Why Today Is the Day to Ask For a Raise | My First Million #216

Sam Parr

Would you rather own a small piece of something huge or a big piece of everything of something much smaller?

Shaan Puri

Sam, where are you, dude? This looks awesome! You're at like a pool or backyard. You're in the Hamptons? What's going on?

Sam Parr

I spent the weekend at my in-laws' house in the Hamptons. I felt pretty sick yesterday, so I just stayed the night here. I didn't feel well, but I'm feeling fine now. I'm in the Hamptons; it looks good, right?

Shaan Puri

I mean, it looks amazing. Yeah, it looks like what I imagined. I've never been to the Hamptons, not even close. I've never gotten an invite. I don't even know anyone that lives in the Hamptons, so...

Sam Parr

me let me tell you

Shaan Puri

my opinion

Sam Parr

Okay, my opinion of the Hamptons? Incredibly overrated. You want to know another thing that's incredibly overrated? Central Park. Central Park is so overrated. Both Central Park and the Hamptons are overrated. The Hamptons? It's not that pretty. It's not that pretty at all. So, very overrated.

Shaan Puri

the appeal what what is good about it

Sam Parr

If you're in New York, it's only an hour to an hour and a half away without traffic. So, you can go to the beach there.

Shaan Puri

So, it's a little bit like Sonoma or Napa. I think those places are nice; they're not the best. They're kind of boring as far as...

Sam Parr

napa is napa and sonoma are prettier than the hamptons without a doubt in my opinion

Shaan Puri

Oh, okay, interesting. Do you feel different? You walk around and every car is like a Bentley or better? You have...

Sam Parr

To have a Range Rover to fit in... it's crazy, man. It's not my style at all. It's very... it's not even remotely my style. Did you see the Jake Paul and Tyron Woodley fight last night?

Shaan Puri

Did I tell my wife I can't help with the kids' bedtime routine because I'm watching the Jake Paul fight? Yeah, I did that. Then I watched that fight, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was an amazing fight.

Sam Parr

I thought it was a good fight I thought jake paul I had higher expectations

Shaan Puri

The drama was there, right? I'm not saying the technical boxing was great. I'm saying the drama was there. I didn't know what was going to happen beforehand, and then every round it still felt like anything could happen, which is what you want.

Sam Parr

The drama was so high, my anxiety level was equal to the best UFC fight... like the best grudge UFC fight. My anxiety level was equal to it. I thought it was amazing. We had Jake Paul on the podcast. He was way different on the podcast than he was for this whole boxing thing. But anyway, it was... I was...

Shaan Puri

I was going to tweet it out. I was like, "Hey, congrats to the guest of episode 170 on your victory tonight!"

Sam Parr

Yeah, it was a fun fight. I'm happy I got to watch it. It was more... it was as intense as any UFC fight I've ever seen. It was pretty badass. They've done an amazing job.

Shaan Puri

Well, let's talk about it a little bit. For those who don't know, or who might just roll their eyes, you're watching Jake Paul fight this guy. Is this rigged? What's the deal with this? As a YouTuber, I have a lot of respect for what they did. I'm pretty impressed by this. I think that the move they made to go from YouTuber to Viner, and then from YouTuber to basically one of the best business models you can do as a single person, is to sell pay-per-views. Why is that so significant? Well, for this fight, I wouldn't be surprised if they sold 1,000,000 pay-per-views. If you sell 1,000,000 pay-per-views at roughly $60 each, that's $60,000,000. They partnered up with Showtime to do the whole thing, so they can make $10,000,000 in one hour from a single event. That's totally different, and it grows their brand. This whole thing makes them more famous because ESPN is talking about it, Twitter is talking about it, and everybody's talking about it. They're doing something they enjoy, which is boxing. They train hard, so it's not easy, but man, is it lucrative! It's a pretty impressive jump from one platform to the next. As a business person, I think they're geniuses. Whether it's intentional or unintentional, they are geniuses in the way that they approach this, the way they promote these events, and the way they leverage their brand. It's genius.

Sam Parr

Also, getting in a ring in front of a million people... getting in a ring in front of 50 people... it's incredibly frightening. Now to do it with someone who's... even though Woodley is at the end of his career, he's 40, he *fucking kills* people. He crushes people. He could... you definitely could die. I mean, it's not likely, but you could. And that's incredibly bold.

Shaan Puri

Very likely, you could get humiliated and knocked out brutally by this guy, you know, in front of everybody.

Sam Parr

Yeah, 100%. I do think it's incredibly courageous, even though whether I agree or don't agree with a lot of the stuff they do. It's wild! I can't believe they've pulled this off. It's wild, it's incredibly wild. The crowd on TV... I've been to like 3 or 4 or 5, I forget how many, UFC fights. And I've been to some of the big ones at Madison Square Garden. The crowd on the TV, like on the act in Cleveland last night...

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

felt the same as when I saw ufc fight like the same energy it was pretty wild they built this

Shaan Puri

They... yeah, they did it. They pulled it off. I also went to a live MMA fight, a local one here in San Francisco.

Sam Parr

where in the the dragon den

Shaan Puri

dragon house yeah amazing you went to 1

Sam Parr

I went to 1 together

Shaan Puri

this weekend I went to 1

Sam Parr

I've been to a bunch there it's badass right it's way scarier than ufc

Shaan Puri

Way, way more intense. So we get cage-side seats because they're only $50, right? It's not a huge stadium - Kizar Stadium is a very small place. But we went there, we get cage-side seats for $50. Since COVID started, they said like, "Oh, everybody's gotta be vaccinated." They didn't check anything at the door, so that was not so great. But I walk in and the crowd is just *lit*. I don't know what a [regular] concert is [like in comparison].

Sam Parr

they're all like super drunk so it's yeah

Shaan Puri

So, I think there are about four or five factors at play. First of all, it's their friends fighting. Usually, in every fight, there are at least 20 people present because they are friends with the fighter. These are amateur fights, and the participants are people who, by day, deliver for DoorDash or work in a consulting company. At night, they participate in this fight club, deciding, "Screw it, I'm going to try this." I get there early for the amateur fights, and I find those way more interesting than the pro fights. So, first of all, there are 20 people there—friends, brothers, kids. I'm seeing moms just yelling, "Kill them!" because it's their son in the ring or whatever. The second thing is that people are drunk. Yes, people are drinking. There’s only one concession stand, and it only sells beer. So, it's like... well.

