#64 - Trapped Data Creating Unicorns, Billionaire Punches Punk Kid & Missing Out on $5M

Sam (@thesamparr) and Shaan (@shaanvp) are back on Zoom to talk Sam's new crush and honorary guest Andrew Wilkinson (6:00), $40M a year consulting king Sam Ovens (10:32), Shaan's experience being initiated into the Tony Robbins religion (15:27), Shaan's operating framework for life bible (21:52), Billionaire's of the week (yes, double): Michael Loeb & Richard Barton (26:45), Billion dollar idea playbook: What industries lack transparency? (40:41), Shaan missing out on making $5 million (45:24) and The Hustle making new podcasts - Go check out Moiz Ali's new podcast Exit Strategy! (54:51). 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.

• 0:00Sam Parr?

  All right, everyone, we have Jordan Harbinger on, and I'm gonna tell you why. So, we get a lot of people asking us questions on how to do different things that we talk about in the podcast, and that's great. And we do the same thing, Sean and I. And one of the folks we turn to on a regular basis, I'm texting him all the time, is Jordan Harbinger. So, Jordan, he's had podcasts for 13 years now. He's been in the top 100 for almost that entire time. And he's got a great pod called The Jordan Harbinger Show, where he talks about social engineering. In particular, he teaches Navy SEALs how to do social engineering. He teaches intelligence agencies, special operations. It's incredibly fascinating. He dives deep with his guests to learn how they think, why they think, and it's really, really, really fascinating, and it's something that I've been listening to for years.

• 0:41Sam Parr?

  But he has one episode that's incredibly fascinating to me, and that's about the guy from Catch Me If You Can, Frank Abagnale. Is that his name, Jordan?

• 0:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, Frank Abagnale, he's a fascinating character. He came on the show, and we spent a long time talking about the psychology behind how he was able to trick so many people. So, to refresh people's memory, he posed as an airline pilot, which is kinda terrifying, a doctor, and an attorney. All of these are pretty specialized. You know, look, if you were just pretending to know how to stock shelves at a grocery store, like, that is something where somebody who does that for a living could probably catch you, but a normal person might not have any idea. Now, when you're pretending to be a doctor, the stakes are pretty high, man. You know, law, kind of trickier to pass the bar exam, that kinda thing. So, the airline pilot, of course, is the, really takes the cake.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  He did this all in his 20s, and we spent a ton of time on The Jordan Harbinger Show discussing and dissecting the concepts behind why people believed him. These same concepts work even now. He's told us that it's actually easier now for fraud, scams, con men to operate than it was back then. Because you'd think, "Oh, now we have computers, we can verify everything." Back then, they didn't have that, the communication took longer. Now, though, people trust the machines too much, so you can trick people, and you can trick machines. Things just got even more complicated, and that's what he does now, is teaches law enforcement, FBI, and citizens like you and I how to avoid common scams and fraud, all, of course, while dissecting the psychology behind it. So, I loved this episode, it was one of my favorites.

• 2:15Sam Parr?

  I remember watching this movie years ago and then I immediately read the book and I was fascinated. I'm a schemer and I like building businesses and just what I call scheming. I like doing things and whenever you see someone doing something like this, I mean, they romanticized it and made it sound like it was kind of cool to go and become a pilot. And so he kind of used it a little bit for evil. But what are some techniques and tactics and strategies that he used to persuade people that you think people now should capitalize on?

• 2:44Speaker 01

  So something that he used that I actually, to a certain degree, also used in my twenties is the element of fear. And now, look, I don't mean you're scaring people and pulling guns on them and making them freak out. But for example, I used to talk my way into concerts before I could afford to go to them. And the way that I did that was I would show up and say, hey, I am from this magazine, from this German website or whatever. And people would say like, well, I don't have anything on that. I have no reservation for you. And I would say, oh, well, that's okay. I, what's your name? Juliana? Okay, I just want to make sure because I'm going to go home, go back to my hotel and get some rest. But I don't want to get in trouble from my editor. So I'm just going to be like, yeah, Juliana didn't have my reservation on her sheet.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  And she'd go, uh, hold on a second because nobody wants their name pinned to a failure in a business. So she'd go get her manager. I'd give him the same spiel and then the guy would go, you know, he's doing the calculation in his head, right? He's going, either I don't let this person in and possibly the owner gets mad at me because this media guy came from Germany and was supposed to be doing this thing and it didn't happen. Or I just let him in and it's no skin off my nose. So they can do the calculation in their head. Now, an amateur person will try to explain and force you to do that calculation by explaining it to you and being explicit. If you can get people to think it's their idea and that's how they solve the problem, then that's the security hole, right?

• 4:11Speaker 01

  And it's kind of like sales, except for you're trying to unsell them on a certain idea and then you get them to push the issue forward. Now, that's a simplification, but that's essentially what he did in many ways in order to pose as a doctor, a lawyer. And an airline pilot, he learned jargon so that he sounded more believable. And we can find, we can do the same thing. If you know how to talk in the language of the target, you are going to have a huge advantage in terms of being believed. A lot of military people find this. You'll say that, you'll see that military people can find who's posing as an intelligence agent or special operator by the words that they use. So if you can master that vernacular, you go automatically behind the circle of trust,

• 4:56Speaker 01

  right? They start believing you because you talk, walk, act, speak like them. That's dangerous mental fallacy to fall into.

• 5:03Sam Parr?

  God, that's so fascinating. I'm just, I'm sitting here just licking my chops at how I want to apply this. I really appreciate you coming on. So there's no money being exchanged here. We're promoting this because Jordan is, is an amazing guy and has helped us grow this podcast, but also I've been listening to him for years. And so this isn't, don't take this lightly. We, we love this guy. Jordan, how can people find you?

• 5:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can find me anywhere you get your podcasts. Just search for the Jordan Harbinger Show, or you can Google the Jordan Harbinger Show, or go to jordanharbinger.com.

• 5:33Sam Parr?

  I appreciate it, man. This is awesome.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 5:46Shaan Puri?

  We're back. Another episode of the greatest podcast ever created. My First Million.

• 5:54Sam Parr?

  What's going on? How are you?

• 5:56Shaan Puri?

  I'm thriving. I'm actually really hot in this room, but I'm thriving.

• 6:00Sam Parr?

  You want to talk about Andrew Wilkinson? Cause I've been thinking about him a lot.

• 6:04Shaan Puri?

  He's on your mind? You got a crush?

• 6:06Sam Parr?

  Is he on your mind?

• 6:09Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I mean, we did an episode with him. I thought he was great. I think he's great. And the reaction was great. So that's triple great from my end. What, what's on your mind?

• 6:18Sam Parr?

  I just think he's great. And same thing as you. I just think that he was smart, good attitude. I think that the reason I like talking to him is because I'm in San Francisco, there's this... Constant mindset that I'm so thankful that I've surrounded myself with, which is all these people who like have these ideas. And some of them are really dumb ideas and they raise a lot of money for them and they become huge. And some of the dumb ideas become awesome. And that's fantastic. And a lot of the dumb ideas remain dumb and just a lot of money was wasted. And there's just a lot of mentality, things that are in San Francisco that I love. But a lot of it has downsides and it's nice to hear something from Andrew, who just totally does not do anything that I'm used to and I love it.

• 7:00Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I also like how he's kind of a one man crew. Like I know he obviously has CEOs for his companies and it sounds like he has a partner, but

• 7:09Shaan Puri?

  like I read his blog, that's him writing. Uh, when we're, you know, when we're talking on the phone, the strategy is, uh, like he thought it was, he was an original thinker. Uh, so he, he basically decided how he wanted to live his life. And then lived his life that way. And his decision was his. It was not like, oh, I just chose of these five popular paths. I picked path four. Uh, it's like, no, he picked path seven, which was just a path that, you know, him and a few other people have made for themselves.

• 7:38Sam Parr?

  Yeah. I just always think it's great to hear from people who do things totally different than what you think you should be doing. And it's just nice to hear, uh, he has a fresh perspective.

• 7:49Shaan Puri?

