million subscribers, which is kind of cool. And I talk on the internet about boring businesses and stuff that I've invested in for a long time. So for forever, I'm like old for the internet. But for forever, I was in investment banking and private equity and buying small businesses like private equity people do. And then just holding them. And I guess like the real way to say it would be a family office. Uh, and then that became bigger. So we turned it into a holding company.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  And now we buy what I call small boring businesses and then talk to other people about how to do the same.

• 3:42Shaan Puri?

  So you sent me this Notion doc that can only be described as prolific epic. It's got like 30 genuinely interesting, uh, ideas or opportunities in this. We're not going to get through all of them, but I bucketed some of them into, uh, category one. So opportunity one, you called, let's get some estrogen in this bitch. Go ahead, I'll take the floor.

• 4:03Speaker 02

  I feel like because I am a legitimate fan of the pod, uh, I know, I know my fellow, uh, pod listeners. And the idea was that for everybody on Twitter. Broin, who typically listens to this podcast, maybe there's this like segment in the market with a little bit more estrogen than you guys have that we could steal our homework. And there are all these businesses that like I would love to see more of. And so, since people on the pod actually go out there and do things and build these businesses, we'll give you some ideas. I don't know where you want to start, but I basically was joking with your producer. And I was like, is this legitimate? Or is Cody crazy? And she was like, she said explicitly, I feel like you saw into my soul. So it's safe to say, women everywhere, I think, will like these ideas. Or you'll tell us if you hate it on the internet.

• 4:48Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I've known producer Ari for, she's been with us for like two weeks now, three weeks maybe. And I've never seen her smiling this hard. She's so excited for this segment. So I want to do the one that stood out to me right away. You said the traditional wife movement.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 5:03Shaan Puri?

  I think the best business ideas start with like a behavioral observation. So just a behavioral phenomenon. You notice people doing something, or you notice the pendulum swinging, or people used to feel one way, or the popular sentiment is one thing, but you notice people starting to gravitate towards the other end of that of that spectrum. That's usually where there's like a real, real opportunity. So what's, what's an observation here that you have?

• 5:26Speaker 02

  Well, yeah. So if people don't know the trad wife movement, I find it fascinating. And basically how I came across it, as one does, is I was on Instagram, scrolling my life away. And I saw this like beautiful woman, flowy dress, no shoes, running through like what I could only describe as a field that was her house. And overlaid on top of it, she had like her little child in front of her. And it was like, girl boss, question mark. I want to be a hobbit mama. And I was just like giggling, kind of ridiculously at this. And then I thought, well, I kind of, I kind of feel that. Like, I feel like we know from COVID, everybody like wanted to go be a gentleman farmer, right? I think you guys talked about that. But this is like the 2.0 version.

• 6:05Speaker 02

  And so what happened from this one video I saw is that Instagram realized I watched it longer than I guess I do other things. So I got served up all this stuff. And before you fucking know it, Sean, I buy some white pumpkins, some flowers to press on to them, and I'm fucking gluing pansies on a pumpkin. Now, you actually know me, but like, I don't have hobbies. Like, all I do is work. We run a bunch of businesses. I'm like, not that fun. And I'm, I'm sitting in front of the TV, gluing pumpkins. And that's when I realized, I think this is going to be huge. So I looked up the TikTok views for this search of trad wife, 187 million, which was wild. And we could like, play with a bunch of different ideas. But then I was like, maybe

• 6:46Speaker 02

  this is the counterculture movement to the call her daddy move, which like, used to be the top of the charts. And looks like it's come down from top one or two podcasts to top 20 to 30 on the charts. And so the idea is, how can we play to that market?

• 7:00Shaan Puri?

  There's, um, so first of all, do you feel threatened? I feel like you're the girl boss, like, you, you are in the, the top ranking. If somebody said, oh, name like, five girl boss people, I'd be like, oh, Sofia Marosa, and then I'd say you, like, I feel like that's kind of you, in terms of your public image. Do you look at this like, uh, you know, kryptonite? And in some way where you're like, oh shit, uh, they're going the other way now? What, what do you, what's your reaction to this?

• 7:25Speaker 02

  Well, like, honestly, that whole girl boss, boss babe, babes, bosses, money, like, I want to die. I want to die on the inside anytime I see any of those names. And I remember once I got invited to a speech and they were like, we need a female CEO, uh, to speak here. And I was like, I'm really unclear what my vagina has to do about this. And the guy was like, it's like, I could just feel him shriveling, you know, on his email. Like, I was like, I don't think it's relevant. Um, so I'm kind of curious. I'm hugely biased. So who knows if I'm right, but, um, I'm happily married. I'm like a very big family gal. Like, I don't talk about sex on the internet, like call her daddy. I think you should do whatever you want, just not my jam. Um, so I'm kind of curious. Like, we had these two worlds for so long, right? You were either single, crazy femme, you know, don't need

• 8:10Speaker 02

  no man, independent.

• 8:11Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Or you were traditional, stay at home, you know, protect the, the familial unit.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  And I just think both seem sort of ridiculous. So can't we have people who like, I don't know, both people have some sorts of hobbies and work? And that maybe just wishful thinking because the world's too polarized for that.

• 8:28Shaan Puri?

  Well, I think I totally agree with you. And I think that obviously we, in a way, we simplify ourselves to make ourselves a great brand. Like the simpler the logo, the simpler the slogan, the simpler the, the, the less three dimensional you are, the easier it is as a brand initially. And then of course you're like, no, no, but I'm, I have all these layers, you know? I, I do have the soft side. I do have the something right. Like I do this every, anybody who's built a brand on the internet does this. You first simplify and then you try to add depth. And so, um, the downside of the simple, the upside of the simplify is you get a whole bunch of followers. A bunch of people know you for boring businesses and kicking ass in the, in the business world. People know sweaty starter for the sweaty startup thing. They don't want to hear his stock picks.

• 9:13Shaan Puri?

  They don't want to hear his other stuff because it's not on brand for him. And of course people do want to shift over time. What I find interesting in this, like this observation of, I actually think there's three. So I think there's the caller daddy, which I'll, I'll put in there, which is like the, um, sex positive, sort of like, uh, girls can be players too. Uh, it's more of a relationship empowerment thing, but not so much career. Then you have the career work empowerment, which is like, you know, like you said, what does my vagina have anything to do with this? And then you have the sort of traditional values. And of course people float between all three, depending on the day, the situation, the phase of life that they're in, et cetera. I've definitely noticed this movement coming because my wife is exactly like this.

• 9:57Shaan Puri?

  She's like, she's like, yeah, it's, I can't say this like out in the world, but I kind of like gender roles. Like I just want you to take out the trash and I'm down to do this stuff with the kids. And then I, I just want you to always drive and like, she's like, why, I don't want to fight all this. And she's also like, she's, she worked really hard. She had a better career than me, uh, when we met and stuff like that. Like she was totally good at that, but she also was like, yeah, I really want to be stay home wife. Like that's my next phase. Um, you know, I, I want that. I just want to do house stuff. And like, that's where her mindset was at at the time. And so it is very, but I, but I noticed that she couldn't really come out and say that. And anytime there's like, uh,

• 10:38Shaan Puri?

  There's a belief or behavior that can't be said, there's an opportunity. This is what Trump capitalized on when he became president was there was a bunch of thoughts in people's heads that he was the only guy willing to say out loud. And, and there's a whole bunch of examples of this in business where there are like Grindr is a good example of this. There was a behavior that was happening that was not compatible with traditional dating and Grindr came in and enabled that spoke to that and was able to do it, even though it was somewhat taboo. And they're, and they're not always in these like sketchy areas. Another example of that would be Snapchat. So when everything became public and permanent, because Facebook was the big social network and then Instagram was the big social network and it was like perfectly filtered photos publicly on

• 11:23Shaan Puri?

  display, not even for your friends and family, for all your followers. And it goes on your feed. And then you had Snapchat come out, which was like, make a silly face is going to disappear in five seconds. And so it's like, the bigger one thing gets, the craving grows for the opposite, for the other, for the anti-whatever the current thing is.

• 11:39Speaker 02

  That's true. Well, even, I mean, you can see it if you look at the Kardashians body types, for instance, like they were like, you know, they were, they had a lot of butt, they had a lot of up top. They had a lot of curve going on there for a minute. And that became the door, right? You saw like people getting fillers that were huge, I mean, huge industry, cosmetology and men's spas experienced the biggest growth increase during any historical period of the U.S., which is wild. We looked at a vesting and a couple of them. And I was like, the margins these places make is incredible. And then what do you see now? The Kardashians, if you're up, up to the know now, Sean, the Kardashians now are like removing their Brazilian butt lifts, they're taking out fillers. There's like that one Black China, she like got rid of everything. I guess she had a ton of stuff.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  And so I think even the, the really, really big celebrities are starting to realize, ooh, like the trend is changing. And so if you're, you're as, as, as committed to the cause as those ladies are, you change your whole body, which is wild.

• 12:38Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's one way to look at it for sure. I remember the first time I heard BBL, I thought somebody was talking about like a basketball league, like a Brazilian basketball league. And I was like, oh, this could be a great conversation. And then quickly I realized I was completely out of my depth. I had no idea what anyone was talking about. But it's true, right? Like the Jenner, Kendall Jenner, whatever, like totally opposite body type as Kim Kardashian, right? So he is, I guess, like a sign of the times. So what would you do off this? So you notice the trad wife movement. You see the TikTok views going up. You see people more interested in this lifestyle. You start buying white pumpkins and hot gluing live, laugh, love on them. So what happens next? What's the opportunity here?

• 13:14Speaker 02

  Okay, well, a couple of them that I thought were fascinating. So one is, I'm sure you don't spend any time in the weekend here, but a bunch of chicks and people do in general. It's called Hobby Lobby. And basically, it's, you know, crafting. But if you think about what the store looks like, it looks like kind of a gnarly CVS, right? Fluorescent lights, everything's a little dirty, too much stuff crammed in there. Why does anybody need 472 toothpaste SKUs? Like, nobody knows. And it's always packed, which astounds me. Then I was like, how big is this company? And apparently, they do $7 billion a year in sale, which is wild. And then TJ Maxx Home Goods and that whole entity is like 51 billion. I don't know how big Home Goods is, as a portion of it. But Home Goods would be like Hobby Lobby,

• 13:57Speaker 02

  but it's done for you. So Hobby Lobby is like, here's a bunch of, here's a recipe. We're gonna give you the ingredients. You put it together. And then Home Goods is like, Cody doesn't have to paint the pumpkin. It's already there. She gets to buy it, live, laugh, love included, right? And what I thought was funny is I was chatting beforehand with Ari about this. And I was like, there's some crazy thing about women and candles. Is your wife like this, Sean? Does she love a good candle?

• 14:23Shaan Puri?

  Crazy? Yeah. Go on.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  I do not stand by that, wife of Sean, by the way.

• 14:28Shaan Puri?

  She doesn't listen, and don't worry. She's never heard one episode.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  But women, like, we, as a gross generality, I'm sure a bunch of people are gonna hate this on the internet afterwards. But as a gross generality, There's like something that we love about a discount on like a home goods item, like a nice little vase, a candle drives men crazy. But I think that there's a play here for home goods or Hobby Lobby 2.0. And all you would have to do is have any sort of retail experience, walk in there, go, oh, God, there's nothing nice about this place, except that it has what is required. And like church it up. So that's one thing, especially because retail is so cheap right now. Like, we owned a commercial strip mall and couldn't fill the fucking thing. I mean, really having a hard time. And so I like that play.

• 15:18Shaan Puri?

