Why Everyone Is Wrong About the Metaverse, Gaingels, Companies that Don't Advertise, and More

Shaan Puri

They say all the best people are crazy. You can't be not crazy and be the best when there are crazy people out there who want to be the best.

MFM Listener

I feel like I can rule the world I know I could be what I want to

Sam Parr

Yeah, I'm going to actually start by asking you a question. I was just talking to Ben about this. Would you send your kids to a school and let them get hit? Or, like, not hit, but... hit's not the right word. If you're acting like an asshole, they could grab you by the collar and kind of push you against the wall. Are you okay with that? No, you're not okay with that.

Shaan Puri

I'm not okay with that. It's not because I don't want my kid to get hit; it's that I wouldn't trust the person who would be doing the hitting to know the right way and the wrong way, and where the line is. I just think about it this way: if you're the type of teacher who signs up for that—if you're the type of teacher who goes to this specialty discipline school, this specialty abuse school to teach—I just don't want that person to have a screw loose, and I'm not there to see it. So I would rather err on the side of "no, you can't hit my kid" or "rough them up in any way" unless I know this person, I trust this person, or I'm there. For example, I think if it was a coach of some kind and the coach was really tough on my kid—not by hitting, but you know, kind of punking my kid—I'm totally cool with that as long as the coach is legit. But I've seen a whole bunch of people, and actually grown up now and looked back at some of the teachers and coaches I had who kind of did weird stuff. Now that I'm an adult, I'm like, "Oh, this was just a totally flawed person." At the time, I really thought they were the authority; I thought that they must know things that we don't know. Then I see them on Facebook, and they're posting like crazy anti-vax stuff and they're, you know, preppers and stuff like that. I'm like, "Oh, you know, you kind of always just had a screw loose." At the time, I thought I was in the wrong for not playing by your rules or whatever.

Sam Parr

I went to an all-boys high school, and I was a jerk at the time. There were times when the disciplinarian would come up to me because I was supposed to have my shirt tucked in, and if I didn't, I would get yelled at a bunch of times. He would give you a horrible wedgie; they would grab you by your underwear and lift you up, saying, "What have I told you, son, about this?" Or if I was disrespectful a couple of times, they would grab me by the shirt and push me against the locker, saying, "If I hear from you again, you're over." You know what I mean? And I loved it.

Shaan Puri

was it a military school or it's just a boys' school

Sam Parr

no it was just an all boys' catholic college prep school in saint louis where I'm from everywhere goes to

Shaan Puri

yeah you went to all boys' high school and what about like before that

Sam Parr

I went to school in Saint Louis. The way it works is that most people in my area go to private school. I attended a Catholic K-8 school and then an all-boys college prep Catholic school from grades 8 to 12. At the time, it was like $900 a year for San Ambrose, my grade school. So, that's just what everyone did. Alright, what do you want to talk about today? Can we talk about your tweet that went viral? That was pretty cool.

Shaan Puri

your boy's done it again another hit

Sam Parr

how many how many people did it reach

Shaan Puri

5,000,000 something like that

Sam Parr

wow so yeah the what you wrote honestly

Shaan Puri

there's wasn't even that interesting so I'm very surprised cool

Sam Parr

It was pretty cool. I think the reason I only thought it was pretty cool was that I already know you and I know how you think. There were two cool parts about it. The first was that it was okay; I would rate it an 8.5 out of 10. The second part, which was a 10 out of 10, was the fact that you just thought of it like that. It was a pretty original thought, and you broke it down well. Another thing that was a 10 out of 10 was that you reached amazing people. Bill Ackman, if you don't know, is a $5 or $10 billion person—kind of a little bit like a god in the hedge fund world. He actually retweeted it and said, "Incredibly interesting insight" or something like that.

Shaan Puri

something like

Sam Parr

That I thought that was amazing. I thought that was so cool. I think that for the listener, the takeaway here is: I know you, and you're kind of a big deal now. But like, three years ago, you weren't a big deal. Now you're basically like, if you DM'd Bill Ackman or loads of other people, or you called or emailed, you have access to them. That's pretty amazing about the internet.

Shaan Puri

It's true. It is amazing how these things go. I'll tell you some cool things that happened. I don't know why I want to tell you this, but I guess I would never really... if I just think of this like a podcast, I would never say this on the podcast because it sounds like, "Why are you bragging?" But if I just think about this like I'm just talking to Sam, I'd be like, "Dude, you won't believe what happened." So, I tweeted this thing out. For people who don't know what it is, I tweeted about the metaverse, which is like the dorkiest term ever. So, you know, already I feel lame even talking about it. It's lame to talk about a tweet; it's lame to talk about the metaverse. I'm multiplying two lames together. But basically, what happened is Facebook rebranded or renamed the company to Meta. It was kind of top of mind for a lot of people. I've been hearing a bunch of people talk about the metaverse, kind of in the investor circle. I remember when we had Mike Maples on here. He was talking about big trends that he had kind of bet on in the past. We asked him what trends he was betting on now, and he said, "You know, the shift to remote work, this other thing, and the metaverse." We didn't even really talk about it on the episode, but I remember stashing that away as like, "This pretty legit guy said he's betting on the metaverse." I don't even know what a metaverse company is, so I just kind of stashed it away as something I should probably go look into at some point.

Shaan Puri

And so, I basically wrote a thread that was like, "Hey, I think the way that people think about this is wrong." I thought about it originally the way I think most people do, which is that the metaverse is a place. If you've ever read or watched the movie *Ready Player One*, it's kind of like, "Oh, there's a virtual world," like *Second Life* or, you know, whatever. There's this virtual world where we're all going to go live in and hang out. It's a...