  And for those who don't know, didn't listen, didn't care, uh, the things in my opinion that he did differently, sort of like, okay, where did he?

• 7:56Sam Parr?

  Why don't you say who Andrew is?

• 7:57Shaan Puri?

  Oh yeah. So Andrew, he owns this company called Tiny. If you go to tinycapital.com, you could see it. And, uh, he's trying to do the sort of Warren Buffett model where he buys what he thinks are wonderful businesses. He plans to hold them for a long time. He has operators who run them and he has a holding company that owns all of them. And sort of the net value is, you know, over a hundred million dollars for these companies now. He's, he basically had.

• 8:20Sam Parr?

  And the way that he financed it was he started an agency when he was 19. He's probably 33, 34 now.

• 8:25Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 8:26Sam Parr?

  And so that's been like a little cash cow.

• 8:28Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. So started that agency kind of in his parents' basement type of thing. Did that for many years, like, I don't know, a decade or so. And then, um, got it to the point where he had a bunch of free cash. So he's like, okay, what do I do with this money? And decided to invest it in buying businesses. So what, the way I think he zigged when everyone else zagged was, um, The Canada decision, so contrary, you know, sort of conventional wisdom is you gotta be in Silicon Valley, you gotta be in New York, LA, wherever the hubs are. And he was like, no, I'm gonna live where I wanna live and I'm gonna take advantage of some of the arbitrage opportunities of, you know, he charged San Francisco rates to his companies he was doing designs for, but he paid his people, you know, local rates for doing the work that

• 9:11Shaan Puri?

  they were doing. And so his agency was wildly profitable and that compounded over like a decade, which is great. So Canada was one contrary decision. The other one was buying businesses versus building them. So building businesses, very sexy, heroic, you're a genius, you're Steve Jobs, buying, you know, a business that does $2 million in revenue and $1 million of EBITDA, you don't get that same sort of props. But his take was like, I think that building is sort of fun and he still does it, but overrated and over indexed on versus buying where there's way more opportunities. So I thought that was another one.

• 9:48Sam Parr?

  And I went to Canada. I went and hung out with him for a couple of days. We almost did business together and I was like, oh, I can't find a flight to directly to Victoria. So Andrew lives in Victoria, which is like a, it feels like a small European town. I don't know how many people live there, maybe 300,000, maybe less, actually, maybe 200,000. And I was like, I can't find a direct flight. He goes, it's okay, we'll get you up here. And he chartered a jet for me to fly there. And it was awesome. It was great. So I'm happy I'm friends with him.

• 10:22Shaan Puri?

  For that reason alone, I'm happy you're friends with him. Yeah, he's a good guy. I think we should have him on the podcast like once a month at the minimum and he should just be a friend of the show.

• 10:32Sam Parr?

  Do you want to talk about something that I found on the internet that I think is, I don't know if it's real or not?

• 10:39Shaan Puri?

  Tell me more.

• 10:40Sam Parr?

  Okay, so there's this guy named Sam Ovens. Have you heard of this person?

• 10:45Shaan Puri?

  You know, you had mentioned his name and I was like, Sam Ovens, never heard of it. It sounds like a fake name. And then I Googled him and I saw his face. I was like, oh, I've seen this guy on my Facebook feed. This guy advertises a lot. So tell me about, I don't know much about him, but tell me about him.

• 10:57Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So the way it started was he's a New Zealand guy. He's maybe thirty years old and he started what he claims is a consulting consulting business, which basically he would talk to small barbers or I don't know what type of small companies, small local things that wanted more leads. And he would help them like optimize the app or something like that. And I think that that was mildly successful. And from there, he goes, well, I'm just going to teach other companies how to do this. Uh, and so he created a course and he named it consulting.com. And at this point now, there's three courses. So the first course is creating a consulting business, which is like you do stuff for local companies like, um,

• 11:39Shaan Puri?

  Teaches you how to be a consultant.

• 11:41Sam Parr?

  Yeah, teaches, his course teaches you how to be a consultant. And obviously that's like the model is you make more money teaching people than actually doing the thing. And so he, uh, it's cost two grand and he started making money off that. Then that teaches you how to go from zero to some sustainable business. And then from there, there's a $5,000 course, which teaches you how to go from a hundred, $500,000 company to a some million dollar company. And then there's a higher end, which is 50 grand, and that teaches you how to go from one million to eight figures.

• 12:12Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 12:12Sam Parr?

  And his website, like, I don't know if this is like a get rich quick scheme. Like, I can't tell because it is so elaborate that it could be true, but it seems so good to be true. And he claims to do something like 50 or 60 million dollars a year in sales with 50% margin.

• 12:31Shaan Puri?

  On his, so his website is consulting.com.

• 12:33Sam Parr?

  Yep.

• 12:34Shaan Puri?

  Great domain.

• 12:35Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but like when you click through it, it all seems so good to be true. Like there's like video reviews and I'm, I know how to like hack that together.

• 12:43Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, of course. You can make something look totally legit in like six hours with two rebels.

• 12:49Sam Parr?

  But his stuff is so, it's so elaborate. So if it is a scheme, and then I looked at his Glassdoor reviews and like, not, it, some, some, some, sometimes I think this adds up to be legit or this adds up to where this is just a massive fraud or scam. It's very interesting.

• 13:06Shaan Puri?

  And so he says on the website, 20,000 active students. So if we take the lowest paid plan that you mentioned, two grand. That's forty million a year of recurring revenue.

• 13:16Sam Parr?

  Well, no.

• 13:17Shaan Puri?

  Oh, no, it's not recurring. It's just a one-time. Okay.

• 13:19Sam Parr?

  That's forty million in sales.

• 13:20Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 13:21Sam Parr?

  Not over, not.

• 13:22Shaan Puri?

  And the sale is a digital course, correct?

• 13:26Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so it could be very profitable minus ad spend.

• 13:29Shaan Puri?

  Right. So maybe sixty percent margin or something like that.

• 13:33Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's super interesting. It's very interesting, but like.

• 13:37Shaan Puri?

  So you go from level one beginner, level two master to level three god. Oh damn, don't you just want to spend that fifty grand to become a level three god?

• 13:45Sam Parr?

  But it's so interesting because if you like, if you had cash flow each year, like what's the amount of cash flow that you need each year to where you think that you don't like that? You couldn't spend that amount, like twenty million dollars probably, right?

• 13:58Shaan Puri?

  Oh, yeah, I think that's high. I don't think you'd spend more than five million dollars a year.

• 14:02Sam Parr?

  Net taxes, like after taxes?

• 14:05Shaan Puri?

  Taxes, yeah.

• 14:07Sam Parr?

  Maybe you could, dude. I think, what's two hundred thousand dollars a month? That's a three million dollars a year. I could spend three million dollars a year pretty easily.

• 14:16Shaan Puri?

  Doing what?

• 14:17Sam Parr?

  I've got friends who live in Long Island.

• 14:20Shaan Puri?

  What would you do?

• 14:21Sam Parr?

  And they spend eighty grand a month. I mean, I would, I would just have two huge houses and a full staff to take care of me. I mean, it would be a company.

• 14:29Shaan Puri?

  Just staff to take care of me.

• 14:31Sam Parr?

  Just handle my needs. It would be a company.

• 14:33Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 14:33Sam Parr?

  I would have a handful of cars and two, a nice house and then another house in the warm weather.

• 14:40Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 14:40Sam Parr?

  And I would fly private.

• 14:41Shaan Puri?

  And you're still under the five million, right? That's three point six million that you said. So again, maybe, maybe you need ten as a buffer.

• 14:48Sam Parr?

  I just think that you could do it. So.

• 14:50Shaan Puri?

  So you're saying this might be a tremendous business and it's a little, the sketchy, sketchy detectors come off.

• 14:58Sam Parr?

  I wanted to know if you had ever heard of this or if the listeners have ever heard of this and if this is legit. Some of our trend subscribers told me they subscribe to it and they're like, I got, I got a lot of value out of it.