  I like that, too. I have a friend that owns almost a billion dollars of real estate outright. So not a fund, like, they own it. It's about 6040 equity and debt. And they, I was like, and they do commercial retail. And I remember sitting with him and I was like, dude, commercial, like, isn't that dead? Like, what do you, in my world, it's like, everything's going online. And retail, brick and mortar, like, this is a graveyard. You're leaning in, you're doubling down. Why do you, don't you need to get rid of this portfolio ASAP? And he was like, yes, in general, but there is a, he's like, the segment I went into is like, super resilient, nobody can touch them. He goes, my number one tenant in all of my, he basically goes to these like giant strip mall

• 16:02Shaan Puri?

  type places, like, or shopping centers that are empty, can't fill a lease. And he goes to Hobby Lobby, says, would you like to be here? And Hobby Lobby's like, yes, we're expanding. Because I was like, who's expanding right now? He's like, I'll tell you who's expanding, Hobby Lobby, home goods. And then he explained all these. And he's like, basically, anything that's got this kind of DIY craft thing, he's like, it's, you can't touch it. It's like, there's so much demand for it. They just keep expanding. He goes, also, the home goods thing, he's like, there's, there's like a treasure hunt dynamic to it, which is exactly what you just said. He goes, women want to physically go to the store because it's a deal hunting experience that if you can find, what did you call it, a vase? Is a vase and a vase the same thing?

• 16:46Speaker 02

  Same thing.

• 16:47Shaan Puri?

  Oh, wow.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  You nailed it.

• 16:48Shaan Puri?

  And you're just cool if you say one and you're me if you say the other? All right, gotcha. So. You go, you find, you find the deal, the sort of needle in a haystack type of thing. And it's kind of thrift shopping, but at a like high end, you know, in a high end way. And he's like, yeah, these are super resilient right now. And there was a couple of other categories like, you know, car repair, things like that, things that you couldn't take online. But he's basically isolated into these like super resilient ones that now are like, oh, we can go pick up prime real estate everywhere because of this. And I'm with you, the Hobby Lobby 1.0, which is like the current Hobby Lobby is like, you know, half CBS, half Home Depot or something like that. It's not like-

• 17:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 17:27Shaan Puri?

  It doesn't look like Etsy or Instagram. And I think if somebody just said, which, by the way, you know that, that woman, Joanna Gaines, Chip and Joanna, they have the-

• 17:36Speaker 02

  Now you're searching up her name. I think it's Joanna, but we can also go with Joanna, either or.

• 17:40Shaan Puri?

  It's a vase sort of situation. So she's got Magnolia, the store in Texas somewhere. Have you been?

• 17:47Speaker 02

  Waco. Yeah, yeah, I've been. It's fantastic. I mean, it's Disneyland for like middle aged white women like me, I think, basically like-

• 17:56Shaan Puri?

  Damn, you went middle aged for yourself? Oh, wow.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  I know. Well, now that I'm late 30s, you know, the TikTok tells me that's middle aged. But what's fascinating about Joanna Gaines is she, she disrupted like three industries that people said they're dead. Magazines? How do you get a magazine that does hundreds of millions of dollars in total revenue from what's built around it? That's wild. And then she did it with an actual retail space. And then she also did it with, well, I guess e-comm isn't dying, but she has an incredible e-comm business. So two out of three.

• 18:29Shaan Puri?

  So they, would it be just like Magnolia, but scaled? Is that like, would that be a winning idea here?

• 18:34Speaker 02

  Well, I think we could play some games here. So I had a friend that used to run, gosh, what was that store? West Elm. So she, she used to run something called West Elm Local. And it was basically like, here's West Elm, but in, in your local area, you have cool little, kind of like you said, pop up Etsy shops that are inside of West Elm. And they're from local providers. And the cool part about that is Home Goods rotates its inventory almost entirely. I think it's twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays. I don't know why I know that, but I do. And they, and, and West Elm Local kind of did the same thing. So they would bring in new clients because you would only be able to get this limited edition pop up vase or whatever for each period. So I think that'd be cool. You could try it like a 1.0 version would be like, could you do a pop in at Hobby Lobby?

• 19:19Speaker 02

  Could you try to talk to them into like- For instance, Hobby Lobby is very Christian values, American, like the, they have like Bible quotes quotes up on the, uh, up on their headquarters. I used to sell them investment products back in the day. And, uh, so you walk in your headquarters and it's like the Bible on the wall. And, um, and so maybe you could talk them into like a local Christian pop-up thing that would go into the store. That could be like an easy little 1.0 way. Maybe not easy because you'd have to get B2B. And then maybe you could do like a, like a pop-up, uh, crafting one around a different holiday. And then if you're big time, like your friend with a billion bucks, I would love to go into these where it just was a better shopping experience.

• 19:59Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I feel like, um, somebody should just take a house and they should just turn the house into the shopping experience and basically like just stage the house. And then you come in and you could just basically push a button and get any of these things delivered to your, to your home from there. Um, and you could even kind of like franchise that concept out and just let, let people kind of curate their, their own.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  The one, the one thing though, I'll say, and I'd be curious, we'll see if, if Ari agrees with me and others, but like, there's something about you go there and you get the thing. So I don't even think, we're not even that efficient.

• 20:27Shaan Puri?

  We'll give you a box. We'll give you an empty box.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  We want to leave with the candle. We want to go put the flowers in the vase immediately. Um, it's, it's literally, if you go to TikTok and scroll around for some fun times, there's all this stuff about if your wife's upset, you just tell her like, let's go to Home Goods, honey, and like take her around and get her some candles.

• 20:45Shaan Puri?

  That's a great idea.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. We're gonna write that down for later.

• 20:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, no, I don't even need to write that down. That went straight to my core memory. Uh, it's like, you know, just default. Actually, I'm gonna do it preventatively every Friday, just, uh, just in case.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  And it's cheap, so there's that.

• 21:00Shaan Puri?

  You had another one on here that I thought was interesting. You said you tried to buy a Halloween Express. That's fascinating. Tell me, why'd you try to buy it? And why is it a try? It sounds like you didn't end up buying it. Why not?

• 21:10Speaker 02

  We didn't end up buying it. Somebody else bought it. Um, and, um, Basically, we tried to buy it because we saw it was $600,000 for a pop-up location. And I should make sure I get this right, but it was like three or four retail locations plus whatever last year's inventory was. So there was like a lot of there, there. They already had the leases, they already had the locations, and it was right before Halloween.

• 21:32Shaan Puri?

  Explain. So this is Halloween Express is like Spirit where it pops up for 60 days or something like that before Halloween and it just takes you over a vacant space? Is that it?

• 21:40Speaker 02

  Well, yes, could take over a vacant space. A lot of times they pre-negotiate the contracts, but basically, you know, retail has so much data behind it. Usually they know like, oh, X percentage of these commercial strip malls will be open at any important time. So if we do a contract with Halloween Express this year, there's likely going to be one location that's open. And then the wild part about Spirit and Halloween Express, I always get the two confused, but they have the same model, which is like every store is 10,000 square feet. So they'll have a target, which is, I don't know, what, 60, 100,000 square feet? But they only take up 10,000 square feet inside of the store. And if you've ever been in one, they kind of throw up these real, it's like drapes, basically,

• 22:23Speaker 02

  and, you know, racks for clothing that you could buy online.

• 22:28Shaan Puri?

  Because they're just trying to standardize the rollout of the store quickly and cheaply.

• 22:33Speaker 02

  Exactly. It's like, it's like the IKEA furniture of stores. You know, it's like every single time we put it in the box, you have the list of things that you need and it's up. And, well, we talked to a contractor who could do the build-out for us, and he said that those things go up in a matter of sometimes days, which he said would be aggressive, but like two weeks. He's like, two weeks, you can have an entire Halloween Express up, which is wild because a normal store is months, if not a year, to throw up. So anyway, we tried to buy this one kind of for shits and giggles because I thought we could make cool content around it and then maybe we could try to sell it. And I wanted to understand the business model. And then somebody else bought it out from under us, basically.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  But that's when I went down to this deep rabbit hole of, oh, my God, the average commercial, let's call it retail store. Costs millions to throw up and takes months and Spirit or Halloween Express costs maybe $10,000 to $50,000 to throw up and is up in days or weeks. So just like speed to execution has to make this a much more interesting business model.

• 23:42Shaan Puri?

  So how much would a business like that make? Let's say you buy one of these businesses and this was, you said, three locations for 600K plus the inventory. So you're right, like, that's a lot. What would you, what would you, what would one of those locations net? Do you think at the end of that?

• 23:59Speaker 02

  In a Halloween season?

• 24:00Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  I think they said that it was somewhere around a million dollars. So three locations inside of their open for two months a year, they would bring in a million dollars. I think it was like 950 or something like that.

• 24:12Shaan Puri?

  That's revenue though, right?

• 24:13Speaker 02

  That's revenue. That's right. Now, the margins on those businesses that they claimed were 30 to 45%. That seems way too high for me. I'm guessing the margins on it are like typical 10 to 20% margin on that kind of business, which means if I bought it, I guess it depends on how much inventory was in there. We never got to go deep on the due diligence side, but depending on how much inventory is in there. If we did this type of business, you could basically be in the clear inside of two or three years. You could be in the black. And so that's kind of interesting.

• 24:44Shaan Puri?

  Hold on, let's do those numbers. So you said a million dollars for one location, revenue?

• 24:48Speaker 02

  A million dollars for this whole business. So that would be three locations.

• 24:53Shaan Puri?

  Cool. So a million dollars and then you're saying maybe, let's just split the difference there.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  Say 20%.

• 24:58Shaan Puri?

  Net. So 200K and you're saying that they, you're buying it for 600K including the inventory. So you're saying a couple of years and you're, you are, you're, you've broken even on your investment. You've returned your capital. But what you're saying is that these things. Like to just run these things, you have to buy new inventory every year. So you'd have to inject how much working capital, you think, to do a million dollars of sales? Maybe like 150K or 200K?

• 25:26Speaker 02

  Well, so the interesting part to me about Halloween is theoretically, a lot of the inventory is the same. So they said that they have about 10 to 15% of the inventory is like the new concepts. So like the Euphoria outfit, for instance, as opposed to the witches, the lions, the wardrobes, whatever people do each year. And so, yeah, if we think that the inventory for that place was probably, you know, $200,000, $250,000 in inventory that they had, you know, yeah, probably each year you're paying like 50 to $100,000 in like the net new inventory, then you can roll some over.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  But yeah, I don't, I mean, the problem is I didn't get to actually do it. So I don't know the true numbers, but that seems, that seems reasonable.

• 26:13Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, okay. All right, fair enough. Okay, so a Halloween store, interesting. You have a couple of other ones on here that I just don't know anything about, but I want to hear what you have to say. You wrote the words fantasy werewolf romance novel. What you talking about?

• 26:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we have a, we have a group where we all buy businesses together. And this one lady comes on and she's like, I bought a romance novel book company. So they write them, they distribute them and they market them, sort of three, three levels to the business. I was like, that's fascinating. And she started explaining some of the titles and then she's kind of a funny character. And so she was like, the thing is, romance werewolves, huge category, like biggest growing category. And I was like, okay, talk to me about that. And she basically said of all the titles that she has, I can't remember how many she had, but let's say like 25, 30 titles that she bought, the outselling ones, the 80/20 rule for her 25 to 30 book business were this fantasy romance category.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  And then, because I'm a woman and I also read books, I was like, let's look at my thing. Like, do I ever read this category? And it turns out, I'm a fantasy reader, and some of them have werewolves in them. So I was like, this is weird. Am I weird? Is she weird or is this category? And then I went and researched it. And I think you guys have covered this before, but there's like 1.3 billion dollars are sold of romance books a year. And it's huge. It's like, almost, in some cases, you know, a quarter to half of the entire industry. But the part that got me the most was realizing romance is growing hugely, but it's with, like, we're the target audience, my age.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  So like, somewhere in the realm of 18 to, let's call it 45, which used to be like the long-haired Fabio romance novels. That used to be the deal. And I guess now this fantasy level is taking over. And what's interesting is you can kind of tell, because if you look up the best-selling books of all time, Harry Potter, 500 ml, Twilight, 160, Fifty Shades, 150. There's like, kind of morphing together. And so I'm curious to see what happens next, but I kind of like this industry. I can't really see you writing a werewolf fantasy novel, Sean, but maybe.

• 28:28Shaan Puri?

  Maybe as a stunt, you know that Sam wrote a romance novel once, you know that story?

• 28:33Speaker 02

  Oh, I forgot about that. He, or did he write it or did he?

