Greatest Hits of 2021 (Vol. 2)

On this episode, we bring you some of the best and most popular moments from My First Million in 2021. This episode specifically highlights some of our best guest moments. Let us know how you like the episode and if we should do greatest hits in the future! _____ * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. _____ Show Notes: (00:40) - Rob Dyrdek masters time (12:45) - How Hasan Minhaj prepares for his shows (17:50) - Steph Smith talks about one-person companies making millions (29:05) - Jack Abraham talks about frameworks for billion dollar companies ----- Links: * Episode 224 with Rob Dyrdek * Episode 244 with Hasan Minhaj * Episode 248 with Steph Smith * Episode 225 with Jack Abraham ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

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

• 0:11Ben?

  Hey guys, welcome to My First Million. This is producer Ben here with another Best Of episode. On this one, we compiled some of the best guest moments of the past. On this first clip, we have the one, the only, the world famous Rob Dyrdek. Rob is a famous skateboarder, celebrity, TV show actor, host and producer. And now he's a really great entrepreneur with a number of different businesses. In this clip, he's explaining exactly how he manages his time and how he has managed to become, as he says, "human optimization."

• 0:39Speaker 01

  I've mastered time, energy and capacity, right? So I live this extraordinarily balanced life by design, where I only dedicate 30% of my time to podcasts and my shooting television and building my businesses. I spend 30% sleeping, 10% on my health, never compromising than 30% with my family.

• 0:59Ben?

  How much is 30% for you? Like, how many hours? Are you looking at 30% of a 40-hour work week or 30% of your waking?

• 1:06Speaker 01

  He's saying of a day. Of my entire life, all hours. So eight hours, basically, right? No, all life. Of the 24 hours in a day, I sleep 30%, so seven hours, right? Like, I work seven hours, I'm with my family seven hours, and I spend three hours on my health, on average, right? When you look at the overall balance. And then I could show you this because I track it every day and it pumps all of it into this beautiful dashboard. Because what I've done over time, because to give you an idea, I shot 250 episodes of television this year. It's exactly 4% of my total time. That's how highly optimized it's become, right? Because you basically have a certain level of human capacity. And in order to scale it, you either hire or automate it.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  So I live this deeply automated life that hires people in to add capacity. And at the end of the day, I just live super balanced and happy. That's it.

• 2:04Shaan Puri?

  So give us an example.

• 2:05Sam Parr?

  What software are you using to track all that time?

• 2:07Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 2:07Sam Parr?

  That dashboard?

• 2:08Speaker 01

  I created, I created, I had a, I had a programmer write me a script that goes inside Google, the Google Calendar.

• 2:15Shaan Puri?

  It's an app on your phone or it's just on like a spreadsheet basically?

• 2:18Speaker 01

  It's inside Google Calendar and then it pops, it populates a Google spreadsheet, right? And then the beauty of it is, is I qualitative data and quantitative data is what I live my life off of, right? So every day for the last five years, I asked, I wrote down how I feel about my life, work and health, zero to 10. And so I could show you by the qualitative numbers, how I'm living a higher quality and happier life. And, and the result of that is based off the optimization that I've done on my quantitative stuff. My quantitative stuff is that I get up before five, did I brain train? Did I get in the gym? Did I meditate? Did I have a clean diet? Did I not drink?

• 2:58Speaker 01

  I could show you by my quantitative numbers that I have done all of those almost every single day of this entire year. About 87% of those quantitative things that have just driven those qualitative numbers. How I feel about my life, my work and my health higher and higher. So by the numbers, I could tell you what a high quality life that I'm living compared to just five years ago.

• 3:26Shaan Puri?

  You're saying so many amazing things, I gotta.

• 3:30Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 3:30Shaan Puri?

  I've been to each one. All right. So you just said something, did I brain train? What's that mean?

• 3:35Speaker 01

  I use the luminosity app, right? Like where it's just adding flexibility and just letting your mind do all of these things that are different than just getting in and reading your emails. And you know, just going through your rhythm is really what I, I do that for.

• 3:48Shaan Puri?

  And you wake up at five, what's the morning routine like? Sounds like you're pretty optimized.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  I'll get up, I, I, I get, I have to get up before five, but depending on what time I go to bed, I'll get up at four, four 30 too, right? And then to me, uh, you know, I always have that, that coffee pre-made so I can get up and get cooking.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  And then I track all my numbers from the previous day, fill in all my time if I missed any time to make sure that, that all my data is there.

• 4:15Sam Parr?

  On your phone or, or on your computer?

• 4:17Speaker 01

  On the computer, right? And then, um, and then I try to just like organize and knock out sort of my more executional work before the kids get up and all that. Um, then at six o'clock, I brain train, six thirty, I meditate. Uh, when I jump out of meditation, I sent, or actually at five fifteen, I bring my wife a coffee and I send her an email of every single thing that I'm doing that day, what it means to me with a love quote on top, right? Um, again, this is

• 4:46Shaan Puri?

  What do you mean, what it means to me? Like each thing you're doing?

