#62 - Lambda School for Secretaries, Billionaire of The Week, Deepfakes & More

Sam (@thesamparr) and Shaan (@shaanvp) talk trends, startups and your next million dollar idea. Today's topics: Deepfakes, good or evil? (5:00), The credentials business (15:13), Are sam and shaan unethical? (29:41), Studying evil leaders (34:47), IDEA: Lambda school for EA's (38:27) and Shaan's Billionaire of the Week: Xavier Niel (44:11). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  Okay, we got a friend of the show, Jordan Harbinger is here. Jordan, how are you doing, man?

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me on, man. I'm just chilling, self-isolating, you know, the usual.

• 0:09Shaan Puri?

  We are all isolating, but I like, I appreciate you dropping in on the show, just parachuting in, just for a couple of minutes. It's always fun to have you. You know, this is a crazy time, 2020 has been a crazy year. We got coronavirus and we also had, you know, the sad, tragic passing of Kobe Bryant, who was a guest on your show. How did, how did that happen? How did you get Kobe?

• 0:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know what was funny is I was pitching a publicity team for a different guest that I can't even remember now because he was about 1% as famous as Kobe Bryant. And they booked it and it was, it was like some comedian, which I of course was really excited about. They booked it and they canceled it and I got really annoyed and they said, "Well, would you consider interviewing Kobe Bryant instead?" And I said, "Yeah, of course I would consider that. Let's do that." So, we set it up and I flew down to Kobe's office and went over there and hung out for a while and did the interview right there. And it was, it was incredible. It was a really interesting experience to be there with his team as well for that day. And honestly, it was probably September of 2019, so the timing was, was

• 1:13Speaker 01

  interesting. You know me, I asked him all kinds of questions that had nothing to do with basketball, including about creativity, business, hiring and firing, because you wonder how a guy like Kobe Bryant decides who to hire and how he lets people go. I don't know if I'd want to be on the wrong side of him. And I, I did end up asking him about his life and what he's going to do for his second act and if he ever, creepily, I asked him if he ever thinks about what he's going to do if he were gone because he has kids. And, and he was really, really honest in the interview. He was really, really straightforward and I admire that. It was a really good interview, in my opinion.

• 1:48Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that is intense, high stakes interviewing, to say the least. And was he like an idol of yours before you did the interview?

• 1:55Speaker 01

  No, man. Honestly, I, look, who doesn't love watching basketball? But I wasn't even, I'm just not a fanboy of athletes in general. So, it was a great, unique opportunity, but I wasn't nervous because of that. I was more nervous because you- You just never know if your audio equipment's gonna screw up. So I was more nervous, like, make sure it's recording than I was nervous to be sitting in front of Kobe Bryant. Honestly, he was so friendly and unassuming and not very loud. In fact, we even had audio issues recording it because we're like, hey, we gotta turn him up really high. And I said, "You're really quiet." And he goes, "Yeah, I'm just not a loud guy, man." And I was like, "Oh, my God, can you be loud for like the next 45 minutes?" So it was a really unique experience. I'll be thankful for that for a long time to come.

• 2:39Shaan Puri?

  That is amazing. You know, when we started the show, we were doing the interview-style thing, and I made a bucket list, a wish list, of all the guests that I would want. You know, Kobe was on there. And when I look at your show, and I've been going, I've been plowing through the archive of episodes that you've got, you've had a bunch of them. So you've had Tony Hawk, you've had Kobe Bryant. Who are some of the other awesome episodes that people should check out if they do binge your show like I'm doing?

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah. Howie Mandel was really good, the comedian. He was very open about things like mental illness and how he doesn't shake people's hands. I've had Dennis Rodman, Malcolm Gladwell. And I also had Frank Abagnale, which a lot of people haven't heard about or from, but he-

• 3:18Shaan Puri?

  Is that the Catch Me If You Can guy?

• 3:20Speaker 01

  He is the Catch Me If You Can guy. So he's the real guy that was played by Leo DiCaprio. And we talked about the psychology behind how he was able to trick so many people. And now he teaches, of course, FBI and intelligence agencies how that's done as well.

• 3:35Shaan Puri?

  That is amazing. So if you're one of the listeners to the show who misses when we used to do the interviews and bring in guests, well, this is my recommendation for you. You should go check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. He's got tons of interviews from guests that we were, you know, hoping to one day have on our show. He's already had him on. Check him out on iTunes, on Spotify, wherever you can find it. Jordan, appreciate you as always, dropping in on the show.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks for having me on, guys.

• 4:11Shaan Puri?

  Uh, Sam, how you doing, man? Why are you so angry?

• 4:13Sam Parr?

  God, fucking shit, nothing works. I hate everything. My Apple TV is not working. QuickTime is not working. I hate Zoom. God damn, I hate it.

• 4:24Shaan Puri?

  But your mohawk is working.

• 4:26Sam Parr?

  That didn't even work. I meant to shave the whole thing and I just forgot that up there.

• 4:30Shaan Puri?

  You did not forget the top.

• 4:33Sam Parr?

  Dude, I hate working from home. I hate it so much.

• 4:37Shaan Puri?

  Uh, don't worry, uh, just like, I don't know, six to eight more weeks of this and then we're back.

• 4:42Sam Parr?

  If we're lucky.

• 4:43Shaan Puri?

  If we're lucky. Um, okay, so let's do this. What do we got? Let's jump right in. People need to...

• 4:50Sam Parr?

  Okay, we are supposed to, well, we are supposed to talk about why comedy or stuff today, but I have found, I want to talk about something that I think is more interesting, but you want to talk about some lighthearted stuff, which is, what's the Sway thing?

• 5:02Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, what is the Sway thing? I saw you, uh, I saw a video of you dancing.

• 5:08Sam Parr?

  Was that the first time you'd seen this?

• 5:09Shaan Puri?

  Danced pretty well. No, I'd seen it. Uh, Ryan Hoover had posted one of him dancing and when he posted it, it looked very real to me. Yours did not look that as real, I think, is where you were in your room. Uh, but when I saw that, I was like, holy shit, Ryan can dance? And, uh, then I saw the comments and everyone was like, nice app. Nice, how do we get the beta of this app? And I was like, oh shit, there's an app that makes you dance. So you have this app?

• 5:32Sam Parr?

  I, okay, I think it's pretty popular. It's called Sway and what it does is you record yourself for 10 or 20 seconds. You just stand there and you like walk around and move. And, um, then it uses AI or I don't know what it is, but, or not AI, it's called, um, Aug, is it?

• 5:51Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it would be AR.

• 5:53Sam Parr?

  Uh, and then, um, makes it look like you're dancing like really good. And I send it to my family and some, I, I made like 20 of them. They thought I was dancing. It was hilarious.

• 6:06Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's, um, it, it looks pretty, it looks pretty funny. If, if, if they actually just made it a little bit less good of dancing, it would look real. People would believe it, but it's like so good that you're like, no way, no.

• 6:18Sam Parr?

  It's pretty amazing. And so when I downloaded it, it was number 50 in the App Store. And like as I was playing with it, I saw it, it's been climbing up the charts.

• 6:27Shaan Puri?

  And did you just download it because you were browsing the App Store or you saw somebody do it?

• 6:31Sam Parr?

  So I all I do, I browse the App Store and I like to see the fastest growing apps.

• 6:35Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 6:35Sam Parr?

  And I like to figure out what's going on. I do that with gaming all the time. So I have to figure out the games that are growing fastest. So yeah, I was just browsing.

• 6:42Shaan Puri?

  Gotcha. And, uh, but it is viral. Like when you see somebody post it.

• 6:46Sam Parr?

  Oh, fuck, yeah.

• 6:47Shaan Puri?

  You're like, oh, this is great. I can, uh, I can like, I, I should do that. So it has this kind of like monkey see, monkey do virality that I like.

• 6:54Sam Parr?