Sam Parr

video game yeah

Shaan Puri

it's like a video game life basically and that's what people I think are just really called

Sam Parr

with with the with the headset

Shaan Puri

yeah like you're plugged in it's some some version of the matrix or ready player 1 or people have these different mental models from like books or movies that they've seen and I said I don't I actually I don't think it's a place I don't think that the metaverse is just like one giant minecraft world that we're all gonna go live in and hang out in and play in and work in and all that stuff I don't think it's like one company creates this this game and we all go live in it I said instead so what if it's not a what if we're wrong about that what if it's not a place what if it's a time I was like what what does that mean well a time I basically described this like parallel so in in the ai world for artificial intelligence there's this idea of the singularity and it's this moment where like kinda like technological progress just sort of escapes us it just it's it starts accelerating faster than you know we can imagine and in rough speaking terms this is where the doomsday people think you know it's after this that basically the robots you know artificial intelligence takes over and humans are done and then other people think it's utopia where artificial intelligence can just invent things it can create cures for cancer and whatever else and humans will be saved and like we will all have to just we all just will have hobbies we don't have to work because ai just takes care of everything but there's this idea of the singularity that's this moment in time where ai basically surpasses this threshold so I was basically arguing my my idea was I I think the metaverse is actually a time it's a moment in time where we care more about the things in our digital life than in our physical life and care more doesn't mean like oh I don't care if my body gets hurt or dies right that's not really what I meant but if you spend all your time working online and then you communicate with people who are also online and you don't even really know them in real life you're not talking to your neighbor you're talking to this person on twitter or this person in a discord or this person on reddit and then your watch all of your entertainment is streamed to you online and all of your assets are digital assets like cryptocurrencies and things like that so you know your money is digital like once everything goes digital as more and more things go digital at some.

Shaan Puri

There's a tipping point where, basically, your identity, your assets, and your social life...

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

It's all online, and I said that to me is the metaverse. It won't be one company; it'll be a combination of companies that are all doing that. I kind of gave some examples. Like, you know, a filter in Instagram is basically like a better, superior replacement to cosmetic procedures, you know, getting plastic surgery or wearing heavy makeup. The digital filter matters more; it's cheaper and more accessible to more people. Ultimately, you care how you're seen online almost more than you care how you're seen in person. I know plenty of people who would never post a photo of themselves with their hair messy, in their sweats and oversized T-shirt. They would never post that on Instagram, but they'll go to the grocery store like that because who cares? I don't care what these people think, but I really care what those people think. What I was describing was that this is already happening. There's this long-running shift where you're caring more about your digital reputation, your digital identity, and your digital assets than your real-world stuff. I said to some people, this is going to sound like the worst thing ever; some people are going to think this is the best thing ever. My argument is it's not even the best nor the worst; it's just the way that things are going, and you'll make of it whatever you choose. So anyways, that's what the tweet was about.

Sam Parr

tweet this on like friday or thursday and what happened

Shaan Puri

At first, nothing really happened. It kind of did how I thought it would initially. So, initially, I was like, "Oh, it's kind of an interesting idea, but pretty nerdy and in the weeds. I don't think anyone's gonna care." And it kind of didn't do much at the beginning. Then something happened, and it just started picking up steam. It's getting more mentions. For example, yesterday it had even more mentions because of this... you know who Fred Wilson is?

Sam Parr

the vc

Shaan Puri

Yeah, the VC from Union Square Ventures, he's had this blog for a long time. I think it's like "Fred's Blog" or something like that. He's been blogging for like 15 years. I've read his ideas for so long. He made a post today about the metaverse. He goes, "I read this really insightful thing," and he just embedded my tweet. He's like, "It made me think blah blah blah blah." So then it gets a new spike of people, whatever. I didn't expect it. I want to know what the hell he likes. So, okay, the first thing is, after how many people...

Sam Parr

followed you because of it

Shaan Puri

Let's see, I started at **178,000** followers and I now have **193,500**.

Sam Parr

wow

Shaan Puri

So, 193.5... We don't do public math, but we can add this up. 15,000 new followers. The post itself has about 20,000+ likes. But I'll tell you what was... that's okay, that's the cool part. Those are just numbers. Here's what was fun: I get a call from... [we'll have to bleep this out] but I get a call right after I post it, about 15 minutes later. I get a call from... [bleeped out] basically a famous person who has stuff on Netflix. They go, "Dude, I'm tripping out over here." I go, "What?" They've never called me before. How do you think he's gonna work friends? He had... after I did that Clubhouse thread a while back, this person had DM'd me saying, "Hey, that's so on..." blah blah blah blah. They said, "Hey, if I ever come to San Francisco for some of my Hollywood work, then I'd love to hang out or something." I was just like, "Yeah, right." But I gave him my number. So, I get a phone call from the person, and they say, "Dude, I'm tripping out over here. You know, it made me a little bit anxious. Like, what's gonna happen? I think you're right, but I don't know what it means if you're right." So, anyways, we have this little conversation. That was kind of fun. Then it starts going into a bunch of NFL players started following me, and I'm like, "Why would they care?" So, a bunch of pro athletes followed, and then I'm sliding into their DMs or they're sliding into my DMs. I'm just basically... it's like clear the calendar all day. I'm just gonna be answering direct messages because...

Sam Parr

really so because

Shaan Puri

I don't know who's in here but I know a lot of values in here

Sam Parr

so professional athletes

Shaan Puri

yeah a bunch of people from the tech industry which you would expect and then

Sam Parr

anyone intriguing

Shaan Puri

From the tech world, yeah. I think, I mean, Fred Wilson, I felt pretty good about. Like a bunch of the Andreessen guys who had blocked me from the Clubhouse thread—like, who are some of their partners? Well, the people who blocked me probably didn't reply, so they didn't unblock me for this. But some of the other partners messaged and said, "Hey, this is great." And I said, "Okay, I'm glad I'm not just permanently banned from your offices."

Sam Parr

that's awesome I think that's great

Shaan Puri

So, this is cool. Stuff happens, and then, you know, the other thing is that a bunch of people—and I realized this later—was that I thought, kind of like, you know, even if you have one of these Twitter threads that goes viral, who cares? Ultimately, what does it lead to? It's fun, but you know, who gives a shit? But I've seen now, months later, there were a lot of people who, let's say, want to invest in a company. They're like, "Dude, I remember that thread! That was epic!" And they're just like, "You're cool," right? You just get the stamp. Because in a world where it's so noisy, with so many people, if you do one memorable thing that people respect and like, it's like that's the shortcut in their brain that says, "Okay, I like this person. Yeah, I trust this person. Yeah, they're cool." It's just from that. I wouldn't have ever predicted that. So, anyways, I call these my little serendipity engines. It's like I put it out there in the world, and I could never predict what's going to happen. But then all these kind of second and third order consequences end up happening, where you end up meeting somebody, going to dinner, doing a deal. It's just all this weird stuff that you can't predict. So, fun day when this happens, but also such a weird thing, dude. I couldn't imagine, even if you told me 5 years ago or 10 years ago, that this would be a thing in my life that I would care about. I'd be like, "What are you talking about? Why would I care about that?"