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Just like, you know, just, yeah.

• 4:49Sam Parr?

  Like why you're doing it?

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, in, in my, in my, one of the, one of the pulls of our relationship was like, I do so much stuff that she would be, it'd be, I'd just be talking to someone, it'd be the first time she ever heard of it. And so she would just like, I would do so much stuff in a day, she just would, would feel disconnected. So I just started giving her an email every day of like what I'm doing, what it means with a nice love quote, right? And, and that then settled down the energy of feeling disconnected from everything that I'm doing. Um, bring her a coffee at five fifteen, God bless her. She started doing five thirty calls for her business. Um, which means she's going to be tired earlier. That means we can go to bed by nine thirty, right? Which is a, another sort of blessing.

• 5:28Sam Parr?

  And, and this is happening in LA, right? You're, this is your

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then, but you know, I, I pop out of meditation at seven, wake the kids up, uh, get them both down to breakfast at seven thirty. My trainer doctor comes to the house, uh, seven thirty to eight thirty, um, training and then take the kids to school at eight thirty, right? Um, and then the day, depending on what the week is, you know, sometimes I go to breakfast dates with my wife. Sometimes it's, you know, on Mondays, you know, I basically run a flat organization, right? So I have, you know, ten core divisions that are ran by, uh, an executive. And I just spend Monday fully organizing from when I get up four o'clock into my chief of staff for an hour, into my president and COO for an hour and then half hours for every single person that runs that,

• 6:16Speaker 01

  uh, division so that we can just be highly organized and then plan the rest of the week. Which of course is inside Thursday night date nights and Friday night sushi night with my wife and picking my kids up and all of you know I've designed balance and then I only work within the structure of balance and then depending on how I feel depending on how my wife feels then I'll even adjust that to lean into making sure that my family is feeling priority above business always.

• 6:44Sam Parr?

  You you you're like yeah you're you're like you know the like people make fun of Silicon Valley people because they're like like here's my calendar I've got it adjusted like this this and this but uh I'm sitting here looking at you I think it looks like you're wearing a black blazer with a black sweater and you got these slick AirPods in you are more Silicon Valley techie in tune with this than like the stereotypes of it and I I love it I think this is awesome.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  I mean look I'm I am human optimization and optimized to to be what though to just be happy you know what I mean like at the end of the day that's why you're playing the game and you got to figure out yourself to understand what truly makes you happy because your goal is to not be happy in pockets your goal is to be happy every single hour of every single day of your life right and and that's really what I've accomplished and I'll tell you something if you think about how you live right you you can live in two places that'll get you nowhere it's dwelling and being negative right or it's being hopeful and like wishing right either of get you nowhere but where where life is lived is you're either problem solving

• 7:49Speaker 01

  you're either creating the future or you're experiencing the present right and the truth is whatever you're experiencing the present is based off of the decisions you've made in the past and it's your choice to create whatever you your reality is that you're going to eventually experience or God forbid something hits you rather than dwelling on it or hoping it didn't happen if you problem solve and handle it um you're not going to you can basically live a life with no negative thoughts if you learn to live in a state of either experiencing creating or problem solving in your entire life right but it's on you to understand what that is to be able to live in that state.

• 8:26Sam Parr?

  I'm flavoured acid Sean.

• 8:29Ben?

  For this next clip, we're gonna be listening to the world famous comedian Hasan Minhaj, and he explains how he prepares for his shows.

• 8:37Shaan Puri?

  What's the system you've developed to get on stage and have that switch flipped? Because when you came on, within two seconds, it's like, this guy's in a state of mind, he's in a state, as we say, of like, he's here to perform, he knows what he's here to do.

• 8:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:52Shaan Puri?

  There's no like, tiptoeing into it.

• 8:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:54Shaan Puri?

  So, I was wondering, what do you do the five, 10 minutes before, or an hour before? I don't know, what your kind of like, warm-up routine is?

• 9:00Speaker 04

  Routine, yeah.

• 9:01Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. I need to get ready.

• 9:03Speaker 04

  The listeners want to know this?

• 9:04Shaan Puri?

  I'm sure.

• 9:05Speaker 04

  Really? This is your personal curiosity.

• 9:07Shaan Puri?

  I want to know it, and I, my trainer has this great phrase, he goes, "Who are my customers?" "The people that love what I do." Because he's like, people always ask, "Oh, who are your customers?" It's some demographic, some like, some like, marketing intellectual answer. He's like, easiest way in the world is, the people who, your customers are the people who love what you do.

• 9:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:27Shaan Puri?

  So just do what you do.

• 9:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:28Shaan Puri?

  And you will naturally attract the people who love that, and you will repel the people who aren't interested.

• 9:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:33Shaan Puri?

  And you will never have to guess what the heck people want, because you just do what you want. And so that's the approach I take to the pod.