Sam Parr

they only sell they only sell beer and costco pizza right

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. So, beer and things that make you want beer. And then the third thing is, I think... so I think the third one would be, I'm so used to... you're in the Hamptons right now, dude. I just hang out online on Tech Twitter and Crypto Twitter. The group of people I normally hang out with are so nerdy and they're just concerned about different things. Their priorities are different. I went to this thing and everybody's like super dressed up. Not like fancy, but they were dressed up like, "I might meet someone here." This is like a club to them. I just feel like everybody here was more real people than the kind of bubble that I usually live in. So it was just different. It was shocking. There were three fights that broke out in the crowd. Just after... if I would have been done, I probably would have broken out in the crowd. I'm sitting there with my sister and my brother-in-law, and we're just hoping it doesn't happen near us. The last thing was COVID. I think COVID has riled people up. When I came in, I was telling my brother-in-law, I was like, "Dude, this crowd is way better than the last time we came to Dragon House Brico." And he goes, "Dude, people are ready to live." He's like, "People are just ready to get out." You could see it, dude. People were just like... I don't know how the kids use the word "lit," but people were lit at this event. The whole event was lit. It was insane.

Sam Parr

I've probably been to 3 of them. Were the Mongols there? I guess they weren't there because they can't travel. No, I've been there and there's... they have... there's like a large contingency of Mongolians and they have...

Shaan Puri

Their family had one Mongolian fighter, and his crew was pretty crazy. Then he fought this Irish dude, and I swear to God, it was like Conor McGregor came out. As soon as the guy comes out, it's like "ole, ole, ole!" The whole crowd is chanting "ole." I'm like, where did this huge Irish contingent come from? He's got a tattoo silhouette of Ireland on the side of his body. He gets in the ring, and they had a crazy fight. It was a lot of fun, first of all. So if you have... I don't know if people... I don't know if it's only for people who like UFC, but if you like UFC, which is maybe 1% of our audience, go to a local show.

Sam Parr

I bet it's more

Shaan Puri

Go to a local show... I didn't think it would be this good. It's like amazing. It was truly amazing. But it also made me feel like, "What is it about people? Why would anybody sign up to do this?" And then I know you are the type who... you signed up to get punched in the face quite a bit. What's the appeal, and would you ever do this?

Sam Parr

Well, I signed up for a smoker. What a smoker is, is it's amateur, so there's no judges. Typically, you can kind of have... like, you can say ahead of time, "Hey, I'm new, you're new." Unlike the fight that you went to, they're not going in with bad intentions, you know? They don't want to hurt you. With the thing that I signed up for, sometimes you'd be like, "Hey, let's get after it," and you'll try to knock people out, and you might get knocked out, but it's not nearly as angry. You could say, "Hey, we're going too hard, let's take it easy."

Shaan Puri

so I've it's like above a sparring session

Sam Parr

It's above a sparring session, but it's not quite a real fight. At least it doesn't have to be. I signed up for it because it makes me feel alive. I feel soft when I just sit in front of the computer all day. It makes me feel good to survive getting beat up because I know that I'm not going to be stressed out about anything else that I'm going to do throughout the day. For example, when I stress out about this podcast or if I get mad that our freaking internet wasn't working really well, I'm like, "Dog, I just got my ass kicked." Like, everything else is fine.

Shaan Puri

Exactly! I went skydiving once, and we did it in the morning. It was like 8 in the morning. So, the rest of the day, you know, from 8:30 onward, I felt like I hadn't only lasted 5 minutes. You just fall for 60 seconds, and then you kind of float down gently for 5 minutes, and then it's over. But the rest of the day, I was like, "I couldn't be bothered by anything." I was like, "Dude, I jumped out of a plane this morning! You think I'm gonna worry about this presentation I have, or this person who didn't call me back, or this person who cut me in line?" Like, bro, I flew! I was flying in the air this morning. So, it was like, if I could bottle that feeling up and have it more often—which it sounds like you get by sparring or whatnot—that's pretty good. I also have been rewatching *Breaking Bad*. Did you watch *Breaking Bad*?

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

So, I just started rewatching it, and it's been enough years that I've kind of forgotten it. That's basically the premise of the show. The show is about this guy who lived his whole life by the book. He was always worried about offending anyone and didn't take many risks, blah, blah, blah. Then, when he finds out that he has a few months to live, he starts doing this initially to help his family. He thinks, "How do I provide for my family if I pass away? I don't want them to have nothing because I'm just a teacher and I didn't save up too much money." Once he starts to do it, he begins to feel good. He starts to feel alive. This has become a theme I'm thinking about. If we want to tie this to business, I'll force it here: there's probably a whole set of products or experiences that make someone feel alive. They're kind of counterintuitive. For example, why would you choose to get punched in the face? Why would you choose to take this risk and almost get caught by the cops? Then, how do you bottle that up and package it in a product or service? I think a lot of people do want this feeling, and once they get it, I believe it's very addictive.

Sam Parr

But I would say that's what you do with a lot of your investments, right? Like when I think about what you're doing with an NFT or what you're doing with crypto, to me it's a high-adrenaline, high-risk type of thing, right?

Shaan Puri

Kind of... I think you'd think I take more risks than I actually do. But yeah, I could see that. That's definitely a piece of it. There's a bit of the roller coaster that you get to go on, and the roller coaster is for a thrill seeker. But I just think in general, like, you know, we were in LA, I went to Disneyland. Why are there even roller coasters? Right? Well, because in 30 seconds, you can get that feeling like you might die, and then you live. That little package of thrills taps into this thrill-seeker part of people. I just feel like there are probably more experiences that could be built that are like that. I think if you're building in VR, for example, instead of trying to build a VR kind of fantasy land, I would build things in VR that make people feel a little bit afraid, a little bit scared, a little bit alive. I think a lot of video games try this, right? A lot of video games involve shooting people and stuff like that because it's cool, and it's an escape. It's something you can't do in real life, so you get to live vicariously through this. But I just think there's a lot more that could be done.

Sam Parr

So, instead of talking about fear, can I tell you something that I read recently? It's about happiness. Can I tell you something that totally... like, I read something recently and the data seems pretty clear, and it totally goes against what we've been told previously. Can I tell you about that?

Shaan Puri

so lay out lay out what we've been told and then what you saw

Sam Parr

So, you know, there are these things that you see in headlines. One of these headlines is, "The average American doesn't have $500 in savings" or something like that. That's mostly bullshit, by the way. That's a bullshit headline. But the other one was that after you make $75,000, your perceived happiness level doesn't really go up significantly. I read about that a while ago. When do you think that came out? Like in 2012 or something? 2013?

Shaan Puri

yeah I feel like I've heard this kinda my whole professional life so maybe at least 12 15 years something like that

Sam Parr

I've always thought that that was bullshit I've always thought that was bullshit for it

Shaan Puri

didn't it didn't pass the sniff test for you

Sam Parr

Not even a little bit. Not even a little bit. So, I came across this study. What these guys did was they got 40,000 people to install this app. This app, at random times, would ask you... like, they would ask you a bunch of questions, but it would be on a scale of like 1 to 5 or 1 to 10. I see you're highlighting the app. You could click it and you could see it. It's called...

