$20M In ONE Day?! (#544)
text $500M Exit, Pieter Levels, and Intentional Internet - January 29, 2024 (about 1 year ago) • 01:02:40
Transcript:
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Shaan Puri | So let's do a little public math here. Let's break a rule. He just launched this product and had more demand than he was willing to let in. He let in 5,000 people, which is $20,000,000 in ARR that he had on day one of launching this product.
Alright, what's up? It's me and Sam, two guys who you can't live without. You know, I should really think about what I'm going to say before I start talking. I literally just start talking and whatever comes out of my mouth is fine.
Also, it's 9 AM for me. I wake up and don't talk to anyone from 8 AM to 9 AM, so these are the first words I say. And that's what came out.
Alright, well here we are. We both have one topic in both of our lists, which is very, very rare that we have overlap. We both have this topic because there's a business that sold for $500,000,000. That is a badass story, and it's called Follow-Up Boss. I had never heard of this company before. I find out they sold for $500,000,000 in cash. Tell me about Follow-Up Boss. I think you know more.
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Sam Parr | You know how I know about them? I know about them for two reasons. The biggest reason is they're a Hampton member, and I saw them post that they had just sold. Man, this story is crazy! So, I had never heard of this company. Have you? | |
Shaan Puri | never heard of them till today | |
Sam Parr | So, there's not really a reason why we would have heard of them other than we're just business nerds. But it's a real estate platform, so it's a vertical software.
Basically, the gist of it is that if you are a real estate agent or if you own a company that has multiple real estate agents, you get leads from Redfin, Zillow, or whatever else. Ideally, you get thousands of leads per month.
As well as having homes that you're selling and people who are buying homes, you have to track them all. It's basically kind of what HubSpot or Salesforce does, but specifically for real estate agents.
The guy, Dan, he started it 12 years ago, I think. Do you know how he started it? That's what's fascinating about it.
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Shaan Puri | I don't know how he started it, but you're right. The gist of it is that it's a niche down CRM. So, agents get leads and they need to follow up with those leads. You have to keep track of all those leads.
It's a sort of HubSpot for real estate agents, just zoomed in, way in on that one niche. It has a pretty insane exit. So, how did they start it?
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Sam Parr | So, what was the final sale? **$500,000,000**. It was **$400,000,000** upfront in cash and then another **$100,000,000** earn-out.
Listen, this guy's name is Dan. He's from Australia, but they live in Wyoming now. So, I guess it's technically a remote company, but they're a Wyoming startup. It's going to be one of the bigger tech exits out of Wyoming.
Man, listen to this. He actually went through the foundation. Do you remember that course from like 10 years ago? It was a course to teach you how to start a startup.
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Shaan Puri | the foundation no I've never heard of that | |
Sam Parr | yeah that's what it was called and so it's like their greatest success story I guess now but they he went to this thing and he started just trolling facebook groups and he was like working a normal job he was a marketer at a normal big company and he was like I wanna start a company I need some ideas and so he was like well I've I've got a buddy in real estate that kind of interests me so I'm so he started joining these facebook groups for real estate agents and he just started like skimming in the all the posts of like what are people complaining about what's like a common thing and he saw this guy complain he's like man I'm paying $500 a month for the software that I hate for tracking all my leads it kinda stinks like how are you guys like tracking your leads and he saw like okay that's interesting and so he partnered with a guy who's a developer a friend of his is a developer they build an mvp they say that it took them like 6 6 months and they only had one customer paying a $150 a month but he said he goes man we built like this interview that I read with him is a few years old so I don't know if it was true till the end but he's like we basically built our entire business on facebook but not facebook ads he goes I would just go into all these facebook groups as the ceo and I would see them talk about like hey what's a good platform for this and it wasn't even related to follow-up boss which was his software company he was like I was just like being helpful constantly and people would click my facebook profile and see that I was the ceo of this one platform or this one tech company and then they would click off and buy it and I would call them and become friends with them but he became they found this idea just through trolling facebook groups and they would see people complain about stuff and he would dm them on facebook and be like hey I think I'm building a solution for you I don't care if you buy it or not but like could you just give me 10 minutes of your time so I could figure out make sure I'm solving the right problem and he did so often that that's how they came up with this idea for the software they bootstrap the whole company I don't know how much their revenue was that's the the only source that I found was a source that I don't entirely trust online but it was like 28,000,000 a year in revenue less than a 100 employees and a huge echo so people | |
Shaan Puri | have to tell you the revenue when you join hampton don't you just have this can't you just take a peek at the quick hipaa record here | |
Sam Parr | But I would never cite that. So, I just Googled, like, "Follow-Up Boss revenue," and I'm just like, "What can I see that's public?" So, right, I don't know.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, this is an awesome story and a good example of kind of the "niche down, zoom in, pivot." I think that there are many business plan blueprints.
For example, those guys from 37 Signals, what they're doing is they just go, "Hey, what's a super popular thing that has too many features? We're going to make it do less and take up less of your life." That's like an example.
Their email client, they're like, "Yeah, it's just going to do these things in this way. Less features are better; less clutter is better."
They're doing it again with their software where you only have to pay for it one time—no monthly recurring fees. Their thing is it's the stripped-down version of X.
I don't know if you saw, well, I know if you saw, but the guys who started Tuft and Needle came out with a new company. Did you see this?
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Sam Parr | crazy what's it called boring mattress boring mattress | |
Shaan Puri | So, the guys who created Tuft and Needle were part of the D2C [direct-to-consumer] wave. You know, mattresses were like the poster boys of that wave. Tuft and Needle and Purple got big, raised a bunch of money, burned a bunch of money, and kind of didn't have a great exit.
So, these guys came back, and now it's just boring.co is the name of their website. It's like, "This is a plain mattress." Our friends told us that we should tell you about all the cool benefits and features that will make this "different" and "sellable," but we're not convinced. We don't think you'll fall for that. So, here's just a really good mattress that'll last you a while—no frills. | |
Sam Parr | and there's a $400 right or it's like it's cheap | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, $500. So that's their new thing.
That's one blueprint in a business: to do the same thing with less... less frills. Actually, you know, brand less of a brand pump or fewer features that you needed to use.
Trello is a good example of this. All productivity apps had more and more features. Trello was like, "Hey, we're just gonna have fewer features."
It's just the equivalent of index cards on the internet that you can move around.
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Sam Parr | Alright everyone, a quick break to tell you about HubSpot. This one's really easy for me to talk about because I'm going to show you a real-life example.
I've got this company called Hampton (joinhampton.com). It's a community for founders doing between $2,000,000 all the way up to $250,000,000 a year in revenue. One of the ways that we've grown is by creating these cool surveys. We have a lot of founders with high net worths, and we ask them all types of questions that people typically are embarrassed to ask but that provide a lot of value.
So, things like how much the founders pay themselves each month, how much money they're spending each month, what their payroll looks like, and if they're optimistic about the next year in their business. All these questions that people are afraid to ask, but we ask them anyway, and they tell us in this anonymous survey.
What we do is create a landing page using HubSpot's landing page tool. It basically has a landing page that says, "Here are all the questions we asked. Give us your email if you want to access it." I shared this page on Twitter, and we were able to get thousands of people who gave us their email and told us they wanted this survey.