Sam Parr

Yeah, I think it is pretty unique. I met this guy named Blake. I don't know what his last name is, but I went to Oklahoma City when I was driving through. I had a MFM meetup or like a Sampar meetup.

Shaan Puri

I don't

Sam Parr

I hosted about 20 people for breakfast, and this guy came. They asked, "What would you tell us if we want to...?" I forget what the question was. I said, "Man, get on Twitter. It's where it's happening." He's on it now and signed up whenever I did this thing a year ago. Now he's got like 50,000 to 80,000 followers. I forget his name, but it's Blake Burge. You probably see him in the little circle jerks.

Shaan Puri

I have shit yeah

Sam Parr

And he was at the meetup. He didn't even have Twitter. I go, "Dude, sign up right now and start posting this stuff. You can meet people; it's pretty amazing."

Shaan Puri

Dude, you know what's crazy? Also, I'm pretty sure somebody sent it to Zuck because someone who's very close to him, like a respected person, was like, "Yeah, this is awesome." So, I'm pretty sure that person was going to share it with him, which is kind of crazy, right? I literally watched the keynote of him talking. He gave a basically 30-minute presentation. I actually want to talk about this. He gave a 30-minute presentation saying, "We rebranded to Meta. Here's why, and here's what it's going to be like." Not just like, "Here's new products we're going to build," but "Here's what the world is going to look like. Here's what life is going to look like." He gave this cool presentation. I don't know, did you see this presentation?

Sam Parr

a little bit it bored the fuck out of me

Shaan Puri

oh really I thought it was amazing you got bored from

Sam Parr

that a little bit

Shaan Puri

it's literally like somebody opened the door and is like hey you wanna see what life's gonna look like in 20 years

Sam Parr

yeah I just find him being incredibly unlikable

Shaan Puri

well yeah he's kind of robotic but like

Sam Parr

I find it a

Shaan Puri

little bit

Sam Parr

hard to watch

Shaan Puri

I definitely... yeah, there's definitely some cringe factor for sure. But the funny thing is, I saw that and I was supposed to have this call with Ben. Ben's like, "Oh, I gotta take care of the baby real quick. Just, you know, I'll be online in like 25 minutes." I was like, "Okay, cool." I thought, "Alright, I got 25 minutes to kill," and I just watched this thing. I just tweeted it out. To me, it was like a throwaway thing; it wasn't like a planned, drafted, edited piece. So, anyway, it's crazy how that works. But I want to talk about this meta thing. Not even what he predicted or what kind of Zuck laid out, but what do you think about Facebook changing the name of the company in general? I have kind of a theory on why, but I'd love to hear what you think.

Sam Parr

I think that if I were Facebook and wanted to recruit the best people on earth, I would apply what I've learned from running a business. This is something that every business says: an entrepreneur of a 20-person company. You even tweeted about Ben Levy, like, "I just called Ben..." but what should I call him? This is something that everyone says is true, but it's not. Titles matter. People will say, "Oh, titles don't matter; just call yourself anything." No, they're actually really important, and they matter a ton. Even if you're a 10-person company, if I were Zuck and wanted to create a company where people wanted to work—which I think they're struggling with right now—I would change the name of the company. I would have a CEO of Facebook, a CEO of this, a CEO of that. This means there would be a VP, a president, and then I would give all these people their own kingdoms. That's how I would continue to grow. That's exactly what Facebook did, or Google. There’s a CEO of Google, a CEO of YouTube, a CEO of this, a CEO of that, and with each CEO, there's a hierarchy for people to climb. You have to give these people these ladders. That's why I think it's a great idea.

Shaan Puri

That's on. So, basically, I've heard, I will call it maybe three or four different theories. So one theory is what you're...

Sam Parr

I've made this up is is this real

Shaan Puri

so that's what

Sam Parr

did I nail it

Shaan Puri

I did, in kind of nerd circles, you know, I've just heard a couple of people talking about this. I was kind of like, "Here's what I think it is," but let's start with the theory. So, **Theory 1** is that it's a recruiting thing. Why would you do this, right? They said it's a recruiting strategy, and it's basically a mix of what you said. When you create a parent company, now you have more... you created basically another level. At the exact level, you created a wall. It's like your neck was compressed and now it's stretched out. It's like, "Ah, you just created this breathing room." So that person who's otherwise a VP can now become CEO. That might be the difference between them. I know, for example, the person who was head of or VP of... I don't look up her title.

Sam Parr

it's not ceo

Shaan Puri

Ben, look up Fiji Sumo's title. She was in charge of Big Blue, which is the Facebook app. Before her, there was Chris Cox. They ran multiple products and were in charge of the suite of products, but their titles weren't CEO; it was something else. She left and now she's the CEO of Instacart. So, she left the big ship, you know, the $1 trillion company, to go be the CEO of maybe a $10 or $20 billion company. I don't know what Instacart is valued at, but something like that. Now, you lose that key talent. Maybe it's because she looked up and said, "This guy's never gonna leave." This guy was super young; he loves this stuff. Where do I go? How do I go up? I can't go up anymore. Even the stock price, we're already at a $1 trillion. What am I betting on? We go to $10 trillion? I need some upside and I need some resume growth here. So that's one theory. I like that theory; I think that's true, but I wouldn't say it's the number one reason. Okay, so let's go to the other theories. Then there's the skeptical theory, which is: dude, Facebook's brand is trash. It's the Philip Morris of, you know, Facebook equals cigarettes. They're just trying to run away from all the bad news and all the bad branding, and so they're gonna change.

Sam Parr

that theory

Shaan Puri

So, a lot of people think that... and there's a subset of that which is, if Mark hires a CEO of Facebook, then the person who gets called into the Senate is that person. They go sit in front of the Senate and talk about all this stuff, and they can get sort of hammered out there. But Zuck, as you know, is the chairman or whatever of Meta. It's like, you know, when the Google guys did this, Sundar, now or whatever, has to go in front of Congress. Larry Page can just go and, you know, he could be CEO of Alphabet and not have to worry about that stuff.

Sam Parr

So, by the way, did you know that one of the Google founders—I don't know, I think it's Larry—he can't speak?

Shaan Puri

he's got like a voice problem sergei

Sam Parr

he's got

Shaan Puri

a voice problem larry yeah

Sam Parr

I think it's Larry. Over the years, if you go and type in his name on YouTube, you'll see a video of him from 10 years ago. You can hear his progression. Then, maybe 5 years ago, you're like, "Oh, this is really bad." I'm pretty sure at this point he can't talk at all. But if you Google his name and watch a video of him, any video that's online is probably recent enough that you could start hearing his voice. You know, I'm not making fun of him, but he sounds like Kermit the Frog. It's a really weird voice for how he looks.