• 28:37Shaan Puri?

  They like ghostwrote it. So basically, same sort of observation. He's like, you know, when people are like, oh, Amazon bestseller? And then it's like, everybody and their mom is Amazon bestsellers. Like, what does this word mean, actually? You know, it's like, in the bottom of the power rankings of meaningful titles, it's like Forbes 30 under 30. And even below that is Amazon bestseller, because it means nothing. And so what you found was that, to be a bestseller, you basically pick some niche category. And then for a day, you know, you sell, you know, 1,000 copies or something like that at 99 cents. And you've become a bestseller. You screenshot that, you're a bestseller, you get the flag. Some version of that. So it's like, it's a very like gamified thing. There's all these

• 29:19Shaan Puri?

  subcategories. So you're, you're trying to just get to the number one inside health, health and wellness inside by a new emerging author or whatever, you know, like there's all these subcategories. So he found somebody who had done this. They were, they were making good money, like tens of thousands a month, I think, selling romance novels on Amazon, on just ebooks. And so he commissioned somebody to write one, or he wrote like a couple. And it was like boss in a, it was like a boss and a secretary. And another one was like a werewolf and a something. And he commissioned somebody to write it and then they wrote it and they did it. They hit the Amazon bestseller. It's out there somewhere. You could find this.

• 29:58Speaker 02

  No, does he still make money on that?

• 30:01Shaan Puri?

  Uh, no, no, not anymore. I think they took it down.

• 30:04Speaker 02

  That's incredible. Well, I mean, honestly, if you go and you.

• 30:08Shaan Puri?

  By the way, the blog post is called Confessions from the Scammy Underground World of Kindle Books. And so, um, his book was called Untamed Billionaire, Undressed Virgin.

• 30:19Speaker 02

  Jesus. Sometimes that guy.

• 30:24Shaan Puri?

  That's incredible.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  That is incredible. He has way better historical business, uh, shenanigans he's done than made.

• 30:31Shaan Puri?

  Oh, wait, no, no, sorry. Sorry. I gotta clear the, clear the record. That wasn't his. That was the name of somebody else's. His was called Captivating Claire. And the cover is this really ripped black guy and then the secretary and it says, a first time billionaire romance. Okay, there we go.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. Okay, that's slightly better. I like the other story better. I think we should cut this part and just tell everybody the other one was his name. I think, I think that's the move. But you know what's fascinating is when you go to like, so if you go to your bookstore and you look up, uh, top charts free. I mean, this category is everywhere. And then to your, the point that I thought was interesting is the move, I didn't realize the, the Amazon bestseller thing. That's why they put it up for 99 cents. The reason that I thought, and this lady was telling me, is you put one up for 99 cents or free. You get it on the top free list. And then you hammer these things out. So you have 472 versions of Fabio the Fantastic Werewolf. And, uh, the, the likelihood that people are

• 31:31Speaker 02

  going to buy all of those in the series is apparently incredibly high. And so, um, I thought that was fascinating and a lot of these authors, like if you look at them, they have 50 books out, which must mean somebody's ghostwriting for them. So I don't think you could do it any other way.

• 31:44Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, or like chat GPT. By the way, you know, the story of Fifty Shades of Grey? Not like the book story, but like the backstory, how it came to be?

• 31:53Speaker 02

  Uh uh.

• 31:53Shaan Puri?

  Oh, this is crazy. So I don't know if you've ever seen the, what's it called? The big fanfiction site, Wattpad. It just sold. It's like a Canadian company. So what happened is Twilight comes out. It's a vampire story. It's great. And then somebody goes on Wattpad and writes a fanfiction version of Twilight, basically. And that was the early, the V1 of Fifty Shades of Grey. People liked it and it became, and then somebody picked it up and they re kind of branded it as its own thing instead of as a Twilight fanfiction, as its own brand. And it became like, you know, whatever, the third or fifth or whatever bestselling book of all

• 32:34Shaan Puri?

  time, started as a fanfiction blog on Wattpad, I think.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  Well, it makes sense, actually, because it's all just sort of copyrighting in some way. What, you know, Joseph Campbell talks about the hero's journey, right? And everybody basically use that, uses that from the Bible to Star Wars to, you know, Twilight, et cetera. I mean, the other thing that I remember, so I actually went to a high school that was right next to, and so we were close with the high school of the woman who wrote Twilight, Stephanie. And I remember when it was going wild, that wasn't my category. And so I like reached out to her and was like, hey, like, congratulations on your first book. I'm so excited for you. You know, I just wanted to let you know, like, I bought a few books for you, you know, to help out. And then retrospect, and then I like looked at her, say, I was like, oh, cool. Cool, cool. Anyway.

• 33:25Shaan Puri?

  Does she reply? Does she respond?

• 33:27Speaker 02

  No, I don't know. I don't think she did. But you know what, Stephanie, I was here for you from the beginning.

• 33:32Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, actually, not from the beginning, though. That's the bad part. It was already successful. That's really good. Okay, so let's, let's do one more that's in this, the segment that you called gets messaged in this bitch. Have we gotten enough messages? I don't know. We got to get one more idea in here. Go pick.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  Okay, how about one that I think could be a billion dollar business, but I don't have the how. So the MFM listeners are super smart. Maybe you guys can figure out the how. You know. Lots of our friends, and I don't know if you experienced any of this, Sean, but getting pregnant these days is like hard. You know, when we were young, I remember it was like, yeah, if you look at that guy sideways, like pregnant, you know, shake hands, pregnant, everybody's pregnant. And then as you get older, apparently it's like now impossible. And I've experienced this firsthand. It's like expensive. You know, you go to the doctors and then you have these different apps and then you're tracking forward or 72 different things. And the whole experience is like awful and expensive. And so I think there's

• 34:30Speaker 02

  a huge opportunity to do something in it. Because once that little box gets checked, like a woman is ready to have a baby or whatever, like, I don't know, we turn into crazy people. We'll do whatever it takes. You know, you guys have, Sam was telling me some crazy stuff he was telling Sarah. I'm like, I don't think that's true about how to get pregnant. And anyway, so for instance, there's this company called Mira, and it has this little like egg shaped tester. And this is like a little TMI, but like you pee on a stick and it tells you how fertile you are, whatever. And the, Sean, I kid you not, when I opened the app, and I'm not a total idiot, like, I can't tell what I'm tracking. And I can't tell what's happening here. There are no notifications.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  There are no gamifications in it. And they charge you, it's like $50 for the the sticks that they send you. And then it's like, somebody should check my math on this. I'm definitely wrong on the number, but it's like 150 to 200 bucks for this tiny little plastic egg that has to be created in China. And that's it. And I never saw an ad for this. It's all like word of mouth referral. So I don't know what crazy ideas you have, but I feel like the people from MFM should solve this.

• 35:40Shaan Puri?

  Okay, let's, let's brainstorm on the fly here. So first of all, when you started saying there was like this little egg shaped thing, I thought where you were going was, like you said, like a sort of a smart device. So you pee on the stick, it tells you kind of where you're at in your cycle. But how cool would that be as a little bedside replacement to your alarm clock? When it glows, hey, it's time. It's time to get busy. And you could see based on the light. So that's a little more tasteful than these apps that are like. Your, you know, your, your ESG levels are spiking right now or whatever.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 36:13Shaan Puri?

  It's like, uh, let's just, let's just add a little bit of romance to this process that becomes very, very clinical. And so I'm thinking bedside egg, bedside, uh, replacement to the alarm clock. Okay, that's idea number one. Idea number two, have you ever heard of Flow app?

• 36:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 36:29Shaan Puri?

  It's, I think it's the, it's flow.health. It's the most popular pregnancy period tracking app in the world. Like their website gets like eight million uniques a month or something like that. Crazy. Um, last I had heard, they were doing something like 30 million ish in ARR, which is pretty bonkers for a mobile app and way more than you would think a niche mobile app like this would do. That was like five years ago that I heard that number. I would not be surprised if Flo was doing, you know, uh, like a hundred million. I'm just gonna search their revenue, see if it, if it's out now.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. And how much they're worth? Cause I couldn't also figure out the valuation on these companies. Like, Mira's gotta be, cause can you imagine? You get me at a point where you're gonna know the second that a woman is pregnant, which is the highest likelihood of, uh, purchasing intent you could have.

• 37:20Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  And like, what would that data be worth? And then also you could sell the data to every medical provider imaginable, uh, and have add-ons and affiliate deals for X supplement, X

• 37:33Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  thing you gotta drink or whatever.

• 37:35Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I, I, I agree with you. It's extremely valuable sort of stage. That's a, that's a time downstage where you're, you're gonna become pretty price insensitive, uh, as you've, as you've noticed. So yeah, Flo, um, over, over three, 300 million people have downloaded the app. Revenue's over a hundred million for this app. It's a billion dollar app, uh, that started off as a period tracking tracker app. It started off as like such a simple little mobile app at the time. So, so yeah, props to these guys. I think they're in Europe, uh, that built this thing. So, uh, I think the mobile app space is, it was obviously, you know, kind of like one winner in this. Other ideas that I think are interesting, so somebody said this to me the other day and I know nothing about this. I had put it on my list of like two research, but I haven't gotten around to it.

• 38:16Shaan Puri?

  So I'll just say the, the 1% of the idea that I have ready, which is, she goes, somebody was talking to me, she goes, do you know how hard it is for a gay couple to adopt a baby? I said, sure don't. I have no idea. How hard is it? Is it very hard? She's like, nearly impossible. And she goes, if you, if anybody created a company that just helped gay male gay couples adopt babies, you know, because they're usually, that's like a very rich segment is like gay male couples. It's like one of the highest like sort of average like household incomes. Obviously, super high need or like no price sensitivity when it comes time and convoluted low NPS process. And so I think if somebody just went and interviewed like 100 couples

• 38:59Shaan Puri?

  that were trying to adopt right now, I bet you could find, I bet you could find a $500 million to a billion dollar business out of 100 interviews of those couples. And I don't know what that idea is yet, but I, that's enough of a map for somebody to go, you know, find their own immunity idol, to use my survivor references.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  That's a good point. I mean, it's sort of, I've been messing around lately thinking about levels to the game of business, like how it would be interesting to categorize all businesses as what level on a, let's call it just a multiple and margin level. If you just say like, what multiple could you get for this business and how high of margins do you get for this business? And maybe like, how reasonable would it be for you get to, I don't know, 10 million or 100 million, whatever your goalpost would be. And I think like a level one business, a lower tier business that would be probably profitable on like day one to 30 would be helping just on the consulting aspect of that. Because you're right, I have a friend that paid $25,000 for help navigating the

• 39:57Speaker 02

  adoption process in Texas. And they, I should figure out what the name of the thing is that they asked for, but they paid a huge chunk of money just to help them figure out how to get higher on the lists for adoption in Texas. So if that exists, there's got to be 32 different ways to do consulting for adoption in this space.

• 40:16Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah. Basically, anybody who's like, clear, like in the airports, but for all life processes, not just lines at the airport. So it's like, somebody who's doing this right now, I saw for H1B visas, they're like, Again, like if you're an immigrant in the United States, applying for a visa is literally like one of the like two things that keeps you up at night. And so there's people that are like, we're just H1B like concierge. I'm like, we know this process inside out. You don't. You're just sitting here Googling, reading forums. We know how to expedite some timelines. We know where you should pay money. We know where you shouldn't worry because it's just, this is normal. This is part of the standard delay. We know when you put your, put together your application, like how to, which order to staple it together

• 40:58Shaan Puri?

  so that you have the best chance of success. And I find that like for these really complex workflows that are high ticket and high desire, like adopting a child, like getting your visa, people are willing to pay, you know, whatever, 10 grand, 20 grand in order to do it. Obviously, it's, you know, the richer segment there, but, but that, that's, and so you could go buy the lead for this, you know, you could advertise and get the lead for this, you know, through Google for maybe two grand a lead, but you're making 20 grand per person that comes out of that funnel.

• 41:30Speaker 02

  That's smart. Well, even we both invested, you invested in home health too, right?