• 15:07Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I would believe that. So, so I'll tell you kind of my closest experience with something like this. So first of all, no, I've never heard of this and I don't know any. Entrepreneurs in San Francisco where all my friends are from that do anything like this. But that doesn't mean it's not valuable. The closest thing I did to this was sort of going into the Tony Robbins pipeline. And so I've talked a bunch of times about Tony Robbins, how great he is and blah, blah, blah. I like him a lot. I got a lot of value out of going to his workshop.

• 15:35Sam Parr?

  I was supposed to go with you and I bailed because it freaked me out.

• 15:39Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, a lot of people get freaked. A lot of people's preconception is just this is like a cult. This guy's a snake oil, you know, salesman or whatever. Uh, yeah, like what am I getting myself into? And I gotta admit, like when I went there, I was like, okay, cool. I'm going, but I'm not doing any of that dancing shit. I'm just a, I'm just here for the information. I'm gonna sit down, I'll be quiet, I'm not gonna yell, I'm not gonna hug, I'm not gonna dance.

• 15:59Sam Parr?

  And you and your friend sat separately, so you wouldn't be embarrassed if you did.

• 16:02Shaan Puri?

  I went with my brother in law and we just agreed beforehand, we're like, yo, we might end up doing the dancing shit. So you sit on that side of the room, I'm sitting on this side of the room. And let's see, we didn't see each other except for at the end of the night when the, the event would end each day. And we would get back together. But anyways, by, you know, hour one, I'm dancing and doing all the good stuff too. But anyways, it was a lot of value and, you know, it cost me like a thousand bucks to go to this thing. Um, I thought it was tremendous. And then in the thing, like he upsells, just like this guy does, right? So he's like, you know, one of the first kind of, um, I don't know, coaches, lifestyle coaches, business coaches out there. And he's been doing this for 40 years now. So he went from audio tapes to books to infomercials.

• 16:44Shaan Puri?

  Now the internet, like whatever the channel was, he wrote it and was like, I'm the business coach, I'm the lifestyle coach. And, uh, you know, I, I got a lot of value. And at one point he upsells his business mastery class or his business mastery thing. It's like, okay, if you like this, if you like how you're feeling right now, and right after he makes you feel great. Um, he's like, you know, that table over there is for anybody who wants to grow their business. It's $10,000, you spend five days with me. And if you don't get a million dollars of value from this thing, I will give you all your money back. And in the moment I was like, dude, I got a million dollars of value today. You know, of course I would do that. So I didn't actually sign up for it, but our buddy Siava did and went to it.

• 17:22Sam Parr?

  He did?

• 17:23Shaan Puri?

  Um, I believe so. I believe so. And so, uh, you know, sorry Siava if I got that wrong, but I'm pretty sure he told me he did. Um, and I have several friends who actually did it as well. And they said, they're like, yeah, it's great. And if you have a business that's doing, you know, if you have a business your size, right? Your business is worth tens of millions of dollars. If you can get a sort of 2%, 3%, 5% lift

• 17:44Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 17:45Shaan Puri?

  in your business, just through improving your own psychology, your own enthusiasm, your own tactics, it's obviously paid itself off, right?

• 17:52Sam Parr?

  So how does the infrastructure of this work? Like, I'm looking at it now. Does Tony Robbins literally have to be at all the things?

• 18:00Shaan Puri?

  No. So, well, he does his live events, yes. So he's the traveling salesman that does the live events. And he probably does, I don't know. I'm gonna get it wrong, but like, let's call it 20 to 40 live events a year.

• 18:11Sam Parr?

  A lot.

• 18:12Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, a lot. You know, every week, every week or two, he's somewhere. And then he has his sort of like army of like coaches that are trained under him. By the way, they all seemed garbage. And so he has this, you know, the people who are the actual coaches that will call you and do all this other stuff with you. They are, you know, like, there's like a fleet of them. I don't know, 100, 100 people that

• 18:36Sam Parr?

  And you think that infrastructure is garbage? Those people are garbage.

• 18:39Shaan Puri?

  When I met them, I was not impressed. In fact, on the days, so Tony Robbins has been doing this for 40 years, to the point where he's been public speaking onstage, hyping crowds up for like 40 years, right? So he can't actually do two days back to back. So he does day one, and he goes from 8 a.m. till 1 a.m. And there's no breaks. You can go to the bathroom, but you're missing the action when you go.

• 18:58Sam Parr?

  And he's just talking the whole time?

• 19:00Shaan Puri?

  He's onstage, he's talking, and he's got 10,000 people in an audience. I've been twice now. Actually, I've been three times. So I should correct that. So the first time I was just experiencing it, the second two times I was observing it, because I took a fleet of friends. I bought tickets for my family and friends. I was like, this is the best gift I can give you, and they loved it, most of them. And so anyways, he holds people's attention for like 14 hours straight, which is incredible. You know, most people can't, you know, listen to a six-minute YouTube video and have their attention held. But then the second day, it's not him onstage, because his vocal cords are shredded. So he can't speak the next day. And this, like, his number two comes up, and this guy's a good public speaker. But he's like, it's like Michael Jordan, and then you go down to B.J. Armstrong. And it's like, oh, no, I came here for Michael Jordan.

• 19:45Shaan Puri?

  And so literally, this guy just, he says stuff, and then he tees up a video of Tony talking 10 years ago, when he used to do this, like, he used to do all four days himself.

• 19:54Sam Parr?

  Oh, my God.

• 19:55Shaan Puri?

  He queues up the video of Tony, and you sit there, and you're watching YouTube videos with 10,000 other people. And this guy's just moderating it. It's like this bizarre experience.

• 20:04Sam Parr?

  That's crazy.

• 20:05Shaan Puri?

  I didn't really sell it very well, but I'll tell you this, that was probably the best, the best money I've ever spent on anything self-improvement wise. Add up all the books or anything else, it's not even close.

• 20:16Sam Parr?

  Maybe I should do it.

• 20:18Shaan Puri?

  You should totally do it. I took about 20 people, so I paid for 20 people's tickets to go.

• 20:24Sam Parr?

  You paid 20 grand?

• 20:25Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I basically became an affiliate for him. I didn't get paid. I just, I believed in it so much, I paid for 20 other people to go. And since then, it's been four years since then. And of them, I would say, four people were like me, where they were like, "Holy shit, life changed." That was the most valuable thing. So four out of 20, let's say. And then another, let's call it, I don't know, 15, were kind of like, "That was amazing." And I talked to them a year later and they're like disappointed in themselves that they didn't carry it forward. They're like, "God, it was so good and I had so much clarity and I had so much energy, but I'm kind of mad at myself. I just kind of let it fade from there. Like, I don't even really remember it now.

• 21:07Shaan Puri?

  I just remember what I felt then. And yeah, I guess I didn't really get too much value because I'm not doing any of the things I wanted to do, you know, after that weekend. And then there's three or four people that literally left. They were like, "This is way too culty. This is pop science. I don't like this. I don't believe this. I don't like how he's manipulating everybody. I'm out." And I was like, "Okay, that's the spectrum."

• 21:28Sam Parr?

  Anyone I know?

• 21:30Shaan Puri?

  Alex from Calm, the founder of Calm, he hated it. And so he just went for a bike ride, I think, in the middle of one of the days. Because he was like, "It's just too much for me." He's like, "I didn't, I didn't feel good in what was going on." And so I left, I rode my bike around the city and I had fun doing that.

• 21:48Sam Parr?

  What was the number one takeaway?

• 21:51Shaan Puri?

  For me?

• 21:53Shaan Puri?

  Oh dude, I have a notepad full that I call the Bible. Cause I was like, this is the closest thing that I have to religion, right? It's like religion in many ways.

• 22:00Sam Parr?

  Oh my god.

• 22:00Shaan Puri?

  Religion is like an operating philosophy for life, right? That's what, that's what people use religion for in many ways. Like, you know, "Don't harm your neighbor, blah, blah, blah." Like, it's an operating philosophy. So this was an operating philosophy. So I'll give you two of the nuggets, right? So the first one is, The quality of your life is equal to the quality of the emotions you have on a day-to-day basis. So what does that mean? It's kind of a mouthful. But like, we're both in a good position. We're very privileged, we're more successful than we ever thought we would be seven years ago, probably. Like, the position we're in now, seven years ago us would have been envious of that. But your happiness is not like 10 times more than it was seven years ago, right? Like, you're probably feeling about the same. And the reason why is that, you know, life is not about, you know, what you have and what you've achieved.