Shaan Puri

It's definitely been that way for a few years. I think he can still speak, but basically, his vocal cords are like partially paralyzed, if I remember correctly.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's crazy, man. If I were him, I wouldn't want to go speak either. I mean, it seems really embarrassing. He shouldn't be embarrassed, but I understand, you know... shit.

Shaan Puri

So, by the way, I'm just reading it right now. It says that 14 years ago, he had a cold and then he got a hoarse voice from the cold. He just never recovered. He went to a doctor, and they said his left vocal cord was paralyzed. It's a nerve problem that's causing his left vocal cord not to move properly anymore.

Sam Parr

and then like when I first heard him talk I was like is the video broken

Shaan Puri

right because he he's super soft spoken right so you're like wow is this guy

Sam Parr

It sounds like he's speaking. It almost sounds like the video was in slow motion or something. It was really, you know, sad. It sucks.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's crazy. I think it has happened on his right vocal cord too. Hashimoto's thyroiditis—that's wild.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's... it's shit anyway. But, if I was him, I wouldn't want to speak in front of the Senate either.

Shaan Puri

and ben looked it up fiji's title was head of the facebook app so so the that's that's one theory which is it's such bad news as a rebrand I think one of the cigarette companies rebranded to like altria or altia or something like that so it's like it's like reminiscent of that so okay so that's like another theory and then there's the third theory which is actually the theory that I subscribe to which is this is actually just a mission shift and so I remember when I worked at twitch this is the 2nd year it was right before I left so I was kind of like you know basically I was on paternity leave I wasn't even really working at twitch at that time I was on paternity leave and I was thinking okay I think it's time for my next thing but I got a phone call from emmett who's the ceo and emmett's great and you know I got a ton of respect for him and he basically said hey I wanna he he messaged me something and said like hey do you have time to talk today like I wanna bounce something off you and he called me and he basically said you know this funny thing has happened which is that like I think 8 to 10 years ago very early days of twitch we had we set out like this big north star mission which was a 1000000 creators getting paid to create on on the platform and so it was like 1,000,000 he's like and at that time we might have had like you know we were in the 1,000 or tens of 1,000 or something like that like a million just seemed a million people getting paid like earning money doing this it just seemed like wild and so he's like you know so so the million was like super far away he's like and then you know last year like we hit the million and he's like this is really weird feeling like you you hit this 10 year goal and there's like this amazing part of it which is holy shit we did it and then there's this numb part of it which is like wait it's like now what what do you do when you hit the thing that you thought was like you know it's like when elon takes a man to mars okay what's the what's the next step right it's like if you get to the moon you gotta start thinking what do I do now and so he said you know one of the most he told me on the phone he goes one of the most dangerous things for a company is achieving your mission because you have to reinvent your mission you have to reinvent yourself and think bigger he's like and so he he was like I wanna brainstorm with you some ideas on what that could be what could be the mission for the company in the next 10 years and so we had a good good brainstorm or whatever and and so I think that's what this is I think facebook is now used by like everybody with a cell phone you know facebook or one of the facebook apps they they the mission was connect you know like connect the world or whatever they literally did it they connected the world everybody is using like not only one but multiple of

Sam Parr

Their products... Dude, so many people use Facebook that when Sarah worked there, I think they were sending satellites to India because they just literally needed more people on the web in order to...

Shaan Puri

Get more people. Yeah, they ran out of people with internet. It's that moment where your Total Addressable Market (TAM) becomes your actual market share. It's insane. I remember once we were having lunch with Alex, the founder of Calm. He just started cracking up, and I was like, "What?" He goes, "I just realized... think about how many Facebook accounts shut down. They churn just due to death." He's like, "Every day, there's probably like a million people who just die and stop using the service." He was just calculating, and he's like, "That's insane to me. If you're at that scale, that's how many people."

Sam Parr

that's pretty wild

Shaan Puri

Literally, just die and stop using our service. That's like more people than ever have used our product will die today on Facebook. So anyway, I think that this is a mission shift. Basically, I think they achieved mission one, and it's like, what's the mission of the company now? Is it just to make money? A lot of people think Zuckerberg's pretty evil. I actually don't think he's evil. I do think he likes power, as evidenced by those early text messages that got leaked of him talking to his buddy in college. He's like, "Dude, these dumb fucks are just giving me all their information." It sounds really evil, but I think he just liked being kind of like the puppet master a little bit. Fundamentally, I don't think he's money-hungry. I don't think he's driven by money. Early on, I remember when Facebook IPO'd, he put something in their prospectus that I really liked. I think other people kind of roll their eyes if they just hate everything Facebook does, but I thought it was pretty cool. He said, "We don't build great services to make money; we make money to build great services." There's an important difference between the two. Yes, we care about money, but we care about money so that we have the profits to invest in building great services, to hire the best people who can build the greatest services and the greatest products in the world. I think that's what they're doing now. He said they're investing $10,000,000,000 this year in their virtual reality and augmented reality stuff for the metaverse, which is an absurd amount of money to be investing into this. Some people think this stuff is going to be worth someday. If you started a company in VR, you'd be hoping it would be worth $10,000,000,000 someday. He's investing that as one year's R&D, which is insane.

Sam Parr

I want to talk to you about a bunch of different things, but I want to ask you about your real estate guy, your real estate buddy. Someone said they like when we ramble about normal stuff, and I want to get... we can make this really quick. Did you watch UFC on Saturday?