• 41:34Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  I invested in them also. And part of the stuff that I think is really smart with what they're doing is just, it's such a pain to get access to those type of, you know, TRT and, and different things that men want and do it in a legal way and really be able to trust what you're getting. And so there's probably a bunch of that inside the, the women's space too. At home, I keep telling them they should launch something for women because I think it's a really underserved market. And if you think about it, you know, men sort of dominate most of the dieting trends in general. So you had like Tim Ferriss normalized keto. And so I tried keto for a while. And then I went to, I now have a Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, who's a stud. And she's like, the thing is, that doesn't work as well for women. I'm like, no, I read the book. I'm a huge Tim Ferriss fan. And it

• 42:20Speaker 02

  just turns out a lot of that stuff, males, men and women are biologically different. And so, yeah, I think there's lots of cool ways to play in that space. Also, like with stuff like peptides, although those are getting federally banned, so maybe not the best idea right now.

• 42:35Shaan Puri?

  Peptides getting federally banned?

• 42:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, we should check my homework on that, but that's the word from the husband.

• 42:39Shaan Puri?

  Is it like Ozempic, a peptide?

• 42:42Speaker 02

  Well, my understanding is most of the reason why peptides are getting banned is because they are hard to patent. And so because of that, there's, you know, conspiracy theorists like Big Pharma doesn't like that. And so they're getting a lot of pushback. But my husband's like number one advocate, thinks everybody.

• 43:00Shaan Puri?

  Should be on peptides?

• 43:01Speaker 02

  Should do research on it.

• 43:03Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So semaglutide, which is Ozempic or Wegovy, that's the generic name. Semaglutide is a peptide. But yeah, I don't think that can get banned. I think people will riot in the streets right now if Ozempic got banned. You also just will close out this section. You wrote, "Life slash partner hack, from woman to a man, dot, dot, dot." What's your hack?

• 43:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, this also comes from my husband. Yeah. His hack is that the best money he's ever spent on being in a marriage is a subscription to flowers on a monthly basis for your wife. And I totally stand by this because it's cheap. There's this one I would use called Farmgirl Flowers. I don't have any affiliation. I'm not an investor. But it's like beautifully little burlap tied bow, et cetera. And it comes every single month. You don't have to think about it. You get auto gifts for your wife. And I'm pretty sure I'll take any, I'll take almost any guarantee that there will never be a wife that would be mad if they got this on a consistent basis. But husbands are just not going to remember consistently. So like do yourself a solid and just, you know, buy some flowers on a consistent basis.

• 44:07Shaan Puri?

  Okay, this is interesting to me. So first of all, what's the deal with flowers? Why do girls love flowers so much? Is there, does it do something for you? Is it just like a mood brightener when you see it in the room? What is the actual appeal here? Because if I see flowers, nothing. Needle doesn't move, doesn't do anything for me.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  You feel dead inside.

• 44:25Shaan Puri?

  Like a candle, like if I smell a candle, I'm in. You know, if, I don't know, if we buy like a nice little piece of art, I like it. I see it. It does something for me. Flowers, I still get it. What is the why? What is the, is it the flowers or is it this man loves me? Is that what it is? It's just like reassurance?

• 44:43Speaker 02

  It's definitely not the love part.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  It's uh, that could be both. No, I think when you're in a relationship, yeah, it's lovely. You're just like, oh, you know, it's such a low, if you think about high ROI, low ash pain, number one winner, like number one winner. But I, I think it's actually just, we like plants and flowers. I don't know if that's a pre, you know, genetic disposition, or if, um, you know, society's patriarchy is upon us, but like, women like flowers. And so I don't know what the thing is, but also the fact that, like, I remember when I was younger, Sean, like, I don't, I can't remember if you've ever said one on here, but when I was young and I had no money, there was very low hanging fruit things for what a rich

• 45:28Speaker 02

  person would have. And one of them was, like, one day, I'll have fresh flowers in my house every single day, and that'll mean I'm super rich. And

• 45:38Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 45:39Speaker 02

  So I think there's a part of it that's also just like, this is such a luxurious

• 45:43Shaan Puri?

  Moment.

• 45:44Speaker 02

  Right. And this is just for me. I can't speak to anybody else. But now when I see them, I'm like, oh, it means we're doing okay, you know?

• 45:50Shaan Puri?

  And even if it's on a subscription and you know, he didn't think, he thought about it once three years ago. It doesn't matter. You just want the flowers.

• 45:57Speaker 02

  Okay, good.

• 45:59Shaan Puri?

  Okay, I'm gonna report back. I'm gonna try this.

• 46:01Speaker 02

  Report back.

• 46:01Shaan Puri?

  And I'll report back.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  But don't tell her, I don't care. And I just set it up on subscription three years ago. No, no qualifiers. Okay?

• 46:09Shaan Puri?

  Well, you know, no guarantees with me. All right. So, um, let's go to the, the small business acquisition stuff. So

• 46:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:16Shaan Puri?

  First, explain your business model. So you got a media business, which is you create content and your, your output is insane. Like I put, you, um, Pomp and Sahil, I feel like are so consistent and so omnipresent everywhere and so consistent with your message. It is unbelievable to me. I can't, I can't imagine myself even doing that, even though I call myself a content creator and comparison to you guys, I'm nothing. I'm just a guy, uh, you know, who talks to his friend, Sam, twice a week. So like, the way you guys do it is crazy. That's a media business. That can be profitable on its own. People maybe advertise, subscribe. I think you have like a paid community or something like that, that people pay for. I think that's pretty lucrative, right? Like, that's a big moneymaker for you?

• 47:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, a couple of different things. One thing that's interesting of those three people you picked, what's the common denominator between all three of us? We were all in finance, which is categorically a fucking miserable industry to be in for the most part. And we all, I think, all of us did private equity or investment banking, which means that we had crazy, crazy hours for a long time.

• 47:21Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  And so anytime like somebody talks to me, like I always kind of giggle when the creator's like, I'm burnt out. I'm like, from filming TikToks, like for a couple hours, like, I think we're fine.

• 47:31Shaan Puri?

  That tweet fatigued you?

• 47:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's totally, we're gonna be okay. And so I think probably we're good at output because anything that can be like mechanized, systematized, and replicated consistently, finance people are usually pretty good.

• 47:46Shaan Puri?

  So you have the content business, and then you have your buying businesses stuff. Is there a third part of what you do, like just passive investing or anything like that? Or are those the two things that you do?

• 47:56Speaker 02

  Well, I guess we have sort of three different businesses now. So one is the content business, which is the one that's super public. And we kind of stumbled into that, I think, only two years ago. So that would be like, the latter part of 2020 is when we started creating a business around content. And I was in private equity at the time when I started that. And then that today is comprised of like newsletter, we have a community, we have a bunch of different media channels, and now I guess a couple newsletters. We have a course on buying businesses. And we do a little bit of ad sponsorship stuff, but I don't, I don't really love that. I think we're gonna change the model to only

• 48:38Speaker 02

  talk about the products of the businesses we own and our own products. So I'm kind of messing around with that, looking at like how the Daily Wire does it, for instance. And then the second business we have is what was the family office, what's now Main Street Holding Company. And that is like, the small businesses that I talk about. So we've owned everything from podcast production businesses, to graphic design agencies, to laundromats, to car washes, to HVAC.

• 49:05Shaan Puri?

  Your own money? This is, you raised money? What happens?

• 49:09Speaker 02

  My own money.

• 49:10Shaan Puri?

  So it's your own money you're using to buy these. And so that's a portfolio. You said there's three businesses. What's the third?

• 49:15Speaker 02

  And the third is we have a venture capital fund. And then we also have, I guess, alongside that, my own passive angel investments or whatever. And so those would be like Hone Health, we did in the venture fund. We invested in Andrew Wilkinson's media companies. That was just a personal investment that I did. It didn't go into the VC company. So that's where like our minority investments go.

• 49:36Shaan Puri?

  Okay. And when did you get rich? Was it after all this? Were you rich before you started all this? What was the like? Where was your kind of like, like, okay, the podcast is called My First Million. When did you make your first million? Was it in the private equity investigative banking world? Or was it after that when you went on your own?

• 49:51Speaker 02

  No, I made my first million when I was working for other people. I'm like the opposite of you. I'm not really as, I was, risk scares me actually. So like, I could have never gone and done what like Sean and Sam did, which is start a business like Sam did. Have no money, sleep on a couch like Hormozie and then like hope that business turns in 160 million. That like scares me too much. I'm a wuss. And so I worked in corporate for a long, long, long time. I ran a bunch of the businesses. I became a partner in them. And so I made millions before I ever really ran my own thing by myself. And I was actually so scared to leave the big corporate, I don't know, canopy, that I bought businesses while I was still working for somebody else.

• 50:34Shaan Puri?

  You say you bought businesses. These are like the, like I bought a car wash laundromat type of thing? Or what type of businesses are you buying?

• 50:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I bought some back in the day that I bought, but they didn't make me any money. It was like I bought a website. I bought a fashion styling marketplace. Those threads refined back in the day. I bought another one called Selling South. But the ones that started making me real money were the boring ones. Like I tried the sexy things websites and I wasn't very good at them. And then it was, oh wait, if I buy. A laundromat, I have a hard time fucking this thing up. Like, I can make some money on that and I can have somebody else run it. And if I pay that somebody else, and then we have three or four or five of them, that's enough money for them to make a good living and me to make a good living. And then maybe we could do that exact same thing in a bunch of different sectors. And I just, back then, when I was doing that, that was not cool. Now I feel like it's kind of cool. The holding company thing is cool on Twitter.

• 51:25Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  Uh, in fact, I didn't tell anybody that I owned laundromats. Well, I thought I might get fired because it's could be considered a conflict of interest. So I was concerned about that. And then, uh, secondly, I didn't think it was that cool. You know, at the time I was like running a Latin American investment business. And so we had a billion dollars in assets under management. I built the thing from zero for this company called First Trust. And everybody thought that job was really cool, including my parents. They're like super proud, but I hated it, was going through divorce and was working like 70 hours a week and on red eyes to Chile basically weekly. And so I bought the businesses to get the fuck out of corporate.

• 52:05Speaker 02

  And then when I finally replaced my income is when I thought, oh, well, now I'm going to take a jump and become a partner at a private equity fund. And then finally I got the balls to go do it all by myself, but it took me a long time to get there.

• 52:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's, everyone's got their, their path. I, I always joke like, you hear these stories like, oh, Mark Cuban, when he was six years old, started a newspaper route, then a lemonade stand and then hired his friends. I'm like, dude, I didn't even know the word business till I was 19, you know? You definitely don't need to, you know, you, everybody's got a different starting point. Uh, so that's for sure. So you, um, uh, let's talk about the laundromat thing. I've told the story on the pod before, but I was at a dinner once with this guy who, uh, was a CEO of a public company. And he was like, he, he was like fast, he's like, you know, you know, people are like really busy. They don't use social media. So he's like, um, he's trying to relate to me. So he's like, oh, you do podcasts? What's, uh, what's the name? And I mean, I could see he doesn't even know where the podcast app is because he's like, does real work for a living. And so he's like, um, he's like, I'll definitely subscribe.

• 53:02Shaan Puri?

  Can you show me how, how do you subscribe to a podcast? I've always wanted to know. And I'm like, wow, this guy's like, you know, just getting going. And one of the things he said, he's like, he's like, you know, I see these people on Instagram talking about laundromats. And he's like, Are we all just fucking stupid and we should just be buying laundromats? Or are they stupid and they think laundromats are a great business? It's like, who's stupid? He's like, I'm worried I'm stupid and that I shouldn't be doing all this stressful work, running this company with thousands of employees. Do I just need to go buy four laundromats and chill? Like, is that actually the answer? And so he was laughing about it and he's like, it can't be that good. And I was like, dude, I honestly don't know what to say. I've never bought one of these boring businesses, don't intend to own a laundromat in Albuquerque or whatever, like, that's not my jam, but it is for some people and you obviously are an advocate for it.

• 53:47Shaan Puri?

  So this is your opportunity. So educate me, drop some knowledge on me. Okay. What is this deal with buying? You can pick either, actually do laundromat, not car wash, because I actually know the car wash business a little bit, but let's do laundromat.