Shaan Puri

track your happiness

Sam Parr

Yeah, and it's pretty cool. It's just a simple app. What they did was they got 35,000 to 40,000 people, and they ranged... they had all types of ranges. They asked people how they felt during different periods of the week and the day, and they would track your income. What they found is that while it is true that after you get past a certain point, your happiness levels don't necessarily go up in proportion. However, what this study found is that up until like $500,000, $600,000, or $700,000 a year, it was definitely still going up. Like, yeah.

Shaan Puri

We can show this graph. If you're watching on YouTube, we'll put this graph on the screen. It's basically two lines: one for your life satisfaction and the other for your experienced well-being. They're both tracking from $15,000 of household income up to $500,000, going up into the right, just like a straight line. So, the more income you were getting, the more life satisfaction you were having at each step. It didn't just plateau at $75,000 like the old, kind of quoted study suggests.

Sam Parr

And it may be that the difference between $2,000,000 and $3,000,000 probably won't be significant. But, according to this study, the difference between $10,000,000 and $1,000,000 is significant and does impact your happiness.

Shaan Puri

totally like kinda broke my frame

Sam Parr

even though I always impact your happiness

Shaan Puri

and that totally

Sam Parr

like kind of broke my frame even though I always thought it would be true

Shaan Puri

I thought this study was actually really interesting

Sam Parr

And there are a few reasons why. The first one was remembered feelings. The $75,000 study basically asked people how they felt in the past, and that's kind of nonsense. You always think that you remember things better than you actually did. For example, during one experience, you might think it's horrible, but then you'll look back and say, "Oh, that was actually awesome." This study actually asked you right then and there how you felt. The second thing was the question, "Were you happier then or are you happier now?" That's kind of nonsense because there's no variance. The variance is too low. Sometimes, it could be a lot better or just a little bit better, and that matters.

Shaan Puri

what this is binary it's it's just yes or no there's no like there's no granularity

Sam Parr

Yeah, so I don't know... I thought this was interesting. I wanted to bring this up because that's one of those studies that I always thought people base [their opinions on]. You read this headline and you believe it to be true, and a lot of people probably make decisions based off of this. I think it's important to say: "No, that's... I think is bullshit." And you shouldn't base your life on that data or that study.

Shaan Puri

right yeah yeah yeah and I I like I love this topic by the way I think it's great this is sort of like myth busting of these like common things you hear like another one is like the 10000 hour rule that got really popular because malcolm gladwell wrote this book called outliers and he's like oh you know to be great at something you got to spend 10000 hours and and so then a lot of people run with that and it's like well there's obviously a bunch of caveats but like the caveats get stripped away as the thing just gets kind of like turned into a fortune cookie tweet right it's like 10000 hours that's the rule and and sure there's instances where somebody spends 10000 hours it gets really great at something but there's definitely instances where it doesn't take 10000 hours to get great at something I've had many of them in my life and and so you wanted like I guess question a lot of these things that you're told and try to figure out what what's the truth and what's the truth for me what am I going to experience what do I choose to believe and so I'm with you on on looking into stuff like this I also think this app is cool this track your happiness app I'm going to actually use it where at my previous company when I was running the idea lab I it was my first time like as ceo of like a larger group we had like 20 something employees at that time and that was I was 25 years old it was the most people I had ever managed and I was like okay well how do I manage people I was like well there's a whole bunch of books on this but I created something pretty simple I asked one of the programmers I went to the guy quinn and he's like this young hacker guy and I was basically like hey quinn I would love to know I would love to just kinda like if I could go have a conversation with each person each day saying hey how are you feeling how's it going I I think I could be a better manager but that would take way too much time and it would just also be like a full on conversation with each person I said can you just set up a thing so that at the end of every like workday so at like 4:30 pm or whatever it just pings everybody individually in slack and it just says hey sean how are you feeling today you know 1 to 10 and what what's your happiness right now and it would just it would basically do what this app does and they would put it in and then I had a dashboard as the manager as the ceo that would show me all these different people and what I found was 2 things the first is some people have a very narrow range of emotions that they feel so like there's like our cto is this british guy paul and he's he's very kind of like stoic he's sort of like you know like british people sort of dry humor and so like he never got too far too high up too high down like he was always like a you know like a 7 or an 8 he didn't he never hit a 10 he never hit a 5 he always stayed in that range so I had to interpret his data differently because I was like for this guy his self assessment of his own like kind of like happiness or well-being his his range is different so I can't just say oh 8 you're good 8 is actually great for him and a 7 is actually quite bad for him whereas for other people who were like you know the hot mess folks it's like some days it's a 1 and some days it's a 10 and I had to interpret them differently so that was the first observation the second was when I would go and I I could I could ping them afterwards I could just say you know it could basically ping them once they submit their score I would say cool do you wanna add a note on why and the reasons that affected people's happiness were so different than what I would have expected I thought people would be unhappy because you know they feel like underpaid or overworked or you know maybe their colleague sent something to them it was always like the smallest shit it's like

Sam Parr

like what

Shaan Puri

It'd be like, you know, something like, "Oh, you know, at lunch today, this table was full, so I kind of had to go sit over there." Or it'd be like, "You know, we were working on this project. I really wanted to get more done, but I got a phone call and got distracted." Some people were really into high output, and their happiness was tied to that. It's like, "Oh yeah, we had to do that team meeting, and I didn't get to work on my project. I didn't get to write enough code today." Or it'd be something really, really small, like, "Yeah, I'm really dealing with this kind of back pain, so this chair is really uncomfortable." It was always things that I wouldn't have otherwise seen, and it brought those to the surface. Then I could decide, "Is this something I could affect and improve, or do I just at least get a better understanding of them?" So that was like one of the better products that we built. We probably should have productized it and made it an actual work tool for other people to use.

Sam Parr

yeah I used to use this thing called 155 you remember that company

Shaan Puri

they're doing pretty well dude I think they're they're pretty successful

Sam Parr

I bet they... I would bet they are. So, they kind of went quiet for a little while, and typically that means it's failing horribly or it's actually quite large. It's usually one or the other. So, it was called 155, and basically, they would send you the whole product. It was very simple and probably thrived during COVID. They send you an email every day, and it takes 15 questions that are 5 minutes to answer, or it's 15 minutes to answer 5 questions—one of those. That's all it is. They just send you an email at the end of the day and they say, "What did you get done today? How do you feel?" Yep, and that's all the product is. I would imagine that it's quite large.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think it raised at like a $130,000,000 valuation recently or something. So, you know, maybe that's a little out of date. That's 2019, so I bet it's doing pretty well. Alright, let's do a different topic. What do you want to talk about?

Sam Parr

Let me tell you about a different company that I recently discovered. It's called Esri. Have you ever heard of that?