I could see if they came from social media. I can see if they came from Twitter, from LinkedIn, basically everywhere else that they could possibly come from. I'm able to track all of that, and then I can see over the next handful of weeks how many of those people actually signed up and became members of Hampton. In other words, I can see how much revenue came from this survey and how much revenue came from each traffic source, things like that.
But the best part is I can see how much revenue came from it. A lot of times, it takes a ton of work to make that happen, but HubSpot made that super, super easy. If you're interested in doing this, you could check it out at hubspot.com. The link's in the description, and I'll also put the link to the survey that I did so you can actually see the landing page and how it works and everything like that.
I'm just going to do that call to action then, and it's free! Check it out in the description.
Alright, now back to MFM. There's actually another takeaway here, though. How long did it take you to hit your first $100,000 in revenue per month after starting your e-commerce company?
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Shaan Puri | like 3 months probably | |
Sam Parr | Yep, okay. You're involved in Shepherd. How long do you think it took them to hit their first $100,000 in revenue?
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Shaan Puri | I have no idea I'm gonna guess 6 months yeah quick | |
Sam Parr | Okay, 6 months. So, we're talking about months. Hampton took a short amount of time, months as well. The hustle, I think it took 9 months. Do you know how long it took Follow-Up Boss to get to $100,000 in monthly revenue?
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Shaan Puri | Well, you said they had one customer for $150, like hanging by a thread for a while. So, is it more than a year to get to that first milestone? It took 4 years.
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Sam Parr | Four years... Four years to get to a point. I was reading this interview with them. It took them four years, and they had 11 employees. They were at around $100,000 in monthly revenue. They said it was around $100,000, so it could have been a little bit more.
But what's crazy is these software companies. I don't know what their revenue was. Like I said, I think it was between $25,000 and $30,000. If you just Google "Follow-Up Boss revenue," that's what I saw. They sold for $400,000 to potentially $500,000 upfront.
What's crazy is these software companies... You and I both have this thing where we want to go fast. We need to learn and have a little bit of this attitude.
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Shaan Puri | I got 0% of this. You are more of a "stick-to-it" kind of guy, do you think? I mean, if you're under $100,000 in revenue four years in, are you still doing this?
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Sam Parr | it's hard so like alright so I have an audience now | |
Shaan Puri | so this would be do you think you could have stuck with it | |
Sam Parr | It depends on where I was in life. If I was 26-year-old Sam, I would say there was a 50% chance. If it's where I am now, I would say there’s a 5% chance. It would be really hard. It would be hard. | |
Shaan Puri | Alright guys, we're going to review the metrics today. Earbuds in, everybody! We're going to send a revenue number, and then everyone has to do this.
I say, "We're at $42,000 in year 4." Then I'm like, "Alright, but there are other things to be excited about."
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Sam Parr | But we talked to Dharmesh about this, and Dharmesh is pretty low-key about it. He's like, "It took forever."
In reality, Dharmesh, the founder of HubSpot, mentioned that HubSpot actually grew a lot faster. However, he said, "Man, the first six years, we only got to like $4,000,000 or something in revenue." I forget exactly what he said, but he conveyed the idea that it's a slog at first.
Let's think about that. | |
Shaan Puri | Time... things just grew slower. Now, things grow much faster, right? The benchmarks and the expectations are way different. | |
Sam Parr | But you have to have faith. And of course, we're talking about the one that worked. There are so many more that don't work. But to have that faith, like, "This can work," and to stick to it for 10, 11, or 12 years... if you have the right metrics, this pays off. These software companies are so much cooler than what we typically start.
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Shaan Puri | So, I did a... I remember many years ago, I did a fireside chat with Michael Birch, who at the time was known as my mentor. He was my boss. He's a guy who's built four or five super successful internet companies that scaled to millions of users. He's basically a billionaire in Silicon Valley.
A bunch of entrepreneurs came over and they were asking questions. One of the questions they asked was, "How do you know when to pivot or persevere?" Meaning, you hear the stories about Follow-Up Boss or Pinterest, where it was not taken off for a while, and then, you know, they stuck with it and then it did.
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Sam Parr | and pictures take a long time | |
Shaan Puri | pictures took a long time like the graph was you know not like some explosive social app at the beginning and and so they and I I turned to him because I was like I wanna know this answer too this is like this is the I I wanna know what is the guy who's done it in silicon valley what does he what does he say and he goes this is the hardest question for any entrepreneur and it's deeply personal and situational he goes for every you know one story you hear of a pinterest that just keeps going after 12 months even though there's no signs of life you know there's a 100 people that did that and failed and you just never hear they don't get to talk at the conference right so he's like it's super hard because you have the survivorship bias to know which story should you listen to and so he's like isaac this is the one where there's no real advice you can get from somebody else the one thing that we figured out at our company was like we would set a time box we think we can hit this milestone by this date and setting that time box is really important because it keeps you honest upfront when you're super optimistic alright let's say something then we think that in the first like I I set one for this new company I haven't I haven't announced it yet on the pod but I set one I said I think we can get to 500,000 arr in the 1st 60 days so I think we can get 500 k of revenue in the 1st 60 days and I set that now if we don't hit that doesn't mean I'm gonna like throw in the towel or shut it down it meant like but maybe knowing me you never know life's on the line for these companies no but but the reality is you set that so that you have to have a conversation about why you didn't hit your expectations what did what were you wrong about or what assumption did you have that was incorrect because it might be a fatal assumption or it might just be oh I was just I underestimated how long it takes to do x and that's okay you can have that conversation the the thing we did when I worked with michael was we asked a question what metric gives us the most faith so what metric worries us the most and what metric gives us the most faith so let's say 4 years in we don't have a a million or we don't have a 100,000 in revenue that's the one that worries us the most we have very little revenue okay but what gives us the most faith it's well of the 52 customers we do have they love it and nobody's churning right then it's like oh okay what can I hang my hat on to give myself the excuse to keep going and so I think that's a useful question to ask if you if you don't know whether I should pivot or persevere I think what metric is giving me the most faith and what metric is keeping me up at night then you can almost kinda weigh the 2 against each other you know if the thing that's giving you faith is like yeah that one guy told me he likes it it's like oh that's not a very strong counterpunch to the fact that the evidence on your revenue and usage side is pretty low | |
Sam Parr | But it feels horrible when you're in it.
So, I posted a link in our MDB document. It goes to a TechCrunch article. If I remember correctly, it goes to a TechCrunch article. When we were running The Hustle, I looked up to a bit. There weren't that many media companies to look up to, and I really admired Business Insider.
The reason I liked it was that Henry Blodget was fairly transparent about their traffic. He wrote an article, it looks like maybe six years into the company, and he made a funny joke. He said, "We eked out a net profit of $21,100 on revenues of $4,800,000. It's basically enough to buy a MacBook Pro."
He reveals their traffic, and you see that it looks like this nice arc, this nice graph where it's exponentially going up. But I remember when I was running The Hustle, I thought, "Well, their graph looked amazing." It looked amazing, but then I zoomed in on this picture, and you could see that it's broken down by month.