  Well, do you remember that app that, um, you, you would take a picture of your face and it would make you look older?

• 6:59Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 7:00Sam Parr?

  Didn't it turn out that that was owned by a Russian company and they were like doing funny stuff with your pictures?

• 7:05Shaan Puri?

  Well, I don't know if they were actually doing anything, but people were definitely sketched out by it. They're like, wait, I just gave my camera roll access to some random Russian developer. And so did like 50 million other people, like just to, just to make this like, uh, old filter or baby filter on my face.

• 7:20Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So download that app. It's called Sway Dance. Is it called Sway? It's called Sway for sure.

• 7:26Shaan Puri?

  S S W A Y. Uh, it's a cool little app. It's good for little pranks. And actually, you know, it, that is a lighthearted way to start it because it's just funny. And people should just go to your Twitter and then they'll find the video of you doing it. But, um, but this is also like part of this deep fakes, um, like this deep fakes problem. And so if you don't know what a deep fake is, a deep fake is basically people can now use, um, technology to make a video look real. You can make anything look. So for example, what they do is they'll take Obama. Obama's talking.

• 8:00Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 8:01Shaan Puri?

  But I can just say any sentence. I could just be like, uh, hey, hey, my name's Barack and, um, I'm the worst president of all time. And it'll make it look like his lips are moving to my sentence because they basically feed in a bunch of footage of Obama talking normally. And it basically, the algorithm learns, okay, here's how Obama's face moves when he says certain things. And then when I, I can input any audio and it'll make it look like he's doing it. Now, right now, the technology is where it looks a little off, but it's not that far off. Like if I showed it to my.

• 8:32Sam Parr?

  Not all of it looks that off.

• 8:33Shaan Puri?

  Right. But it's just getting better month over month. So they just showed a, um, like a paper just came out with a new one and it's literally just taking a still photo. So they took the Mona Lisa. And then they do the same thing. I can go say a sentence and it will make the Mona Lisa say it. And like the, the, the voice can, can, is that good. And so like, it's pretty crazy that they can just do that off a still photo. You don't even need like hours and hours of raw footage of the person in order to do this now. But what do you think of this whole deepfaking? Cause it's a big problem. Like your sister's a lawyer and um, I think she was, she was like a DA before, right?

• 9:09Sam Parr?

  Yeah, uh, well, she works for the DA. And then she's a public defender in the Bronx.

• 9:14Shaan Puri?

  And uh, and people, now it's like, if you can't trust what you see, right? If, if, if audio, like, we already have photos that could be photoshopped. Audio now that can be, uh, like Livebird, uh, uh, I think is the name of it. Um, where basically you just, you just talk, uh, you can, you, you can train, um, you can train this system to where you could just type anything and it'll say it in your voice, or it'll say it in Donald Trump's voice. So if you can't believe what you see, what you hear, or what's in video, then um, how does that like mess up the world? Like fake news is gonna become a bigger problem.

• 9:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's gonna become a problem, but why are we defaulting to that? Why are we worrying about, I mean, yeah, it's gonna be a problem, but also let's think about all the amazing things like, like act, like there's gonna be fake actors.

• 10:00Shaan Puri?

  Like my dance, like your dance video?

• 10:02Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like it's gonna make, it's gonna make movies amazing. Like, like Brad Pitt won't exist. It'll be, it'll, well, it will be, it'll be AJ Pitt and it will be some fake person. And I think that's awesome.

• 10:16Shaan Puri?

  So here's a future world. You literally are just looking at your computer. And instead, like today, if you wanna make a movie or an animation, you have to like be an animator or a movie editor, or an artist to be able to draw. You're just gonna be able to say things, and it's gonna be able to create what you're, what you're saying. So you're gonna be able to say, okay, what if Donald Trump was talking to, you know, whatever, Barack Obama? And then Donald jumped in the air and he said this, and then literally it's just gonna be able to animate. That's how, that's how far this is gonna go. And that's gonna unlock the ability to create stuff to people who don't have the technical skills to do it today.

• 10:53Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm, but I'm not too worried about how they're gonna um, regulate it because like, If you have a political ad now, it like anyone could run an ad on Facebook or on TV and it says Donald Trump. I'm Donald Trump and I hate Mexicans. Anyone could do that now, but I mean, like literally the tech like you could buy ads, but there are ways to say like, well, no, that's not allowed. And it has to say like, I'm Donald Trump and I support this. You know what I mean? Like, there are ways to like.

• 11:23Shaan Puri?

  What do you mean?

• 11:24Sam Parr?

  Like, if you run a TV, a political TV ad right now, it has to say who pays for it.

• 11:30Shaan Puri?

  Sure.

• 11:30Sam Parr?

  It has to say, is this.

• 11:31Shaan Puri?

  But it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be a political thing, right? This could, this can go for anyone. Someone in high school can just bully somebody else. Like right now, the, the thing that.

• 11:39Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 11:39Shaan Puri?

  Deep fakes, deep fakes got famous because people were putting other people's faces on porn actors. And you could make it look like I could take a photo of your mom and I could put it on, it put it into a porno and it would look like your mom's in the porno. And people were doing this with celebrities. People were doing this with their classmates. And, um, you know, the Reddit, the subreddit for this got huge is r slash fakes, r slash deep fakes. And, um, so this is how it got popular because it was like this incredible bullying tool. Like, forget about political ads. It's just like slander left and right.

• 12:10Sam Parr?

  Did it, did it get taken down that subreddit?

• 12:12Shaan Puri?

  No, I think it's still up.

• 12:15Sam Parr?

  I'm gonna.

• 12:15Shaan Puri?

  I don't know. I haven't been in a long time, but, um, when it first blew up, you know, it, it got really popular because people were, you know, if, oh yeah, it is banned from Reddit now. Because it was like, it was becoming a problem.

• 12:26Sam Parr?

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:28Shaan Puri?

  But that, that didn't stop the actual, the actual problem. That just stopped the subreddit where people were sharing it. So, so I think this is going to be a massive, massive problem for evidence. I think it's a bit, going to become a massive problem for just like slander and, um, you know, spin like I could, I could take a video of you and make it say that you hate Mexican people and it's not.

• 12:46Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 12:47Shaan Puri?

  Donald Trump. And, uh, and people would believe it because they would see your face and they would say, I saw him say that, you know?

• 12:53Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 12:55Shaan Puri?

  And so I'll tell you what some people are trying to do to combat this is a whole bunch of programmers who programmers in general are have a high bar for the truth. They really want things to be true, logical, solvable, reliable. And so when you take away evidence, evidence which used to be a source of truth. It's like, well, you're saying this, but I have video of you doing that thing. So that's evidence. But now it's like, well, this video could be anything. This video could be fake. Um, so they're trying to solve this in the way that they think it can be solved. So the theory is anything you make to sort of validate stuff, um, the con artist will always be one step ahead. And there's too big of a payoff to be able to fake this stuff. Well, it's like a counterfeiter. And um, you're always a cat and mouse game, which is not a winning solution.

• 13:41Shaan Puri?

  So the solution that they believe is that the phone makers themselves, the device makers themselves will need to put a cryptographic seal um, on the video when it's taken. And it's like a tamper proof seal like we have with medicine or whatever, where it's like, if this seal is broken, that means this video has been edited in some way. And so at some point, people will only trust um, videos or photos that have this this cryptographic seal on them that says this has not been edited because it's it's on the device itself. And when it got captured, it gets instantly implemented on. And so

• 14:14Sam Parr?

  Who's working on that?

• 14:15Shaan Puri?

  Well, the problem is a startup can't do this, right? Because it's actually Apple that needs to implement it. It's actually Samsung that needs to implement this. And so luckily, Apple's a pretty privacy conscious company and they know that like, if their tools are being used for evil, they'd usually actually do stuff about it. So hopefully, Apple is working on this. But I have a friend who was doing a startup trying to do this. And he was running into this problem, which is like, look, the people who need to do this are all the camera makers. Uh, like, you know, the security camera itself needs to do this. And that's the only like decent solution now. Some technical people will say, oh, there's nothing that's actually tamper proof. You can still, you can still, uh, you know, get around it.