Shaan Puri

no sounds like a government agency

Sam Parr

Okay, so ESRI. Basically, there's this entire sector, this entire industry that needs important map information. If you scroll all the way down to where it says "felt," you'll see where I am. The idea here is there's this company called ESRI. It was started in the 1960s. It's 100% owned by this one guy and his brother, so 100% owned by the same family. No debt. They've never taken any outside funding. You can't find anything about it. It does over $1 billion a year in subscription revenue, and basically what it does is...

Shaan Puri

subscription revenue nice

Sam Parr

Yes, it's software. I guess you could call it information, but probably at this point, it's software because it started in the sixties. At that time, it was basically information. What it does is very simple. Over 20,000 cities use it, so most reasonably sized cities in America use it. Most states use it, and most Fortune 500 companies use it. What it does is provide loads of information on maps. So, if you're a government and you want to build new gas pipes or something like that in your city, you're going to take their data. You can also give them more data, and that's going to give you an interactive map that you can use to figure out where the other pipes are. You're going to be able to build this pretty complex system that you can continually use year over year. It's going to show where your pipes are. It's called Geographic Information System. Have you never heard of that term?

Shaan Puri

gis yeah I've heard that

Sam Parr

Yeah, I thought for sure you would have heard that. So, it's almost like Google Maps on steroids. In the same way that Apple... or sorry, the same way that...

Shaan Puri

it's like b to b Google maps

Sam Parr

Yeah, so in the same way Uber uses either Apple or Google Maps, this is what the city of the Hamptons would use when they're building new roads and new electricity. Now, there are a few reasons why this is interesting. One, it's one of the most complex and interesting family-owned businesses I've ever seen. It's a total monopoly. The way they got their monopoly is by going into colleges and working with engineering students. They've worked really hard to make sure all the colleges that give their software away for free, so the engineering students start using it at a very young age. Then, when they graduate, they think, "Oh yeah, let's just use Esri." They know exactly what they're doing. It also has a total moat because selling to a government is impossibly hard. It's incredibly difficult. Why? Because when you're a government, you want to make sure that the vendor you’re using takes 100% responsibility if something goes wrong. So, when you're signing up, if you're a government employee or working at a Fortune 500 company, you want cover-your-ass insurance. You want a company that's well-known, not new, and that will take responsibility if something bad happens. That's Esri—a crazy fascinating company. But I'm curious about which businesses are going to... because whenever you see something old, you know, from the 1960s as a software company, you think, "Well, surely they can't crush it forever." Also, the founder of this company, Esri, is probably worth $10 billion at this point.

Sam Parr

I think he's like 85 years old, so he's going to die. They're going to lose him. This is just inevitably how it works.

Shaan Puri

dude this guy's name by the way jack dangermond

Sam Parr

is that his name

Shaan Puri

right this dangermond I mean come on that's

Sam Parr

you know

Shaan Puri

I can see why people don't want to compete with this guy. He's pretty old. I don't know, he doesn't look like he's 80. He looks like he's, you know...

Sam Parr

well he's rich

Shaan Puri

60 70 something like that yeah personal fortune $4,000,000,000 himself

Sam Parr

Yeah, and he started with his brother when he was like 27. Crazy, fascinating business. And I can probably...

Shaan Puri

taken a cent outside of a $5,000 initial loan from dangermond's mother

Sam Parr

Crazy, right? Crazy, fascinating company. And he seems, I mean, you know, from what I read about him, he seems like a good guy. He and his wife, he's an environmentalist. So, he started this because he cared about wildfires and things like that. He was building software to help create maps that somehow reduce wildfires, which I'm going to explain in a second. But basically, there's a new company, and there are a bunch of new companies coming out. The first one is called Felt, so go to felt.com. It’s totally...

Shaan Puri

Is not? I went to this... It looked, it looked, it looked... Well, this is like an early access site. But I saw it and I said, "Oh, this is kind of interesting." So I started looking into it. I've read your notes on it. This felt thing seems pretty cool. Are you investing in this? This seems kind of awesome.

Sam Parr

Nope, I... I've never talked to this person. So it started with a guy named Sam Hashimi. His first company was called Remix. It was a city transportation planning startup that he sold for $100 million. When he was doing that, he learned all about the inadequacies of basically using maps and creating maps for your service. He said, "Well, I'm going to create a better map business, something that people can add stuff to." It's almost like where ESRI is like Google Maps, this is like Waze. People can contribute to it. It's kind of fascinating and seems very interesting. I always like these old school companies. I mean, I like this company that this guy Jack started. I think he's badass. I love seeing the new guys that are going to try and take this and kick their ass. I think it's very fascinating.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, this is cool. I like this a lot. There was a company called... what's the name? They're based in... they spun out of like this lab. Hold on, I think you actually might have their name here. It's...

Sam Parr

And while you're looking for that, so Felt describes itself as the world's first collaborative mapping tool. It serves a wide range of use cases. I imagine, although they haven't said this, that anyone can use it. A user can utilize it if they're going hiking with friends or planning a trip. I believe their grand scheme, their niche, their wedge, is to help reduce wildfires. The way they could do that is by using data to figure out where wildfires are and where they're likely to happen. Then, cities will pay money to use their mapping data in order to mitigate wildfires. I imagine they're going to create something really cool. If you go to felt.com, it looks very user-focused, whereas they're going to make most of their money from B2B (business-to-business). It doesn't look like a typical B2B product. I think what they're going to do is similar to Waze. They're going to let consumers use it to map out interesting things, and then they'll sell the data and mapping tools to businesses. That's how they're going to win. Crazy fascinating! Go ahead.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think it's cool. So, the company I was thinking of is called **Descartes Labs**. I met the founder of this at a dinner, and he was telling me about it. I was like, "Wow, this is kind of amazing." This became one of my misses; I was like, "I really should invest in this." At the time, I wasn't really investing super actively, and I missed the boat. I think this has become a very big company, but at the time, I was pretty convinced that this was going to be a winner. Why is that? They spun out of **Los Alamos National Labs**, which is in New Mexico, Albuquerque or something like that. It's kind of like, you know, NASA or something like that. So, this is a highly scientific community. They spun out and created this commercial company called **Descartes Labs**. What they do is satellite imagery. They would basically take... I don't know if it was their own satellites or other people's satellites, but they would take the imagery of, like, "Cool, there's this image from a satellite of a field." Then they could run all kinds of machine learning, computer vision, and different modern technologies on top of that. They could give a hedge fund an idea of how much corn yield there is this year. So, if you ever watched **Billions**, they kind of do some of this sometimes, where it's like, "Oh, look how many trucks are leaving this factory." So, before the earnings call, I can figure out how much volume they're doing because I can see the rate of change from before to after. They have a whole bunch of different products, but basically, at the time, they were trying to figure out how to use it. I think he told me this story, and this is many years ago, so I may be getting this wrong. But I think what he told me was that at the time, they didn't have that many customers, but their business model was basically just betting on the futures of corn crop yields or something like that because they were putting...