Shaan Puri

I did oh no I watched okay part of it yeah I watched hamza okay

Sam Parr

So, I want to talk about sports lately. It doesn't matter if you're into UFC or not; I want you all to do this. A few weeks ago, or maybe a few months ago, we talked about this woman named Rose Namajunas. Her nickname is "Thug Rose." She's this little white-haired lady with a shaved head—really cool. Before her fight, she was muttering to herself, "I'm the best, I'm the best." It was inspirational. Then she knocked out this woman, and it was truly inspiring because she's very endearing and cute. There's everything to like about this woman. Now, there's this guy who's kind of the same thing but the opposite. His name is Khamzat. For some reason, there's a huge group of Chechen UFC fighters. If you don't know, Chechnya is a region of Russia. I don't want to sound like a fool; I'm not incredibly well-researched, but they're mostly white and look white, yet they are devout Muslims. I don't know how they consider themselves in relation to Russia, but we Americans would say, "Oh, you're just a Russian Muslim." They're known for wrestling, and many of them are from an area called Dagestan. If you can imagine what Afghanistan looks like, that's kind of what this area looks like. It's in Russia, and they have gone through a ton of war lately—over the last 20 to 30 years. So, there's this guy named Khamzat. He had a cleft lip or something like that, so his lip is all crooked. He is so scary looking. He knows how to speak English now, but his attitude and what he says is intense. When asked, "Who do you want to fight next?" he responds, "Oh brother, I'll smash everyone. I'm going to kill everyone. I'm going to take their soul." Yeah, he's been saying that this whole time. He's been in four fights in the UFC and has been punched in the face only once. What happened this weekend is absurd. He fought...

Shaan Puri

is absurd

Sam Parr

Which is absurd. This weekend, he fought the best Chinese guy; I forget his last name, but it was Lee. He's a little bit older, but he's considered the best out of China. He picked him up and walked over to the side of the cage where Dana was. He yells to Dana, "Get off your phone, watch this!" Then he gets on top of the guy and chokes him unconscious. In the interview afterwards, both in the ring and outside the ring, he goes, "Brother, I'm just here to smash everyone and kill people."

Shaan Puri

who do you mean

Sam Parr

to go are you gonna

Shaan Puri

Everyone, brother! I kill everyone. I'm here to kill everyone, brother. I love this! I'll kill everyone. That's all he was saying.

Sam Parr

And they go, "What are you gonna do? Are you gonna fight the number one person?" He goes, "Well, they're gonna have to give me the number one person because I'm gonna kill everyone. No one will be alive."

Shaan Puri

And then he even said something. He goes, "You know, where did you get this mentality?" He goes, "I'm crazy, man." He said, "All the best people are crazy. You can't be not crazy and be the best when there are crazy people out there who want to be the best." I just thought, "That's not true." But it's absolutely true.

Sam Parr

He goes, "I'm a gangster. I'm crazy." I think there are a few things to learn here. The first is that a lot of that is born; I think a lot of it is just an act that you've turned on. In his case, I imagine he's seen a lot of tragedy and, like, fucking war. He created this tough guy persona in order just to survive, you know? The second thing is, I think you can tell yourself that consistently, and you can kind of become it. The third thing is, these guys, these Dagestani guys, and also, for some reason, this weekend, all the Russians won. Petr Yan won; he's Russian. All these Russians are crushing it. They've got something in them. I don't know what this Russian attitude is that I've noticed about these guys, but it's this very quiet... although Khamzat, even though he talks a lot of shit, he's still really quiet. It's this quiet, subtle confidence, and I love it. When I watch their videos over and over again, Fedor had it. They've got this quiet confidence, and I'm in love with that. I'm in love with it.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, they have a tenacity that's pretty crazy. I was browsing on TikTok, and this clip came up related to the NBA. Most of the NBA is not like that; there aren't many Russians in the NBA. But it's kind of silly. The UFC is one of the only sports where people go and say, "I want to kill everybody." In any other sport, they don't really say that in the press conference, right? They might say it as trash talk on the field when there's no microphone to pick it up. But in the UFC, they just literally say it to the reporter, and the reporter writes it down and publishes the post or whatever, you know?

Sam Parr

and it's one of the only sports it's one of the only sports you can't play

Shaan Puri

right yeah yeah

Sam Parr

you can't like play it you know it's like if it's like something bad is going to happen

Shaan Puri

Two cool little nuggets here. So early on, the founding story of the UFC is pretty wild. It was started by someone else, and then Dana White, who is currently the president of the UFC, a pretty famous guy, became a part of the show. He goes to every single event and sits cage side. They do an event in a different place every weekend. This guy is now a billionaire, and he is a very outspoken individual. Imagine the commissioner of your favorite sport; they're usually a pretty buttoned-up guy, often an ex-lawyer. They typically say something like, "We, as the NFL, are committed to upholding integrity," and blah blah blah. In contrast, Dana White will post things like, "Oh, this fight's going to be awesome," and if someone in an Instagram comment says, "This fight sucks" or "That's too expensive for..."

Sam Parr

the pay per view a motherfucking clown

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he'll be like... he'll literally be like, "You fucking clown! Like, shut up, you fucking clown!" And then that's like, he says that. It's like, what CEO of what company is able to just say that to their potential customers? It's insane. The whole sport's savage. But he said something early on because the bet that he made, the investment that they made, they bought the UFC for about $2,000,000. And it wasn't his money. He convinced his two childhood friends, the Fertitas, who own casinos—that's their background, that's how they made their wealth—to buy the UFC. Then they ended up pouring in like $50 or $60 million at a loss to keep it alive, to promote the thing. He kept believing, kept believing, kept believing. They kept pouring in $1,000,000 and $1,000,000 of dollars, and it looked like it was not gonna work. And then it has now since turned around as a public company, and it's, you know, it's all working now. They sold it for, you know, over $4,000,000,000.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I think it... I was looking at it. It's a great company. It makes like $300 to $400 million a year in profit.

Shaan Puri

And they asked him, "Dana, what gave you the faith that this business would work when all the evidence just said the guy who did this before me failed? Nobody else has done this in America, and you guys are bleeding like $40,000,000 to $60,000,000. Why did you continue?" He goes, "Because I get people. I understand humans." He goes, "Let's say we're out on a playground. There's a football game going on over there, there's a soccer game over here, and there's a basketball court over there with people shooting hoops."

Sam Parr

I'm not gonna

Shaan Puri

Be a basketball court over there, people shooting hoops. I said, "Oh my God, that Russian guy is fighting that Chinese guy." Guess where everybody's attention goes? He goes, "Everybody looks, and then everybody runs over to watch the fight." That's how humans are wired. You can't help but turn and look when a fight breaks out. That was the whole thesis; that was the underlying psychological nugget. I loved that. You know, that is how simple he was thinking. He goes, "By the way, this is a sport that transcends every country." Yeah, football's huge in America, but go to the UK, and nobody cares. We have fighters who are like the pride of the UK. It's huge. We're huge in the UK, we're huge in Australia, we're huge in Africa, we're huge in China. This can get bigger than any one of those sports because we can tap into the global population. Fighting, one person punching another, is a universally known sport. You don't need to even know the rules. It's not like basketball, football, or baseball. If I try to watch cricket, I don't know what's going on; I don't know the rules. But with two people fighting, I understand the premise. I get what's going on. It's like this historic, barbaric thing. So anyways, I love that business side of the UFC as well.