• 14:51Sam Parr?

  Sure, sure, but

• 14:52Shaan Puri?

  It's better.

• 14:52Sam Parr?

  And they are right, but there are still things where it's mostly works.

• 14:56Shaan Puri?

  Right, exactly. So I think that's the world, that's the way the world is going to work later where you're going to need to see this little, you know, icon that says, it's like, you know, it's the gluten free icon. It's the

• 15:09Sam Parr?

  Organic.

• 15:10Shaan Puri?

  It's organic icon. It's going to be, this is legitimate. And there's going to be a legitimacy icon on any photo or video.

• 15:16Sam Parr?

  Dude, that the icon business, that's a good business. You know JD Power?

• 15:20Shaan Puri?

  Now, I mean, I've heard of it, but I don't know what you're gonna tell me right now.

• 15:24Sam Parr?

  But you know what it is, though, right? It's like

• 15:26Shaan Puri?

  All I know is

• 15:27Sam Parr?

  Fifty-five JD Power

• 15:28Shaan Puri?

  JD Power and Associates, that's all I know. What does that mean?

• 15:31Sam Parr?

  Okay, so JD Power, the reason I looked into this, because I wanted to create a business like this, where I was like, because I was like, this is a fucking racket. And I'm like, it does sound, it does give a little, it does give value if they're, if you, but you have to be like a benevolent dictator, where like, you can like rule it, but you really gotta be honest, otherwise

• 15:51Shaan Puri?

  Trust as a service, right?

• 15:52Sam Parr?

  Right. And JD Power, what they do is, it's a billion-dollar company, JD Power is, and all, I mean, what they do is they test different cars and they give it awards. But the, the way that they make money is the car companies are members of the organization. So if you're like, if, if, you know, if you only want the money, you don't give a fuck about like being ethical, um, you could be like, hey, Ford, like, our new membership costs this much money, are you guys in or out? And just so you know, if you're out, we can't give you any awards.

• 16:24Shaan Puri?

  That's crazy. Um, yeah, that, yeah, if you could be in the business of being the rating agency, that is gold. In fact, uh, you know, but one of the problems is like, if, if people remember during the, the subprime, uh, crisis, I, I believe what happened was these, these subprime mortgages, um, the bonds that were the securitized housing bonds, mortgage bonds, were rated triple A. And people were like, well, how is this rated triple A? This is like a junk bond. Um, why would it be rated triple A? And I think, I believe this, um, uh, the companies, I think it was the banks that were funding Standard and Poor, right? So, yeah, Standard and Poor was the rating agency and they were the one sort of, um, funneling money

• 17:03Sam Parr?

  Exactly. It's the same thing. It's the same thing.

• 17:06Shaan Puri?

  And so they lost their, or they didn't actually lose it. They're still around. They're still one of the kind of main rating agencies, but like, that's a breach of, breach of trust, uh, when the only thing you're providing is trust as a service.

• 17:16Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's the same thing. So JD Power was sold to McGraw-Hill in two thousand and five for four hundred million dollars. And then it was sold again recently in two thousand and, uh, eight, nineteen, I think for north of a billion.

• 17:29Shaan Puri?

  Right. I've really been wanting to do the same thing. I look like you have, I've been wanting to create a credentialing agency. So, um, either in the standardized testing world, so like, you know, the way SAT, not, these, these things are a racket, because they can charge whatever the hell they want, because you need that credential to move forward. And these credentials were, you know, for the most part, all these credentials were just created at one point in time. And so I was looking into like, is there another credential that I could create? That literally all I'm providing is a stamp and I just get paid for, for, for the stamp.

• 18:03Sam Parr?

  Well, you know what I've always wanted to do that's similar is a vendor's list. So like Sean, if you're launching something, you're going to come to me because you think I know a little bit about copywriting and you're going to say, do you know any copywriters? And I'm gonna be like, I know one or two, but like they're hard to find. And so in my head, I'm like, I just gotta create Sam's list where it just have like approved vendors. And now

• 18:23Shaan Puri?

  This is the best.

• 18:23Sam Parr?

  What?

• 18:24Shaan Puri?

  Are you saying this is the best? Are you saying these are 10 that you should check out? Or are you saying this is the best one, like Wirecutter?

• 18:31Sam Parr?

  Well, I don't think you could do the best one because if you have the best copywriter, that person will always be busy. But like there are definitely like dozens or hundreds that you can approve. Um, I mean, I guess Angie's List was something similar and that's huge. Uh, but like I've always wanted to do this for copywriters in particular. I was, I, I, I almost bought Sam, I almost did Sam's List. And because people are always like, which copywriter should I do? I'm like, I don't know, man. Uh, I could post on my social media, but like it's a lot of work for me to go and find them for you.

• 19:05Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 19:05Sam Parr?

  But like the same thing with law firms, the same thing with accountants.

• 19:09Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 19:09Sam Parr?

  Um, I'm like, man, I gotta just create like a vendor's list of people who I know and approve of.

• 19:14Shaan Puri?

  That's cool. The version of this I wanted to do was around either IQ. So I was like, oh, okay. Like men's IQ, like can I basically create some bullshit test? That essentially labels people and that, you know, if you're in the top 5%, you get this extra little certificate. And so people would pay to be basically have that as

• 19:32Sam Parr?

  That's awesome.

• 19:32Shaan Puri?

  As a bragging right. Or I was also thinking about it for developers, like is there a, um, just an extra credential you could pay $39 to get? That basically says, yes, I know X language or I am competent, I have this level of competency at this thing. And, um, I'm really a big fan of if anyone's out there creating a credential, uh, you know, credentialing agency or trust as a service. I'm very, very interested in those because I think those are, um, beautiful, beautiful businesses, extremely easy to run, low cost, low risk. And the more you do it, the more powerful they become because the more you're, the more times you see JD power, even if you don't even fully know what it is, it's like, oh, we need to go get that. That's the, that's the standard.

• 20:10Sam Parr?

  So I just looked up Mensa while you were talking. They have a hundred and fifty, they're a nonprofit. It's a hundred and fifty thousand members and they do about four point eight million dollars a year in sales.

• 20:20Shaan Puri?

  Interesting.

• 20:20Sam Parr?

  Not that big.

• 20:21Shaan Puri?

  I wanted the backstory. Yeah, but like as a nonprofit, you never know, like what's the, what was their motive? How are they doing things?

• 20:26Sam Parr?

  Well, but you do know, dude, you can go and look up at all their, they have to file a for, a government form and you can see how much the, uh, how much they pay themselves, how much revenue and what their expenses are.

• 20:37Shaan Puri?

  Right. I guess, I guess what I'm saying is I haven't, I haven't done that part. Like the same thing can be done for athletes, by the way, like you know how NFL players go through the combine, which is basically this battery of tests. You run a forty yard dash, you do this, uh, bench press of a hundred eighty-five pounds, you do a vertical leap test. And so I really wanted, I, I really think that somebody could create a credentialing thing where you just have this facility in different cities and people pay to come in to get off officially tested to get their scores. And it's like, here's how good I am as an athlete. And then they use that when they're trying to basically like get on AAU teams or get college scholarships or whatever it is. It's like today, we only offer that to NFL players right before they get drafted. But I think that there should

• 21:18Shaan Puri?

  be a sort of, um, a standard service for athletes to say, hey, what's my reaction time? What's my agility test? What's my vertical?

• 21:25Sam Parr?

  I did that when I was a kid, uh, when I was in high school, I did the same thing. It was called Spark. And

• 21:31Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 21:31Sam Parr?