Sam Parr

their own

Shaan Puri

They were their own balance sheet. They were just betting, basically. They were showing that, like, "Look, we can actually generate returns using this strategy because that's how valuable our data is." I think that was early on when they were just making the technology and playing with it. But either it was them or them and a partner doing that. Now, I think they have a lot more customers who are looking for this. Whether it's, you know, an agriculture company that has some need because they need to predict the way that the world is changing, the way that any data you can get from satellite imagery is basically what they do. I really like that business model as well. Some people are doing that in terms of getting satellites into space, and other people are taking the satellite imagery and making more sense of it, getting more actionable data and insights from that.

Sam Parr

did you say the name of the company in front of the founder

Shaan Puri

the name of what company oh no no he told me am I saying it wrong

Sam Parr

I I do

Shaan Puri

is it a french

Sam Parr

have you heard of the philosopher

Shaan Puri

descartes

Sam Parr

yeah what's the french philosopher's name rene descartes

Shaan Puri

maybe maybe that's what it is

Sam Parr

what did you call it

Shaan Puri

descartes

Sam Parr

It's Descartes. Yeah, it's Descartes. It's like... I don't... I forget. René Descartes, is he the guy who said, "I think, therefore I am"? Anyway, that's why...

Shaan Puri

I think, therefore I know. I know that I got that pretty badly wrong. I met this guy years ago, so I don't even fully remember the idea. I just remember thinking, "Oh, that's interesting." All my friends are making apps to order pizza and create to-do lists and stuff like that. This guy is basically taking satellite imagery and looking at it. My only two takeaways were: I should probably invest in this guy, and the second thing was, why am I not doing something more interesting with my life? That sounds way cooler and more interesting, and probably more valuable, than competing around ideas that everybody has and that everybody could kind of do. So that was a takeaway I had during that process.

Sam Parr

do you want me to keep going or you want one

Shaan Puri

no do one

Sam Parr

Alright, let me tell you a quick story about a guy named Wayne Huizenga. I love Wayne Huizenga. I read his book, I believe it's called "Building Blockbuster." So there's this guy named Wayne Huizenga... where... alright, now I'm gonna sound uncultured. Is he from... I always get it confused: Holland, the Netherlands, and Dutch - are they all the same thing?

Shaan Puri

Dutch is a way to describe people, I think, from the Netherlands. I think Holland might be a part of the Netherlands. I'm not sure.

Sam Parr

Dude, I don't know. I'm sounding uncultured, I'm sorry, but what does Wayne Huizenga say?

Shaan Puri

so he's of dutch descent we will go with it

Sam Parr

of dutch descent

Shaan Puri

came to united states from nether from the netherlands alright good alright

Sam Parr

So, he's born in 1937. Alright, listen to the story of this guy. Born in 1937, his parents divorced at a young age. He went to the army, and when he was in his twenties, he started a company called Waste Management. Basically, he had one moving truck and he started a waste management business where he would go from door to door, throwing away your trash. Eventually, after only a short amount of time—like 2 years—he starts realizing that this business is incredibly fragmented. There are loads of small players who all just own little bits and pieces. He thinks, "Well, I'm just gonna buy all of them." So, he starts buying a significant number of them, something like 2 or 3 a week. His business eventually becomes Waste Management today, which has a $64 billion market cap. It's the biggest waste removal company in the country—an incredibly big operation. He left that in 1984. You'd think, "Alright, that's great. Go and chill." But when he was still in his fifties, I believe, he starts a company called Blockbuster. This is in 1987. He found one Blockbuster store, bought it with a little bit of money, and took it public about 2 years later. This guy is like a financial arbitrage machine. He's really good at raising money and deploying capital. So, he raises this money, and after about 2 years, Blockbuster has $7 million in revenue and 19 stores. Then, in just a handful of years, he gets it to $4 billion in revenue, with 3,000 stores in 11 countries. Eventually, he sells it to Viacom in 1994, which is about 8 years after starting the company, for $8.5 billion. It's pretty crazy. If you would have invested $25,000 into Blockbuster when it went public in 1987, it would have been worth about $1 million when they sold. He's pretty amazing; I mean, he's got a good track record.

Shaan Puri

so he also started something else right he'll started automation

Sam Parr

Yeah, so the guy... Alright, so he's in waste management. He's in Blockbuster at this point. He's in his sixties, and you think, "Alright, now you're just gonna chill." Absolutely not! He starts AutoNation, which is the largest seller of used cars in America. So he went from waste management to Blockbuster to cars. Throughout this whole journey, he's also doing the same with resorts. Have you ever heard of Extended Stay America? I believe now it's owned by Marriott. So basically, they've got something like 500 to 700 motels that are nice enough that you could stay for like a handful of days or for like a month or two to four weeks at a time. He started that. He also started a bunch of different golf clubs. Then in the nineties, he eventually buys the Miami Dolphins, and I think he bought another Florida football team.

Shaan Puri

wait so that's the dolphins and then he bought the the florida marlins also the baseball team

Sam Parr

The Marlins are pretty amazing. I was always amazed at this guy, and the reason I was amazed at him is that he had an incredibly positive attitude when he was doing this whole thing. Here are a few quotes from his biography that reflect his philosophy: > "We made small acquisitions in different states around the United States. It was just easier, faster, and cheaper to go in and buy out a guy who was already established in a market, even if it was very small. Then I'd hire a bunch of salespeople to go out and do the internal growth. The plan was always to have internal growth, but in order to get internal growth growing quickly, it was sometimes easier to go out to a certain market and just buy a guy who had 3 or 4 trucks and say, 'Okay, let's do this on our own.'" That's what he did over and over again in all those businesses, except for Blockbuster. But even then, he did it with Blockbuster because he started the brand, and they grew on their own. Eventually, they started buying loads of different mom-and-pop movie stores. This was his whole strategy. There's another guy who did this; his name is Bradley Jacobs. He's worth like $5 or $10 billion. He did this over and over again, and I think there's still a ton of room to do this. So, what other industries could you do this in? I've been thinking about this a lot, and I'm not entirely educated on the topic, but I think you could do it for all types of moving businesses. There isn't actually one leader that you trust who's like the best; it's a lot of mom-and-pop stores. What other industries could you do this consolidation stuff in?

Shaan Puri

I mean, these roll-ups happen kind of in every industry. I feel like people have done it with dentists' offices.