• 9:38Speaker 04

  Yeah. No, I love it, man, I love talking shop like this. For me, it's actually, it's the three hours before. So, what I try to do before any show, I try to make sure that like, I exercise in some capacity, because, and I don't know if you feel this way, maybe it's within our community, it's so funny to go back to what you're talking about, where you're like, "Oh, he seems like a guy who works really hard." This is funny, I was doing Marc Maron's podcast, and Maron said the same thing about me, he's like, "Yeah, you seem like really put together," and he's like, "Why aren't you unraveling like the way other comics are, right?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I'm just philosophically not from that camp, I'm not from the tortured artist camp, I'm more from the place of like, I'm creating from a place of passion and love."

• 10:22Speaker 04

  And actually, real talk, it's about emptying the tank. I just want to put it all out on the court.

• 10:27Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 10:27Speaker 04

  You know, and this court happens to be the stage, right? And I want to do my best, I want to be like...

• 10:34Speaker 04

  I put everything into picking out this outfit. I put everything into picking out these jokes, these tags, the stage design, the lighting design, like, this is it. And I want to know when I go to sleep here at night, when I put my head down on the pillow. I did everything I could.

• 10:48Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 10:49Speaker 04

  Like, living a life without regret, and only you can answer that, is the best.

• 10:53Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 10:53Speaker 04

  Everybody's talking about chasing happiness. To me, it's about chasing satisfaction, like, that self-satisfaction. And you know what it is.

• 10:59Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 10:59Speaker 04

  You know what it is.

• 11:00Shaan Puri?

  Right. And you know when you sold out?

• 11:02Speaker 04

  You know when you sold out.

• 11:03Shaan Puri?

  You got a good result, but you kind of didn't do it the right way.

• 11:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:06Shaan Puri?

  That sticks with you. And some people just, like, let that stick with them.

• 11:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:10Shaan Puri?

  Other people say, alright, even if I won, I'm not gonna win on those terms again.

• 11:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:14Shaan Puri?

  And if I lost, I can lose on these terms and be good at night.

• 11:17Speaker 04

  Yep. And, and I'm sure there's listeners to the pod that spend their time retweeting the right things and quote tweeting and dunking on VC people. And, you know, they, they say the right things, they'll regurgitate the right opinions, but they know when they put their head down at night, hey, you were supposed to train, you jerked off instead. You were supposed to do this, you didn't. But only you can answer that.

• 11:36Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 11:37Speaker 04

  So you can signal all you want. For me, what that stage represents is like, no, I'm putting myself in a high level of accountability in front of thirty, four hundred people.

• 11:46Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 11:46Speaker 04

  I'm putting it all out here.

• 11:48Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 11:48Speaker 04

  Even, and if you don't think I'm good, if you think I'm corny, if you think I'm whatever, hey, it is what it is, but I stood here.

• 11:52Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 11:53Speaker 04

  And I did it.

• 11:53Shaan Puri?

  I did me.

• 11:54Speaker 04

  And on my terms, and I did my best.

• 11:56Shaan Puri?

  So you're saying, so you're saying, three hours before you keep it?

• 11:57Speaker 04

  Three hours before, what I do is I like to do the, the, uh, some form of exercise. And I try to get out of my head.

• 12:04Shaan Puri?

  It's a workout workout, or you're just trying to break a sweat? What do you, what's the?

• 12:06Speaker 04

  Yeah. Trying to do, on tour, it's just about body maintenance. So I'll do running, I'll do some pull-ups, some core stuff, just stuff to get my body going.

• 12:17Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 12:17Speaker 04

  And, and start breaking a sweat. And what I love about, like, right around minute thirty to forty-five, is I'll get out of my head and into my body. And so much of life right now. Getting out of your head. Getting out of your head. And it's funny, I called you randomly, I was appreciate, I appreciate you picking up the phone the other day. We had a long conversation, we can get into that later. But so much of, I think what you do and what you put out in the world, and I call it like tech Twitter talk. It's all in your head. Intellectual. It's all just heady, anxiety inducing stuff. Oh, Ethereum's up, oh, Solana's this, it's like, it's all head shit. It's not a body feeling thing. Like grounding yourself two feet on the ground, I'm here in this moment, what do I do?

• 13:02Speaker 04

  And so much of performance, and to be great at it, the best Chappelle, the best performers, they're not in their head, they're in their body. They're really there. Somebody screams, somebody says something, somebody heckles, they're in their body. When you watch Steph Curry play, when I watch Devin Booker play, these guys are so in their body. Right. Luca's the best at this, he's in his body, he's in the, he's in flow. Right. And so Luca's like a kid, and kids do this well. Yeah. Kids do this pretty naturally. I love that. The older you get, the more heady you get, which is you gotta fight that. Yeah, you gotta fight that, right? And so, that's a great way to get out of my head, get into my body, then I'll probably, I eat something. Um, I take a shower, and then I put, I put on the outfit, and for me, it's like, being on stage. Uniform.