• 22:45Shaan Puri?

  It's about who you've become. And so what most people, what most people miss is that if you are, it doesn't matter if you're rich, doesn't matter if you have a family, doesn't matter if you have, you know, if you're famous. If the emotions that you're feeling on a day-to-day basis are stressed, then you have a shitty quality of life. If you're feeling anger or upset, then you have a shitty quality of life, regardless of everything else. And so then the question is, how do you figure out how to like change your emotions on a day-to-day basis? So you're feeling good every day, regardless of your situation. Hello, it's Anthony. So like, so he gives you three, three like tools. He's like, all right, here's the three ways you can change how you feel. The very first thing is your body is physical. So if you change your, if you have a radical change in your physiology, he calls it,

• 23:27Shaan Puri?

  which basically means if you did a bunch of push-ups, if you exercised, if you ran, if you jumped into a cold pool, or why people like taking hot showers is to relax. The fastest way to change how you feel is to physically change your body. And in fact, Emmet, who's the CEO of Twitch, was telling me this the other day, or he was kind of talking about this on Twitter. People have panic attacks, and when you have a panic attack, it's a really uncomfortable feeling. And most people with panic attacks really want a solution of like, how do I not get these anymore? I take medicine. And so some people take medicine, and that's one way to change your physiology, is chemically changing your physiology. What most people try to do is like...

• 24:08Shaan Puri?

  Uh, people try to help people think their way out of it. They're like, oh, just, no, don't be so anxious and you need to just relax. I'm like, as if that can help. Um, that's like, you know, that's if that was that easy, yeah, we would all do it. Um, and actually, what, what science has shown is that fastest, most effective, kind of quick and dirty way to stop a panic attack is to, uh, plunge your face into, uh, really cold water. If you do that right at the start of a panic attack, it will stop it because your fight or flight will kick in and it'll, it'll override that. And so.

• 24:36Sam Parr?

  One time, one time I accidentally ate brownies that my roommate made and they turned out to be edible brownies and I don't smoke weed and I hate weed so much. Like, I don't do any of that. And I ate a lot of these brownies and I was like, James, I'm flipping out. He goes, yeah, I'm sorry. Those were weed brownies. And I, I, I started having a panic attack and I went and got in a cold shower and that was the only thing that helped.

• 24:58Shaan Puri?

  Oh, nice. Okay. Yeah. So that, so that's fastest way to change the way you feel is your body. Either through heat, cold, uh, or getting your heart rate up and exercising. Um, and it doesn't have to be like, go, go to the gym. It can be like, if you did 10 jumping jacks, you will feel different than you did right before that. Uh, the second one is focus. So what are you going to focus on? Um, uh, so, so you, uh, you know, where you place your focus is going to judge how, what your brain is, uh, what your brain is basically signaling to your body of how to feel. So if you're focused on pain, then you're going to feel shitty. If you're focused on how somebody did you wrong, how this guy cut you off in traffic, you're going to get outraged. Uh, but if you focus on things you're grateful for, if you focus on things are going well, if you focus on things that are,

• 25:42Shaan Puri?

  um, that you can trust, that you can rely on, you'll feel different. Um, and then the last one is, um, I think it's like language, language or story, which basically the words you use and the story you tell yourself. The big, the big idea, and I recommend this to anybody who's in business, which is the quality of your results is linked to your quality of your decisions. And the quality of your decisions is linked to the quality of the internal monologue you have. So the conversation you have with yourself ends up dictating the decisions you make, which ends up dictating the results you get. And that's kind of what I pulled away from the whole thing. And then it's a whole bunch of strategies to do that better.

• 26:18Sam Parr?

  I think you just saved me a thousand dollars.

• 26:22Shaan Puri?

  Well, you gotta get up and dance, otherwise it doesn't stick.

• 26:24Sam Parr?

  This is awesome. I like learning about this.

• 26:26Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I always hesitate to talk about it because it's like kinda preachy, but I think it helps some people.

• 26:33Sam Parr?

  It's never preachy when you can make fun of it. So like you, you, you do a good job of making fun of something and then you explain what it is. So that's never preachy.

• 26:40Shaan Puri?

  Okay, sounds good. Alright, let's do, let's do something a little different. Let's do, uh, we started this joking segment called the billionaire of the week, Billy of the week. And um, I think we should actually continue it.

• 26:52Sam Parr?

  I loved it. I, uh, your guy Xavier Neal, I went and looked, you talked about him two weeks ago and I went and read all about him. He mostly speaks French and all of his talks on YouTube, so it was kind of hard to, you had to read along. Um, he's badass. I love that guy.

• 27:07Shaan Puri?

  Okay, and you had one that you were thinking about. Who, who's the billionaire of the week?

• 27:11Sam Parr?

  Yeah, let me pull up my notes. So his name is Michael Loeb. Have you heard of him?

• 27:14Shaan Puri?

  I had not.

• 27:15Sam Parr?

  Okay, so Michael Loeb, uh, in the nineties, I'm pulling up my notes, he started this thing called Synapse Group. And basically what they did was, this was before, um, a lot of things were popular on the internet. And so they patented, I don't know how they did this, there must have been something unique about it, but they patented, uh, the online subscription model. I don't, yeah, I, I don't know like how that, there, there's some really nitty gritty things that are a little bit beyond what I'm able to understand, but.

• 27:44Shaan Puri?

  Hold on, they made money off that patent? Or they just patented and everybody does it?

• 27:49Sam Parr?

  Well, so they, they just created a unique way to do it. And I think, I don't know exactly how it worked, but basically Time Magazine, Meredith, which is a huge magazine publisher, all these magazine publishers would pay them money to get them more subscriptions. Because this way in which they were able to get people to renew subscriptions must have been fantastic and it worked really well. I don't understand how it worked then. Basically what it seems now is like a really robust affiliate network. So like Meredith will cross-sell, Meredith, which is a three billion dollar company based out of Minnesota, I believe, bought the company Synapse for a lot of money and they deployed it across all their brands. So it, it's kinda, it's.

• 28:30Shaan Puri?

  He made it big through the Synapse Group, which was a magazine subscription thing.

• 28:34Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it, it definitely made him wealthy. It didn't make him a billionaire, but it made him, he definitely got wealthy. What made him really wealthy was with his co-founder of Synapse, he went and started Priceline. And Priceline eventually, I think, are they, are they owned by Expedia or are they the own thing?

• 28:48Shaan Puri?

  Uh, I'm not sure. So as an owner, let's just check it out. Booking, booking.

• 28:52Sam Parr?

  Booking. So it it now it's just a huge, you know, huge thing. So that that made them very wealthy. But what's interesting is after that, he started, um, like they, what you used to be part of, just like a, a, a rich entrepreneurs playground where they just launched companies.

• 29:09Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 29:09Sam Parr?

  And it's called Loeb and Loeb dot NYC. And they've started a whole bunch of companies, um, including a company called, uh, I believe it's called Script Relief. Do you know what that is?

• 29:20Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 29:21Sam Parr?

  So what you do is you go to it. They started companies, uh, like, or they used to, they used to own Script Relief and then they renamed it to something else. But basically what you do is you go to the website and you can get discounts off of your pharmaceutical drugs. And so like if you want to buy, if you have Xanax or some type of acne medicine or something like that, somehow they, they get, uh, they get access to these deals and you use that coupon code at CVS and you get a discount and

• 29:47Shaan Puri?

  Gotcha.

• 29:48Sam Parr?

  It's paid for sending CVS business.

• 29:51Shaan Puri?

  They made that business, uh, we talked about on the podcast called Thanks, uh, the B to B gifting thing. It looks like it's in there.

• 29:58Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So they own a bunch of stuff and he owns a lot of them. And a business like Script Relief was making something like a hundred million dollars a year in profit.

• 30:06Sam Parr?