Sam Parr

right now dentist is like the hottest thing going

Shaan Puri

There's also veterinary hospitals and clinics. There are pet cemeteries that someone has told us about, which are essentially pet cremation services. This is another option in a fragmented market. For example, there are rural wireless internet service providers. There are a huge number of these, where in a local market, there might not be a local monopoly, but there is a large local footprint. Going in to compete can be very expensive; it would take too long and be too hard to rebuild that in a small place. So, you buy it at a fair price, but you acquire a whole lot of these businesses. You make the sum greater than the parts. I think this roll-up strategy is one of the more intriguing ways to build a monstrous empire. Otherwise, you kind of have to build a Facebook or a YouTube. It's very hard to create a multi-billion dollar company from scratch. I believe it is far easier to execute one of these roll-ups and create, you know, $100 million or even $1 billion of value in 5 to 10 years.

Sam Parr

It doesn't interest me personally, but if I wanted to become a billionaire, I think that this would be one of the lower-risk ways to get it done.

Shaan Puri

One of the worst... did this with local newspapers also. So, Rupert Murdoch, this is kind of what he did: local newspapers, local radio stations, local television stations, whatever. He basically bought local media companies and then aggregated them, rolling them all up to create a giant, basically News Corp, which is his mothership brand. By the way, this guy Wayne Huizenga—if you're watching on YouTube, put this guy's face on here from his Wikipedia—looks like an evil Steve Ballmer. So that's what this guy looks like. Bradley Jacobs, the other guy you mentioned, who's done this with XPO Logistics and a couple of other companies, literally looks like he couldn't be a sweeter... he looks like someone's sweetheart dad who, you know, coaches the local soccer team. I love looking at these types of people because I think to do this, you gotta be pretty... I don't want to say ruthless, but extremely aggressive, ambitious, a great dealmaker, and you're moving at a freight train's pace. I love to meet these people. Now, you can't meet them sometimes, but I love to just even look at their photos and read their bios. Who is this person? Where did they come from? Because it takes a very specific attitude to be able to go do this with self-storage or local landscapers, pool construction companies, rolling them all up.

Sam Parr

I've read a lot about both of those guys, and I've seen them talk on YouTube. My opinion of them is that they seem highly ethical. They seem incredibly high energy—super high energy—and they seem very entrepreneurial. Even though they both look like Wall Street suits that don't create, these guys definitely are creators. Even though they buy stuff and you think, "Well, that's not like... you're not inventing anything," maybe they're not inventing anything from scratch, but they're definitely creators. I remember I saw that guy, Bradley Jacobs, and I saw what he looked like. I'm like, "Dude, this fucking suit! He's just some arbitrage square." But he's not. He totally is a creator, and it's really interesting. He may not be like Mark Zuckerberg, where he's coding, but he's a different type of creator, and I really like these types of folks.

Shaan Puri

Doesn't this seem a little low? This guy's net worth was $2,800,000,000 when he died. I feel like, how is this guy's net worth so low compared to doing AutoNation, Waste Management, and Blockbuster? How does that add up?

Sam Parr

I think that the number that we have there could be wrong but I

Shaan Puri

think it's wrong

Sam Parr

What I read about in his biography was that with Waste Management, because they raised so much money and because they bought so many companies, they simply didn't own that much of it. I mean, they owned a smaller piece of a massive pie, and they were okay doing that. When he started Waste Management and when he left, he was the largest individual shareholder, I believe, but he probably owned like single-digit percentage, right?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, even just owning the Dolphins, I feel like the Dolphins themselves are going to be a $500 million to $1 billion franchise. So, that seems a little low. But yeah, this guy is definitely the "Billionaire of the Week." Extremely impressive career. You know, shout out to this guy. He passed away a couple of years ago at age 80, so, you know, respect. Okay, what else do you want to talk about? I have another kind of fast-growing company I think is worth talking about. This thing called Picasso. Have you seen this?

Sam Parr

no I'm gonna Google it is that how it's spelled

Shaan Puri

Picasso. Yeah, P-I-C-A-S-S-O. So, two executives at Zillow spun out and created this thing, I think, a year ago, and it's already worth $1 to $2 billion, kind of in the valuation world. So, I think they created all that value in basically a year to a year and a half. And what does it do? It's basically a **fucking timeshare**. What they do is they buy homes, convert them to an LLC, and then sell fractions of that home to investors. So, they bought, like, you know, let's say a house in Napa Valley. They go buy a $1 million house, convert it into slices of one-eighth. So, you can own one-eighth of this house for whatever, $125,000. You can buy a piece of this home, so you're a fractional homeowner. It's meant to be for second homes, so you don't do this for your primary residence; you do this for your vacation home. When you buy that one-eighth of the house, that gets you 44 nights of a stay in that home for the year. You can either use them yourself, gift them to others, or I think you can rent them out or let them rent it out for you. This company takes this insane rate. They take 12% of the purchase price upfront, just straight off the bat, and then they charge you a monthly management fee because they have the app that you and the other owners use to coordinate who's booking what, what's the rental share, how you're sharing expenses, all that good stuff. And if the house goes down, you know, you're on the hook for it. They took their money upfront. So, I thought this was kind of an incredible riff on a timeshare that I'm surprised, frankly, is growing this fast. I didn't like it. It's not something I look at and say, "That's awesome! I wish I had done that or thought of that idea." I actually think this is kind of dumb. What do you think?

Sam Parr

So, timeshares... I mean, timeshares is a huge business. I like the idea of a timeshare; it's not bad. I would be into owning one. It's just that I don't want to go through the sleaziness of... you know what I mean? Like, you don't want to [deal with the typical sales tactics].

Shaan Puri

sit through the webinar yeah

Sam Parr

I don't want to I don't want to go to the seminar

Shaan Puri

so it's it's weird

Sam Parr

so I think it could be cool why is it worth so much so fast

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I don't know... I mean, they've grown, you know? So it's Picasso's evaluation. I saw it because there was a big protest going on. So Picasso raises $75,000,000, goes from launch to unicorn in 5 months. I think part of it is...

Sam Parr

what was the protest

Shaan Puri

what's that

Sam Parr

you said there was a protest

Shaan Puri

Oh, the protest was basically like this: in Napa, the home that they bought, the neighborhood was like, "Yo, what is this? We don't want this. We don't want this timeshare rental. We don't want all these different people coming through. Why are they doing this?" So, they were trying to say, "Hey, timeshares are not allowed." What this company says is, "It's not a timeshare." In a timeshare, you own a block of time; in this, you actually are a part owner of the home. So, it's different than a timeshare. Then people were like, "Dude, you can't just call it cooperative ownership, make up a new term, and say it's not a timeshare." So, they're kind of going back and forth about that.

Sam Parr

So, the guy who started it, his name is Spencer. Spencer Raskopf, is that how you say his name? So, he started...

Shaan Puri

well and austin allison so she's actually the ceo they were both execs at zillow

Sam Parr

so yeah so one of the co founders' name is spencer have you seen what this guy has done before

Shaan Puri

No, the name sounds familiar. Wasn't he one of the original founders of Zillow? Like, yeah.