If you really focus on it, what you could see is that basically in February of '09, they hit an all-time high, and then they didn't surpass that until something like December of '09. So basically for...
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Shaan Puri | the whole year | |
Sam Parr | The whole year, which I think they started in '07, was for 10 months. So, for 10 months, two years into the company, the monthly traffic—which for a site like Business Insider is how they gauge if they're doing a good job—basically either went down or didn't go up.
When you do that every single day, every single week for 10 months, it feels miserable. Then you zoom out and you see, "Okay, well, it has gone up." But these graphs are never a smooth upward trend. A lot of times, I imagine for two years, it'll be pretty rough. For three years, four years, it'll be tough, and then after a while, it starts picking up if you do a handful of things right.
But that requires extreme faith, and it's very, very hard to manage your emotions every day when it's like that. | |
Shaan Puri | I totally agree. This is something Tony Robbins said: "The number one choke point of any business is the psychology of the owner."
Every problem you think your business has, if you do the root cause analysis, it goes right back to the psychology of the owner.
For example, let's say, "Oh, we're not growing fast enough." Why? Because our paid acquisition sucks. Why? Because the person running our paid acquisition has only been doing it for six months. You don't have someone experienced.
Why? Because we're not hiring the right people. Why? Because our owner hasn't made that a priority and isn't willing to spend money. Or, is afraid to spend money on talent.
So, everything just comes back to the psychology of the owner, which is both empowering and, I think, scary for some people. The empowering part is that it's in your control. The scary part is, "Shit, it's my fault."
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Sam Parr | And it goes back to looking at inefficiencies. Where does the owner or CEO struggle? For example, I remember at The Hustle, I was always fearful of overspending. I was cheap about things, and I was actually overly cheap.
There were times when Facebook ads opened up, and I thought, "Dude, we gotta spend more here." Looking back, I should have spent way more, but I didn't because I was being too cheap.
Why was I cheap? Well, it stems from all the other experiences I've had in life. It's basically like what they say: a person with money is just going to magnify the traits they already have.
You always say that about people when they're drunk; their true feelings are just going to come out.
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Shaan Puri | right | |
Sam Parr | it's bay it's the same thing as with running a company and you gotta like master that inner game and it's really hard | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, for sure! Let's do another one. I want to talk about... do you have this one? "Peter Levels is insane." Tell me about the "Peter Levels is insane" one. That's a good headline!
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Sam Parr | I love this guy, Peter Levels. We had him on the podcast; I think we've only had him once, but he has an open invitation if he wants to come on again.
So, Peter Levels, we both love him. He has like 4 or 5 different businesses that he runs, and I think he's doing it all by himself. Collectively, his businesses probably do $2,000,000 a year in sales, and he's super transparent about all of it. He puts his revenue in his bio on Twitter and shares everything. He's a really fascinating, thoughtful guy.
Did you see what he did with his stock portfolio? So, click that tweet and you'll see it. He basically created a Google Sheet, and you can kind of... I don't know, he doesn't explicitly say it, but you could do the math. He says, "Here's how much my stock portfolio made me," and it was up 32%. So, you can kind of just do basic algebra and figure out how much he has in his portfolio. He reveals every holding that he has.
I think that, a) I'm happy he is doing this, but b) I would never ever do this, though. His transparency is wild, but it's super fascinating to see what this guy is doing when it comes to sharing his numbers out in public. It's pretty, pretty fascinating. | |
Shaan Puri | I gotta say two things about Peter.
First, Peter, come back on the pod! We miss you. You've done a bunch of interesting stuff, including your new AI projects that we didn't talk about yet, so I want to do that.
Second, we've had a bunch of people on this podcast. Some have big names, and some have impressive track records, like billionaires or those who built $100 billion companies. However, nobody—and I mean nobody—has a higher approval rating among entrepreneurs on the internet than Peter Levels. Have you ever met anybody who is not a fan of Peter Levels?
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Sam Parr | I've had billionaire friends, or associates, in a conversation, and they'll say, "That guy's doing it right. Everyone likes this guy."
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Shaan Puri | Put this guy's profile picture up on the screen. Go to YouTube and just look at this guy's profile picture. This is a personal branding seminar.
Look at this guy's profile picture. It's him on a couch in the international pose of a guy scheming on the internet, just messing around and having fun by himself. He's on a couch, half of his body dangling off. He's got his laptop, he's not wearing a shirt, and he's got his laptop up on a pillow because, you know, the laptop starts to scorch you after a while.
He's at this messed up angle, his neck's all twisted, but you know this guy is a one-man band just having fun. This is why you're right: CEOs of major companies are like that guy. That guy's doing it right because everybody is jealous of being able to be this guy—a guy who's just one man with a laptop, traveling around the world, building projects, whatever he wants for fun.
He builds cool stuff like an artist, and whatever he builds tends to have some juice behind it because he's a very creative guy. He's had many failures, but who cares? He's got a bunch of successes and he's very open about them. He's not trying to sell you anything.
Peter Levels is a hero amongst makers, and nobody—I will contend this—nobody has a higher approval rating on the internet amongst entrepreneurs than Peter Levels. | |
Sam Parr | He's a great man. I think on this podcast, a lot of people are like, "Oh, you're talking about just big companies too often," or whatever.
We always reiterate this: we like people who carve their path. That path could lead to a huge exit, or it could lead to something really small. You could just be a great artist. It doesn't matter if it's a big money thing or not.
Peter Lovell is fascinating because he has carved the hardest path and he sticks to it. He's very value-based. He's a really, really cool guy. | |
Shaan Puri | He did a tweet where he mentioned, "Only 4 out of the 70 projects I've ever done have made money, and 95% of everything I ever did failed. My hit rate's only 5%, so ship more."
This tweet has 15,000 likes. It literally looks like a screenshot of projects that made money and grew. He has Nomad List, Remote Talk, Rebase, and a YouTube network. This was before his AI venture.
Then, he lists all of his projects, which include things like Ice Cream Chat, Tubolytics, Gift Book, Tailored Telegram Chatbot, Suit, StartupRetreats.com, and Fire Calculator. I don't even know what any of these are, but each one of these represents a great week that he had while working on these projects.
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Sam Parr | You know that meme where it's like, "Babe, wake up! Sean Perry just tweeted again," or like, "Babe, wake up! You know, Peter Levels bought a domain?"
Yeah, whenever Peter replies to one of my tweets, it's like one of those. It's like, "Babe, wake up! Peter just said he liked what I'm doing." That's how I feel about this guy. He's a really cool guy.
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Shaan Puri | I have a theory that what is ultimately lacking in most people's lives is that they don't live life on their own terms. The way that this expresses itself is that you have a lot of fun when you're living life on your own terms. When you're just doing your thing, you're having a good time.
Peter Levels has that profile picture of him on his couch, all crooked, just on his laptop. He's doing his thing, and I feel like this is honestly a bit of why people like this podcast. We're not the most prepared, researched, or well-spoken, but people can tell we have fun in our lives. We literally just do shit that we want to do, and we're having a good time.
It might be that the things we do are not at all the things you want to do. Right? Sam's like buying a ranch and tipping cows, and I don't know what all this stuff is that you do. I don't want to do all that stuff, but I can tell that you want to do all that stuff, and that's awesome. It's great that you want to do all those things. You know, you build your gym and your farmhouse and whatever, all that good stuff.