• 54:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. I call these gateway drug businesses. So basically, no, if you're a billionaire, you shouldn't go buy a laundromat. This is a terrible idea. The reason I talk about it is because I have a belief that I think a lot of people don't have, that almost anybody could have a business that they currently work as a job, let's say, and have some ownership in that business. And in fact, the world would be a lot better off if we all had a little bit of skin in the game. That's like my little hill that I want to die on. And so when I first started talking about this, I was like, the thing is, I've been in finance, like, I went through all the levels and we want everybody else to think that we're smarter than them when we're in finance. And we're actually not, because the worst part about running a laundromat is not reading the P and L.

• 54:44Speaker 02

  The worst part about running the laundromat is like, the machine breaks, what do you do? There's a homeless person there, like, how do you handle that? Somebody breaks into your laundromat and breaks the glass door and like, any human could handle that. And so I talked about laundromats, one, because that is one of the first businesses I bought, so it just was, you know, recency bias. And then, two, because I think if you can't understand, taking a coin, putting it in a machine, getting out clean clothes or dry clothes from it and running that business model, you probably shouldn't run a business. It's like a very simplistic business model.

• 55:18Speaker 02

  But this is why I've been obsessing on levels to the game. The problem with laundromats are they're a terrible business if you're really good at business. So like if you're good at business, the laundromat, I invested in one laundromat. It wasn't one that I owned complete control of that did $3 million a year. That's the biggest laundromat that I've ever seen individually.

• 55:37Shaan Puri?

  That's revenue? What is that?

• 55:38Speaker 02

  That's revenue.

• 55:39Shaan Puri?

  So $3 million a year? Okay, let's get out my calculator. So this, is it like one of these like jumbo, like, I've seen some of these laundromats that look like full on shops or something like that. They're like huge.

• 55:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a very big laundromat.

• 55:51Shaan Puri?

  So it's doing like eight grand a day?

• 55:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, they do 15% margins. And the way they do them is actually through the wash and fold business, not the walk-in laundry business.

• 56:03Shaan Puri?

  Okay, gotcha.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  And so the real business where the higher level customers are and where you make more money is, you know, single mom wants to put her bag of clothes outside of her door. You pick it up, you wash it, you drop it back off. It requires cars and logistics and some oversight. It's more complex. The average laundromat makes somewhere around $100,000 to $500,000 a year. Like, that's what a laundromat makes at 15 to 10 to 15% margins.

• 56:33Speaker 02

  And there's like not that much you can do, once you have a laundromat, to get a laundromat that's doing $100,000 to $500,000. It's really hard.

• 56:42Shaan Puri?

  It's location dependent or what's the bottleneck there?

• 56:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, location dependent, also just demographics of your, you know, segment. So if you're in a poorer neighborhood, wash and fold might not be as much of a driver for you. If you're in a higher end neighborhood, it could be competition.

• 57:00Shaan Puri?

  So those are making, you know, between $20,000 and $50,000 a year for the owner?

• 57:07Speaker 02

  Yep. That's right.

• 57:08Shaan Puri?

  So you got like, you know, you have to do multiple of these. Otherwise, if you own one, you're working the job of an owner, but making the wage of a minimum wage employee or something. So, so you want to own multiple? That would be the play here?

• 57:21Speaker 02

  Well, I think it depends. This is where I think business acquisition gets interesting. It's like, who are you and what do you want? Everybody always asks me like, what's the best sector to buy? And I'm like, that's a dumb question. The best sector to buy is like the one that's uniquely aligned to you.

• 57:33Shaan Puri?

  So what was it for you? What was it for you?

• 57:35Speaker 02

  The reason I bought the laundromat is because I had an operator that already knew how to run laundromats and had found one that we could buy for very cheap. And I was like, I don't like a lot of risk. I could, I could front a hundred K. Okay. Buy this. And then if we run that and that works, let's get three to five of them and get rolling. But like a lot of people that I talked to, you know, maybe you're a teacher and you have six months off during the year. And then why wouldn't you own a little laundromat? And then I like to compare it versus houses or like short-term rentals. So like the average short-term rentals, we should check my numbers, but does somewhere like a hundred and twenty, a hundred and sixty dollars in net income a month? And you put up $250,000 on average for one of those homes?

• 58:19Speaker 02

  So like compare a single-family home for 250K versus a laundromat for 100K. And this one's making you 30, 50,000 dollars a year. And, uh, I'm sorry, 20 to 40,000 dollars a year. And this one's making you a couple thousand dollars a year? That's actually kind of a good, that's a better risk reward trade-off. And so I think it just depends. And then the other thing I think is you start with one business and not a lot of, not a lot of Americans are probably like your listeners. A lot of Americans like haven't run a big business before, wouldn't know what to do with the tech business. And so them starting with something pretty simple in their local community. And then they go, okay, I know how to run this. I made 20 to 50K on it. I didn't risk my house by buying too big of a business or starting too big of a business.

• 59:05Speaker 02

  Now I go and sell this to somebody else and do a bigger endeavor. At least that's how I think about it.

• 59:09Shaan Puri?

  So you're, the first business you bought was a laundromat or was it something else?

• 59:13Speaker 02

  My very first business was a website back in the day.

• 59:16Shaan Puri?

  So you bought the website stuff, then you went brick and mortar after that?

• 59:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, brick and mortar. Laundromat was my first brick and mortar business.

• 59:23Shaan Puri?

  What'd you do after that?

• 59:25Speaker 02

  After that, we bought a couple of them. So we bought multiple laundromats. And then we kept buying laundromats.

• 59:31Shaan Puri?

  How many laundromats did you buy?

• 59:33Speaker 02

  In total, I probably owned like 25 or 30 laundromats over my career of laundromating. But that first little portfolio was probably seven or eight.

• 59:42Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  And I was working full time at the time. I was at a company called First Trust then, mostly in Latin America. So I couldn't do too much with it back then.

• 59:50Shaan Puri?

  And give me the best deal you ever did and the worst deal you ever did.

• 59:53Speaker 02

  The best, let's see, the worst deal I did. We had one business entirely go under. So we invested in a business where we got lied to, stolen from. That was a small business that supported other small businesses from a tax and accounting perspective. So they didn't do the taxes, but they did bookmark, uh, bookkeeping and kind of funny that they would be the ones to do the stealing.

• 1:00:19Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  But that's the biggest issue in buying small businesses. And I think I lost, I probably lost a couple hundred K on that deal. And the biggest issue with buying small businesses is that you run out of cash because they either lied to you about the business that you bought and how much money it has in it. Or they lied by omission. They didn't quite realize, you know, that they needed to share this with you. Or they didn't actually track their finances very well. And so you ended up buying something you didn't want. So that, that one I got stolen from. But a lot of times the small businesses do not actually have the finances that I, that I think they do.

• 1:00:55Shaan Puri?

  What about the best deal?

• 1:00:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, the best deal that I've ever did was probably, uh, mostly from the land acquisition. So we basically bought a, a big plot of land that had an RV park on it. Also like a series of vending machines, also like a little area for people to, to camp and, you know, go into nature, whatever. And that business, the appreciation of the land ended up being what, what paid the most for it. So that business made us a few million bucks, which was kind of cool. And we definitely didn't put that in.

• 1:01:26Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:01:28Speaker 02

  And maybe the other business that I think will be my best deal ever is a series of car washes we bought. Because ever since this company called Mr. Car Wash went public to the tune of billions of billions of dollars.

• 1:01:38Shaan Puri?

  Multiples went up.

• 1:01:40Speaker 02

  Oh, fuck. I mean, we've got offers that are just wild on these. So I don't wanna, I wanna knock on wood that that one actually goes through. But we sold out of a bunch of our laundromats at great multiples, and I think we'll sell out of our car washes at really, really good multiples. But I don't always talk about my best deals because it's like, I don't think you should get into these with an idea that you're gonna have some crazy exit. Like, you're gonna cash flow. That's the goal. You cash flow. And if you wanna have a crazy multiple exit, buying these tiny businesses unless you scale them up in a big way is probably not gonna be the way to do it.

• 1:02:12Shaan Puri?

  And me and Ben were debating this the other day. We were talking about like, uh, what's a good, uh, on the finance side, what's a good North Star goal? And we were saying, uh, we just threw, we threw out a bunch of ideas. Two of the ideas were, um, should we build up $10 million a year of annual cash flow? As the goal out of this whole cope? Or should we just try to build $100 million portfolio value that's realized, realized portfolio value? In roughly, you know, the same amount of time. And of course, like, if you have $10 million of cash flow, you could probably sell it for $100 million. So it's not like these were totally different, but you would maybe buy different things. Cause if you're just trying to get to 100, you might not buy things, you could buy things that don't cash flow. You could just start a business if it doesn't, uh, that's not, that's not about cash flow. But if you need cash flow, you have to go a certain route.

• 1:02:57Shaan Puri?

  I'm curious, two things. A, what would be your opinion on that? And B, what's the goal for you? What do you, what do you set as your kind of North Star, your summit, uh, that you're trying to, trying to climb up to?

• 1:03:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, what, what do you mean by realized value? You mean you actually wanna sell it and then get 100 million from it? Or you want a third party to mark it up and say that it is worth $100 million?

• 1:03:17Shaan Puri?

  The way I thought about it there was that it's, um, sold or sellable in a kind of more bulletproof way versus like, one business that on paper got marked up by one investor, but you know, not really liquid, it's not a profitable business. So, you know, you couldn't actually exit for that amount. Which is often like the Silicon Valley, how do you get $100 million valuation, but you could never sell that business for $100 million type of thing. So not that, not the paper valuation, but either it's exited or, you know, if you ran a process for, for 60, 90 days with 80% certainty, you could get that value.

• 1:03:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, for me, I have an issue, which is that I'm pretty ADHD. I like to do a lot of different things. Like, if you look at my work history, I think the longest I ever stayed at a job was like five and a half years or something like that. And I was moving from different investment firms every two years or so. So I kind of like the portfolio approach because it allows me to be ADHD in a bunch of different businesses. And so I get to like pop in and pop out. Theoretically, if I wanted to build a billion dollar business, you could argue that if I have a great idea that I really, really love, that would be a better way to get to a billion dollars. I just haven't had an idea that I was that obsessed with, that I thought was fun, that I still need to do because I, you know, I'm pretty comfortable.

• 1:04:32Speaker 02

  I have enough cash to do sort of what I want now. So I think our goal has always been, I kind of buy my own bullshit, which is, for a long time, I thought I was gonna just build a bunch of foreign businesses into my little tiny version of KKR or Berkshire Hathaway. And I was gonna build up this, this thing. And then, you know, I did that for like 15 years, working for other people. And then I did it for a couple more years by myself. And I got to this point where I was like, I actually do not think it is good for the really, really few people to own everything. I think it is much better, experientially, and just for society, when you go to a local coffee shop than when you go to Starbucks.

• 1:05:15Speaker 02

  Nightmare. I refuse to go to Starbucks. We have like a company policy, you're not allowed to buy from big corporate chains. And so I kind of thought, man, if I go and build this thing, that I-

• 1:05:25Shaan Puri?

  What happens if someone does walk into the Starbucks? What do you do? Just hit it out of their hand? Smack that shit onto the floor?

• 1:05:29Speaker 02

  Actually, Tanner, who's here right now, knows that. He walked into my place in California, we lived there for some of the year, with two Starbucks. And I just looked at him, and I was like, what are we doing here? And he was like, and then the next week, because I have a good team, I ordered Chipotle on accident. And so then I had to, then I had to pay for my own Chipotle.

• 1:05:48Shaan Puri?

  Tanner said the F-word. What?

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:50Shaan Puri?

  Frappuccino.