Sam Parr

So check this out. In '99, at the age of 24, he founded Hotwire.com, a leading travel internet company. I mean, obviously, that's hotels, right? They sold it for $700 million. Then he started Zillow and took it public. He was the CEO through its IPO and bought loads of different companies. He resigned in 2020, so I guess he's out entirely. Then he started Dot LA, which is a media company for California startups. So I guess that's kind of like a passion project. And now he started Picasso. Dude, this guy's prolific! And he's on the board of Palantir. This guy's...

Shaan Puri

Like this is why it's worth **$1,000,000,000**. Because it's like, "Oh, the ex-CEO of Zillow is doing this new real estate thing. Cool, we're in!" We're sort of price insensitive on the valuation. So, I think it has more to do with the team than it does probably the traction in terms of that valuation.

Sam Parr

Yeah, this guy's a badass. I mean, he's a hardcore badass. Would you... when I think of these types of things, these companies that raise all this money, we talked about Zillow or we talked about this company Picasso. This guy looks like Spencer; that's his history.

Shaan Puri

also a podcaster he's got office hours podcast there you go

Sam Parr

Oh, we should have him on here! Spencer, if you're listening, come on! Do you think that... do you like the strategy of raising? Would you rather own a small piece of something huge, or a big piece (or everything) of something much smaller?

Shaan Puri

I don't think about it like that. That wouldn't be the deciding criteria. If it was just between those two, I would rather own the whole thing of a smaller venture. I find it to be more fulfilling, and I think economically, you end up doing better or have more options. When you own a small piece of a bigger thing, if it happens to go a little sideways and doesn't have a big unicorn exit, the company doesn't go public, or it doesn't get sold for $3,000,000,000, it's very easy to walk away with very little. You raised all this money, so now you have the first $100,000,000 going back to investors, and maybe you only sold it for $70,000,000 or something like that. Whereas if you owned a huge amount of the hustle, I think that path is better. You could sell for $12,000,000 and walk away with $10,000,000. So, I think it gives you more options on how to build your wealth. Now, that being said, there's something fun about building something massive and going for something that's truly game-changing with three extra zeros on the back of it. So, you know, I respect both paths. If I was picking between those two, I would want to own more of a smaller thing because it gives me more options.

Sam Parr

what do you think is easier

Shaan Puri

Oh, for sure. Owning a smaller company is easier in one sense. It is easier, I think, on a day-to-day basis because you don't have to worry about fundraising or shareholder management. You can also exit for smaller amounts. The harder part is when you look at companies that just raised $75,000,000. They're not going to feel like they're "roughing it" every day. Whereas when it's your company, and I don't know, you probably ran payroll in the first year of the hustle. You probably had to worry, like, let's say advertisers pull out. You were likely feeling that pinch because you were more or less bootstrapped. You raised a little bit of money, but I don't think you ever felt like you had this huge cash cushion that you could just fall back on.

Sam Parr

Well, yeah, I did not. But in my opinion, I normally would have agreed with you. However, we had Mark Lawrie on the podcast, and I talked a lot. I had a lot of his coworkers reach out to me after the podcast. Basically, Mark Lawrie is our Judge.com. What he's done is... what was his vision? He had this phrase, and I forget the phrase, but it was like "vision, capital, people." Is that what it was?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's his fun name now, so we can look it up. But yeah, it's **Vision Capital People**. Yeah, you got it right, **VCP**.

Sam Parr

Vision. That was his whole premise. He said, "Everything I come up with, the vision, I get the capital, we get the people. That's what we do." When he says that, I'm like, "What does that mean?" That's a pretty vague, fluffy thing. But I started talking to people who worked with him, and they're like, "He did that so well." He would raise all this money, and he really did a lot of work. But it wasn't like he was doing the things you do when you're just starting out and don't have any money. You know, like I ran my own payroll, I did all the banking, I would go out and get all the vendors. He just hired amazing people, and they did most of the work. He took care of the hard part of selling people to join the company and selling people to give them money. I thought about that, and I'm like, "Dude, that does sound so easy."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it sounds pretty awesome that it's easy... It's awesome. I thought I'd put it... Nothing's easy. I think anything valuable is typically not something you go to because it's easy, necessarily. But I'm totally with you. What's more fun: a small vision or a big vision? A big vision, right? What feels better: having a lot of ammo (in terms of capital) or being strapped for cash? And always having to worry not only about how to get customers and grow, but *can we pay the bills every single month*? Definitely [having more capital feels better].

Sam Parr

On the other side, if Sean wants to **take a break** for a little while, he can do that. Yes, exactly. He could bail for a...

Shaan Puri

little I optimize for freedom I optimize for freedom above above most things and so like if you ask me would I rather work my my dad taught me this a long time ago he told me once because our my first startup was a sushi restaurant chain and I was like I was talking about you know why it's fun blah blah blah he goes he was trying to convince me to come work in the energy industry he's like he he worked at bp so he worked in the oil and gas industry and he's like he's like you know the minimum is like you like to play poker right now when you go to a poker table you can either sit down with a $100 or you can sit down with $10,000 or a $100,000 you're still playing the same game you're still going to sit there for 6 hours he's like it's why not play the bigger game and he's like in the energy industry the minimum stakes are in the millions nothing happens in the 100 of 1,000 of dollars like you're saying a restaurant one location if it works can produce a $100,000 a year of net income or $125,000 of net income he's like why not just he's like a small project and a big project if you make it your your obsession which is what you're going to do when you go start a startup they both take the same amount of time they're both going to be all consuming all right so might as well do the one that has the bigger payoff so when he said it like that I was pretty sure like that's why my next start I I stopped the food thing and I went and did a biotech company because he was right and biotech like our well we made one deal that was worth $5,000,000 and I was like wow that would have taken us like 5 years and 25 locations to do in the restaurant industry and this was like 1 1 great meeting 1 great presentation and like you know a year of technology development and boom $5,000,000 came through the door so I kind of got to taste both sides of it and so if I was gonna a big project and a small project both take the same time a big project's more fun but what I don't like is big companies because in big companies I feel like I lose my freedom of my time and my energy of how I want to spend my day and so that's why I'm trying to find this mix of my perfect situation is I work for myself and pretty much by myself but I'm working on things that I feel are big and can pay off big and the w with the world of the internet that's now possible

Sam Parr

One of the most expensive mistakes ever made... Trends now makes millions of dollars in subscription revenue. It's a really good business. Had we made relatively minor changes - not that different, like it wouldn't have cost us more money, we may have needed a few more people - and right now we charge $300 a year. There's a world where it wouldn't have had to been that much different, and it definitely would have been a similar amount of work, [but] we could have charged $30,000 a year.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

and I didn't understand that for a long time now I completely do where it's like

Shaan Puri

It's actually... we were talking about that with HustleCon. When you were doing HustleCon, the HustleCon ticket was what? $200, $300? Something like that.