I think that Peter Levels is a great example of somebody who's just living life on his own terms, and that is one of the most attractive traits that people have in general. It's so funny because what most people do is the exact opposite. Peter Levels has a bunch of influence, but when most people try to become influencers, they strip down their personality and try to appeal to others. People can sniff that out. | |
Sam Parr |
Yeah, I just think he's the best and I DM him on a regular basis. He replies to me 10% of the time. So Peter, if this makes it to you, come on the pod, man! Come back on! What do you got?
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Shaan Puri | Let's do another person who has gone from zero to hero: Brian Johnson.
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Sam Parr | have you seen the t shirt that he wears lately | |
Shaan Puri | don't die | |
Sam Parr | yeah don't die | |
Shaan Puri | Don't die. That's the new brand. You know what I like about it? It's the same look as the Austin 316 T-shirts. Yes, I'm like, "You should've just done Johnson 316: Don't Die." In fact, I'm like, "You'll make Johnson 316: Don't Die shirts," because that's who he should become.
Alright, so I was looking the other day because I saw that Brian Johnson finally started to sell something. You and I had made a prediction about 6 months to a year ago. We said, "You know what? I don't think Brian's doing this for the money. I don't think he's doing this for the fame." Although he's going to make a lot of money, and I'm sure the fame, you know, the attention feels good in the moment.
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Sam Parr | very obvious prediction | |
Shaan Puri | Very obvious prediction, but we said, "Dude, is this the greatest pre-launch marketing stunt ever?"
What he did was basically turn himself into a character. A lot of people have done this in the fitness niche, but he's not a fitness influencer. He branded himself as a longevity influencer—a "live forever, don't die" influencer.
He spent a couple of million dollars on tests, content, and building his brand. He came on podcasts like ours, and you could look at Google Trends to see the interest in Brian Johnson growing over time. Actually, we should map out when our podcast was with him on that trend because I'm curious where that was.
He has built an amazing following and he's doing everything you should do as an influencer. Not that he wants to be an influencer, but he's doing everything he should do. I don't know if you've seen his meetups that he's having lately—these runs that he's doing.
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Sam Parr | yeah they look awesome | |
Shaan Puri | They take people and they chant, "Don't die," and then they run up a hill or something like that. When they get to the bottom, they eat just a pot of lentils. They're all eating lentils. It's amazing!
So, he's building this little cult, and it's a great thing. He came out with his first paid product. Did you see it?
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Sam Parr | it was it it's the meal service right | |
Shaan Puri | No, no, no. So, he came out with like a... it's kind of like a meal service. It's basically part one of his blueprint diet as a ready-to-eat sort of delivery package. I think you pay $330 a month and you get this thing. 12,000 people applied.
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Sam Parr | Wait, wait, wait. What is it? How is it not? You said I was... you implied I was a little wrong with meal service. It is a meal service then, but it's just like powder, right?
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, it's not like meal delivery. It's not like Blue Apron, but it is, you know, the supplements and the drink and whatever. It's like some version, some skimmed down version of his anti-aging protocol.
Got it? It's the blueprint for self-experimentation study, and there's like a Level 1, and there's going to be a Level 2 and Level 3. So, there are 67 interventions in this, and it looks like there are a couple of powders, a bottle of olive oil, and then there's a bunch of pills. | |
Sam Parr | I like all those things powders pills that powder pills and oils sign me up | |
Shaan Puri | So, he got 12,000 people to apply, and 5,000 people paid.
Let's do a little public math here. Let's break a rule. He just launched this product and had more demand than he was willing to let in. He let in 5,000 people. That's **$20,000,000** in ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) that he had on day one of launching this product.
**$20,000,000** of ARR for a subscription supplements business essentially is like a **$200,000,000** business.
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Sam Parr | What do you think Athletic Greens is at revenue-wise? They raised that at $1,200,000,000. I bet they're at a... | |
Shaan Puri | 100 a 150 is my guess maybe 200 wow | |
Sam Parr | max okay | |
Shaan Puri | Not yet, you know, but this is day one. Day one, he came out the gate with $20,000,000, and this is less than half of the demand that he had. He could have been at $40,000,000 if he wanted to.
Again, I don't think he's doing this for the money, but goddamn, that's an impressive start to a business. It shows that I have this phrase now that I say, and my wife doesn't think it's cool. She's the only one I've tried it on, but I say this: **"All content is now marketing, and all marketing is now content."**
This is what Brian Johnson did. He was putting out content that happened to be marketing, and that marketing is now leading to a lot of sales for his new protocol.
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Sam Parr | When you say that to your wife, I can just hear the world's loudest eye roll, like, "Shut the fuck up, Sean. That shit works on those fucking dorks that listen to you. Take out the fucking trash, Sean."
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Shaan Puri | did you warm up the mac and cheese like I asked you to or not what are you talking about | |
Sam Parr | This is awesome! It's sort of like... have you seen that movie where they talk about "The Big Short"? Ryan Gosling's character, you know, they're like, "What are you getting out of this?" Ryan goes, "Look, look, listen, Vinny. You're getting the ice cream, you're getting the nuts, you're getting the chocolate syrup, you're getting the whipped cream, and when this works out, I'm gonna get the cherry on top. That's my feat. I just get a little bit of this."
That's what Brian Johnson is doing with this business. He's doing everything else, I think, actually just because he's a dork and he enjoys this stuff. Then it just so happened that he got famous, and now he's like, "Yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool. Okay, fine, I'll do that too." You know, and I dig that.
Isn't it weird? Like, why do you think we have so much trust and faith in this guy? Part of it is because he already has like the "F you" money, and so we think, "He didn't give a shit. He's just doing this just because." But the way that he's turned himself into a character is actually really interesting.
In his case, there was a high barrier to entry. He spent a million dollars, it seems, doing this. He also kind of lived like a hermit for two years to perfect this. But the idea of turning yourself into a character and then doing it in front of a lot of people, that's actually a really appealing and exciting route to go for a lot of people. It's just like you change your identity and you go all in on this, and you could actually make a great living by doing this.
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Shaan Puri | It's the same reason I bought shoes from the "Knees Over Toes" guy. I probably never bought shoes from any brand besides Nike in like 20 years. Then I see this guy, who's over 40 years old, dunking a basketball. I see what he looked like before he was doing his thing and how he had knee surgeries.
**Undeniable proof** is a very, very powerful lever. This guy literally just does a somersault, then he gets up and dunks the basketball. He's like this 45-year-old white guy.
With the shoes he came out with, like a pair of shoes that are, you know, the "Knees Over Toes" thing... not great shoes, by the way, for the record. Definitely don't buy version 1 of anybody's anything.
So, you know, it wasn't great, but I have a high amount of faith and trust in this guy because, again, all content is marketing. For two years, he just put out free content and didn't sell a thing.
For two years, all he did was put out very helpful content and showed an undeniable level of proof that this guy was in incredible shape, that his legs were super, super strong. The transformation from where he started to where he is now is very powerful.