  Uh, S P A R Q. And the guy who created it was a ex, uh, he was a college, a very elite college runner in the seventies and eighties. I think his name was Rudy. Um, I forget his last, Rudy Chappa. I'm, I'm remembering it off the top of my head. Rudy Chappa, he was a, uh, uh, two miler from California at high school. He, I think he had the high school state record or high school national record for the two mile at like eight thirty something.

• 21:59Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 21:59Sam Parr?

  And, um, his name is Rudy Chappa. I think, am I right? Is his name Rudy Chappa?

• 22:03Shaan Puri?

  Uh, I'm on the website right now. I don't see, I haven't looked at his name, but yeah, this looks interesting.

• 22:07Sam Parr?

  And he

• 22:08Shaan Puri?

  Four hundred fitness tests.

• 22:09Sam Parr?

  And he was a Nike executive and then he created the Spark test. And what you did, it was very similar to a combine and it was, and I get it. I, I crushed it. It was a forty yard, forty yard dash, a broad jump, a vertical jump, um, how far you can throw a medicine ball.

• 22:26Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 22:27Sam Parr?

  And maybe that's it. And they would give you a score and that score and I went to this place called Velocity Sports and Velocity Sports was created by the coach of LSU Track and Field and it was a chain of gyms that you can go to for high school kids and run and shit like that. And the Velocity Sports must have paid Spark money to use it. And then when you applied to college, I would put my Spark score to get a scholarship.

• 22:53Shaan Puri?

  Yes, dude, that's exactly what I'm thinking about and I'm looking at their website now. It looks very basic, but this is interesting. I think there's a lot of unused facilities like track, track and field that are unused so much of the time that you could do this without CapEx probably, as long as you say like, you know, when you run a race and it's like, as long as the wind conditions are under this, then it's in a, this counts in the official thing.

• 23:16Sam Parr?

  Right.

• 23:16Shaan Puri?

  Um, so I bet you could use, you know, in the summertime, schools that are empty, you could use their track and field facilities and um, build a, build a program like this because now people with sports are, parents with sports have become so crazy. Um, where people are doing travel sports at like age six, age seven, you're paying thousands of dollars for your seven-year-old to play baseball and um, be on this like elite team. And this is like a multi-billion dollar industry, the travel sports industry. And I think all those people would be people who would want to get their kid tested and you could drive Facebook ads to say, hey, get your kid tested, here's your score, what's your score? And then every year you want it upgraded because it's like, oh, I've gotten stronger, faster and taller. So uh, I want my official measurements that are, that are sort of ratified.

• 23:59Sam Parr?

  And here's another example of this is uh, this is kind of funny. We're kind of ranting on this. I did zero research on this other than like, I didn't prepare for this, so.

• 24:08Shaan Puri?

  Me neither. I just thought of this idea while we were talking. That's how fucking great we are, dude. Just take a minute to appreciate that.

• 24:14Sam Parr?

  Do you know um, Gallup?

• 24:17Shaan Puri?

  I do know Gallup, yes.

• 24:18Sam Parr?

  Okay, so uh, wait, did my microphone, are we, is it good? Uh, okay, so Gallup is uh, is a um,

• 24:27Shaan Puri?

  Polling service, right?

• 24:28Sam Parr?

  Polling company created by this guy named Joseph Gallup, I think, and.

• 24:34Sam Parr?

  The another company or like a smaller company bought Gallup. And it was a family owned business and the founder of that company that bought Gallup. His name was, um, I forget his name exactly, but do you remember, um, StrengthsFinder?

• 24:51Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 24:52Sam Parr?

  The guy who owned the family business that bought Gallup, he is the author of StrengthsFinder.

• 24:58Shaan Puri?

  I see.

• 24:59Sam Parr?

  And so Strengths, StrengthsFinder, it's hard for me to say. They have a book that is popular, but it's even though it's popular, it doesn't make nearly the amount of money that the company makes. The company makes about a billion or $2 billion a year. It's privately owned. It's probably one of the largest privately owned companies in America, like top 200. And they have a quiz. So if you Google StrengthsFinder's quiz, it's a $29 or $49 quiz and it tells you where you rank on StrengthsFinder.

• 25:30Shaan Puri?

  Right, I've, I've taken it because somebody sent it to me. Jim Clifton's the name of the guy.

• 25:34Sam Parr?

  Jim Clifton, Jim Clifton, his dad, Jim Clifton was the CEO of Gallup.

• 25:38Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 25:39Sam Parr?

  And this was his thing. And so it was like a survey. They make hundreds of millions of dollars a year off that quiz.

• 25:44Shaan Puri?

  Yes, exactly. So I've taken StrengthsFinder's and I, this is when I was like, oh, this is just bullshit. Okay, gotcha. Like, first of all, it's a test you cannot fail. It's just saying, which of these strengths do you have? So you're just going to get one of the 25 strengths or whatever. It's like, here's the five you get. Leadership, determination, and you know, innovation and whatever. And then the other person gets like empathy and you know, you know, thoughtfulness and whatever else. So it's, it's pretty genius and they sell these to companies who wanna basically take these personality tests for leaders to say, hey, we want to understand our employees better, you want to understand your teammates better, and this will help you work together better. And, um, I believe StrengthsFinder's was doing like 100 million plus in revenue. I'd have to go double check that, but, um, but yeah, it's like a tremendously successful

• 26:29Shaan Puri?

  franchise and the book is really just a, it's like a code. You get in the book that says, go take this quiz online. Um, and then the book is like kind of useless beyond that, but you have to.

• 26:39Sam Parr?

  And that shit works really well using that book because, um, like I said, I've, I've kind of talked about this, me and Ramon, we own this, this, this, this software for to do lists and we get all of our signups practically because one guy who has a book mentioned our service.

• 26:58Sam Parr?

  And it gets silenced and the book's not even popular.

• 27:02Shaan Puri?

  That's amazing. Also, like we had talked about that person in our Facebook group, the My First Million Side Hustles Facebook group, basically, who is doing a chess tutoring service. Any niche sport or niche niche thing like chess, I don't know, there probably is already because chess is still widely established, but probably is already some sort of benchmark or test you take. But if I was him, I would basically create my own anyways, which is like, oh, by the way, for all my students, like once a year, we do this hundred dollar, you know, test and you get your chess chess Q score and what your chess Q score tells you your adaptability, your, you know,

• 27:39Shaan Puri?

  recognition, cognition, whatever. And, and it's not like total horse shit. You actually are testing to see how good they are at certain things. But I think it's a, it's just a very simple way to make a lot of money off of kind of vaporware. There's nothing physical you're doing there.

• 27:57Sam Parr?

  Vaporware in that it's real, but it's.

• 28:01Shaan Puri?

  It's lightweight. It's very simple to create. It's very simple to maintain. There's no like employees or assets you need to buy in order.

• 28:08Sam Parr?

  Well, because Sean, someone in the reviews, our latest review says that you and I are unethical and that you have to check your ethics at the door if you're going to listen to this podcast, which is totally bullshit. But I just want to make them aware that when you say vaporware, you mean it's real or it's substance, but.

• 28:25Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, vaporware is the wrong word for it. What I meant is a very lightweight thing to create and maintain and very low cost to create.

• 28:34Sam Parr?

  Another example of this is Doug Score. Do you know Doug Score?

• 28:37Shaan Puri?

  Never heard of it.

• 28:39Sam Parr?

  Dude, it's just this guy named Doug Demoro. He's this nerd, like he's like the nerdiest guy ever and he's got like four million subscribers on YouTube. And like, he's the type of guy who wears like a collared shirt, but like you can see his white undershirt sticking out. From, from like the sleeves, you know, people like, he's like,

• 28:58Shaan Puri?

  I know exactly what you're talking about.

• 28:59Sam Parr?