• 13:47Speaker 04

  And putting on that, it feels like a uniform. And like, for me, it feels, I want it to feel like a show. Like, from the watch to the jacket to the pants, I'm like, there's a level of confidence that you have when you move into a room, and you're like, hey, from, from my heels all the way up to my head, I'm wearing my armor. Right. Like, I'm coming correct. Right. And you just, you carry yourself with a little bop, you're like, no, I feel better about myself. My shit isn't slouching, there's no stains on my stuff, you know what I mean? Like, the moment I saw you today, you walked in, you're wearing your tech pants, I could tell you washed them a few times, but there's some stains on the backside. You know what I'm saying? But that feeling of like, no man, when I'm coming in here, I'm gonna be fresher than Sean. Yeah. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna be fresh. Yeah. That already gives me a feeling of like confidence, I know what I'm doing, you know?

• 14:32Speaker 04

  And, and by the way, the opener Marcela, like, Marcela was just like, dressed to the nines, you know? It's, it's a feeling. Then I get to the show, um, I finish eating, I'll meditate. So meditation for ten to fifteen minutes allow me to just again get out of my head and drop into my body and something simple just headspace. Right. Like I'm not getting too crazy about it. Um, and what I love about headspace specifically is so much of it is just basic breathing, establishing a level of intention. I'll meditate, then I'll pray. And for me, like prayer is really important because it's gotta be about something bigger than just myself and my corporal being. I'm like, what am I doing this for? And just establishing an intention and for me, the intention is like love.

• 15:17Speaker 04

  Let me give joy to people. Right. And I, I want the seed of everything that I'm doing to come from that, not be like, not be petty energy, angry energy, um, I'm gonna prove you wrong energy, like. I'm in the laughter business. Right. Like I'm here to make you feel joy, right? Um, and that warm feeling, so establishing an intention there, I get to the, I'll get to the venue about an hour before. I'll have a double shot of espresso. Um, I'll let my bowels do what they do. You always get those jitters, like you gotta pee, you gotta do what you gotta do. And then about like thirty to forty-five minutes before, I like to be loose just with the, with the staff. Right. Let them know like, hey, what's up? How are you?

• 16:02Speaker 04

  Door guy, security guy, openers. Right. You know what I mean? Another way to get out of your head, by the way. Yeah. Be there, be with others, be there, talking to others, serving others in a way. Yeah, and then, um, about a half an hour before, um, I'll go to my green room. I usually write it down. I'll write down, it'll just be on hotel notepad paper. Hey, what are a couple of new tags that I'm working on tonight? Right. Just move the ball forward a little bit, remind myself, y'all, I'm gonna do this. Um, for example, last night, one of the things I talk about, act one of the show is fertility. And a new joke that I did was like, you know what it's like being infertile as a man? I felt like Woody in Toy Story when his arm got ripped off.

• 16:45Speaker 04

  All, that was a, that was just one line and I was like, hey, make sure you do the Woody Toy Story line. Right. You know? And, uh, every show I try to add a few of these extra moments. And you add that up over the course of like a year, two years, three years. You start to see what works and what doesn't work and I'll, I'll have a thousand, three thousand different variations of that, right? And then I get on stage and by the time I get on stage, there's just this feeling of like. Now it's just pure play. Whatever happens, happens. Right. And when I'm onstage, what I try to do is I try to remember when, when I'm opening in front of my crowd, they're like really hot. And one of the things I try to remember is, don't yell, don't scream.

• 17:29Speaker 04

  Try to actually bring them to you. Hmm. Like, set the tempo of the game. Right. Don't get like too excited or too hot. Like, you can whip them up, but then like sit down at the stool, bring them to you.

• 17:42Ben?

  For this next clip, we have longtime guest Steph Smith, and she talks about companies with only one employee that are able to make millions of dollars.

• 17:50Sam Parr?

  So let's talk about companies of one. So you have a list of like 10 or seven companies that are run by one person, that are shockingly big. Let's go through some of them and talk about them.

• 18:03Steph Smith?

  Yeah, so I think you called out two before, so I'm gonna just call out those two quickly. You called out Built With before, which is the site that basically can tell what a site is built with. Is it built with WordPress or Squarespace? Or what plugins is a site using? And that one, at the time when you found it, was I think doing around 14 million. And then you've also covered Nomad List and RemoteOK by Peter Levels. And those two, I think together, are doing around a million a year. And those two, I think, are both completely solo founders. I know Peter certainly is. But there are a couple others. So have you heard of Ugmunk?

• 18:35Sam Parr?

  Well, hold on. So Built With, so people know. Built With is like maybe one of the most impressive ones here, but not the, but one of. Built With is like, it's like a, I think they have a plugin as well, but it's a website. You go to builtwith.com, you enter in the hustle.co. Let's say you wanna, you see something on our website that you like and you wanna copy, and you're like, how'd they build that? What plugins do they use? What, whatever. You use Built With, and they make money because, what do they do? I think they like sell people's data or something.

• 19:01Steph Smith?

  I'm not sure, actually. Let me look this up because I know they get a crazy amount of traffic. Look, they've got plans on their site. So they've got a basic plan. I don't know what you get with it, but it's $295.

• 19:14Sam Parr?