So, anybody who wants to have that transformation will trust him. Then, when he comes out with a product and says, "Hey, this is what I use," people will buy it, and it's very, very effective. | |
Sam Parr | By the way, I also bought Knees Over Toes shoes before he came out with that shoe company. He was always wearing these other shoes, and I also bought them.
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Shaan Puri | I also bought those white shoes that look like they're on the stand. They're like $70 or something, or maybe $45. I couldn't even really get them on. I have a thick American foot or something, and they just don't fit in this European shoe.
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Sam Parr | Dude, I wear the shit out of them. I love those shoes! I remember seeing the picture and Googling, "What are those shoes?"
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Shaan Puri | they're not those shoes they look cool though what do they look they | |
Sam Parr | look great | |
Shaan Puri | they're like fourier or something like that | |
Sam Parr | like fugazi or it's like such an ebb | |
Shaan Puri | I love the fugazi's too man they were they were fugazi's help | |
Sam Parr | can I do a quick thrill of the shill by the way | |
Shaan Puri | okay go | |
Sam Parr | Alright, so basically at Hampton, we've got access to all this data. In order to grow, we decided... I love data. You know, they say data's the new oil. I already mentioned I love oil. I don't know how to make money off of it yet, but somehow oil is good.
We've been doing these surveys where we survey different industries and we get benchmarks for different industries. Right now, we just did one on agencies. We surveyed 60 agencies; they gave us all their revenue and profit. We did a cool survey where we show the benchmarks for profit per employee and revenue per employee.
You can find it at [joinhampton.com](http://joinhampton.com). If you go to our blog, you'll see the surveys. We did one on wealth, where people share their net worth, how much money they're spending each month, how much income they're making each month, and how much they're working each week. We just did one on agencies, so if you're an agency owner, check it out.
But more so, that's the shill. Here's the thrill part, Sean. If I decide to do this... have you ever heard of benchmarking? I didn't know anything about this industry. Do you know anything about benchmarking?
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Shaan Puri | yeah of course | |
Sam Parr | I didn't know that people would ever pay for this. The most common form of benchmarking is salary benchmarking. There’s a company called Salary.com, and then there are about 10 or 20 other ones that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars.
I think in a couple of years, if I get enough data, I can spin this off and create a data company where I do benchmarking for different industries. The problem that we'll be solving is, let's say you're an agency or an e-commerce business and you're above $50,000,000 in revenue. You want to know, "Are we spending the right amount for ads? Are we spending the right amount for employees?"
I think we can build a cool data business off of this. So that's the thrill of the shill. I just wanted to call my shot and say that maybe eventually, I think we're going to do this.
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Shaan Puri | I don't think it's a "call your shot" if you say maybe eventually. The "call your shot" is saying, "I'm going to do this." That's like the only requirement of calling your shot: to say, "I'm gonna do this."
It's not about saying, "It also happened to me; it might so happen to do this," which probably won't happen, but it could kind of work.
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Sam Parr | it's like if babe ruth just went like this it's at the? You just went like | |
Shaan Puri | he's gonna shrug he just | |
Sam Parr | went like my god he just later said he's like | |
Shaan Puri | Dude, you also reminded me of something. I don't mean to rain on your thrill or your shill here, but do you remember—have you seen these leaked messages? I'm sure you've seen this because we're both internet... what's it called? Like the people who look for fossils... whatever, archaeology. Yeah, when Mark Zuckerberg had his old AIM messages leaked when he was 19 years old starting Facebook and he like...
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Sam Parr | these these effing idiots are actually downloading this stuff | |
Shaan Puri | Here's the transcript:
He goes, he just DMs a friend just because he can't wait to brag. He says, "Yeah, so if you ever need anyone, and if you ever need any info about anyone at Harvard, just ask. I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, social security numbers."
His friend goes, "What? How did you manage that?"
He replies, "People just submitted it. I don't know why they... quote, 'trust me, dumb fucks.' This is Sam. It is slack about Hampton."
He's like, "Yeah, every agency just submitted their profits, their revenues, their growth tactics. They trust me."
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Sam Parr | for the record I | |
Shaan Puri | wanna say the next zuck dude | |
Sam Parr | Dude, I want to say I have access to **zero** of the documents that people submit in order to join Hampton. I've got **zero** access. I purposely did this for years. I purposely didn't ask for the name of your e-commerce business. I just didn't want to know because I didn't want to accidentally say anything.
I have **zero** access to this, not only because I don't want to say anything, but also because I just literally don't know how to, you know, use computers and log in. I don't have a password.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, that was the equivalent of, you know, "no habla inglés." Like, "Oh, I got pulled over. I don't even speak. I don't even know how to use my computer. I can't access this stuff, trust me."
Alright, let me stop making fun of that. Let's move on. Let's do another one. Alright, so last...
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Sam Parr | year I invested in this company called consensus and they basically it was like an ai company for research for like scientific research so if you wanted to like figure out like you know instead of like reading individual studies this website would just tell you in aggregate what many studies would show and they're only doing okay there it was basically just guys and they were still just trying to figure it out like it it was like this sounds interesting but like I don't even know if this is gonna work let's see well something happened a few weeks ago that I think is gonna change their business but I think that there's an inflection so basically like when the iphone came out the app store happened and we heard stories about pandora so pandora was a company before they were the music service the app store came out and they're like oh let's just use our service and pivot and build an app they're one of the first apps that's what made pandora popular when covid happened there's companies like betterhelp which is like therapy online or there's like telemedicine because the laws during covid change where a doctor can prescribe meds across state lines there's been a lot a a bunch of these right now one just happened so I think january 14th so I think it was 10 or january 10th openai created an app store they've kind of done this where they've like made their own like you can make your own gpt and all this other stuff but they've they created an app store I don't even think they said what the pricing was so with the iphone app store I think the developer gets what 70% of the revenue apple gets 30% openai hasn't even said what that what what it's gonna be so they're still really early and so this company that I invested in they're like oh well like our thing is going okay but like what if we just like went all in on this like plug in for openai store and so their version is basically like you just type in you ask it questions medical questions and it just gives you a slightly better answer than openai but it's a lot better or at least enough that you wanna pay for and there's not that much traffic right now or not that many new apps in the openai openai app store but this is one of those inflection moments so here's a 2 more examples so you remember honey that company that was like what do they do coupon codes for a website and then grammarly did the same thing they both did that with the chrome store you have a bunch of friends because you kind of ran in that world where people did this with with the facebook platform so zynga I don't know how much money they eventually made but it was at one. | |
Sam Parr | A multibillion-dollar company, I think right now we're going to see a Facebook store. You're going to see all these Mafia Wars, all these weird games. I think you had a buddy, what was the guy's name? Dan, who went to Camp FM and started like OMG Pop or something like that. What was that called?
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Shaan Puri | draw something was the game that everybody played | |
Sam Parr | And I think he had a multi-hundred-million-dollar exit. I think this is right now about to happen with the OpenAI plug-in store. It's really fascinating what's happening.
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Shaan Puri | I thought this was interesting. You asked the guy, or somebody asked the founder. He said, "I think it's going to be something between more than the Chrome extensions market and less than the App Store."