Sam Parr

So, if you're a UFC person, you know what I'm talking about. If you're not, that was pretty cool. This weekend, there are a couple of things. I'll say it real quick: the main thing is this guy, Kamaru Usman, an African immigrant who comes to America during college and kicks ass. It's the American dream! He's fighting against a devout MAGA Trump supporter, so that story is very fun. The second fight is Rose Namajunas, who I like. She's fighting the best one from China. They're both amazing. Then the third one features two Midwestern hardworking guys who are just going to stand there and bash each other. They're just bangers; they stand there and bash each other's brains in. So, that's a cool fight this weekend. Alright, what do you got?

Shaan Puri

Let's do something else. Let's switch topics here. I have a couple of things on here. Let's do a quick idea, actually. So, Ben had this idea that I liked. He goes, "You know, my brother is a real estate agent, and real estate agents are really competitive with each other. In any given city, they're fighting for kind of like the pie is this big. It's either my client or yours." There's not a whole lot of ways for real estate agents to collaborate with each other. Some like to do deals together, like if I'm the buy side and you're the sell side, great! I'm confident we can get our clients to hammer out a deal. But for the most part, it's a very dog-eat-dog world. All agents are like sports agents, whatever. But he goes, "With real estate agents, there's something interesting that might be a niche little business." So, I called it "Real Estate Buddy," which is basically when you're, let's say, a real estate agent in Florida or, right now, California. Your real estate agent in California and a bunch of people are moving to Texas. That agent in California is not going to help you find the home in Texas. But maybe I helped you buy your California home, and you don't know any agents in Texas. So, what if I had basically a buddy in every state? If my client is moving there, I can pass you to them. I would get a share of the commission, and they get a free referral—a trusted client, basically, that someone else has put the time and energy into building up trust with. So, you could create this network of leads and partnerships across borders where there actually is a big incentive to collaborate because both sides benefit from this. Whereas normally, it's an extremely competitive world. I thought that's a little interesting as a niche business. Maybe something like that exists. I'm not super deep in that world. Have you ever done this?

Sam Parr

have you ever used bigger pockets

Shaan Puri

like to learn you mean

Sam Parr

you know yeah do you know what bigger pockets pockets is

Shaan Puri

It's like a real estate media company. It's a combination of a forum and a podcast.

Sam Parr

yeah it's bigger podcast

Shaan Puri

buying real estate

Sam Parr

I think that could be potentially a huge business. I don't think it is huge, but I bet it could be. The reason I see them all the time is when we look at our podcast rankings. On a good week, we'll be around 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, or 15 in the big business categories. On a bad week, we'll be 40 or 50. BiggerPockets is always number 3, and then they have another one that's like number 6, and another that's like number 11. They're always in the top 10 most listened podcasts. BiggerPockets has 3 or 4 of them, and then they have this forum that costs... well, it's free, but you can sign up and get extra stuff. I'm a $300-a-year paying member. I think what these guys are doing is building this business, a media arm or whatever, and then they just use all of their cash flow to go and buy more real estate. It's an amazing company. I love BiggerPockets. I think if you want to build a community and make money from it, this is the company to look at. If you want to do it in this style, where you get a lot of people involved, these guys are the model. This is the perfect model on how to do it.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's actually great. Because BiggerPockets has existed for a while and it's always been important. The main guy, I think, is Joshua Dorkin or something like that. He sold it at some point. So, I think it's... I don't know who owns it now. Let me see if I can find out. So basically, he sold the thing not for a ton, if I remember correctly. McCarthy.

Sam Parr

not a good thing to sell he sold it in pe

Shaan Puri

and this is such a valuable property so it was just like a forum yeah and I don't know the full story

Sam Parr

I mean he could he could he could raise this is like angellist he could raise like a massive fund

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. I think he had a medical emergency for his kid or something, so he had to take time off, and then he ended up selling it. I don't know how it all went down, but I think you could compete with this. I think you could build a better BiggerPockets. It would be hard; I'm not saying it's easy, but I believe that it would be extremely valuable. If you're going to build a community or a media company in any niche, this is one that I would bet on. You know, if you're not going to go for something new and sexy like crypto or whatever, this is where a lot of money is to be made. There's always a new batch of people who want to learn about making money in real estate and how to buy real estate. So, there's always a new group of people looking to learn and connect. Maybe BiggerPockets is pretty established with its crew, but you know, who's number two behind BiggerPockets? Certainly, there is somebody, but I don't think it's as much of a household name right now. I wonder if you could take some other angle. By the way, can you talk?

Sam Parr

Dude, let me tell you about something real quick. Something that you've never heard of... or maybe you're about to say what I'm going to say. It's a house—something that's not a household name but is huge in our little world. There's this group, it's a guy or a group of guys, called **Gangels**.

Shaan Puri

this is exactly what I was gonna ask you about

Sam Parr

Okay, I've gotta tell you, I'm getting dinner with these guys tonight. So, Gangels... no offense, Gangels, I think you guys are wonderful. I've met you, and it's a really weird name at first. I guess it's not spelled this way; I guess it just means "gay angel." So, I think it's one person who started it—Lorenzo, I think his name is. He's gay, I guess, based on doing some research on him, and I think he was a successful entrepreneur. I'm meeting him tonight, so I don't know his whole background, but he started this group called Gangels, and I believe it was an email list of gay...

Shaan Puri

give give the headline first why is this interesting and then then give the background

Sam Parr

You're right. So, it's this group of people. It's this guy who's got this... it's not a fund, but it's like an investment group. This year alone, the rumor is that they're going to invest around $400 to $500 million. Previously, they've invested collectively over the past few years, like $300 million. So, in the next year or two, their total investment is going to be like $1 billion, which is basically like a $3 billion fund. Kind of like that, you invest if you have a $3 billion fund. I'd imagine you invest that over five years. So, that's like the numbers we're talking about here.

Shaan Puri

Like a very large... This is startup investing, so this is like a very large technology fund that I have never...

Sam Parr

heard of or the bigger

Shaan Puri

And it seems like a niche fringe thing. It's like, "Oh, that's cool, like an LGBTQ fund." What do you have, like a $2,000,000 fund? And you're investing in, you know, some cool companies? Like, no. How are they deploying? How are they getting $400,000,000 in a year to deploy? And then how are they deploying this?