  Oh, I know what you get. You get, basically, I believe you sign up and it tells you people's... So it crawls all these websites and it tells you what type of features they have on their website and what type of plugins. And I think you pay money and it'll say, "We have the emails or contact information of all types of people who use blank plugin." And you sell a plugin that is complimentary to that. Therefore, pay money and you could now target them and advertise against them, or things like that.

• 19:41Steph Smith?

  Yeah, they charge... So their basic plan is $3,000 a year. Their pro is $5,000. Their team is $10,000. There's a cool little trick they have on their pricing page. If you go to it and you hover over, they have like technologies, keywords, and they have these little GIFs that they're actually like showing what you would get with the product. I've never actually seen that before, so that's a cute little hack.

• 20:02Sam Parr?

  And it's built by basically one guy in Australia. Alright, so what are some of the other companies?

• 20:07Steph Smith?

  Okay, so I was gonna call it UG Monk. So this one's not as big. I actually don't know exactly how much they're making, but it's a really simple ecommerce store. They started just selling really nice t-shirts, which sounds like, okay, like there's enough t-shirt stores out there. But this guy, Jeff Sheldon, he focused on just really high-quality shirts. And then now he's moved into almost like productivity stuff. If you... Are you in the doc?

• 20:31Sam Parr?

  I'm looking at UG Monk. So when I go to UG Monk, I see like a pen holder and I see like a to-do list. Like a... It's like cute, well-designed like pen holders, but it doesn't sound neat, but honestly, it looks pretty sick.

• 20:48Steph Smith?

  Yeah, it looks surprisingly sick. If you go to... Let me... If you click in the doc where it says, "Look at this," if you click that, that is his setup. And he's like one of those builders who I think has built a little Twitter following as well. And he just has this beautiful desk setup, which is like the perfect ad. And I...

• 21:06Sam Parr?

  Oh, I've seen this. It looks awesome.

• 21:09Steph Smith?

  I never thought I'd want to go and buy like a hundred dollar to do list, but I, I think I'm gonna buy one.

• 21:16Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I, it's just like cute, easy to use, like mid-century modern stuff. Yeah, I'm on board. How much revenue does he do?

• 21:24Steph Smith?

  I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure he does several million a year. He gets over 200,000 page views a month. And he's been going at this for several years. So I know he makes enough to have left his full-time job several years ago, and he's grown a lot since then. So I'd probably say a couple mil.

• 21:39Sam Parr?

  Wow, that's crazy. All right. That's a, that's a good find. It's just one guy? He's the only employee?

• 21:45Steph Smith?

  I think so. I mean, he certainly, he, he probably has some staff now that he's been growing, but I, I'm pretty sure he doesn't have a big team.

• 21:52Sam Parr?

  All right, what's next?

• 21:53Steph Smith?

  All right, Card is actually one guy. He might have contractors, but Card, C-A-R-R-D. I've built sites with Card. People probably recognize Card, or they've almost certainly been on a site built by Card. And it's built by this guy AJ, and it's doing one million dollars a year AR. I think he actually just raised money now, so I think he's kind of going for.

• 22:12Sam Parr?

  Did he really just raise money? I would love to invest in this.

• 22:15Steph Smith?

  Yeah, he raised money earlier this year. He was like big in the indie hacker community, and then I think he posted on Indie Hackers this year, like, look, I'm, I'm gonna raise money. I'm gonna, you know, really go for it. But he, it's kind of crazy. 2.5 million sites have been built on Card. And yeah, I, he hit like a million AR.

• 22:33Sam Parr?

  So it's a free platform for building simply, uh, for building simple, fully responsive, one-page websites that can do anything. I actually think, so there, there was this company called, you remember About Me?

• 22:46Steph Smith?

  No, what is that?

• 22:47Sam Parr?

  About.me. So go to About.me. That's the URL. You don't remember that? You're, I'm just a little bit older than you, which, which is like, then that few years probably makes a difference. Because About.me, when I was just getting started, was considered like the preeminent builder in this space. And they made, it, it was a one-page website where you can explain stuff about you. And it was started by this guy named Tony Conrad, I believe his name is. And he's this cool-looking dude who is also an investor now. And he sold it after only two years to AOL for like $40 million, and it was bootstrapped. You see About.me? You see how it's like basically the same thing?

• 23:26Steph Smith?

  Yeah, it reminds me of, you've heard of Unsplash, right?

• 23:29Sam Parr?

  I love Unsplash.

• 23:31Steph Smith?

  So, or sorry, I'm not thinking of Unsplash, I'm talking about Unfold. Unfold is this app that basically, for Instagrammers, it adds different, like it allows you to kind of piece together pictures for your Instagram story. But they also started these like one-pagers. Where basically, because all these Instagrammers, they're like, oh, I need my link in bio. Linkin bio is also a site like that. But Unfold was sold to Squarespace, I think like last year or something. I don't know for how much, though.

• 23:56Sam Parr?