  He's like a sloppy, dirty guy, but he's amazing. He has a thing where he reviews cars and he creates a Doug score, which is based off of like, is this fun for a weekend car? Or is this fun for a daily driver? And now at this point, he's got a thousand cars that he's ranked. And I'm, when I'm buying my car now, I do it. I check the Doug score.

• 29:18Shaan Puri?

  Ah, I like that. Okay, that's cool. Like Kelly Blue Book for value and then Doug score for sort of enjoyment. I like that.

• 29:24Sam Parr?

  And Kelly, Kelly Blue Book, great example. Kelly Blue Book is a multi-billion dollar company.

• 29:29Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, but they, they provide a little different thing. They have just like a data set that they're able to use to, to, to give you a, a price comparison, which is like different than sort of an aptitude test. But nonetheless, I'm curious, um, do you think we are low ethics? Do you think you have a sort of a looser ethical, um, criteria than most people for business?

• 29:50Sam Parr?

  I think that we have a looser, um, attitude. Yes, but I think it's, it's significantly above the line of like, good. Like, like for example, most people are like, I can't pre-sell product that I don't have. And I'm like, in my head, I'm like, who cares? Just refund the people. And like, you haven't, you sound like, I'm not saying steal money. I'm saying advertise something that doesn't exist so you can get demand, improve demand. And then you refund the money. You don't, I'm not saying you steal from them, but yeah, you are lying. And so I think that's ethical.

• 30:24Shaan Puri?

  Right, yeah, I think we definitely have a, a looser definition than the average person. I would say the average, um, maybe the average business person even. But there is, you know, I think the, the, the problem here is there's no standards, right? There's no, there's no definition for what, what's ethical, what's not. It's completely subjective and judgmental. Um, and so the, the, the hard part is, you know, for us, we think there's a line between right and wrong. And we're on the right side. We, we, we think we have a safe margin of, of buffer where we're in the right. Uh, but for other people, their line might be in a different spot.

• 30:58Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but that's because most people aren't aggressive. But anything that I do, I would, I would suggest to my mom that she buy whatever I'm promoting. Or like, it's like, do I want my family to use this? Or, or if I told them about what I'm doing, would I, like, do I want to hide this?

• 31:14Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 31:14Sam Parr?

  And I don't, I'm, I'm, I'm. Anything that I can do, I'm not afraid to tell everyone.

• 31:19Shaan Puri?

  So I met this guy once. This guy had reached out to me about, we're building this product called Blab. And Blab was getting popular. This guy reached out. He said, hey, my name's Billy. I'm from, you know, I forgot where he's from, like Santiago or they're from Mexico or some somewhere in Latin. And he was like, I'm coming up to California. I'm coming to San Francisco. I want to meet you and I want to talk to you about this company. I was like, okay, I don't know about that. Like, most of the people who that are users of a product are not usually people I want to like do meetings with necessarily. But he said a bunch of stuff in his email that made him sound amazingly legit. He was like, my family started the first television station in Mexico. We, you know, I own all these different like music festivals. And he sounded like super legit.

• 32:02Shaan Puri?

  But his emails written with blue text font and like different sizes of text.

• 32:06Sam Parr?

  Oh, that was copy and paste.

• 32:08Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, so I was, well, no, no, not like that. Like, it was like, like he had chose, like, no, I'm gonna, my emails are blue. And not the like copy paste little purple thing. It was like, um, this was just his style. So I was like, I don't know if this guy's a joker or not. Anyways, we go out to dinner and I have very low hopes. We go to a sushi place and I walk in and I see probably the most handsome guy I've ever seen. And this guy, Billy, was extremely well put together. He's like in a suit and tie. Um, he looks legit. He, we sit down at the table. He orders the omakase, which is basically chef's choice, like $200 each sushi dinner. And he's like, I got this. Don't worry. And I'm like, okay, I'm starting to believe, but I, you know, could be, could still be someone who's faking it.

• 32:48Shaan Puri?

  And he starts telling me a story and this guy's completely legit. He's probably the most charismatic guy I've ever met my whole life. I was like, you know, if, if, if I swung that way, I'd be in love right now. Like this guy is amazing. So at the end of the dinner, I asked him a question. I said, hey, um, you know, you're a very persuasive guy. Like this was, you clearly are good at this, right? You're clearly very persuasive, very charming. I said, I used to think I'm that way till I met you, basically. I used to think I was in the sort of top tier of that. Um, but I always sort of had this hesitation of like, you know, should I use my, my powers for good or evil type of thing? Like, where do you draw the line on using this?

• 33:24Sam Parr?

  But this guy's legit? He was a real person?

• 33:25Shaan Puri?

  Completely legit, yes. And, and so he really was wealthy, very successful, very smart, very charming, all that good stuff. And so, um, I asked him, I said, you know, what do you think? He goes, my rule is this. He goes, If your intentions are good, then it's all fair game. And so he was like, he was like, it all that matters is the intent. If you're trying to scam people, if you're trying to con people, if you're trying to not deliver value, if you're trying to just get something that's a good situation for you and not for the other person, then you shouldn't be doing it. What you shouldn't be using all these powers of persuasion. He's like, but if you think you are genuinely going to help people, if you think you are generally in the right, if you think you're generally working for a good cause, if your mission is pure, if your intent is good, then it's all fair game. You should use it to the max.

• 34:08Shaan Puri?

  And I was like, all right, Billy, thank you very much for this incredible.

• 34:11Sam Parr?

  I completely agree with him. And if you study, you know, like persuasion and charm, and I use it in the form of copywriting. That's all, some people are born better, but it's a teachable skill. And I always tell people like, what I'm going to tell you, it's going to sound like evil. Like, I'm going to teach you how to manipulate people, but make sure you use it for good.

• 34:30Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 34:32Sam Parr?

  Because you can easily use this for bad.

• 34:34Shaan Puri?

  And you know what? Here's a, here's a weird counter to this. And this is where, you know, people are going to be like, okay, this guy's actually evil. Okay, so the other way of doing this, so the one way, one of the things is to say what you just said, which is use these powers for good. The other thing I've, I've been able to do is, is the opposite, which is when I see somebody do something for evil, but it works, I try to learn from it. And so, for example, remember the first time I saw, I'll give you a recent example first.

• 35:00Sam Parr?

  No, I completely agree.

• 35:01Shaan Puri?

  So Trump is somebody who I'm not a fan of. I think the guy is bad in all these different ways. But when I watch him, the guy is an incredibly effective communicator. And he's not polished. He doesn't use fancy $15 words. He doesn't have a lot of substance behind what he's saying. But the guy is like a, a master of, of communication. The guy knows how to get his point across in a way that resonates with people.

• 35:31Sam Parr?

  I completely agree.

• 35:32Shaan Puri?

  Scott Adams, who's the creator of Dilbert, was talking about this when Trump was running. If you haven't seen it, go read Scott Adams's blog. He's the creator of Dilbert, and he was early on, when Trump first announced his candidacy, Scott Adams called it, he goes, this guy's going to win. And people were like, what? He goes, I've been studying persuasion for 20 years. I've been studying hypnosis. I've been a communicator through cartoon. I know an effective communicator when I see one. This guy is a master. He goes, and so he would come up with whenever Trump would say things like, low energy Jeb or whatever, when he would like call Jeb Bush low energy. He was like, these are linguistic kill shots. These are, or when he would talk about the wall, he'd be like, it's a great big wall, a huge wall.

• 36:14Shaan Puri?

  And he's like, he's painting a picture in people's minds, which is much better than talking about policy. And so you can learn from people that you think are using it for negative.

• 36:22Sam Parr?

  He, and he called out that he was gonna win.

• 36:25Shaan Puri?