  And so some of his companies are really big. Now here's another reason why he's interesting. Do you ever watch that TV show Billions?

• 30:12Shaan Puri?

  Yep. Love it.

• 30:14Sam Parr?

  You know, the house that Bobby Axelrod bought?

• 30:16Shaan Puri?

  Okay, yes.

• 30:17Sam Parr?

  That's his house. That's Michael Loeb's house.

• 30:20Shaan Puri?

  Oh, wow. Okay.

• 30:20Sam Parr?

  And last year or two years ago, Michael Loeb had a big party, like a fundraiser, like a sophisticated thing. And his son brought some friends along and some of the 18 year old friends got drunk and started pissing on the front lawn and just looking like a fool. And so Loeb punched one of the kids in the nose and broke his nose and might go to jail for it. He, he, he just punched this kid one time, but he hurt him pretty bad.

• 30:45Shaan Puri?

  He's gonna go to jail for just that?

• 30:47Sam Parr?

  They're, they're trying to get him to go to jail for that. I mean, that's assault. If you, if you hurt someone, you can definitely, if you weren't a billionaire, you definitely could go to jail for that. I, I, they're trying to get him to go to jail. I have a feeling he's just gonna write a fat check. I mean,

• 30:59Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 30:59Sam Parr?

  The kid was, is probably just a rich snobby.

• 31:02Shaan Puri?

  So where'd you see this scripts thing? It's not even on their website.

• 31:06Sam Parr?

  I talked to people who work there.

• 31:07Shaan Puri?

  Ah, Sam doing his thing. Investigative journalist Sam. I like it.

• 31:12Sam Parr?

  I just talked to people who work there. So if you Google, and let's see, Michael Loeb,

• 31:18Sam Parr?

  Google Michael Loeb Script Relief. It's on his LinkedIn.

• 31:24Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I see it now.

• 31:25Sam Parr?

  It's renamed something else, though. Does it say what it's renamed to?

• 31:30Shaan Puri?

  I'm checking, but you know, logging into LinkedIn is like, you know, taking the first 10 steps into hell. So I'm gonna try this now.

• 31:40Sam Parr?

  Script Relief was recently sold to United Healthcare.

• 31:43Shaan Puri?

  Over 5 million users.

• 31:46Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so it was sold to someone else and now it's called something else.

• 31:51Sam Parr?

  But he just has like a web of companies and it's just super interesting because.

• 31:56Shaan Puri?

  Dude, this is gonna sound weird. When you look at this guy, do you, do you think this guy looks like a billionaire? Does this guy look like a successful guy?

• 32:04Sam Parr?

  No, that's why he doesn't to me. He looks like a guy who would punch a kid in the face.

• 32:08Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he looks like a guy who's like bitter about his life and punch a kid in the face for that reason, not punch a kid in the face because he's a billionaire and the kid pissed him his pool.

• 32:17Sam Parr?

  No, he looks like he would be punching kids in the face regardless of what his financial status was. That's why he's interesting to me.

• 32:23Shaan Puri?

  So I have such a.

• 32:24Sam Parr?

  Look at his mugshot. Google his name and look at his mugshot. Like, he looks like, he looks like, uh, he looks like a tough guy.

• 32:32Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he looks, yeah, he looks like a tough guy. He looks like an enforcer that a billionaire would have. He's a billionaire, but he looks like a billionaire as an enforcer.

• 32:39Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that's why I think this person's interesting because.

• 32:41Shaan Puri?

  Oh dang, they have a picture of the kid who he punched in the face.

• 32:44Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he fucked him up. He broke his nose.

• 32:50Shaan Puri?

  Oh man, I did not expect to just see those two side by side. That's, you know, this is quality, this is quality Google image searching.

• 32:57Sam Parr?

  It's good, right? And look at that kid. He definitely has a punchable face.

• 33:01Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, well, the kid looks like he did something. He's even, he's like kinda smug in the picture. He's got a broken nose. He's in the hospital, his shirt's covered in blood. He's got a little smirk on him.

• 33:09Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Super interesting person, right?

• 33:13Shaan Puri?

  Yes. Okay, I like this guy. I never even heard of this guy. I feel like you know a bunch of these guys that are like the either media titans or like these other like New York, you know, New York rich people. I only know like San Francisco or like Dubai rich people.

• 33:27Sam Parr?

  I know them because I spend time on Wikipedia because my way of building businesses is I'd like to see what has worked and then I I reverse engineer how it worked and I'm like, all right, I'm gonna deploy that on my company.

• 33:40Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 33:41Sam Parr?

  Um, and when I'm reverse engineering things, I'll like read about the company.

• 33:45Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 33:45Sam Parr?

  And I'll see who started it. And I'm like, oh, wait, that guy started it. Oh, but he was friends with this person and they partnered previously. I bet he had access to. That's probably how. So like I like under, so I just like reverse engineer things.

• 33:57Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I like that. And then you call people, which most people don't do. You get on the phone and you start calling people who work at the company and you get that extra 10% that you needed.

• 34:04Sam Parr?

  Right. Well, that's what helps because I've made friends with someone who started his thing. So now if I want to meet him, I have it in.

• 34:11Shaan Puri?

  Right. So, okay, so I have another example of what you just said. I was gonna save this guy for next week, but we're gonna do a double billionaire of the week. So we're doing a double Billy special. Get your, get your Billy's right now. Richard Barton. Okay. So have you heard of this guy, Richard Barton?

• 34:26Sam Parr?

  Is it Burton's billboards?

• 34:28Shaan Puri?

  No. Um, so this guy started a couple of different companies. So just if you just Google Richard Barton.

• 34:33Sam Parr?

  I did earlier and nothing came up.

• 34:35Shaan Puri?

  Uh, did I, am I saying his name wrong?

• 34:38Sam Parr?

  I think you got it wrong because I did.

• 34:40Shaan Puri?

  No, no, okay. He Barton, sorry. Barton, not Burton. Okay. So Richard Barton. Uh, so this guy started Zillow. He also started one of your favorite sites, Glassdoor. Um, he also started, he has three. So he has Zillow, he has Glassdoor and what's his other one?

• 34:58Shaan Puri?

  I was gonna research this for next week, so we're just gonna do this live here. Uh, and he did Expedia. He did Expedia.

• 35:05Sam Parr?

  Board of directors on Netflix.

• 35:06Shaan Puri?

  He did Expedia, Zillow and Glassdoor. What a fucking baller. I'm like, okay.

• 35:13Sam Parr?

  Expedia?

• 35:14Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, so, okay, so how did this happen? So I listened to this interview with this guy like five years ago, before this podcast even started. Before this podcast was even a little, you know, sperm in my balls. And when I, when I looked at this guy, the one thing that stood out to me was he had a very simple thesis that he used to start all these companies, which was information wants to be free. So, okay, what does information wants to be free mean? So he was basically like, I'm gonna bring transparency to industries that are, that are not transparent. And so he's, you know, let's take Zillow, for example. Before Zillow and the sort of online house, house search companies existed like Trulia and all this Redfin, stuff like that, the MLS listings were something that only the agents and brokers had access to. And so this is, they were gatekeepers.

• 35:59Shaan Puri?

  They were like, oh, you wanna know what's on the market? Let me literally print out the MLS papers and I'll show you, show you these and I'll tour you through these companies. That's so great line, dude. Information that, information wants, you got. Information wants to be free. And so they needed the same thing in travel, right? We had travel agents who were the brokers, who you had to call and be like, hey, I'd like to get a flight and I don't wanna pay too much and you just trust that hopefully this agent is gonna do, gonna do their job. They're gonna know all the different options, different times, different airports, and they're gonna find me something that fits my needs. And Expedia was just a search bar that would just tell you, here's all the flights. You decide. Here's the information. You don't need to go to a travel agent anymore. And Glassdoor is the same thing. You wanted to know what's it really like to work there?

• 36:44Shaan Puri?