  Man, I think that these one-page website builders are actually really cool. So there's this other business I almost invested in. I think it's called mediakits.com or .co. I believe it's just called MediaKit. And all they did was built a really slick website builder, where you could create your media kit and send it to people. So, and whether you're The Hustle, or you're just an Instagram person, you just had thehustle.co.mediakit, or like, you know, steffsmith.com.mediakit. And it was that, your media kit was on there. And that sounds like not that important, but it's kind of like DocSend. So DocSend, if you don't know what DocSend is, DocSend is basically, all it is, is PowerPoint in the cloud, but email gated.

• 24:39Sam Parr?

  So you have to enter your email, and then you get all types of information. So you use it when you are creating a pitch deck, and you want to send it to investors, so you know who has it, and who views it, and how long they've used it. And it's basically that. So anyway, Card is pretty badass. That actually might be one of the highest potential businesses you have here, I think.

• 24:58Steph Smith?

  Yeah, and I mean, he actually runs Card as a subscription business, so that's 1 million ARR, and I think it's probably way past that today. I think you're gonna like the next one, though. Go to this nextepisode.net. I think it's actually next-episode.net. It's the, it's such an old site. I think the guy's been running it for 15 years. And if you just open it up, you'll, you'll get a sense of how the UI hasn't caught up to where we are today. But it's amazing, because this guy's been running it for 15 years. Guess how much traffic this thing gets?

• 25:27Sam Parr?

  I'm looking at it on SimilarWeb. This is crazy. So what is this called? So next-episode.net. What is this?

• 25:35Steph Smith?

  Yeah. It's a site where basically, like, there's no way I would think that a site like this would still exist, but people use it. That basically helps you track your TV shows. And it's a little bit of a community, so I think, I've never used it, but you know, people watch The Bachelor, they hang out on this site, and they find other people who watch The Bachelor, and they talk about it. But it's kind of crazy how much traffic this site gets.

• 25:56Sam Parr?

  This is awesome. And so here's why I know this is a big business. So if you go to SimilarWeb and you look at the traffic, the estimated monthly traffic is 3.6 million uniques a month. That's decent. That's not like the best, but it's like really good, particularly for one person. But if you go to Traffic Source, it says that 80% is coming from direct traffic, which basically means that there's a lot of people that are just typing in this URL and going there on a consistent basis. And if you do that, you probably can have a huge business. And it looks like they have got a premium, which is only $2 a month. But how big is this?

• 26:32Steph Smith?

  So I don't know exactly how big it is, but he's been running it for 15 years. And I know he's definitely, I found him on Hacker News, one of those posts that was like, "Hey, like who's a solopreneur who's doing this thing on their own?" And he's like, "I've worked on this entirely on my own for the last 15 years." So...

• 26:47Sam Parr?

  What? This is crazy. Good find. I can't, wait, so who, what's this person's name? Do you know?

• 26:54Steph Smith?

  Uh, let me send you...

• 26:55Sam Parr?

  Here he is. I found him. Nico, Nicolay?

• 26:59Steph Smith?

  Yeah.

• 27:01Sam Parr?

  Wow, this is a good find. How much revenue do you think he does on this?

• 27:06Steph Smith?

  I don't know about today, but I'm assuming like, if he's getting that many million pages and he's been working on it for 15 years, I'd say like, maybe a million a year. What do you think?

• 27:16Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I would agree with that. And it's probably mostly all profit.

• 27:20Steph Smith?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, he's literally the only one who works on it.

• 27:23Sam Parr?

  And there's no cost.

• 27:24Steph Smith?

  In one of the, the posts on Hacker News, he's like, "Yeah, I started it for myself because I couldn't find such a tool back in the day." And basically, he's like, avoided hiring other people because he doesn't want to like scale through hiring.

• 27:37Sam Parr?

  All right. What else we got?

• 27:39Steph Smith?

  There's a ton on here. There's some, there's one called Hostify by a guy named Riley, who basically, you know, has scaled that to like a million a month in a year or two. There's some good stories from back in the day where apparently SurveyMonkey was doing $19 million in revenue with 12 employees. So not a one-person thing, but Plenty of Fish is another example where they were doing apparently $10 million and the guy was by himself. He might've even been part-time. So that's kind of a crazy story from back in the day, too.

• 28:07Sam Parr?

  How did, how, how do you know this about SurveyMonkey?

• 28:10Steph Smith?

  So it was posted, it was actually you posted about Built With a while ago, I think. And then I went through all of the comments of you. Basically, you were like, can anyone tell me something more efficient than that? And this guy named Trip posted, yeah, Survey Monkey was doing 19 million with 12 employees. And you asked him if this was documented and basically someone else commented and was like, yeah, Trip's too modest to say this, but he actually invested in Survey Monkey in 2009. So he probably knows the numbers.

• 28:39Sam Parr?

  Wow, this is amazing. I've heard this, I've heard rumors about Survey Monkey doing this. This is crazy. This is so cool.

• 28:47Ben?

  Okay, from million dollar businesses, we're moving to billion dollar businesses. On this next clip, we have Jack Abraham. He's the founder of multiple great startups and he's currently leading tons of successful investments at Atomic. In this clip, he tells us the frameworks that he uses to recognize opportunities for billion dollar companies.