  He called that he was gonna win months before anybody even took him seriously. When 538 was like, this guy's got a 0% chance. Scott Adams was like, this guy's gonna win. And of course, if he was wrong, nobody would ever even really pay attention to it, because, you know, but when you're right on a contrary in prediction, you get all the credit. And the other example of this was Hitler. So Hitler, when Hitler was rising to power, I studied, how did this guy get so popular? What did this guy do? Because when you watch him speak, he's not a very compelling guy. But they did a lot of things. So one thing I remember that stood out to me is I was in seventh grade and I remember learning about this. And when Hitler was trying to rise to power, all the political campaign posters were all like full color, lots of text.

• 37:06Shaan Puri?

  People trying to explain their position on things. And Hitler went the other way. Everything he did was black and white, which would be normally, it would not stand out. But he was like, well, I will contrast everybody else who's using tons of color on their stuff. I'll go black and white. The second thing was he would use only like big images and like really powerful images and not a bunch of text. And then he would use movies as propaganda and, you know, fill the cinema with people to watch a movie, but it was very much a propaganda thing behind it. So even though he used it for evil, those techniques and principles are interesting to learn from for me as somebody who wants to, you know, have a strong toolkit that I can use for good.

• 37:42Sam Parr?

  I completely agree. I was reading, I've been going on so many Wikipedia. Holes now that I'm home so much. I was reading about, uh, I read Hitler's Wikipedia because I was reading about World War II and it looked like, I was reading about the mafia and then World War II and then like, uh, it was like, he's, there is like, his rise to power was because he, uh, like would speak at these, uh, I don't know what, what the equivalent of is now, but just like halls where he, like bars, like veteran halls. And I'm like, wait a minute, he started as a speaker? That's it?

• 38:18Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 38:19Sam Parr?

  It was kind of crazy.

• 38:20Shaan Puri?

  Um, so, okay, a couple of things, we'll, we'll switch topics because people now are like, what, these guys are saying Trump and Hillary are good. I don't understand. Um, okay. So I have an idea for you. So, um, I call this my new Lambda School idea. Um, have you ever, do you guys have like an office administrator or office admin? I don't know if you guys are.

• 38:38Sam Parr?

  We have, yeah, I mean, we have someone who handles stuff. Yes.

• 38:41Shaan Puri?

  And do.

• 38:42Sam Parr?

  Like an HR and things like that.

• 38:44Shaan Puri?

  Right. I'm talking more like, um, so admin work or like an executive assistant or secretary. Do you have anybody like that? Have you ever? So recently, um, I'm, uh, at my work, we're hiring an EA, right? So we had an EA, she left, we had to hire a new executive assistant. And so, um, they put me on the hiring panel and I'm like, okay, I don't even know what questions I'm supposed to ask. Like, I, I, I don't really know what the background I should be looking for, all that stuff. So I started thinking about this, started looking it up. So it turns out that, um, office administrators or, or secretaries or, or executive administrators, uh, EAs is one of the most popular jobs in the country. Um, and it's also something where, so there's about, you know, uh, let's say 600,000, I

• 39:27Shaan Puri?

  think in the U S. Um, and they pay pretty well. Uh, so it doesn't require tons of specialized skill. It's pretty much anybody can learn to do this if you're, you know, somewhat competent. But you can make 50, 60, 70, 80 K, um, doing this. I thought, that's a pretty good paying job. And I know at our company, the EAs, they're critical. Um, they do such an amazing job. They, they're, they, they help and all the senior leaders do what they do. And so I started thinking about this and I said, could there be a Lambda School for EA's? Because I think this is something that in three months, you could teach people the core skills that you need around calendaring, booking, travel, you know, note taking, all the different sort of core components that you need to do to do this job well. You know, it's not rocket science. You just need to learn the tools and learn the sort of do's and don'ts.

• 40:11Shaan Puri?

  And then I think companies, when, you know, like us, when we're hiring for this, there's no like school or degree that you look at where you're like, oh, because you have this degree, you're going to do a good job. And so it's usually like, do you already have experience doing this or not? But that's a catch 22 because how do you break in if everyone wants to hire for somebody who already has experience doing it? And so I'm thinking that you could create a program that tells, offers people who says, hey, in three months, we can train you for a job that'll pay you 50, 60 or 70 K a year. And it's a job that has good, you know, work-life balance and all these other characteristics of it. And so, and you could use the Lambda School model where you take an income share agreement. You say, great, I'm training people for three months.

• 40:53Shaan Puri?

  It costs me $3,000 to do this remote virtual school, but I make back, you know, up to 15K, 17K per candidate that gets placed into a job over time. What do you think of this idea?

• 41:05Sam Parr?

  Fucking love it. And I'm looking it up right now. orgorg.co. Have you heard of orgorg?

• 41:11Shaan Puri?

  No, that's a hilarious name though.

• 41:13Sam Parr?

  We use it. Um, let's see how big their team is. That can kind of tell us how big they are. But okay, what orgorg is, is it's a community slash, community slash, uh, job board. It's like a, I don't know how you would describe it in one word. It's a, orgorg is a 100% volunteer run organization. We have jog board, blogs, resources. We have private groups, an email list, and it's all for HR and executive assistants. Office manager, HR departments and DIY, uh, admin assistant, like, you know, whatever.

• 41:51Sam Parr?

  And so, our old EA was on this, and it was an email list. And they would send out blasts like, "Hey, I'm looking for the best IT person. Our company's small, we only have a budget of $2,000. Who do you recommend?" Or, like, when I wanted to hire a new EA, I had a friend post a listing on there, and I got tons of applicants. What I would do with your idea is I would either buy... This company, man, the lady who runs this, I forget her name, but she could be making millions off of this. But I don't think she is. I bet she's making hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, I would buy that. I would buy that.

• 42:31Shaan Puri?

  Buy it or become the platinum sponsor for a fair rate, and use it for the sort of the user acquisition. And there's this powerful thing, because once you build the brand that, hey, yeah, it's like a staffing agency, right? But it's a big internet version of a staffing agency. And once you place some people, two good things happen. The first is, you get a reputation that says, "Hey, our EA's have been hired by company A, B, C, D, E, and we've become a trustworthy source for good EA's." But then also, right now, all the candidates in our current EA pipeline came from our existing EA's, people they knew from their network. And so, your alumni become your hiring partners. And so, the more alumni you place, the more opportunities you have for your own graduates.

• 43:14Shaan Puri?

  And so, I think that's like the real power of the Lambda School model. And unlike developers...

• 43:19Sam Parr?

  Well, okay, so the Lambda School model, you gotta break that shit down. Lambda School model, you're saying you train them for free, and then you get a percentage of their salary?

• 43:27Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 43:28Sam Parr?

  Do you love that model for everything?

• 43:30Shaan Puri?

  Not for everything necessarily, but I think when you have a low cost of training, it's a great model, because it reduces the friction to join, because you say, "Well, it's free." And so, I only have to pay them if I get a high-paying job out of this. So, your incentives are aligned, right? Because we want you to get a high-paying job, but you came to us to get a high-paying job. We only get paid if you get a high-paying job. And if you get a high-paying job, this is a reasonable payback for us providing that service to you. And so, I think any place where you have a low cost of training, this is a very good mechanism. It's just a debt mechanism. It gets a lot of hype, but really, it's just a debt vehicle. But I think it's a good debt vehicle for this.

• 44:11Sam Parr?

  Let's, oh, why don't you bring up this Xavier Neal story?

• 44:14Shaan Puri?

  Okay, yes, all right, so Xavier Neal, I'm sorry, I feel like I've been talking most of this.

• 44:18Sam Parr?

  That's okay, it's really interesting.

• 44:21Shaan Puri?

  So Xavier Neal is my new favorite billionaire. So this is my second section, this is my segment of the show called My New Favorite Rich Guy. So this guy is essentially like an Elon Musk type of dude in France. But instead of trying to send rockets to Mars, this guy just operates in his own style, but he's got the same kind of, what I call like no fucks given attitude, like a Branson or an Elon Musk. And I'd never heard of this guy. So I'll tell you how I discovered him. So I discovered him because he created this thing called 42. Have you ever heard of the school called 42?