• 1:05:54Speaker 02

  I um, you know, I don't know. I think once you start making enough money, like at some point, you're like, I want my money to mean something and I want all this work to mean something. And so I was like, I don't want to own a billion dollar portfolio of small businesses and become everything that I talk shit about. That doesn't feel that great. And instead, what we'll do is we're starting to buy a lot more businesses in the three cities that I'm really involved in, which is San Diego, Austin, and Phoenix. And so I want to own where I live. That seems to make sense to me and feel good. And then I cash flow off that. And then the second thing I want to do is I'm gonna go really aggressively all in on. I'll ask you and Sam about it later, if you, what you guys think. But we're gonna plow a couple million bucks and we're gonna raise a couple million

• 1:06:37Speaker 02

  bucks on one bet, which I've never done before. I've never raised for any of my, I've raised for some of my funds, obviously, but never for a single company. So I'm sort of nervous, but I think we have an opportunity.

• 1:06:50Shaan Puri?

  Like to start or to buy?

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  I bought the company already as an MVP. And then I'm gonna build something on top of it and I'm gonna put in a new CEO. And I'm working right now and recruiting that CEO for this, this business.

• 1:07:03Shaan Puri?

  And I'm guessing can't talk about that right now?

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  Not yet. I mean, not that anybody really cares on the internet, but your guys, you guys MF M F M ers are doers. So I feel like if I do, there'll be 37 copycats by Monday.

• 1:07:14Shaan Puri?

  Hell, yeah, there will be. That's what we do. We destroy all the margins for all of us collectively. We destroy Alpha left and right. All right. So you, so that's the game you're playing. You're, wait, so sorry. You told me the game you're not playing. You're not playing the private equity, build the next KKR game. You're building the own businesses where I live. I got that part of it, but that doesn't seem like the complete picture. What's the rest of the game? And how does like?

• 1:07:40Speaker 02

  Well, we have a portfolio that you could, I mean, it depends how you value it. But let's say it's, it's worth about 75 to a hundred million dollars in, in.

• 1:07:49Shaan Puri?

  A lot of car washes.

• 1:07:50Speaker 02

  Value right now. A lot of car washes.

• 1:07:52Shaan Puri?

  That's a lot, a lot of soap, baby.

• 1:07:54Speaker 02

  And then, so we have that. And that's cool. Really cool. Young Cody would be like, that's fucking wild. The next game we're gonna play is a really big, single bet. And so we'll have those two things.

• 1:08:11Shaan Puri?

  And why? Why not just retire and be trad wife and pumpkins and live, laugh, love?

• 1:08:15Speaker 02

  Dude, honestly, I bought those pumpkins and I was painting them and it brought me no joy whatsoever. Probably zero joy. And I remember I called my husband afterwards and I was like, I feel nothing and I must be done inside. And so.

• 1:08:28Shaan Puri?

  I have to buy this pumpkin company for this to have been worth it as a hobby.

• 1:08:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. It's like something's wrong with me. I also think you do like, do you have hobbies?

• 1:08:38Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I got hobbies. I got hobbies. I love to play basketball, but my hobbies are.

• 1:08:42Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, you do.

• 1:08:42Shaan Puri?

  They're things that fall into like really specific categories. So not, I don't have niche hobbies. Like, some people are like, oh, I love, you know, studying duck calls and I have all these little duck kazoo's or whatever the hell. Mine are not niche like that. They're very common things. I like playing poker. I like basketball. I like working out. I like, you know, like, I like shit that everybody likes. I'm like the basic bitch of like hobbies. However, I like to do them in a certain way that makes them more fun to me. So for example, I got a lot of joy building a home gym and having a trainer who's like my boy who comes over and we work out here and then friends who we meet will come drop in for workouts with us and I so I get to like hang out with my friends when I do that. So I tried to build a lifestyle around it. Or like basketball,

• 1:09:25Shaan Puri?

  instead of just going playing pickup basketball 24 hour fitness, we do this thing called Camp MFM where we rent a house, rent a gym, fly in, you know, a bunch of awesome founders or kind of like celebrity people who love to play basketball and an NBA trainer and we spend the weekend pretending we're NBA players, right? Like, we cosplay. And so I will try to take the hobbies, basic hobbies, but do them, common hobbies in an uncommon way is what's done it for me as far as being, being a fun thing to invest in.

• 1:09:50Speaker 02

  I like that. Well, yeah, I need to, I need hobbies, basically. I have none. I like to work out. I like to hang out with like friends that like literally have the most boring hobbies imaginable. I really actually like working a lot, which is probably pretty sick. But my husband is like Captain Hobby. He's so good. He's like a fucking black belt in jujitsu or a purple belt or something. And he's, you know, former Navy SEAL, so he's amazing at shooting. Him and Sam are always hobbying. And I'm not.

• 1:10:17Shaan Puri?

  I'm surprised Sam hangs out with him because Sam wants to always be able to kill everybody in the room or whatever he always says. And your husband would eat him as an appetizer. He's, Sam is tapas for him. Like, this is nothing. So I'm surprised that Sam allows himself to be in the same room.

• 1:10:32Speaker 02

  Sam does try to fight him a lot, which is like a very Sam ism, you know?

• 1:10:37Shaan Puri?

  Like a son to his dad. Oh, let's fight. And then the dad's like, okay, sure. Let's play wrestle. So yeah, I'm gonna tell you one tip for hobbies.

• 1:10:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, tell me.

• 1:10:46Shaan Puri?

  You want to get hobbies? There's two things that will force any person like us to get hobbies. The first, hang out with people that are completely post-economic. So people who are literally wealthier than wealthy, because when you go to dinner with them, they don't want to talk about business deals. They're like completely, not that they're over, they're still in the game of business. It's just not interesting to them. It's not what makes for a new conversation, or it's not like, it's no longer part of the status game. Cause they're all, they're also only with other people who are all very successful. And so the status game then becomes, oh, my Burning Man camp was like this. And oh, my new hobby is to do this. And oh, I'm doing this crazy health kick where I'm like, you know, taking blood from my feet and putting it into my arms.

• 1:11:31Shaan Puri?

  It's crazy. It's like, you gotta do the crazy thing outside of business because you've already like, hit the ceiling on business craziness. Like, you know, the only one they want to talk to about business craziness is like, what is Elon doing or whatever? Like that is genuinely like gets the pulse going for them on the business side. Whereas most things don't. So that's one way. Cause I remember sitting at many dinners and feeling completely generic where the things I'm interested in, the things that my brain has been working on to them are like, yeah, we know. Like we've, yeah, we've been doing that for 20 years now. Like that's not something to talk about, right? Uh, it's like talking about the weather.

• 1:12:08Speaker 02

  Did you see my Twitter ad for my newsletter?

• 1:12:10Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. I'm like, I got the CPC down and they're like, wow, like I remember I used to care about those things. Um, so, so that's one way to do it. And the other is to go to a place where, um, like hang out with like artists or Hollywood people. They're here with like actual artists for whom like the art is the goal and not the recognition from the, from the art.

• 1:12:31Shaan Puri?

  All they want to do, like you said, tell them what you're making and they're like, oh, that's cool. Like, do you think that's cool? And you're like, no, this is fucking cringe. And they're like, so why are you doing it? And you're like, cuz it leads to outcomes. And then they're like, oh, you know, like, you're like, it's like, you value things so differently than an actual artist. So two ways, if you wanna like, round yourself out, is immersive stuff, though. And then the embarrassment will fuel you to find something that is a non, it's not about the

• 1:13:02Speaker 02

  Non, a non-work hobby. Yeah, the thing that I have found about that is, I don't actually care that much what people think. And I find that hanging out with a lot of really, really rich people, like you and I both have, I think, a bunch of mutual friends that are super rich. I'm like, I don't care about your polyamory orgy at Burning Man. Like, good for you, dude. I'm so excited that you were such a nerd in high school that now we're compensated for it with lots of free sex. I think you should go wild. But I don't think it's that fucking cool, actually. So maybe, I do maybe have one hobby, which is that I, I really find, like, the political movements in the country interesting, not like Republican versus Democrat, but maybe that's my, that's my toxic trait hobby.

• 1:13:45Shaan Puri?

  That's your Roman Empire?

• 1:13:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Like, I think we're part of this think tank called AEI, and those people fascinate me. Like, have you ever been around big thinkers that like, you know, like Arthur Brooks? Do you know who that is? You guys should get him on here. I wonder if he'd like him.

• 1:14:00Shaan Puri?

  None of the words you just said at the last minute even mean anything to me. You said, political movements that are not Democrat, Republican? I'm like, what the hell is she talking about, then? The second thing you said is, I'm part of a think tank. A what tank? And then you said AEI. I'm like, that's a wrestling league, I think. And then you just mentioned Arthur Brooks, who I think might own the Atlanta Falcons, but I'm pretty sure that's not him. So, could you go in reverse order? What are political parties not the Democrats or Republicans?

• 1:14:27Speaker 02

  So, American Enterprise Institute has this one idea, which is that all ideas should be in a competition. There should be a competition for the best ideas, and the best ideas should win in order to determine how we rule our lives. What are our regulations? And so they're bipartisan. There's Democrats and Republicans in it. And I'm part of a group that donates every year, and we go to a couple of events for them. And so that might be a hobby of mine, I suppose.

• 1:14:53Shaan Puri?

  So they'll debate something like UBI or something? Is that what you mean? Like, is that the idea?

• 1:14:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, they'll have Dick Cheney and Michelle Obama on a stage together.

• 1:15:05Speaker 02

  And they'll be like, ready, go, you know, and they'll kind of compete their ideas. And it's closed doors and you can't video it. Um, and you can't talk about the specific things that were talked about inside of there. So it allows these politicians to be perhaps more realistic than they would be on the news sites. So I find that to be really interesting.

• 1:15:26Shaan Puri?

  That's kind of cool.

• 1:15:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think you guys would like it. And then, um, this guy, Arthur Brooks, who would be incredible. He used to run AI and was fascinated because he actually was like good friends with the Dalai Lama, which that's, that's impressive. But then simultaneously, uh, was able to pull together more funding. Like, I think he raised tens and tens or hundreds of millions of dollars for AI and really changed regulation on both the Democrat and Republican sides. And he is, if you can imagine what this is like, like you go to this event, all the, most of the leaders of the free world are there. You fly in to a private airport and, um, in Sea Island. And you go to this private hotel, there's all these securities. It's like a little mini UN.

• 1:16:07Speaker 02

  And the guy who runs the think tank is talking to a lot of, since it's free markets and competition of ideas, there's a lot of conservatives there. And, uh, and he gets in front of the biggest conservative donors in the world and starts to talk to them about love and why love is the most important thing in the world, which for conservatives is like not normalized at all. That, that nobody wants to talk about that. They want to talk about how all the Democrats are crazy. And so, um, I really have a lot of respect for him. He has like a bestselling book with Oprah New and, uh, and a documentary out about capitalism. And so.

• 1:16:39Shaan Puri?

  Wow, this guy, uh, yeah, I see him posing with Oprah. Uh, okay, this is interesting. And so you go to these like private, um, private events. How much, what's the, what's the absolute minimum one has to donate in order to be invited to the private thingy?

• 1:16:54Speaker 02

  I think it's 25 or 50K.

• 1:16:56Shaan Puri?

  Okay, all right.

• 1:16:57Speaker 02

  But you go through a screening process to come in.

• 1:17:01Shaan Puri?

  They're gonna realize I don't, I don't know anything. Don't give a shit about anything.

• 1:17:03Speaker 02

  No, I think they probably like that. They did. I remember the first time I went, they're like, you do what? Where? Like, they thought this whole internet, because everyone had been doing it for like, probably three years. And so I told them that I, I did little, I wrote little blogs on the internet. And they're like, wow, that's, huh, cool.

• 1:17:21Shaan Puri?