You know, short term, it's awesome for marketing and functionality for users. OpenAI is footing the bill on a lot of the compute costs.
In the medium term, we have 2x the usage of the next biggest GPT, and I think Canva is the next. So, this is the number one GPT.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, it's taking off. These guys are smart, but when they were starting their company, once we invested, it was like, "I don't know, hopefully we'll figure it out."
There was a time when I thought, "You guys better figure this out soon. I don't know if this is going to work out."
Then this inflection happened; this change occurred.
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Shaan Puri | Dude, this product is awesome! I just went to their site. I didn't do the ChatGPT thing, but their app is really cool.
So, you go there and ask any questions. I just asked, "Are microplastics dangerous for humans?" It pulls up all these papers. Then you hit "synthesize," which I think is the feature that you have to buy credits for. You start with 23 credits.
It says, "Summary: We looked at 10 papers. The study suggests microplastics are dangerous for humans. They carry toxic chemicals, contaminate ecosystems, and are linked to various health issues, including cancers and immune system disruptions."
Then it says, "We looked at 14 papers: Yes - 43% of the time, Possibly - 57% of the time, No - 0% of the time." That was the gist of it.
You can also see below each specific paper, and it's tagged like, "Oh, this is a rigorous journal," or "This is highly cited." You can kind of get AI to summarize each of those papers.
This is a sick product!
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Sam Parr | it's cool and it but it by the way just like all great stuff it did not start that way | |
Shaan Puri | I'm mad you didn't tell me about this this is I why did I invest in this this is great | |
Sam Parr | It wasn't obvious. And by the way, it's still not obvious. This company, just like any startup, could still totally fail and not work. | |
Shaan Puri | No, but it's a very interesting bet, right? Like to do a verticalized Google specifically for scientific papers.
AI being the "why now" of what you could do differently than you could do before makes a lot of sense. | |
Sam Parr | And it was... I'll give the shout out: it's **consensus.app**. That's their website.
Being, hey, **Consensus** is great! I think it's actually going to work out. These guys, they kind of put their heads down for like 24 months and are really starting to figure things out.
There's going to be a lot of stuff just like them on the ChatGPT store. Because I think when we invested in them, I don't remember exactly, but I'm almost positive the word "AI" didn't come up one time. It wasn't like, "We have this... we know what the outcome that we want it to be, but we're not entirely sure how we're going to come to that."
Then they started figuring out AI got more popular, and then this ChatGPT store opened up. They were like, "Boom! We found the path." I think that path is open right now.
Now it's more competitive than the App Store and it's more competitive than Chrome because there are more people who are doing this stuff. OpenAI is already huge, but that inflection is happening right now.
This is one of those things that's happening in real time, and I wanted to call out because I think OpenAI even said, "We don't even know what payment terms we're going to give these people." They're still all figuring it out, but this is happening this second right now. There's an opportunity here for a lot of different companies.
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Shaan Puri | They're like a relationship, you know, some celebrity relationship. They're like, "Oh, we don't want to put a label on it yet, so we're just exploring each other and figuring out, you know, who we are together and individually."
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Sam Parr | it's definitely trying to figure it out have you seen perplexity have you used perplexity | |
Shaan Puri | I don't like it I don't know why people are going nuts for it | |
Sam Parr | It's pretty cool. It's just like OpenAI, but for some reason, it has a science bent.
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Shaan Puri | That's one of these companies. I don't know much about it; this is an uninformed opinion. But I feel like every VC who missed out—like, you can't get into OpenAI, or if you could get in now, it's at a $100 billion valuation. There's not much money to be made as an investor there.
So all the capital... you know, all the investors realize, "Holy shit, this is the big thing!" And they're like, "What's the next best competitor?" And they're like, "Alright, Stable Diffusion."
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Sam Parr | it could be | |
Shaan Puri | Complexity and the next thing, and the next thing. They get these super inflated valuations, and I don't know... I'm not really a believer in that. I think those get way ahead of their skis. I've seen that story many times. This happened in crypto, and it happened when mobile was happening.
For every Instagram, you would then get ten super funded other apps that didn't make any sense. Yeah, I would take the under, or I would short that.
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Sam Parr | After the pod, go to your email and type in "consensus." I'm almost positive that I heard about this company and you were CC'd on the email. Just, I just want to put that out there. It was 2002; it was 2 years ago. I'm almost positive. | |
Shaan Puri | You're like in the pod. Take some lighter fluid, pour it over your eye, and light it back.
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Sam Parr | And hope no one finds out what happens. We're going to burn it down and hide it.
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Shaan Puri | I'm going to do a rant about something. I've had a realization that my world, like a lot of the content I'm consuming, was algorithmic. Alright, that's pretty obvious.
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Sam Parr | you everyone's using mean just twitter tiktok whatever | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, everything I was using... You go to Twitter, it's an algorithm telling you, "Here's the content you need to see." You go to TikTok, it's all algorithms taking over.
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Sam Parr | business shit | |
Shaan Puri | Facebook, Instagram... yes, all of that. Even email. Email is not really algorithmic exactly, but you go there and it's, "Here's what other people want you to look at."
Here's my problem: "Hey, here's my problem, read me."
And then the same thing with, you know, all news. You go to a news app and it says, "Hey, here are everybody's problems on the other side of the world. Pay attention to this."
I'm calling it the **intentional internet**, which is where I started really being intentional about, "Oh no, no, no, no. If I'm going on the internet right now, what is it that I want to see? What am I curious about? What is it that I want to learn about?"
Then I go in and I'm stiff-arming algorithms left and right. You know, I'm Marshawn Lynch on that one run where he just sheds eight defenders and goes all the way, rumbling to the end zone. That's me on the internet now.
I think more people should be doing this. Join me on the **intentional internet**, where you get on and you're not just a little puppy, eating the puppy chow that the algorithms give you. Go on with some intent and say, "What is it that I'm looking for?"
Maybe it's a certain type of entertainment, maybe it's a certain type of information, or I want to be inspired. Okay, so then go look for the things that will give you access to the internet that way.
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Sam Parr | you follow 13,000 people on on twitter the trick | |
Shaan Puri | is you don't go to twitter right | |
Sam Parr | you should what do you do | |
Shaan Puri | Well, Twitter's not a great place for this, right? Because if you go to Twitter, the first thing you're going to see is the feed, and you're going to start scrolling.
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Sam Parr | what are you gonna start reading books that's very | |
Shaan Puri | Unlike you, I make a little list. I say, "You know what? I'm curious how this started," or "I want to learn more about this." Then I'll go to YouTube or Google or wherever, looking for that.
But adding that little paper step in between me and the internet has been very, very useful. I learned a bunch of interesting things in the last three days. I got more out of the internet, so I'm just putting that out there for anybody who...
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Sam Parr | what's been on your list | |
Shaan Puri | I'll give you an example. I was doing research for one thing and I saw this name. Do you know this guy, Eric Van Veen?
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Sam Parr | Yes, he's amazing. I have got him. Oh wait, are you talking about Ricky Van Veen or Eric?
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Shaan Puri | oh maybe he's ricky ricky van veen ricky | |
Sam Parr | ricky facebook guy | |
Shaan Puri | yeah facebook | |
Sam Parr | Dude, Dreby is super Dreby. This guy is Dreby as shit. I've talked to him a bunch via email a handful of times.