• 44:53Sam Parr?

  Um, no. So wait, so he's in France?

• 44:56Shaan Puri?

  He's in France. He, so I'll tell you his kind of like life story. So age 19, he creates this business called Minitel. Minitel is essentially a sex hotline, a phone service, you know, you call, so call like sort of a sex line. And at 19, he creates this thing and it goes gangbusters. And so he's doing really well, makes a few million bucks off this. Then he either creates or invests and buys a stake in something called WorldNet, sold a few years later for 50 million bucks, right before the dot com crash. And then his big thing that he did was he created this thing called Free. And Free was like a T-Mobile, it's like a mobile carrier. And at the time in France, all like SMS, phone plans are all very expensive. So he created, he undercut everybody. He created

• 45:41Shaan Puri?

  the like lowest cost way to have, you know, a cellular service. And so Free became this huge company. And so his net worth ballooned to like 6.6 billion dollars.

• 45:52Sam Parr?

  I'm looking him up now. This guy's my favorite person ever.

• 45:55Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, and he's, he's very legit. And so he was like, all right, look, what do I want to do now? I want to do more baller shit. And so he was like, okay, I'm going to create this thing called 42. So he was like, I'm going to create a computer science school with no teachers and no staff. So all he did was create this dope facility with a bunch of computers. And if you get into 42, you just come and the computer is your lesson plan. So it's like a video game. There's like a challenge. It's like, hey, you need to make a website that can do X, Y, and Z. And you're like, okay. And it's like, you have the internet and you have some people next to you. And like, you guys need to figure out how to get past this level. And so you start doing the program. So it's self-serve. You do it. You do a bunch of like projects to level up. Plus you create your own, you know, like projects or ideas. So somebody created,

• 46:38Shaan Puri?

  I don't know, like, somebody could create like a coronavirus tracker right now because that's a timely little website you could do.

• 46:44Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I'm looking it up now. They have 2,500 students.

• 46:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, and it's actually closed right now because the physical facility closed here, but it was a wild idea. I don't even know how successful it's been. I don't think it's been a wild success, but I love his bet. So he was like, yeah, I'm gonna put 150 million dollars into this. So he built one in France, and he built one here in Fremont for 100 million dollars in California. And it was just like, so what a radical idea, what a way to bet your money and try to like, change the world over and over and over again. And then he did this thing in France. He's like, okay, how do I build the like startup ecosystem here? So he created this thing called Station F. And if you look at this thing, it's like the fucking NASA facility. It's like this huge,

• 47:27Shaan Puri?

  huge, like, I don't know how many football fields long office or hangar or co-working space. And he's like, all right, I'm gonna make the dopest place for any investor to come when they're in Europe. Here, here's some space to go hang out. Entrepreneurs, you're starting companies, come over here and build your company. Here's an office space. Restaurants, come here at the bottom. Fill this place up. You know, gym, whatever. So he created his own little oasis, kinda like Tony Hsieh did in Vegas. This guy did in France.

• 47:53Sam Parr?

  This guy's amazing. What I-

• 47:55Shaan Puri?

  I just love this guy's style.

• 47:56Sam Parr?

  So first of all, I looked it up now. He's not perfect. 2004, he was indicted and detained for a month for misuse of company assets, which occurred in several of his sex shops that he was a shareholder in. And he ended up getting a two-year suspended prison sentence for misuse of company assets. So he's certainly not perfect. I don't know. I'm just reading off this one thing, though. In addition to all this, he owns the rights to the song "My Way" by Frank Sinatra, which I love. He owns one of the largest newspapers in France. It was a super interesting guy. Well, I'm curious about people like this. And Andrew Wilkinson's gonna be on the pod. Is he gonna be on Miss Tousan?

• 48:34Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, the next episode, basically.

• 48:36Sam Parr?

  So Andrew, kinda, Andrew, not exactly, but kinda does this in the same way as well. And so we have to ask him about this. What I wanna know is how do these people manage so many freaking projects?

• 48:47Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 48:48Sam Parr?

  Cause like, I, I can't even manage what I have on my plate and like-

• 48:52Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 48:54Shaan Puri?

  So for example, so they, you know, they hire, they hire people to run their shit, right? So like, I worked with a guy, Michael Birch, who's kind of like this, like billionaire type of dude. And he created this incubator with this totally different model, or everybody owns all the equity in all the projects. And, you know, he picked me to run this, run the show for him. So he tried, and he trusted me, he was pretty hands off. We checked in, but like, he let me run the show. So I was looking at this guy Xavier Neal, and he's got somebody, this woman from Google, who runs Station F, the big, the big facility. He's got somebody who runs his investment fund. And the guy, that guy was telling the story, he goes, you know, um, we don't have board meetings, but I was like, uh, Xavier, don't you want to know what I'm doing with your fund? And he's like, yeah, for sure, tell me. And he's like, um, he, he goes, I told him, I said, hey, we invest in all these companies.

• 49:38Shaan Puri?

  I think we should double down on these winners and, uh, make, make less small investments and do more on the winning companies.

• 49:44Sam Parr?

  And what did he say? Okay.

• 49:46Shaan Puri?

  He goes, he goes, I'm not, I'm not doing this to make more money. I'm doing this to make more companies, invest in more companies. And the guy was like, what? He's like, he's like, you could double down, but don't stop investing in new, in like new small, small companies. Uh, and then the other thing that they talked about in his thing, kind of like what you're saying, how do you manage this? They're showing like, uh, the guy showed his email inbox, all the emails from this guy. And I've noticed this, a lot of wealthy, busy people, their emails look like text messages. So like, this guy will write them a long email about like, hey, we're thinking about this plan, here's what we could do, here's.

• 50:17Sam Parr?

  Their plan is like, okay, cool.

• 50:19Shaan Puri?

  It's literally, it's up to you, all good. And it's like, up, the number two, the letter U, and then all good.

• 50:28Sam Parr?

  Where do I see this screenshot?

• 50:29Shaan Puri?

  Uh, there, there was a story, I think it was like a Forbes or Bloomberg story or something about this guy. Um, and they, they, they put that, put that in there. But I think this is a pretty common thing amongst the people who do a lot of stuff.

• 50:39Sam Parr?

  I guess it's kind of like, if I buy like, uh, like I've talked about how I'm, I'm gonna buy like a, just a toy car, like a fun car. I guess it'd be like the equivalent of me buying like a $10,000 car and like letting someone use it. And it's like, dude, I don't care, just make sure it comes back in one piece.

• 50:52Shaan Puri?

  Right. So, you know, the thing, I, I guess the thing I want to clarify, because when Andrew's coming on on Tuesday, I'm, I like Andrew for the same reason I like this guy. And they're totally different, right? Andrew's not gone to jail and didn't start a sex hotline and is not a billionaire, like.

• 51:06Sam Parr?

  Well, we don't know that for sure.

• 51:07Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 51:08Sam Parr?

  This guy, and this guy has about 20 years on Andrew, so give him time.

• 51:13Shaan Puri?

  Uh, but I guess like the thing, the, the thing that stands out to me is I respect above all else. People who do shit their own way, people who have their own, they are original thinkers and decide to live life on their own terms, that's kind of what I got out of this guy is I think, I feel like this guy, Branson, Elon Musk, the thing I like about them, and they're definitely have lots of flaws and lots of messed up things that they do, but I just respect that they don't just follow a normal societal playbook, they live life on their own terms, they basically, you know, martial be their own drum or whatever, that's what I like about them, that's what I like about Andrew, he's done it completely his way, which is very non-traditional.

• 51:53Sam Parr?

  Do you think this guy speaks good English?

• 51:55Shaan Puri?

  This French guy?

• 51:56Sam Parr?

  Yeah, let's uh-

• 51:58Shaan Puri?