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

On average, you had told me... I was like, "Dude, why are you doing this?" Like, events business? Shift, dude! Events businesses can be big. Look at this one, look at that one. I went and looked at them because you were right. They did actually make tens of millions of dollars. But I was like, "Dude, the ticket price of this is $3,000 minimum!" It looks like they have a $15,000 ticket package for some people. Yours is like ten times cheaper than that. And you were like, "Yeah, we could," but you didn't feel comfortable going that route or whatever. I don't know what your reason was.

Sam Parr

Because you knew... Yeah, I knew I was being a... there are a few things. 1. I was a coward, so I was just being fearful. 2. When I started my company, I was like 24. What I don't understand is how these young guys, like people who are 21, 22, or 23, can do it. The folks who started Box.com, which is an enterprise cloud company, were like 20 or 19, still in college. What I don't understand is when you're 19 or 20... In my case, I was 24 when I thought about the company. I was like, "Well, I don't have any money. I would never buy something that was $2,000." Now that I'm older and have more experience, I realize that $2,000 is not a lot of money. So, what I don't understand is how these young guys in their early twenties, who don't have a lot of experience, can even fathom that someone is willing to spend all this money on their product. They're either just courageous or they have more faith. I don't know what it is, but kudos to them. Because when I was 24 and starting my thing, even though I could have charged way more money—and I tell everyone to do it now—I did not have the courage or the knowledge to do it back then.

Shaan Puri

Right, and you see now, because you're inside HubSpot, you see how much companies spend on just stuff. It's like going to a really wealthy person's house and then you see them tip... you know, they tip some guy $100 or they buy this fancy espresso machine for $8,000. It's like, "Oh, these are normal expenses for them." So then, when you're on the outside, you're like, "I should be charging a lot more." But when you've never been inside one of these big companies, it feels like a $3,000 ask. Dude, I better be giving them my left arm! Actually, they feel more comfortable with larger price tags. In fact, a $300 product is a little bit off-putting to them and sort of strange to them.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's... and it's like disrespectful. It's like, "Dude, this thing isn't good. Charge more!" So, knowing what I know now, I think Marc Andreessen had a very headline-worthy quote. It was something like, "If Marc Andreessen had one piece of advice for his startups, it would be simple: charge more." He was two words: "Charge more." Most startups do what I did; they charge way less than they should. I don't know, maybe you're trying to be cute. I don't know what it is, but it's just... it's cuter to be cheaper.

Shaan Puri

But like, insecurity, right? Because at the beginning, you're like, "Oh, I just want some customers. It's not that big of a deal." Then that becomes the anchor that you mentally anchor to, and the market anchors you to. Then you're afraid if you raise prices, everybody's going to run out the door. You know, what happens if I raise these prices? I'm going to get complaints. People are going to quit... you know, blah blah blah. So, it's really like a form of insecurity. It's like a corporate insecurity. And so, if you're out there, I tweeted this the other day: "If you're working at a company, go ask for a raise today." But do you think anyone did that? There's a sky cycle. I just got a promotion. Go ask for a raise today! But I'm... I don't know. I haven't really proven myself. Go ask for a raise today! Everybody should go ask for a raise inside of a big company. Why? Because there's almost always wiggle room. When I was hiring, they would say they had what they called a compensation band. What does that mean? It means for the same role, we can pay this much on the low end or this much on the high end. And guess what? You start people low or in the middle of the scale, and then you flex up when you need to. When do you need to? When they ask for more money. So, there's already in your exact role, without getting a promotion, there is more money that can be had. The second thing is, what's the worst that happens? They say no. And when they say no, you might learn something. They might say no because they give you essentially a soft "hell no." What's a soft "hell no"? A soft "hell no" is sort of like they say no, and they're like, "Look, if you want more, you can go elsewhere and get it." That's kind of a "you're not so valued here, like go for it." Or there's a no that's like, "Look, we love you, we value you. I would love to give you more; I just can't right now because of X, Y, Z. Or can you demonstrate... can you hit these goals? Because that will help us build this case." And hey, you're one step closer to making more money than you were before you asked. And so, or they say yes, and boom, you get more money. Like, there's no loss.

Sam Parr

I was kind

Shaan Puri

Of like work for me, don't come ask me for more money. That doesn't count because I gave this advice, so don't ask me. But, you know, this is for other people.

Sam Parr

I was notorious at the Hustle because when people would ask me for a raise, I'd always say yes. I was horrible at confrontation; I just said yes to everything. I'm like, "Oh my god, I don't feel like dealing with this."

Shaan Puri

That is not true, dude. You told me a hilarious story. We can bleep this out if you don't want to tell it. I don't know if you remember, but you, me, and our friend Sully were at Dela Rosa or... we were at some restaurant, and you told us the story of... okay, bleep this. Do you remember this? No, I don't remember it fully, but you were just like, "No." And you can leave if you think that. It wasn't just "no," it was like, "You don't understand... like, you don't understand."

Sam Parr

oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

Shaan Puri

yeah so the story was like value

Sam Parr

Well, yeah, so I remember this. I should rephrase this: when people do good, I say yes to everything. When people do bad, they're like, "Well, I want a raise." So, I'm alright. You're like a machine to me. It sounds horrible, but it's like, look, our business is a machine, and humans are part of the input. Humans' effort is part of the input, right? And you're asking me for a raise right now. I think that the money you are paid breaks even. So, we put money into this machine; we put in the input.

Shaan Puri

same amount out and we

Sam Parr

Get the same amount out? If I were to give you more money, I'm putting more input. How much bigger is the output going to be? Because right now, I don't think it's worth it. And so, if you don't think that's fair, then you should go to some other machine and figure out where that input can have a bigger output. Because right now, it ain't working.

Shaan Puri

Right, yeah, exactly. I love that because, a) it was honest, and b) it was a little bit brutal. You know, it wasn't like I would say you have many, many super strengths and A+ skills. I would pick you over anybody, but softly wording things is not one of them. I found it to be super funny. But really, again, even if you find that information now and it hurts in the moment, when this person says, "Look, it's not like it's not on the table with the way things are currently," if you find that out, that's a good piece of information. It hurts in the moment, but it's a good piece of information to know because you might say, "Shit, I need to create more value here." What would it mean? You can have a conversation and say, "Well, what would I need to do for you to feel great about paying me double what I'm making today?" That's a question you can ask. They might not know the answer right away, but they'll come up with it. They'll help work with you on it, and then you'll realize, "Oh, that's where the value is created in my business." So maybe in this machine, that's where the machine needs the oil. I should go oil that part of it and create all this new output. Then, of course, they'll give me some more because I've created disproportionately more value out of it. It's a good conversation to have if you haven't had it, you know, with the people you work with.

Sam Parr

alright good well let's see if we're gonna do that alright good pod

Shaan Puri

yeah let's get out of here