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Shaan Puri | the internet pete buttigieg or something | |
Sam Parr | no man this guy's great | |
Shaan Puri | So, this guy created CollegeHumor, yeah? And then he created a couple of other things.
So, what did he create? He created CollegeHumor, and then he created a few other things like Cracked or whatever. Then he bundled it up, sold it to IAC, and he was running media at IAC.
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Sam Parr | you're forgetting the biggest thing they started | |
Shaan Puri | which one | |
Sam Parr | So, at CollegeHumor, this was like pre-YouTube days. They created, this was like eBaum's World days, a better way to host videos.
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Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Sam Parr | And that's what Vimeo is. They sold to IAC, which then spun off and became a publicly traded company worth over $1,000,000,000. | |
Shaan Puri | So, Vimeo creates CollegeHumor and then goes to IAC. IAC is a super interesting company with a very cool pedigree of people that come out of it. For example, Tinder came out of IAC. There are a bunch of really interesting things about IAC. They're sort of like the Procter and Gamble of the internet; they're a conglomerate of internet sites, mostly media.
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Sam Parr | dotcom I think came out of there | |
Shaan Puri | Now he's the head of video or head of creative content at Facebook. I was like, "Oh, this guy's interesting." I kind of just noted it because I was thinking about CollegeHumor.
So I asked, "Who's behind that? What are they doing now?" I think this "What are they doing now?" has been one of my threads. I'll think of something that was cool and I'll be like, "Where did they go? I haven't heard about their new album. What are they working on?"
I'll go look at that. That's just a very useful way to go look at things.
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Sam Parr |
By the way, Ricky ended up marrying Allison Williams - you know, the famous actress whose father is Brian Williams, the famous newscaster. I don't think they're together anymore, but yeah... If you just Google tabloids or whatever, you'll see it.
If you Google his name, the guy is just hanging out with all these celebrities and stuff. He seems so cool. Like, this guy is dreamy as hell.
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Shaan Puri | We acknowledge the strategy of Facebook. So, anyways, what's my...
I have a list of cool companies or cool things that were built, you know, 10 years ago, and I'm wondering what those people are doing now. CollegeHumor was one of them. So, I go look at this guy, and then I'm researching Vimeo. I'm looking at him, and then I'm like, he gave this talk in 2008 at this media conference.
Then he comes back again 8 years later. I don't know if you've ever seen this talk, but it gets no views on the internet. However, for nerds like us who create media and content on the internet, it's very interesting to see what somebody thought in 2008.
At that time, the iPhone had come out, but it hadn't changed the world yet. Literally, in the presentation, he's like, "Yeah, kids, all their BlackBerrys are not going to be doing X, Y, Z." Back then, when he created CollegeHumor, it became the number one comedy entertainment site on the internet, way bigger than Cartoon Network and all these other incumbents.
Okay, that's interesting. Then he comes back a few years later and he's like, "Here's what I got right and here's what I got wrong." One of the things he was talking about... and he's like...
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Shaan Puri | People on the internet will stop leaving the internet. They won't just use it as a springboard to go onto Netflix or get cast into a TV show. They'll realize that their YouTube channel is worth more than those shows. They won't want to leave to pursue those opportunities; they won't view this as just a stepping stone.
That's happening. He basically had four or five predictions about where the world was going. He put up all the sites like Viral Nova and Upworthy, and whatnot. He said, "Right now, these are the hottest sites in the world. Their traffic is crushing ours, and they're getting more traffic than anybody—more traffic than God." He said, "I think all of this is going to zero. I think this is highly commoditized, and it's not gonna work for these reasons." He was absolutely correct.
It was very interesting to learn from this guy who's kind of a master at what he does. I've done this before, like when I looked up all the infomercial kings—the guys who created Proactiv, that acne medicine. I wondered, "How did that story happen?"
But if I just log on to the internet and take the last thing that somebody tweeted or the latest TikTok someone uploaded, I'm playing defense. I'm playing their game, not mine. So I'm just trying to have a little bit more intention when I use the internet.
You know, I'm not the type who's just going to go for a total digital detox and not use the internet. But when I do use it, I'm trying to use it in a healthier way.
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Sam Parr | So, Ricky, did he predict that the viral novas of the world were going to go to 0? And they did.
Yeah, did I ever tell you the story about my partner Joe in Hampton and a bunch of other stuff? Did I tell you a story about little things?
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Shaan Puri | You've mentioned it before that he got really big, the most trafficked Facebook referral, right? And then he had an offer to sell, and he didn't take it or something.
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Sam Parr | is that | |
Shaan Puri | the story | |
Sam Parr | so joe joe is an amazing entrepreneur so he started his first company it was an ad tech company he sold it for 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars when he was 25 so he just had this like huge success at a young age then his next business he started was called I forget exactly what it was called but it petflow it was a pet food company and they started it before chewy except he was a little conservative and he was like we have to spend money profitably on ads and that's hard to do and so we're gonna go a little bit slower chewy comes in and goes nah f that we're gonna lose money for the 1st 6 or 12 months at a customer and we're gonna do such a good job that they're gonna come back and joe was like that's a dumb strategy turns out it was right but in order to make pet flow grow he created a blog where they just wrote content on pets and within a very very very short amount of time they started getting 10 20 30,000,000 people a month coming to this blog on pets and he's like screw that let's just do this blog and so within 4 years they were the most shared website on facebook bigger than viral nova bigger than buzzfeed bigger than huffpo all these publishers that were huge in the 2014 15 era and it started getting something like 250,000,000 uniques a month to their website and they scaled up I think to 90,000,000 in revenue in 4 years it was a huge company I went to I cold emailed them I went to his office he had these studios and they're like facebook live is the next big thing we just built out this $250,000 studio in the in the manhattan office and it's gonna be the greatest thing ever we have a 150 employees this is gonna be the biggest thing ever the problem of course that we all know was zuck does what zuck wants and they built this entire company littlethings.com on the back of facebook and they got an loi to sell the business and they were literally 3 weeks from selling they were gonna sell for 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars facebook puts out this annual report they go we're actually changing we're pivoting from this thing to this thing and 3 weeks away or something like that from this deal closing for 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars the company backed out and within 6 months the business basically laid off everyone and had to shut down all in a matter of like 6 or 7 months of like we're on top of the world making 100,000,000 a year to now we are not and it's a crazy crazy story if you Google like his name joe speiser little things you'll see the story I think inc just did some big story on it but it's pretty wild | |
Shaan Puri | Ah, the lessons we learned. Unfortunately, that's, you know, it's cool to be like, "Yeah, you learn so much from failure," but it's like, God, sometimes it's so painful.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, he was basically saying, "I win." He posted this publicly. He was like, "I was set to make $50,000,000, and three weeks away from the closing, it went away." He has all these crazy... | |
Shaan Puri | What’s he like to work with? Because you picked him as your partner for Hampton, why did you pick him?
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Sam Parr | He's the best man. He's the best. He's a harmonious partner. He's even-keeled and very easy to be with.