• 29:07Sam Parr?

  Go to the patterns. I'd be curious to what those are.

• 29:10Speaker 06

  Cool. Yeah, so some patterns that I think are kind of tried and true, that are really interesting to, to think about. One pattern is if you take things that rich people have access to, or rich companies have access to, and you figure out how to democratize them. So you make them more accessible, distributable, cheaper and accessible to everyone. That is a winning formula for creating a really good company. And part of the reason for that, from a philosophical perspective, this is actually something I learned from Marc Andreessen.

• 29:52Speaker 06

  He has this belief that human desire is infinite, which is an interesting concept. And if you believe that, then people with a lot of resources and companies with a lot of resources are willing to spend on the outer limit of human desire. So they're poking around, they're figuring out all of these things of what's the next thing on the human desire bubble that could be discovered? And they might discover something. And if something there really takes hold, that you can then take and give to everyone. Everyone might want that and it might be ready for everyone.

• 30:26Shaan Puri?

  Like what? Like Uber was Uber was a classic example of this, right? People had private drivers. Now everybody can push a button, have a private driver, driver, pick them up.

• 30:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, private driver with Uber, private chef with DoorDash, private shopper with Instacart. Those are all, you know, really good examples. You could even argue, you know, second home Airbnb. It's kind of like having access to a second home much in a much cheaper way. So I think that that's a really, really interesting pattern that people can look into that.

• 31:04Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that's a good framework.

• 31:06Speaker 06

  Is an interesting one and is pretty tried and true.

• 31:10Shaan Puri?

  And so what's a, what's an idea in that space? So what are some other things that you've seen that either very wealthy people or very wealthy companies have that the rest of us don't? What are some other, what are some other examples in there that, that, you know, haven't looked into it, but might, might be, might be interesting?

• 31:27Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 31:30Speaker 06

  Well, I think that there seems to be some kind of a renaissance happening in fintech, partially because the wealthy seem to have access to financial planning, financial resources around planning, access to the markets. You know, there's this whole 99% versus the 1% and people have kind of figured that out. And I think that's why you're seeing this boom of new companies. If you can give the 99% what the 1% has access to and the ability to generate wealth. I think that that's actually really interesting. I think there are a lot of interesting startup ideas that are being formed there. We're starting one or two that we think can help empower people in that area, for example. So that would be, you know, one example of, of an area that.

• 32:15Sam Parr?

  Are you going to do anything in the wealth advisor space?

• 32:19Speaker 06

  Um, we are kind of tangentially doing things there. I think that there's probably a lot more to do there.

• 32:29Speaker 06

  You know, wealth advisory is a compounded issue where even the wealthy, when they have access to wealth advisory, it's not great.

• 32:38Sam Parr?

  It's not great. Have you heard of, have you heard of Adpar, Sean?

• 32:42Speaker 06

  No.

• 32:43Sam Parr?

  So I, I bet you have, Jack, right?

• 32:46Speaker 06

  Adipar? Yeah.

• 32:47Sam Parr?

  Adipar, sorry. And so Adipar was started by Joe Lonsdale, I think, right? Um, I only know like, you know, the Wikipedia version, but basically it's a, it's kind of like mint.com, but for really wealthy people. I actually, but like billionaire wealthy people. I actually don't know what features necessarily it has that, uh, something a little bit, what, what, Jack, what's it have that's more robust, you know?

• 33:12Speaker 06

  Um, sorry, can you repeat that?

• 33:14Sam Parr?

  What, what does Adipar have that's more robust?

• 33:18Speaker 06

  It basically has tracking of like everything, every fund, everywhere in the world, every wealth manager, all of your assets. But they tend to work more with wealth managers instead of individuals, but Joe and that company has an, like a big vision for where that can go. Um, and you might be able to work with it as an individual now, but that's kind of along the lines.

• 33:39Sam Parr?

  So I

• 33:40Speaker 06

  I could disrupt that.

• 33:41Sam Parr?

  So I work with some of these folks and they send me like the jankiest stuff ever. And their login, so like Morgan Stanley, the login to like, look at your investments. It's horrible. And I was like, you guys, this is just absolutely awful. Like I'm just using spreadsheets on my own. This is really bad. You know, I've heard of this Adipar thing and they're like, well, you know, you can't use that unless you're worth $500 million or like a billion dollars. It's, it's really, really expensive. Like it's crazy high. And I'm like, are you kidding me? Just like, give me a mint.com login or something and you guys like become the admin and just like, let's share this. You could just tell me. Because this is dog shit. And so I think that, um, I think there's a lot of interesting stuff in that space.

• 34:21Sam Parr?

  But to go back to your point about distribution, I think selling to those people are, can be quite challenging because they're very old school and they're very conservative. But, uh, that, I was bringing this up to ask you if that's a space that has been interesting to you lately. Because you, I know you're being a little cryptic because you like to be stealth until you, you go live. But so I was trying to, I'm trying to get something out of you.