Sam Parr

I don't think they get this. I don't think they get any money. If you Google it, it's spelled "Gainels," like "gain" (G-A-I-N) and then "joles." If you look at their portfolio and just Google "Gainels" and click on news, you'll see all these TechCrunch articles that say, you know, "this company raises money from Andreessen," and then "this, this, this," and "Gainels," "this, this, this," and "Gainesville." They'll say that for every article. If you go to their portfolio page... do you see their portfolio page?

Shaan Puri

yeah it's legit yeah

Sam Parr

Dude, they're in everything. Gainesville is in everything. What they do is find companies, write a page about them, and then send it out to an email list. People invest, and they get a 20% carry on it. They also take a fee of about $8,000 to $10,000 per deal, which they use as their finder's fee to pay their lawyers and things like that. That's the whole business model. They've got a web of about 5, 6, or 7 people who also send the deals that Gainesville gets access to, to their audience. Those people who send it to their audience also get a stake in the carry. It's a very simple business model.

Shaan Puri

Are most of the investors gay, or are most of the people who started gay? What's the stick? Can I do it if I'm not gay?

Sam Parr

So here's the thing. Why it's kind of crazy is it must have started like they mostly invested into gay, lesbian, and transgender, or you know, whatever LGBTQ... you know, whatever the... what's the... I'm sorry, I'm not meaning to... I'm just struggling. LGBTQ, yes, is that it?

Shaan Puri

that's the new I thought

Sam Parr

there was another one

Shaan Puri

new intro music I think maybe you just stumbling over lgbtq is is perfect no

Sam Parr

I can just... whatever L G B T... I just can't say it properly. So it started with that; that was their thing. But then, like, they invested... like they've invested, yeah, they invested in Hone, which is the company you and I invested in for testosterone. Yeah, and that's like a pretty masculine male, I guess you could say. Like, well, maybe if you're transitioning, you would want to take testosterone. But they invest in like Lyft, so like, I don't know where... like how the L G B T... whatever. I'm just like...

Shaan Puri

just skip it

Sam Parr

The LGBTQ thing lines up with the whole... with other companies, but that was definitely their angle, and it's not anymore. But it's a great angle because, you know, there's not a lot of gay and lesbian investors. And then they're like, "Hey, look, that's our whole shtick! Let us in." I understand it totally works.

Shaan Puri

Do you remember when you stopped using "gay" as a term for, you know, meaning something is lame or something is stupid?

Sam Parr

oh yeah in high school

Shaan Puri

and do you remember what got you to stop or what what when you realized like oh wait that's not cool

Sam Parr

Just like when I had gay friends, I was like, "Oh, that's not very nice, is it?" Then I talked to my nephews—Sarah's nephews—and they're like 14, 15, and 13. I was just curious, and I asked, "Hey, do you guys ever insult someone, or does anyone ever insult someone for being gay?" They were like, "What do you mean?" I said, "You know, do you ever feel..."

Shaan Puri

like picked on yeah

Sam Parr

You know, yeah, like you say, "Hey man, that's really gay. You're gay." And they go, "But why is it bad to be gay?" And I was like, "It's not. You just answered my question. Thank you." It's just not part... you know what I mean? When we were kids, when we were younger, that's how it was. It was crazy. Yeah, I don't think young people insult others for being gay anymore. I think that's pretty crazy.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think that means like in 20 years. Because probably when I was 10, that was like a common thing to say in my school. So, I think that means in 20 years, it went from just common and people did it without even thinking, to like... it would now be kind of disgusting. It's not even like an argument. It's like, "Wait, why would we do that?" I would prefer to refer...

Sam Parr

to it

Shaan Puri

you know like why would I why would I try to use that as an insult that doesn't make any sense

Sam Parr

I have, like, in my head, there's the "N" word and then there's the "F" word. You know what I mean? If I heard someone say that, I would be flabbergasted. I'd be like, "What?"

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

It'd be like when I was a kid. It was like the word "like." You know, if you said the word, if it was like that, that was like the "C" word. Now, I wouldn't say "F," you mean the British.

Shaan Puri

people and australian people they say it

Sam Parr

Yes, but like, it's... yeah, it is kind of crazy how that has changed. I mean, obviously, it's good. But yeah, I remember as a kid what we used to do, so I gotta give.

Shaan Puri

a shout out

Sam Parr

all the time and then

Shaan Puri

The person who first told me, "Hey, by the way, you know that's not cool, right?" was this guy who, I think, just yesterday or two days ago, the news came out that he's gay and engaged to this guy he's been dating for 11 years. The actor Kal Penn, when I was a kid, was in a movie where he played my older brother. We would hang out on the set all the time. I remember saying something was stupid or lame or whatever, and I was just a little kid. He was probably in sixth grade or something. He was the first person to bring this to my attention. He said, "You know, that's not like... you shouldn't say that when you just mean something's weird or not cool. You shouldn't say 'gay'; you should say something else." He wasn't out at that time, and I don't know if he even knew, but he brought that to my attention. I remember feeling so dumb because I looked up to this guy. I thought he was so cool, and I was so nervous about it. Was he nice about it? Yeah, he was totally nice. He kind of acted like a big brother to me. He was just like, "Yo, by the way, you know you shouldn't do that. Think about it, blah blah blah." I was like, "Oh, that makes total sense. I never even thought about this." In that time, even in my world in Houston, Texas, it’s not like I was the last one to know; nobody really thought about it. But he was in Hollywood, and I think people on the West Coast tend to be a little more forward, liberal, and progressive with that type of stuff. So I remember hearing that and thinking, "Oh man, I just made a fool of myself." I realized that was silly, and I don't know why I did that. I just stopped after that. It came full circle yesterday. But anyway, we could do another topic. What else you got?

Sam Parr

Alright, let's do one more. Actually, do you have one you want to do, or do you want me to go?

Shaan Puri

Let's do this one that's about companies. I had this idea... I don't even know what it is, but I was reading that Tesla was doing something called "Giga Fest." Do you know what Giga Fest is?

Sam Parr

Yes, so basically, if I remember correctly, a lot of people in the liberal media got angry because they were like, "Tesla's throwing a festival during a pandemic." But basically, they rented out a town in Germany and they're doing a conference or a festival.