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Shaan Puri | Like the partnership dynamics, because you've told me about those. What is he? What's his edge? What's he great at? What is he like? What is he amazing at?
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Sam Parr | You ever hang out with Israeli guys? Israeli guys have a culture of being quite competent because they served in the military. They're really good at stuff. Oftentimes, they're good at spotting opportunities because that's also part of the culture—just like negotiating well and finding interesting deals.
He is so good at spotting opportunities. He's technical and he's so fast. I've never met someone who's significantly faster than I am at making stuff and going all in. He'll just find an opportunity, build a website for it, and he's like, "Yep, this is what I'm doing now." He pounces so fast. I've never met someone who moves faster.
One thing that we did that was so great... Did you ever have this with Ben or any of your other partners? Where you do like a... you're like, "Look, before we hop in bed and before we get married here, let's just sit down and map out what do you want your life to be like? What do you want in 5 years, 10 years? What do you want on a day-to-day basis?" And you write out how you want to live, what you're willing to give up, and what you're not willing to give up. Have you ever done that?
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Shaan Puri | Not exactly, but you know, you told me you did that. I think there's a version of that that I do, but I'm not... I think everything changes. So, you know, it sounded really great in theory, and I think it's a useful exercise just to clarify your own thoughts. But I don't... I think people themselves are quite incongruent in general.
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Sam Parr | well yeah you change | |
Shaan Puri | You change, but also you don't know what you want. You say one thing because it sounds good or you think you want it, but then something comes up. It's your stated preference versus revealed preference. I think it's very hard to get to people's revealed preferences, their true preferences, or their true desires.
I think it's a good exercise to do, but I don't put as much weight in it as you do.
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Sam Parr | Well, I think that it starts a really good conversation. So I was like, "Look, let's be transparent," just like you should with your wife or girlfriend. You're like, "Let's talk about what type of life we potentially want," and let's be very open about that.
I think that creating that clarity is important, and we'll acknowledge that it will change. So I think it creates a great version of that. But Joe is also 42; I think he's older than me. At that age, he has a little bit more solidified values that he stands for.
It was helpful. I think if I had done that exercise when I was 24, it would not have been good. In fact, I did do that exercise when I was 24, and it sucked.
Do you want to know what I said I wanted when I was 24? I said, "I want 10,000 employees." I thought, "Wouldn't it be awesome if you had 10,000 employees?" Then I hired three people, and I was like, "Out the window!" I'm like, "Yeah, that's a no for me, dog."
So I think if you're a little bit older and you have some experience, you might know a little bit more about what you want. But when I was younger, no, that wouldn't have worked.
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Shaan Puri | My thinking on this is the Buffett thing: you want a partner with energy, integrity, and intelligence. I think that's the core thing I look for, at least.
Energy is the easiest to spot, and it's the easiest one to try to write off if somebody doesn't have it. It seems like a nice-to-have, but it's actually not a nice-to-have for me; it's a must-have.
So, energy is the first one that shows up, and it's the easiest one that I've tried to talk myself out of with certain people. That's been a mistake every single time I've done it. | |
Sam Parr | Who have you worked with that's high energy and almost exhausts you because you're like, "I can't keep up"?
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Shaan Puri | Sully's like that. He's super high energy, but not in an exhausting way. I get energy from that, so it's all good.
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Sam Parr | I don't mean exhausting like they wear you out, but you're like, "Oh my God, dude!" You're almost hard to keep up with. You move so fast. That's inspiring.
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Shaan Puri | yeah everybody that yeah it's a but it's in a good way like yeah | |
Sam Parr | that I mean it in a good way | |
Shaan Puri | Pace and that they bring their own energy to the table. I'm not bringing it out of them. Ben is a fun guy. So, Ben Levy, who's my current business partner, on the surface, when you meet him, he's a more quiet guy. He's more reserved. He doesn't come across as this huge, booming personality.
But Ben's got that energy where he just comes out for him, like through text messages or when he wakes up and does something. He can't sleep at night because he's thinking about something. So, energy reveals itself. Energy is not just being a wacky, flailing arms guy. It's about whether you are driven yourself. Do you take action quickly? Do you think about things all the time? Or am I trying to force you to engage by dragging your brain into the conversation?
Do you get excited about things? When an opportunity arises, do you shift gears?
So, energy is the first one. Then it's intelligence or competence, which is about what they are great at. For example, "Oh, this person's great at selling," or "This person's great at building," or "This person's great at just pushing the ball forward every day," whatever it is.
Then the last one, which is integrity, is the hardest one to get a feel for. It's about how this person is going to treat me when they have the opportunity to be selfish. Will they be selfish? It's very, very hard to know that. You can kind of only talk to people they've worked with before or ask them questions and try to see if they're pretty honest about that.
Then I just work with them on something first before we commit. So, it's like we have that conversation, sure, but let's actually work together. I would always trade an experience for a belief. If I can have an experience working with you on something for three weeks, that's going to be way better than me trying to take a leap of faith on a bunch of things you said or wrote down in a Google Doc.
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Sam Parr | did you just make up that word or that phrase | |
Shaan Puri | tony robbins special baby | |
Sam Parr | Oh yeah, I was going to say, that's yours now. Do you... how late into the evening are you working on business stuff versus family time or fitness or whatever else there is?
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Shaan Puri | I basically work out in the middle of the day, around 2:00 PM. So, it's like I've done enough work that I could stop.
I wake up, do my morning routine, and then I work. After that, I take a break to work out. If I've done enough that day, I'll just play with my kids and hang out. If I haven't, I'll do another hour or two of work.
Then, I do family time until they go to bed, which is usually around 8:30 or 9:00 PM. After that, I chill out or work—one of the two, as they're both kind of the same to me. Sometimes it's just watching a show, and other times it's working or reading something.
I'll do that until 11:00 PM or midnight, and then I go to sleep.
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Sam Parr | But between that 11 o'clock, or between when kids go to sleep and you go to bed, are you on the phone talking to people ever?
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Shaan Puri | No, no, no. That's *me time*. That's me on the internet. I'm not talking to people. No.
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Sam Parr | I I've got a bunch of friends who are like that and they'll like call | |
Shaan Puri | My wife, she'll try to talk, and I will be like, "I'm doing no talking." That's my friend. I'm doing no talking right now. It's a nice way of saying, like, I don't want to talk to you. I'm doing no talking. That's it.
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Sam Parr | There's this thing, there's like this unspoken rule at my house where, at 8 or 9, when she wants to ask me, "Hey, what dates do you want to go to this place?" I just mumble. I go, "That means, dude, I just shopped at IKEA all day. I'm overwhelmed. I can't look at anything. I can't think. Don't ask me a date. I'm not thinking about anything."
You know what we've been doing lately? It's **fucking Legos**. Have you ever done Legos?
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Shaan Puri | I've never done Legos. I have a whole separate podcast topic about adult Legos because I think it's a thing. You're one of those, so we should talk. We should actually do a full segment on it.
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Sam Parr | I'm so into it! That's all I'll say. I am so... I just got into it in November. I'm a Lego guy now.
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Shaan Puri | I love it! Okay, we're going to talk about that next time. I gotta jump. This has been good. This is the pod. That's the pod.
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Sam Parr | that's the pod |