• 34:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think it's a really interesting space. I would encourage people to look into it. I think that there is a lot that can be done there. I think there's dissatisfaction amongst everyone, basically in that space. It's pretty universal. Lot of room for improvement.

• 34:58Shaan Puri?

  Cool. So that's one pattern for great ideas. So what are the wealthy companies that people have that can be democratized? And if a few people have that desire and they pushed out to that limit, other people would want it if you can make it accessible, cheaper, and more available to them. That's an amazing one. I think there's tons of great ideas there. What's another framework or sort of pattern you've seen for great ideas?

• 35:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, so one that I think is pretty interesting, that's also I would put in like the tried and true bucket, is if you take something that people consistently do, and they have to do, and they feel like they have to do it, but it takes a lot of steps and/or time, and you dramatically simplify it. And you make it a lot faster to accomplish the same thing that they feel like they have to do. So some good examples of this would be, for example, booking online travel. You know, it used to be so hard to do. You'd have to go to so many different sites. The Kayak founders had the vision of, let's just pull it all into kayak.com.

• 36:07Speaker 06

  You go to one site, you see it all in one place, that they made it really easy.

• 36:11Shaan Puri?

  I think you've said this once, which was, anytime somebody has 14 tabs open to do this, to do one task, that's a business opportunity, is that right?

• 36:19Speaker 06

  That's a business opportunity. Yeah. I mean, just watch for that. If you ever see that, people are doing a lot of research, there are, yeah, tons of tabs open, it's really arduous, that's an opportunity. Another example of that, that we kind of found with him's and hers and other telemedicine companies that we've started, is going to the doctor's office. You know, people need to go to the doctor's office. Think of that process. You're calling the doctor's office, you're scheduling an appointment, you're whipping out your calendar, you're putting it on your calendar, you're going to the waiting room, you're sitting there, you're getting prescribed something, you're going to Walgreens, you're waiting in line for half an hour, going around the store, going home, you know, this is a big process.

• 37:00Speaker 06

  And as a result, the next generation kind of doesn't even really engage with the healthcare system. You know, close to nine out of 10 of them don't even know who their doctor is, or they haven't even gone. So you know, telemedicine takes that process and makes it a five minute process where you can do it on your phone and go through and get treated for whatever condition that you have. I think another interesting example of that is selling your house. People need to sell their house, right? And it's a really hard, long, arduous process fraught with a lot of anxiety and things like that. Open Door came along and said, hey, come to this website. Tell us what your house is and we'll make you an offer to buy it. And you can sell it right now.

• 37:44Speaker 06

  And, you know, not everyone has to do that and not everyone does do that, but enough people do it that created a really, really big company that's doing really well. So those are some, some interesting.

• 37:56Shaan Puri?

  You guys are doing that now with Open Store, right? Uh, which I gotta say is it is a truly great idea. I remember when I first heard it, I texted my friend and I said, uh, I, I didn't even say how great this idea is. I just only said, why are we not doing this? Uh, because I was like, this is that good of an idea. Selling your company, selling your ecommerce store in this case. Takes so much effort, so much work and the data is all there, right? Like I'm assuming, I don't actually know how it works. So I'm assuming it's sort of like Clearbank or whatever, where you can plug into their Shopify, you can plug into their Facebook ad account, you can plug into their bank or whatever. And, and with those, you know, three sources of data, you can get a basically like a health score and a value of this, of this,

• 38:37Shaan Puri?

  of the shop and make them an offer and they don't have to go, most of them don't even know, like at least with a house, it's painful, but you kind of know what you're supposed to do to do it. Yeah. Nine out of 10 friends I talked to who have an ecommerce store don't even know what you would do if you wanted to sell. They don't even know what, whose door do I knock on? What do I need to have ready? And, and so therefore I just, I'm just not going to do it. And, and it's like the open door thing where not everybody's going to do this, but sure, if open door captures, I'm, I don't know what they modeled out, but you know, 1%, 3%, 5% of all house sales, like multi-billion dollar company, same thing for, for open source. So I'm super, super bullish to the point where I was like, why the, what am I doing with my life? That I'm not doing this idea. This makes total sense.

• 39:17Speaker 06

  Oh man. Well, thanks for saying that.

• 39:18Shaan Puri?

  Don't worry, I'm not going to copy you, but.

• 39:20Speaker 06

  Keith and I are having a ton of fun, ton of fun building out that company, um, here in Miami. That's been a blast. Building a, a great team, a huge team and. Yeah, it solves this pain point in a market where it's really hard to sell your company. And all you need to do is come to a website. We give you a price and you can sell your company. And it's really interesting. We have an amazing data science team. We're hiring really aggressively. If anyone wants to join, it's, you know, anyone who joins that team, it's such an unbelievable team. I think it's going to create this almost Miami mafia, so to speak, around here of amazing people. I think it's an exceptional opportunity and scaling really quickly. So that's been a lot of fun. Thanks for saying that.

• 40:04Ben?

  Okay, that's it. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time.