  And employers have no desire to put that out there. They don't want anybody to know any of the bad things that happen in, you know, the working environment of their company. And employees were often scared to do it because they would sign things that would be like, you know, non-disclosure, whatever, non-slander, I forgot what the term for it is, non-disparagement. And so Glassdoor was unleashing the information about what's it like to work at X company. And so I love how this guy, literally on one thesis, has started three multi-billion dollar companies off that one premise. And so that was when I, when I did what you were talking about, I reverse engineered, how did this guy do it? It wasn't, oh, how did he build Expedia? How did he build Zillow? It was, how did he even get this idea? Oh, okay, what other industries today lack transparency where I can open them up? What are they?

• 37:29Shaan Puri?

  Oh dude, well if now that's a billion dollar idea I need to have.

• 37:33Sam Parr?

  So let's think of some. One of them is pricing for enterprise software.

• 37:39Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 37:40Sam Parr?

  What they do is they find out how much money your company makes and then they go, okay, we're going to charge you this.

• 37:45Shaan Puri?

  Right. I like that. I like that a lot.

• 37:48Sam Parr?

  Like, I hate the call for pricing model. I mean, I hate it, but it works. We do it.

• 37:55Shaan Puri?

  So Angel List did this in a way as well when you were able to figure out who's invested in what. That used to be like sort of not easy to find information. It wasn't sort of like totally guarded. But I

• 38:09Sam Parr?

  Crunchbase as well.

• 38:10Shaan Puri?

  I'm literally just looking at the tabs that I have open, right? Like Yelp. Yelp was something like that too. You know, how was it? What is it like to eat there? The review system. It organized and made public information that people wanted that was not super transparent before this.

• 38:27Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I mean, housing, he did that. There's a lot. There's so many good ones. Salaries, he did that with Glassdoor.

• 38:35Shaan Puri?

  Does Glassdoor do salaries?

• 38:37Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 38:37Shaan Puri?

  So there's, there's one that I use that's in the tech world called Levels. I think we talked about it once before, but they do it where with just the like kind of tech companies. It's like, what do people at tech companies make? And a lot of people have been doing this on inside companies. So inside Microsoft, for example, they created an anonymous Google Doc where you could just put your level, your job category, like engineer or designer, product person, whatever, and your salary and your pay.

• 39:02Sam Parr?

  Glassdoor does that.

• 39:03Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you can figure out, am I underpaid? But this was even in like more specific. It was like in a company, these are people now, like, and it's not just Glassdoor, it's like just a few who kind of go and post this stuff. But they're getting like these, these companies are having these like really rich documents with thousands of people contributing. And, and right now those are just Excel docs. I wonder if you could take the, just the salary component of maybe what's in Glassdoor and do it in a better way inside companies. So people make sure they're not getting the short end of stick within their own company right now.

• 39:37Sam Parr?

  That's interesting. Another one is freelancers.

• 39:43Shaan Puri?

  Freelancers what?

• 39:45Sam Parr?

  Freelancers and agencies. So the problem with a lot of this stuff is when we're trying to hire some agencies to WordPress development, I have to back channel and go find out from people who work with them, what they were like. Once I sign up to an agree with them, I can't, I won't find out unless I'm on a weekend if they suck or not.

• 40:07Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 40:09Sam Parr?

  And it's like, oh my God, I can't believe that. I can't believe I'm in. And that's the same thing with like payroll software too. Like gusto looks good, but when you sign up to it, you don't realize like what you like and what you don't like about it.

• 40:20Shaan Puri?

  So we have a couple of friends who are doing things that are trying to put out, you know, they're trying to make information come free of what software do companies use? So like a lot of people would want to know, what does the hustle use? What do you guys use to send email? What do you guys use for analytics? What do you guys use for your paywall? What do you use for trends? And like I know Ryan at Product Hunt, they're doing this with something called stacks or your stacks. And they want to know what's your software stack that your company runs on? And it's an interesting idea. He's designing it kind of like a social network, but the value in the end, if you do, if you get there is, oh, cool. I can now go see, okay, if I'm building an Airbnb type of company, what do they use to run their company? What do they use for analytics?

• 41:00Sam Parr?

  Do you think that that is not working?

• 41:02Shaan Puri?

  Well, it's really tough to build, right? It is one of those things where really valuable if you get there, really tough to get the information in because you have to get the incentives right. Later on, you have the incentive to come to the site because you want to see what other people use. But what's the incentive to post? And so he's trying to make it fun and interesting and cool to post by making it like very visual, like sort of a

• 41:22Sam Parr?

  You get it doing that.

• 41:23Shaan Puri?

  A profile for your company, right? Like, uh, like, yeah, we use this stuff. And so I don't know the numbers on how it's doing, but I do think it's an interesting experiment. And I think if they did it, it would be the most valuable thing that Product Hunt has built because it's a, it's just inherently extremely, there's a great business model on top of that. If you can show what software people use.

• 41:43Sam Parr?

  That's cool. I agree.

• 41:47Sam Parr?

  That's interesting. I love this idea of information needs or information wants to be free.

• 41:53Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, let's think more about that. So I think we'll come back with an example of information today that is either behind a walled garden or it's incomplete. And if you set it free, it would make people make better choices or save them money or whatever it is. Like, maybe it's something in the insurance space. Maybe it's, I don't know exactly what, but I'm gonna think about this because I think this is a formula for building really big companies.

• 42:16Sam Parr?

  Yeah, for me, it's how much things cost, like freelancers and lawyers and things like that. That's always bothered me. I don't, like, my lawyer could be like, "Yeah, we charge $700 an hour." And when I was first getting going, I was like, "I have no idea. Is that normal?"

• 42:32Shaan Puri?

  Right. And on the other side, it's also how much companies make, right? Like, you love it when you hear that a company's public or it's a nonprofit because you're like, "Yes, I'm gonna get to their financials because they have to report."

• 42:42Sam Parr?

  You know who does it? Pitchbook.

• 42:44Shaan Puri?

  For private companies?

• 42:46Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and they do it in a really interesting way. And they're owned by a publicly traded company. They do about $120 million a year in revenue.

• 42:52Shaan Puri?

  It's like 25 grand for a pitchbook subscription, right?

• 42:55Sam Parr?

  Really expensive. And they do about 120, they're owned by, is it called Morningstar? Or it's a company, right?

• 43:02Shaan Puri?

  I think it is Morningstar. Or Morningstar is like the mutual fund thing.

• 43:06Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's owned by one of those things. And I just read their earnings thing.

• 43:11Shaan Puri?

  Morningstar, it is Morningstar. And they are the mutual fund thing, too.

• 43:14Sam Parr?

  And what they do is they do a bunch of different things. The first thing that they do is they crawl the web and they find SEC documents and they find like all type, they just crawl and find data. And they have a team of like 300 people who just hit the phones all day and call people and get the information.

• 43:31Shaan Puri?

  Right. And then the other one that's like that is, you know, even for podcasts, when we look at the top charts and we're like, "All right, how do we become the number one business podcast?" We don't know how much, we don't know how many downloads they get, right? There's this idea of how much something, how much is being earned? How much is something making? And how much does something cost? I think that just generally would apply to a whole bunch of different spaces that you could use for this.

• 43:53Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that's why I use a similar web because they show me how much like traffic, like guest traffic.

• 43:58Shaan Puri?

  One of the dope ones of this, do you use Second Measure?

• 44:01Sam Parr?

  Yeah, they're great.

• 44:03Shaan Puri?

  They're great. I think they're a little bit expensive.

• 44:04Sam Parr?

  I know they are.

• 44:05Shaan Puri?

  Uh, yeah, if you don't know what they are, so Second Measure takes credit card spending data and um can tell you essentially like how much money something is making just by analyzing how many people are charging Spotify per month and then they're like, okay, cool, right? Imagine Spotify was not a public company, you'd be able to see here's how much revenue that they're making or they do this with like the delivery companies, which delivery company is winning? Well, they can just check this huge data set of credit card spending and say, okay, it looks like Grubhub's in the lead and then second is DoorDash or whatever. And so Second Measure is super powerful using a source of truth, which is credit card data. I don't know how they get at it.

• 44:38Sam Parr?

  Whenever we talk about this stuff, all I want to do is like end the podcast and make my days 50 hours long and just start.