  It used to be my secret that I like, don't care, don't vote, don't watch the news, ever. Like, not as like a general thing, like, just don't. And, and I used to just not say it, because when I did, people would look at me like, oh, so you're just like, it's some combination of you're dumb, or selfish, and they're like, you're some combination of dumb and selfish. I don't really understand. And I never really knew how to put it into words. Because I was like, I don't know, I'm just focused. Yeah, I'm on, I focus on myself, but not in a way that's selfish. I'm not trying to take anything from anyone. I just put my attention on the things in my life. And then somebody said this to me, they go, they go, yeah, you're, you're an extreme in any one position, you know, just being all consuming, watching the news 24/7, or never ever caring, or paying attention to

• 1:18:04Shaan Puri?

  the news. Neither one of those is probably very good. But towards your end of the spectrum, they go, you know, I think actually the world would be a better place, instead of worrying about the government, learning how to govern yourself. And, and I really took that, that like, resonated with me, because I was like, oh, that's exactly it. I realized I can't even fully govern myself. Whether it's, you know, I shouldn't eat that, and I go eat that, or I should wake up early and I sleep in, or, you know, I want to text my friends and stay in touch, but I forget about them, become consumed with what's going on in my life. I've yet to even govern myself. You, what am I worried about what's going on 3,000 miles away, and with other people I can't control, at all, let alone myself, who I can't. And so, that was the first time I heard something that made me feel good about

• 1:18:49Shaan Puri?

  that, right? I previously just felt a little embarrassed, but not to the point where I was going to change my behavior, because I was like, I know intuitively, this is right. I just have no words to justify it.

• 1:18:58Speaker 02

  Well, I always liked that, I think it was Jordan Peterson that said, before you clean up the world, clean up your room. So I think there is actually a true component to, man, if we actually all just took care of our own things, and our own things could be our family, our friends, our community, life would probably be a little bit better. So, I support you in your purple, non-blue, non-red nature, Sean.

• 1:19:22Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And somebody also said this about relationships, they go, The wrong way to think about relationships is they'll take care of you. I'll take care of you and you take care of me. And then you're constantly feeling like you've lacked some care from the other side. Instead, it's I'll take care of me for you and you take care of you for me. And I think that's just a much better mental model for how to be in a relationship is I will be the best. I'm going to become the best person I can be for you. And you do, if you do the same, then we're both going to end up in great shape. And we both are focusing on the only thing we can control, which is ourselves.

• 1:19:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I love that. Well, also, I mean, why you got to tell other people how to live? That's my biggest complaint. I'm like, you do you and I'll do me. And even if you don't like it, I was still going to do that anyway. So, uh, you know, thank God for freedom in that way.

• 1:20:11Shaan Puri?

  Okay, I want to ask you about content. So you have built a big content brand across newsletters, social media, Tik Tok, YouTube. You're, you're everywhere.

• 1:20:21Shaan Puri?

  Give me the kind of, can you do a rant on like, what is your approach? Like you were Cody Sanchez, but at some point you created Cody Sanchez, the brand. And can you explain to me what went into that? Because I think most people don't know what goes into that. I think a lot of people try to take an aw shucks mentality and say, I didn't really.

• 1:20:45Speaker 02

  I hate that.

• 1:20:45Shaan Puri?

  I didn't think too much. I just, it just all sort of happened organically. And anybody out there who would like to do the same is like, great. So I guess I'll just hope it all just happens. Whereas I think that most people do have some thought that they put into things and a strategy, maybe that they put into things. Or took a different approach than what they saw others were doing and it paid off. I'd love to hear your version of that.

• 1:21:08Speaker 02

  Totally. One, I hate when people do that. I have never met somebody that after you dig in a little bit, didn't systematically try for the thing that they have created in any aspect of life. Like, don't fuck it by it. So that's one of my big pet peeves. For me, basically what happened is I think I'm the opposite of a lot of people that are public now. So I raised a bunch of money before for my funds and built these big fund families, right? We invested a lot, hundreds of millions, raised billions of dollars over my career, not just for me, when I was with other companies. And what I kind of realized is that's a little bit like.

• 1:21:47Speaker 02

  Giving a man a fish as opposed to teaching a man to fish. And I was, I was with a CEO of a company that I worked for back in the day and I was starting to do a little stuff online. This is like, you're like six or seven years ago. And I remember he took me on a walk on the beach at the Monarch in, or the Montage of the Monarch in California. And he was like, "The thing is, Cody, we get rich quietly here. Like, we don't build the I, we build the me, all those, you know, things." And at the time, I didn't really like that answer. And in my self-righteousness, I was like, "Well, he doesn't get it and the internet's gonna be so powerful and steak dinners and strippers, which is how a lot of people in finance raise money, doesn't work and isn't gonna work in the future. And so, we should actually build a media presence."

• 1:22:30Speaker 02

  But I realized quickly, like, he had built a multi-billion dollar business. It was his, I was playing with his chips. So, he had every right to say, "Hey, no, not am I done." And so, at that point, I kind of realized that I think what I actually like doing is, I like watching other people grow and build based on the ideas I share with them. Like, my little ego likes when somebody tells me that one of the things that I did works for them. And I feel like that's like, kind of a cool legacy. Makes me happier. And so, I started realizing that originally, just by speaking with some nonprofits we worked with. I would go and speak and I was like, "Oh, I kind of feel good. I feel better doing that than when I close a big transaction, actually." And so, I started doing that more and more. And then, I was like, "Huh, uh, I think we should scale this."

• 1:23:15Speaker 02

  Because I just think I have that sickness in my brain that anything I do a little bit, I want to do giant. Probably not that dissimilar with you in basketball. You're like, "I could go play a pickup game or I could invite Mr. Beast and also LeBron." You're like, "Well, let's do option two." And so, um, so I was like, I just started writing a newsletter for a while and didn't realize it was a business. And then, the first thing I did that I would tell anybody to do, if you want to go and build a content machine, is you should steal people who have already built the thing. It seems so obvious, but, uh, nobody does it. Everybody tries to do things by themselves. And because I had built a lot of businesses by now, I was like, "Oh, this is just a normal business. We need a head of ops, we need a head of, I would have called it marketing back in the day, but now, we call it a head of content.

• 1:23:56Speaker 02

  You know, we need a head of finance to figure out how much we should budget and how much we should put into all of this stuff. And then, we also, uh, probably need a bunch of chiefs or a bunch of Indians underneath the chiefs." And so, I basically hired those first three things. I always hire first at the top. And then I do a sliding scale down. And after I had hired those three people, because I was funding it all myself from what I had built before, then I started to go sectors or niche specific. So like, hire one person for TikTok, hire one person for Twitter, hire one person for Instagram. And it doesn't mean that they would write it all in their ghostwriting. I would just say, I'm stressed about these three platforms. I'm going to remove my stress from me into you.

• 1:24:39Speaker 02

  And so you shall now stress all day about TikTok and Twitter and Instagram and a newsletter. And I will not, I'm going to stress on this portfolio of businesses, which nobody else can run. And so that's how I started.

• 1:24:51Shaan Puri?

  And do you, um, do you do one for the other? Do they feed each other? Or what's the, what's the plan with the content? Like, how does the content fit with the portfolio of businesses? What's the, what, why do you do both? Why not just do one?

• 1:25:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's the best. I mean, I think maybe you've talked about this, but the flywheel of content is the most powerful thing I've ever seen. I mean, Naval talked about it with his, I think he talked about three levels of leverage, which was, you know, uh, capital, or I'm sorry, people, capital, and then code. And then I think the current one is audience. And audience is the only permissionless version. All those other ones, you have to have banks, you had to have employees say yes, you had to actually understand code. Um, but audience is, is so, your favorite word, um, democratized. Anybody can, uh,

• 1:25:39Shaan Puri?

  Put a quarter in the swear jar before you leave.

• 1:25:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Anybody can, can do it. And so I was like, well, this is fascinating. If I could get, like, for instance, yesterday in one of our YouTube videos, we put a, a lead magnet to the newsletter. And we got like 2,500 newsletter signups. And let's say the newsletter signup on average costs us one to two bucks. Well, that was, you know, that's $5,000 I could have done through PPC or through organic. I could just get it from audience.

• 1:26:10Shaan Puri?

  Content, yeah.

• 1:26:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so, um, they all influence one another. But how I originally thought about it is I'm going to talk about content, about buying businesses. Because I talk about buying businesses, what's going to happen? A bunch of people are going to want to sell me their business. So now I'm going to buy more businesses that they want to sell. And I'm going to buy them at better prices and faster than anybody else because they feel like they already know me and they trust me.

• 1:26:31Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:26:32Speaker 02

  And so I'm almost indexing on trust. I'm going to tell them exactly how I value it. I'm going to tell them exactly how I buy and then they're going to sell me their business. And then, once they sell me their business, I'm going to build that business through my audience. So I'm going to funnel more of the audience into said business. And then finally, when I go to exit the business, I'm going to have a community of buyers that want to buy this business. And then I'm going to do it again and again and again. And it's sort of ended up working out like that. I would say most often now, it's that I get referrals to businesses that I want to buy. It's not so much cold outreach.

• 1:27:05Speaker 02

  So maybe it was slightly off from what I thought the thesis was going to be.

• 1:27:08Shaan Puri?

  Right, right. And, okay, so I want to give you a chance to address what I view as good criticism. So what's good criticism? Good criticism is, so bad criticism is this person's full of shit. Good criticism is, it's not all perfect, right? It's like, that's like a good version of criticism, meaning you're in a good position if somebody says that. So for example, I want to give you a chance to do, to answer this in two ways. The first is, every criticism, I believe, has a kernel of truth. When I go read the YouTube comments and somebody says blah, blah, blah about me, it might be mean, it might have been rude, might have been uncalled for, but it's usually not completely baseless. There's some kernel of truth in it. And the same thing on the good side.

• 1:27:52Shaan Puri?

  Somebody compliments me, it's usually not as good as they say, but there's a kernel of truth and that's what led to that sentiment. So here's some of the things that people would say about you. Cody Sanchez, her real business is in creating content, getting you to pay her to teach you how to buy a business, not in the businesses she's bought herself. In what way would that be true and in what way would that be false?

• 1:28:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, I think one, I think you're right. One of our mottos is question everything. So I don't think there's anything wrong with with questioning any of that. We make more money categorically from the businesses we own than from the community that we own, for instance. So like numerically, categorically, that's just the fact. Now, would I be upset if all of a sudden we're doing 25, 50, 100 million dollars in a community and this, my idea of an M and A for MB, like an MBA, M and A? If I could actually create that and I could supplant what we're getting in institutions and education systems, I'd be fucking thrilled.

• 1:29:01Speaker 02

  So the second that I make way more money with communities and courses, I will be shouting it at her, yes, like we built the best fucking thing ever. We're doing tens and tens of millions of dollars and you're welcome, like happy. The second, like what would be true about that is, yeah, we're really good at this. Like it is a big business. It does millions of dollars a year. I think we have really quickly supplanted anybody in the industry. Like we are the name. If you want to go learn how to buy a business, soon we will be the name. If you want to learn how to sell a business. And my goal is we will also be in the name. If you want to learn how to build a business. So we will own the entire ecosystem. I'm in talks right now with University of Texas and University of Austin, which is

• 1:29:46Speaker 02

  Joe Lonsdale's company to do a program with them where we can push back on what I think is awful education that's taught at most institutions.

• 1:29:56Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:29:56Speaker 02

  And instead of telling you what to think and a bunch of political nonsense, we're just going to teach you really smart financial tactics that you can apply whichever way you want. And so, um, it does like, I'm sure it's the same with you. What bothers me when people talk about me online is if I feel like there is a kernel of truth or we fuck up. Like one time we did this tweet thread. And it was a seven instead of a two for the number of years that I was at Goldman, which is like, you can see it on my form, you for and my LinkedIn. You can see how long I was at Goldman. And I had all these people be like, I knew you were just a fucking secretary and you were only there for,

• 1:30:37Speaker 02

  you know, two years out seven. And that one actually bothered me a little bit because I was like, we were wrong. And so, fuck, that's, that's.

• 1:30:44Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, but that's a typo. Who cares?

• 1:30:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess so.

• 1:30:47Shaan Puri?

  You're wrong, but like, don't beat yourself up over that, right? Like, that's nothing.

• 1:30:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's true.

• 1:30:52Shaan Puri?