  I bet he's alright.

• 51:59Sam Parr?

  Let's fucking email him.

• 52:01Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 52:02Sam Parr?

  I'm looking at him now, I mean, I would, if you're French, I mean, if you're a magnet like this, I would imagine you speak some English, but is he a, I don't know if he speaks good enough English to be on this.

• 52:16Shaan Puri?

  I'm sure he speaks, I'm sure, we'll learn French dude, we will, we will make it happen if we need to.

• 52:21Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it'll be like Yoel Romero on Joe Rogan, where he just has a translator on the podcast.

• 52:27Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 52:28Sam Parr?

  I'm down, I would love to do this, and this guy's in cahoots with this other guy who, I don't want to say his name because it's too embarrassing if I pronounce, if I try to say it, because he's French, but it's Bernard Arnault, do you know who that is?

• 52:43Shaan Puri?

  I don't know.

• 52:44Sam Parr?

  He owns LVMH.

• 52:45Shaan Puri?

  Oh, okay.

• 52:46Sam Parr?

  I'll tell you really quick, he's, usually goes back and forth with Gates and a few of these other guys, that's the richest guy in the world, he, LVMH, it stands for Louis Vuitton, something, but they own Chanel, they own Louis Vuitton, they own, it's the largest luxury group in the world, they own, what's the Rihanna?

• 53:07Shaan Puri?

  Fenty, yeah.

• 53:08Sam Parr?

  Yeah, they own that, so, the way he started it was, his father was wealthy and they owned a construction business, and-

• 53:15Sam Parr?

  It was big, but it wasn't like billionaire big, but I think they sold it for like $20 million in in the 60s, which is a lot of money. That I mean, that's probably the equivalent of 20 million. That's probably the equivalent of 100 million now. So it's a lot of money. And so anyway, he convinced his father when this guy Bernard was in his 20s and he goes, Dad, we gotta divert, we gotta sell our construction business and buy luxury goods. Cause when I went to New York, they all knew what Chanel was, but that's not even a big company. And so he goes, let's, let's fucking buy Chanel. And so they bought Chanel for a small sum, millions of dollars, but not what it's worth now. And then he runs it and he starts buying more and more and more. So he turned a construction company into the owner of Louis Vuitton and

• 54:00Shaan Puri?

  Dude, they own a lot of shit. So let me just throw off some names. So they own Belvedere, they own Hennessy, they own Dior, they own Fenty, they own Fenty, they own Tag, they own Hublot, they own Moet, they own, I mean, this is, this is like, uh, like, I don't know a luxury brand that's not on this list.

• 54:19Sam Parr?

  Yeah, they own it all. Like, do they, but then like Gucci, I think Gucci is its own brand.

• 54:24Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, like the AB and Bev where it's like, two companies own like all the other sub-companies.

• 54:31Sam Parr?

  Yeah, well, this freaking guy did it and he, it started as a construction business.

• 54:36Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 54:36Sam Parr?

  And this doesn't happen that much anymore, but this is what I love about business before, for some reason, it seemed like this happened, this used, this used to happen a lot more. The Chinese are notorious for doing this, where they diversify like crazy.

• 54:50Shaan Puri?

  So I don't think this doesn't happen more. I think this is just something that happens on like a 50-year horizon. And so it's just hard for us who like, we're just for five years, we've just been furiously looking at this for 10 years, uh, to see these things that are playing out over 50 or 100-year arcs, right?

• 55:05Sam Parr?

  I agree, I agree with you, but I've studied a handful of Chinese companies that were launched in the 90s and 2000s and they are like crazy about doing that.

• 55:15Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 55:17Sam Parr?

  Where like they would start something and like two years later, they own like apartment buildings. It's like, what the heck? That's not even like, and, and the Japanese have done it as well. They have a name for it. I don't want to pronounce it because I don't want to butcher. I don't even know how to say it. It starts with a K. Kazu, I think.

• 55:33Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 55:34Sam Parr?

  And it, and it's basically, it's kind of like how, do you know how Yamaha makes motorcycles, pianos and chainsaws and power blow? It's kind of like that. Like they like are known for doing that.

• 55:45Shaan Puri?

  And so what do you, okay, so I was saying, what I respect the most-

• 55:48Sam Parr?

  SoftBank did it too.

• 55:49Shaan Puri?

  Right. So what I was saying was, what I respect the most is people who, who, you know, create their own playbook on how they want to live their life and-

• 55:56Sam Parr?

  I agree.

• 55:57Shaan Puri?

  Pull it off. What, what would be your, because like, I think you kind of like the like mogul types. You love researching. What do you think is like your highest, highest bit thing you respect?

• 56:08Sam Parr?

  People who, the, the same, you said it best. I agree with what you said. People who, um, people who look at the world and be like, yeah, I get it. The world's this way. I'm going to bend the world to make it my way though.

• 56:20Shaan Puri?

  And have you, uh, like in your own small way, do you think, have you done that? Like, what's an example of where you've bent the world into working the way you want it to work?

• 56:27Sam Parr?

  I think that, so I'm from Missouri. I think that some of my friends from Missouri think that I have done that. Um, I do not think that I have done that.

• 56:36Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 56:37Sam Parr?

  But I think give it time and I will.

• 56:38Shaan Puri?

  I think some of the things you did with the hustle were like that. So for example, um, you didn't go the VC route. In fact, you did some weird shit like crowdfunding and other stuff along the way. Um, and from the beginning, I think you, I remember you distinctly saying, because I was like, why don't you do Facebook? You know, why don't you do video? Why don't you Snapchat? This is hot. And you were like, no, I want to do email because that's my own little pirate ship that I can own. And I'm not, I'm not dependent on any other platform. I want to make my own pirate ship and I want to get my pirate ship to be a big fucking pirate ship. And I just never really heard anyone- Talk like that or think like that where they were so specific around the like the path to victory.

• 57:21Sam Parr?

  Dude, I have a video like I'm normally I try not to brag on myself because I think I got a lot of flaws. But the way our company is shaping now, I made a video in 2015 and I outlined what was going to happen. And it is 100% happening exactly like that.

• 57:37Shaan Puri?

  Where's that video?

• 57:38Sam Parr?

  It's on YouTube. If you Google the Hustle Seed Invest, I explained, I go, we're going to build to a million people. We're going to profit from advertising and we're going to use all that profit to build more stuff. And we're going to sell that stuff and then we're going to build more media around it. And it is happening exactly. And do you know how you said pirate ship? Let me show you something. Hold on. Let me show you something. Stay there.

• 57:57Shaan Puri?

  All right.

• 57:59Sam Parr?

  So I'm off camera, so I'm going to show you why. You're going to see what I'm doing.

• 58:06Shaan Puri?

  So Sam just dropped his pants. I'm looking at a giant pirate ship tattoo on his thigh.

• 58:14Shaan Puri?

  When did you get that?

• 58:16Sam Parr?

  In 2000, like right around when I was telling you about the company, I got a pirate ship and it says bold, fast, fun.

• 58:22Shaan Puri?

  So you basically you tattooed your business plan under your thigh?

• 58:26Sam Parr?

  Yes, I love it. I tell everyone I go email list is our pirate ship and every email is a little bit of wind in our sails.

• 58:33Shaan Puri?

  I love it. That's great. Okay, we got to end on that. That's a classic. I should have taken a screenshot of that one. Okay, so we will see you guys Tuesday. We're going to have Andrew on. When we say Tuesday, that's when we record these come out.

• 58:46Sam Parr?

  I look like a freaking loose cannon right now with a mohawk and tattoos. I'm not actually like that.

• 58:52Shaan Puri?

  All right, man. I will. We'll catch you later.

• 58:54Sam Parr?

  Okay.

• 59:22Shaan Puri?

  The.

• 1:01:32Shaan Puri?

  The.

• 1:03:49Shaan Puri?

  The.