• 44:44Shaan Puri?

  Search everything.

• 44:47Sam Parr?

  This whole, this whole data or make information or find information wants to be free, that whole concept, that's amazing.

• 44:53Shaan Puri?

  That's the test. I want people to listen to this podcast and be so excited and then I want you to feel anxious. I want you to feel stressed that you don't have 50 hours in your day to go do this and uh that's, that's how this should feel. I've heard a bunch of people say like, yeah, I have to keep pausing the podcast to like, A, write shit down, B, take a breath, C, think about, think about what's going on and then I resume it. And uh, yeah, that's what we want. It's that, that high value.

• 45:19Sam Parr?

  Uh, you want to talk about one more thing?

• 45:21Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, which one? You, you, you look at the list, tell me which one you want to do.

• 45:25Sam Parr?

  What happened? You lost $5 million?

• 45:29Shaan Puri?

  All right, I didn't exactly lose $5 million, but I did not make the $5 million that I could have made. All right, so this is called Sean's Shitty Investments. This is a new segment we created just now. And I'll tell you about two uh bad investments and one good investment I made. So uh I was talking to a friend of mine, a guy who had been, I'd been advising this guy about his startup. This is maybe four, five years ago. I'd been advising him. He didn't live in America. He was building a product for international, uh, his product was around international students applying to US universities. And uh, making it easy. If you don't know, if you live overseas, like I, I finished high school in China. So I saw this firsthand. If you're in China, you're in India, you're in Malaysia.

• 46:12Shaan Puri?

  The goal, like your life goal is to go to a US university. It doesn't even matter if it's a good one, but it is to go to a US university. And US universities overcharge for, for that. And um,

• 46:23Sam Parr?

  And they get in trouble for that too sometimes.

• 46:25Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, actually right now there's a bunch of stuff in the news because they charge like three times more for international students.

• 46:30Sam Parr?

  State is in trouble because they have like sixty percent Chinese uh nationals there and they're like,

• 46:37Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 46:37Sam Parr?

  What the fuck? You guys are charging sixty grand for these kids.

• 46:40Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. So um, so anyways, I was helping this guy, great founder, really liked the company, was really interested. But I was at a point at that time financially where I was like, okay, if I'm investing in startups, it's a pretty irresponsible investment. Cause you know, when you invest in startups, high likelihood of failure. So you need to place like twenty-five, thirty bets. And so if you say, okay, I'm going to place, you know, twenty-five, thirty bets and each bet's going to be twenty-five grand, like I'm basically, I need to have five, five hundred thousand, I need to have seven hundred fifty thousand dollars uh that I'm going to put into this. Which means that can't be like your whole net worth, uh, which is like my, this would, that would have been more, seventy-five, seven, seven hundred fifty grand at that time would have been more than my whole net worth. And so I knew I didn't have the, the sort of uh bankroll to do it.

• 47:25Shaan Puri?

  Uh, but that was an excuse. I could have found a way. I could have wrote the check anyways. I could have banked on myself making more in the future like I did. And bottom line is I didn't. So I would have been the first check into this guy's company. And my sort of twenty-five thousand dollar check, which I was very, very close to writing, would have become five, uh, five million dollar stake in this guy's business by now.

• 47:43Sam Parr?

  Wait, how, when, what's the name of the company?

• 47:46Shaan Puri?

  Um, I don't know if I should say the name.

• 47:48Sam Parr?

  And how, well, how big is it now?

• 47:49Shaan Puri?

  I'll, I'll just tell you the name, we'll bleep it out. So then it's called.

• 47:53Shaan Puri?

  And so he told me that they just crossed, you know, the billion dollar valuation. And, and so I don't know if they're exactly at that. I don't know if they're a little over, a little under, but the point is they're doing well. And, and so, yeah, I was kicking myself because that would have been a big investment. This has happened to me. This has happened to me now two different times where I could have, I could have been one of the angel checks into a business. I thought it was a good business. I didn't pull the trigger and those two would have combined to be worth, you know, $10 million plus by now.

• 48:24Sam Parr?

  What was the other one?

• 48:26Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 48:28Sam Parr?

  So this company, this studying abroad company, they're, do they make a lot of revenue or is it just?

• 48:35Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, revenue. And even then, like this was, they were pre revenue at the time, but I was doing the math and I was like, wait, like they had an L O I signed by a bunch of universities. And I was like, wait, so if they just matched the supply and demand, like this thing's gonna make money, but didn't have enough conviction.

• 48:50Sam Parr?

  And is it just a lead gen site?

• 48:52Shaan Puri?

  No, no, no. It's a full software tool that let, that actually does the application for the student and blah, blah, blah.

• 48:57Sam Parr?

  The university pays money. Oh, so it's a SaaS company?

• 49:01Shaan Puri?

  It's a free SaaS tool for the user and then it's a lead gen on the other side where when a kid gets accepted, they get paid that way.

• 49:09Sam Parr?

  Got it. And they, they charge the universities money?

• 49:11Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, like thousands of dollars per student.

• 49:15Sam Parr?

  Got it. So, okay. So they don't charge them money for the software?

• 49:19Shaan Puri?

  No, the, the software is used by the, the actual student and customer. So anyways, it was a, it's a great business. Big miss on my part. Happy for the guy though. He's an awesome guy and I really, I like this guy's energy a lot. I, I, you kind of, sometimes you meet people who got, who just have good energy. I don't know how to describe it, but he was one of those people. So.

• 49:36Sam Parr?

  And you lost on MGM?

• 49:39Shaan Puri?

  Uh, so no, not again. So basically I haven't talked about this on the podcast, but I, during COVID, I decided to, to mess around with option trading, which, you know, famous last words. And so I was literally, this is how dumb I am, right? So, so I don't play in the finance, the public markets that much. I just do very simple things. I just buy companies I think are good for the next 10 years or I buy index funds. I don't do a whole, I don't do like day trading. I don't do, you know, leverage buying or lever, I don't do shorts. But I was like, you know what? I don't see any way that MGM, which is MGM Resorts. I was like, I don't see any way that their business doesn't go down with this COVID thing. And so I was thinking about it and it got cut by like seventy five percent.

• 50:23Shaan Puri?

  So the stock price dropped from, I don't know, it was like twenty five, dropped from thirty down to like twelve. And and I was like, yeah, I still think that this thing is going to go down. And so I'm literally on one tab, I have like a Khan Academy video of like, what the hell is a put? And on the other hand, I've got my Robin Hood account and I'm like just pushing buttons. And so I pushed a bunch of buttons and I placed this trade, which basically said, okay, I think MGM is going to go down. And yeah, about two thousand dollars worth of options and like, let's see what happens. And it turns out MGM did go down, but I needed it. Once I understood my own trade, which was like after I placed it, because I was again, just pushing buttons. When I was looking at the like confirmation, I was like, oh shit, this is a horrible trade.

• 51:04Shaan Puri?

  Like I, I just basically said that this is going to go down forty percent in the next seven days. I was like, what?

• 51:12Sam Parr?

  How much did you lose?

• 51:13Shaan Puri?

  Two grand. So I was like, what a stupid bet. So that's my bad, the two bad investments that I want to share. On the other side, on the other side, I bet really big into Bitcoin when it dropped to like forty five hundred recently. And now it's back up, so that one made back the money from, for the my shitty option trade in Spain.

• 51:31Sam Parr?

  I, I completely stay away from stocks. I only buy S and P five hundred or Facebook stock. And about two weeks ago, when it was at the bottom, I was like, I was like, well, no. When the whole market was real low, like the lowest point, maybe ten or two weeks ago, I sold most everything. And I was like, I was like, I think it's just going to get worse and worse and worse because unemployment. And unemployment comes out and it's the highest it's ever been and or the unemployment work claims. And then the stock market goes up twenty percent. I like, I just don't understand how this, I don't, I don't understand how this works at all. Because and then I applied for the loan for, for that Trump enacted. And I'm like, so you're telling me we get free money?

• 52:13Sam Parr?