  Another way to think about it, or another, like, I guess, thing to react to. So we get less criticism. I was wondering this. I was like, why do we get less criticism? So I was worried. I was like, are we just less popular or less good than these other people? And what I realized is actually, no, there's one difference, which is when you do a podcast, podcasts, because they're long form, it sort of naturally filters a bunch of people out. Second, it gives you a chance to breathe and be yourself. And people tend to, once they get to know you and understand you, they tend to not, not feel the same way about you, not have like that sort of reactionary takeaway against you. The third is that you're just not everywhere. And the vibe is, I'm talking to my buddy Sam, you're here listening as a fly on the wall versus you go on Instagram or Tik Tok and you're staring down the barrel,

• 1:31:35Shaan Puri?

  looking at the camera saying, you should do this. All of a sudden, you're a business guru. All of a sudden, you're telling me what to do. All of a sudden, guard, the walls go up. And literally just because of the way you're, which way we're pointing, when it's me talking to my co-host, it's very different than somebody who picks up their phone and says, you know, I'm so great and here's what I do and you should do the same. So that's what I realized is actually the way that the reaction gets really big. Now, I'm wondering how you think about like, distancing yourself, or do you just not care about like the whole like business guru, kind of like Grant Cardone, Ty Lopez, like, there's like this whole thing that I personally don't want to necessarily be associated with. I don't necessarily think that they're bad. And anyway, I just don't want to be bucketed in with that group.

• 1:32:20Shaan Puri?

  And I can see how there's like a tension between the more you come out and talk about business and how to make it, the more you can be bucketed as business guru. How do you think about that? Do you, do you think you do fall into that trap? Or how do you avoid that?

• 1:32:35Speaker 02

  One, I think, as, I think I'm a big ethical, moral compass type person. So like, if I feel like I'm doing something wrong, uh, that's gonna bother me a lot more than what other people think about me. And so that, that doesn't bother me too much. I also think, and I would be curious your take, like, I wanna do a math model on this. I, so much of what we are told in today's society, in my opinion, is the opposite. It's like, it's clown world. It's, we're told this one thing and it actually makes no sense. For instance, if I went out right now, I've never, ever raised money for any of the businesses that I invest in from my audience, ever. Not once. Not once have I asked for a dollar for that. Now, we have a venture fund that's tiny, that I say, do not invest in if you don't

• 1:33:20Speaker 02

  wanna lose money. Cause this is like, a very small, it's a $10 million fund, and it's, like, who knows? Who knows if venture works?

• 1:33:29Speaker 02

  And I think that there's a legitimacy that comes with asking people for money to invest in your funds, as opposed to teaching them how to do the thing, which in my mind, actually makes no sense. Because if I went and raised another billion dollar fund, family, like I did, I'm going to make so much more money than I ever will teaching people how to do things online. So much more money. But then they don't actually learn. So I think I have like a, I have like a chip on my shoulder about it, that I wanna push back on it. And I also think, man, young Cody would've really liked to learn this earlier. And wouldn't it be nice if somebody would've actually showed me their homework back in the day?

• 1:34:09Speaker 02

  Like, I would've liked that, actually. Um, so I think, I think that's how I, I remedied it. Now, I hate comparisons to Grant Cardone or Ty Lopez, because, uh, I'm not talking about those two, cause I don't know them individually, but you know, I looked at some of the fundraising docs on Grant Cardone's stuff, and I don't think it's that great for retail investors. I think it's pretty one-sided. And I think Ty Lopez is very like Ferraris, women, you know, get rich quick stuff. And ours is sort of the opposite. It's like, this is gonna be hard. It'll take longer than you think. It'll be harder than you think. And maybe it'll be worth it if you actually keep going past the point in which it's comfortable.

• 1:34:51Speaker 02

  But yeah, I think at some point, you just have to give up what people think about you on the internet, one way or the other, cause there's always gonna be, you know, if you think about it also, Sean, like, so if we have 100 million views a month, or 5 million followers...

• 1:35:04Speaker 02

  Like 1% is gonna be fucking nuts, for sure, just like categorically. And so anytime something happens, I go, well, that's the 1%, unless we're doing something wrong. And then I go, well, we did, that was a typo. That's our bad.

• 1:35:17Shaan Puri?

  Right. Well, I'm hoping that people who listen to this, uh, you know, I guess like, I believe that, like you just said, you, you know, the most important opinion is the one you have of yourself, you know, the reputation with yourself is the one that matters. Uh, I also believe that people should come to their own opinions once they have the opportunity to hear you speak. Which is why I asked some of these questions to you, because I wanted to, I wanted to know that, I wanted to hear how you would answer them myself. But I also know that for most people, they're not really going to get to hear you talk on this, um, really anywhere. So, uh, as far as, as far as I've seen. So I hope that people, you know, come to whatever opinions they want on that stuff. Uh, that's, that's on them at that point. I think that the ideas you shared at the beginning and the model that you've created here around buying boring businesses

• 1:36:02Shaan Puri?

  is fascinating to me. Um, I am almost jealous that I don't want to buy a boring business. I'm like, oh, wow, that, you know, like, what, what's wrong with the chip in my brain that wants to buy exciting businesses? Like, I only want to buy exciting businesses. And I think that is probably harder, higher degree of difficulty. But you know, you, you, you choose, you get to choose the game you play. That's, that's the game I want to play.

• 1:36:28Speaker 02

  Or you just invest in, you invest in Xavier's thing, which we both did too, you know? And you support small businesses that way. I mean, and the only other thing I want to say is like, I think it's really cool what you guys are doing here. Because although you might not call your businesses boring, you are actually doing the thing that most people in industry hate, which is you're taking complex ideas and you're skinning them down. So a lot of people can execute on them. And like, there, not a lot of people want to share their homework like that. So while mine might be boring and yours might be more sexy, I think we're both doing something really similar, which is here's what works for me. Here's some relatively complex stuff. Here's how I think we could really simplify it. And then like you go do you and go build something. Cause I think that's the only thing that makes the world a little bit better are the builders.

• 1:37:09Shaan Puri?

  My, uh, I invested in the same company you did, Shop Genie, which is like the perfect example of a boring business that can be pretty big. And so these guys make like, if you go to an auto repair shop. If you need to go get your car repaired today, you basically have to drive it. It's only like walk in essentially. You drive in or you call, nobody picks up the phone. You drive up and then they're like, ah, it's gonna be a couple hours. You could just like, leave it here and like, go home on foot. And you're like, ah, shit, like, damn, I wish this was like, I wish this worked like everything else in the world worked. Meaning, I want you to go online and book an appointment and show up and drop off my car and be done and pay you online, not like, you know, not like, you know, in cash here or whatever. And so they made this like, basically like a booking software for auto repair shops. Is that a good way to explain it? That's how I think about it at least.

• 1:37:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, and now that you're talking about it, I'm sure this will happen for them again. But what's cool about when we get to invest in these types of businesses, like we did a little tweet for them and a little announcement of investing in them. And they got like 30 franchise users who have multiple franchises underneath them. And so the ability to help somebody scale with a podcast like yours is really cool, which makes sense because you did support Shepard. And I think that's like a similar, similar model.

• 1:38:19Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, so Kieran, the founder of it, he told me about this business. I was like, that's a great idea. I would not like, I don't want to do that. That sounds boring to me, but it's not boring to you. And that's all that matters and investing is the easiest way for me to like, ride along that ride. And the funny thing is, he told me like, back to the content idea. He's like, oh, we have this guy, um, I had never heard of this guy, Aaron Stokes. Do you know who this is?

• 1:38:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:42Shaan Puri?

  He's, he's like, you know, the, the whoever, you know, the, the Gary Vee of the auto repair world. And so this one guy, I'm pretty sure this guy's making like $30 million a year, just creating content for people that own auto repair businesses. And he's like, he has just conquered this niche and he's the, he's doing the content marketing stuff, but only for a really, really narrow thing. But then for them, he's probably the only talented content person that's creating anything for them. And so when he hosts the event or he has the, the paid group or whatever, I don't even know this guy's full business model. But I know that his revenue is up there, sort of like 20 million plus.

• 1:39:22Shaan Puri?

  And he can get a thousand, you know, auto repair shop owners to show up to a, to any event that he, you know, a conference that he throws. And I was like, wow, this content game can be like, niched down into the, into the, even though the boring verticals in a very interesting way.

• 1:39:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, we should own more of those, huh? I mean, I think a fun game, like a great content channel that I was talking to Chris, my husband, about was like, what did he call it? He called it like CringeCon. And it would just be like you going to different niche industry conferences and watching their keynotes, like the keynote from the self-storage industry conference and like keynote from, you know, because one of our friends owns a small self-storage company that we're going to invest in. And he was like, yeah, I went to a self-storage conference and the keynote speaker was like, they use words like hoarders. We use words like customers, you know? And you're like, I just want to see this. So there's so many ways to make money.

• 1:40:21Shaan Puri?

  It's a giant compilation of every like niche conference.

• 1:40:24Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I know, I'm going to speak at Balaji's conference next week about like, they use all these words, Shaw, that you probably know because you're smarter than me, like ACC slash EE in parentheses on your Twitter bio.

• 1:40:37Shaan Puri?

  I don't know what the hell that is. I've seen that everywhere.

• 1:40:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what I told him. I'm like, I need a dictionary to speak here. And, and what I thought was fascinating is I'm like, you have this whole world that nobody else knows about. And, you know, you guys have all made billions or hundreds of millions off of it. So so many ways to make money. And that, to me, would actually be boring. Like, I don't, you know, acronyms, I don't need all of those.

• 1:40:59Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I've told the story before, but we got the idea for Milk Road. Not the idea, but the like, trigger to launch Milk Road was at FarmCon. We went to a farming conference in Kansas City and like, same thing, you know, we go in and the panel was talking about, you know, corn and wheat futures. And I'm like, I was stunned. I was like, these guys know what futures are? And secondly, like, we're talking about corn futures? And then one guy was like, I'm all in on beans. And I was like, hey, man, brother, I'm all in on beans too. But I think for different reasons. And so like, it was such a wild experience that I just really had no like, it was a totally different world, like, you know, literally like 2,000 farmers in a room. Just talking farming.

• 1:41:41Shaan Puri?

  And, um, you know, I think it's really good to get outside your bubble and kind of like, you know, for a guy from, who lives in San Francisco, talks to tech dorks all day. Like, that was a totally different experience. I should do more of that, but like, that was my one, kind of like, my one trip last year. It's like, I don't go to Burning Man, I went to FarmCon, which I think is actually more extreme experience, all things considered.

• 1:42:02Speaker 02

  Dude, that's gonna be me next week. I already told Balaji, I'm like, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna understand half of this. He had this idea too, that I was like, I think actually, this is a terrible idea. Categorically. He like, wanted to do five-minute speeches, like, five-minute little speeches. And I'm like, one, that's hard, like, you know, okay, we can do that. And he's like, so I want to do a bunch of them. And I was thinking, in order for some of them to be really fast, what we'll do is, we can pre-record some of it, so it's really good, and then we'll walk up on the stage and we could press play.

• 1:42:31Shaan Puri?

  Like a DJ.

• 1:42:35Speaker 02

  I was like, Balaji, you are the smartest man I've ever met, and also know.

• 1:42:39Shaan Puri?

  He's like, and then instead of coming to the conference, everyone just stays home. And actually, they just listen to it on their own, in the podcast app. It's a podcast, actually.

• 1:42:49Speaker 02

  This is, yeah, I mean, thank God, humans think differently. But I'm, I'm really curious to imagine if I could carry a conversation well with a lot of people here. I'm just gonna tell them, the thing is, if you want to know about laundromats, I'm your girl. That's about it.

• 1:43:02Shaan Puri?

  And they're like, we don't.

• 1:43:03Speaker 02

  We don't.

• 1:43:05Shaan Puri?

  That's that.

• 1:43:05Speaker 02

  Next.

• 1:43:08Shaan Puri?

  All right, Cody, this has been great. Sorry I took you so far over time, but.

• 1:43:11Speaker 02

  Not at all. This was a blast.

• 1:43:12Shaan Puri?

  Thank you for guest hosting, while Sam is out. And, uh, that's the pod. Where, oh, where should people follow you? Where do you want, where do you want to send them?

• 1:43:19Speaker 02

  Cody Sanchez on all the socials. Uh, pretty straightforward.

• 1:43:24Shaan Puri?

  All right, that's it.