  That sounds great, but you, when you start thinking about it, you're like, I'm going to pay for this eventually. Like somehow I'm, there's no such thing as free or we're going to pay for it eventually. And so this money, it's just this whole situation, it doesn't make sense to me because. The stock market should be going down.

• 52:28Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, and it will. It will. This is a, this is a sort of a dead cat bounce or like sort of a false rally. But forgetting, forgetting the market right now, because I don't know shit about it. And who, also, who cares? Not that interesting. It's a speculator's game. The, there's a phrase I learned that I thought was pretty cool. It's called a Keynesian beauty contest. You know what a Keynesian beauty contest is? Okay, so have you ever heard of the sort of economists, uh, I've got little names like Maynard, John Maynard Keynes or whatever. Anyways, he's a famous guy in the world of economics, Keynesian economics. And a Keynesian beauty, beauty contest describes this phenomenon where, let's say there's a, what you think the stock market should be is, here's an asset, here's a company, you could buy some of their stock,

• 53:11Shaan Puri?

  and you buy it if you think that the company's going to become more valuable than it's priced at today. That's what we think should be happening. But what's actually happening is this is a speculator market, right? It's a speculation-driven market. And so you don't, in a short time horizon, you don't, you're not betting that the company is going to uh, improve and actually generate more revenue and whatnot. You're just betting that other people are going to think this is more attractive. But they're also betting that other people are going to think it's more attractive. So it's a Keynesian beauty contest is where you're not actually judging the beauty of it. You are thinking what the other judges would think about this thing. And they're thinking about what the other judges would think about this thing. And it becomes this sort of speculative loop. And um, that's my sort of Wikipedia page of the week.

• 53:53Sam Parr?

  That's, that's exactly how things are working. And it just annoys me so much. You have so much more control over your life when you actually run the business.

• 54:01Shaan Puri?

  Right. And there's also a great phrase, which is sort of in, in the short term, the stock market is a popularity contest. And in the long term, it's a weighing machine. And um, I think that really describes it well, right? So like, this is also for private companies as well. And when you're, when you're raising a series A and you're a hyped company, it's a popularity contest. And when people are like, how did this valuation? That doesn't make any sense. It's like, yeah, it makes sense if you, if you understand that this is currently a popularity contest. But over the long haul, it does not remain a popularity contest. It becomes a weighing machine. And if you're full of air and there's nothing there, like, your value will go down. And so for all those people who don't understand those valuations, uh, that's why.

• 54:38Sam Parr?

  It's frustrating. I'm just, so I don't, I don't do anything in that world because it's just not, I, I don't know anything about it and I don't want to know. I, it makes me too angry.

• 54:48Shaan Puri?

  Okay, cool. Do you want to squeeze anything else in or you want to, we can wrap it. Tell people about the other podcast you guys are doing.

• 54:53Sam Parr?

  Yeah, we just launched one with Moyes Ali, which you should go on it, Sean. I had a, I went on it to help Moyes interview better, but it's called Exit Strategy. So Moyes started this company called Native and he started it, me and Moyes started our companies in the same office. And so I saw him start it from nothing. I saw him get the idea and start this thing. And he started this deodorant company called Native and 20 months after starting it, he sold it for a hundred million dollars in cash or maybe 28 months. And so he decided to launch a podcast because he is looking for a new project where he's interviewing other D to C founders. And he's going to talk about scaling and selling their companies. It's called Exit Strategy. You Google the hustle, exit strategy, or just look it up on Spotify or podcast store, you'll see it.

• 55:35Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I started listening to it. I'm like five minutes in, but so far, so good. We'll see.

• 55:40Sam Parr?

  Moyes is crazy. I told, my feedback to him was for the next episodes, lean into being crazy. Don't hold back.

• 55:48Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that would be my advice as well, which is don't, I think when you're, when you're a really interesting person and actually your opinions are more interesting than your questions in many ways. You need to make it a conversation, a debate more than a interview. Because I think what's going to end up happening is that Moyes is going to be, end up being more interesting than most of his guests. And so what he should do to raise both people's levels is for him to just act how he would normally act in a conversation with that person.

• 56:17Sam Parr?

  He like, he says the craziest stuff ever and he's a great guy, but he's a loose cannon and I love that about him. So I need him to remain as a loose cannon.

• 56:28Shaan Puri?

  Right. So check it out. Exit Strategy. We want the podcast family to get bigger, stronger, better. Every badass entrepreneur who wants a podcast needs to go to the hustle and push a button and start their podcast with the hustle. But like, it should be badass, interesting entrepreneurs, not, you know, sort of Joe Schmo, I want to start a podcast.

• 56:48Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 56:49Shaan Puri?

  The podcast should be the least interesting thing you've ever done in your career.

• 56:53Sam Parr?

  Yeah, we want experts. We want experts who are charismatic, not charismatic people who hope to be experts.

• 57:00Shaan Puri?

  Right. And also not experts who are not charismatic because nobody wants that either.

• 57:04Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but yeah, so that's out. And.

• 57:11Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and keep leaving reviews. I read all the reviews. Everyone keeps yelling at me because they say my mic sucks. So I ordered a new one, but everything's backordered. I have a new mic coming.

• 57:22Shaan Puri?

  Amazon doesn't know essential, the essentials are micro. Alright, let's read one review. Let's do a reviewer of the week. Let's give somebody a shout here. So I'm gonna scan these for one second. Okay, so three stars. Sam could learn how to talk into a mic, but both these guys are very knowledgeable and give investing a fresh young spin. I've been listening just since it was just Sean, spelled my name wrong, and loved it. But when Sam came on, it became different. Sam gets excited and his voice pops into the mic. Yeah, but come on, that's the excitement. Sam should listen to the podcast. Not gonna do it. Ducks to listen to yourself. You can tell Sean speaks softer. Sean misspelled again and tries to get Sam

• 58:03Shaan Puri?

  to quiet down, but it's not working. That's not true. I do not try to get him to decide. Okay, let's look at another low review. I think these are more interesting than the high reviews, although I want the high reviews, but let's just do it.

• 58:15Sam Parr?

  Well, we have like 800 reviews and almost all are five stars. The only ones that aren't five stars are the people who call us unethical, which is bullshit. The people who say that my mic sucks, which is bullshit. And the people who just call us bros, also bullshit. Well, no, that's not bullshit. I am a bro means a man. Yeah, that's me.

• 58:33Shaan Puri?

  Alright, CS Value says, very smart guys, would not recommend. Hell of a title for a review. So these guys are very smart and you'll certainly learn a thing or two about making money by listening to this podcast. That said, it's not worth the subtle recalibration of your moral compass. I don't know. That's a decision for each listener to decide. Okay, so then they say, these are not high integrity people. Here's their examples of why we're not high integrity. We ask people to sub an ODS sub to game the podcast algorithm.

• 59:01Sam Parr?

  Give me a break.

• 59:02Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, big joke. Laughing about lying on a job application and getting caught.

• 59:07Sam Parr?

  I didn't laugh because I thought it was good. I laughed because that's the way you deal with heartache.

• 59:12Shaan Puri?

  I laughed to cover the pain. Don't you understand?

• 59:14Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like I said how I I I said how that was a horrible move and I got what I deserved.

• 59:20Shaan Puri?

  Right casually dismissing a host's criminal record. A host?

• 59:24Sam Parr?

  That was me. Yeah, no one dismissed my criminal record. They said it's stupid. I shouldn't have done it. And that's why I changed my lifestyle.

• 59:30Shaan Puri?

  Gotcha. These guys are definitely sharp guys. They're good at hustling, hacking and scheming. But this is not content I would recommend anyone putting to their brain. You know what?

• 59:38Sam Parr?

  Fuck them.

• 59:39Shaan Puri?

  If that doesn't make people want to listen to this more, I don't know what will.

• 59:43Sam Parr?

  That's there's our clip for Instagram.

• 59:47Shaan Puri?

  I like how you're looking around like are we still in the studio and we have our staff to like clip it? It's just your wife behind you.

• 59:56Shaan Puri?

  Okay, cool. Let's get out of here. We'll be back Tuesday and yeah, see ya. Enjoy. Share the pod.