Shaan Puri

And like, what's happening at it? Is it like drinking in music, or is it like car technical stuff? Do you know?

Sam Parr

I have no idea

Shaan Puri

So, okay, honestly, it doesn't even matter what it was. I just saw the name and thought, "Oh man, Tesla's doing another smart thing!" They basically took Oktoberfest and rebranded it for their own event. I assumed it would be some combination of fun, music, food, drinks, and things relevant to building cool cars, recruiting talent, and enhancing the brand experience. I started thinking, why don't more companies do this? At first, I thought, well, certainly they're not the only ones. I began to think about other examples. There's the Macy's Day Parade, which I don't even know how that got invented. I don't know the backstory, but since I was a kid, I remember that there's always the Macy's Day Parade on TV. It's like, why did Macy's get involved in that? We've also talked about Michelin star restaurants. Michelin Tires, the tire company, basically invented a food restaurant ranking system to give people a reason to drive to far-off places to try amazing restaurants. They created a demand for driving long distances through the Michelin star system, and they got their name associated with all that. Then there's the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. In San Francisco, every year, if you live there, you know about Dreamforce. It's this huge event that shuts down half the city. There's sort of a parade, and big bands like U2 come and perform, but it's for the most boring thing—it's a sales CRM.

Sam Parr

Dude, do you wanna know why most people don't do this? Yeah, I think a lot of people actually try, and it just doesn't work. Alright, so the Fortune 500... Fortune 500 basically just means the top 500 companies in the world, right? Do you even think Fortune 500 means Fortune magazine?

Shaan Puri

No, right? Sometimes it does overtake the brand. Like Michelin. The Michelin star means more to me than Michelin tires.

Sam Parr

do you when you think have you ever shopped at a macy's

Shaan Puri

of course I've I've shopped at a macy's before yeah

Sam Parr

have you been at a macy's in 20 years

Shaan Puri

not 10 yeah 10 years is probably cut off

Sam Parr

So, a lot of... I think a lot of times people do this. I always work with creative people, and maybe I'm just sometimes a pessimist around this stuff. A lot of times, they give me these ideas, and I'm like, "This is just fucking stupid." I don't think this is going to increase sales. I'm just trying to survive at the moment, and it doesn't work a lot.

Shaan Puri

I agree, it's not for when you're in survival mode, which is where I spent most of my career in startups. You're either in survival mode or you're not. If you don't make this work, it's going to just die. So, you don't have time to plan a parade with a music festival and all the stuff. It wouldn't make any sense.

Sam Parr

And here's the other reason why this isn't a good idea. A lot of times, most companies are just... well, they're just lame. Imagine, like, this window blind company, Hunter Douglas. They're going to have, what, a "Blind Fest"? I don't know. I mean, I get it; I think there's some cool stuff out there. Like, you know Blendtec, the blender? Have you heard of Blendtec? They had "Will It Blend?" That was awesome! I loved "Will It Blend." Do you remember that YouTube channel?

Shaan Puri

yeah of course

Sam Parr

I love "Will It Blend?" but a lot of stuff is just lame, and I don't want to celebrate it. Now, a few boring things that I think could work is... what's that vacuum company everyone loves? Dyson.

Shaan Puri

dyson yeah

Sam Parr

Dude, I'm about to... I've been staying up at night wondering if I'm going to buy one of these $700 vacuums. Have you ever used one of them?

Shaan Puri

the handheld one yeah

Sam Parr

it's like a little

Shaan Puri

wall amazing one yeah I have that one

Sam Parr

it's amazing everyone you you have one did you pay $700 for

Shaan Puri

feels so satisfied dude I feel like I get $700 of value every time I I use it

Sam Parr

So, like, Dyson is boring, and I dig that. I would do that. I can't think of what else is boring and awesome.

Shaan Puri

But dude, any company could do this. All you have to do is attach your boring name to awesomeness, and it does work. It does work to an extent. Now, it's not going to turn a bad company into a good company, but it does take a boring company and make them slightly less boring. It makes them more relevant. In general, I just feel like those same dollars go further. I see so many dumb billboards or just useless events or useless ads all over the internet. I just sort of think, "Man, you know, for like $200,000, you can throw a whole music festival." You can do some amazing things with $200,000, and that's what they'll spend.

Sam Parr

But I don't want to go to like Florock or Clorox bleach and Imagine Dragons. I just don't give a shit, you know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

Did you want to go to a restaurant that reviews attire? No, you didn't make me.

Sam Parr

A big deal, but when I think of Clorox and the Killers, I don't think, "I'm going to buy more bleach."

Shaan Puri

dude mister bright side

Sam Parr

although maybe maybe

Shaan Puri

I don't

Sam Parr

Oh, that's a good one. I walked right into that one. I don't know; I'm not sure if it could work. Maybe, but I think a lot of those things aren't as successful often. Whenever I was thinking of Fortune 500 or Michelin, I'm like, "I don't associate that with the magazine." The magazine's still going to go bankrupt anytime soon. So anyway, I...

Shaan Puri

Don't know... like, I think the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show is a good example of going overboard on these kinds of events. You're not directly trying to sell your thing; you're creating a spectacle. You're attracting the type of people you want. For example, we have an ad budget for this podcast. They're like, "Dude, HubSpot is great! They're generous. They're like, 'You guys are in our HubSpot Podcast Network. We want to help you grow.'" So they gave us a little bit of cash... a lot of money with this.

Sam Parr

like a lot of cash and I can't think of a thing to do with it

Shaan Puri

Exactly. Because... what is the plan right now? The plan is to go spend a **ton** of it on Spotify ads, right? And that might work.

Sam Parr

and and other podcasts

Shaan Puri

and and other podcast platforms and that might work I don't know we'll see

Sam Parr

I well what do you guys wanna do

Shaan Puri

work very poorly so I'm saying with that same amount of money can I say how much money or no

Sam Parr

100 of 1,000 of dollars a quarter

Shaan Puri

so 100 of 1,000 of dollars

Sam Parr

maybe maybe we could say like in the range of $1,000,000 a year

Shaan Puri

Right, so I don't know... let's take our audience. Our audience is kind of this hustler-type mindset. They like investing, building things, and making money. They enjoy hearing about $1,000,000,000 companies and billionaires. What could we do that would just get... I don't know, like if we got 50,000 people to pay attention to something, I think that would be a huge win, right? So, what would be either an event, a stunt, or something that's of service to people? The equivalent of what Red Bull did. Right? Like Red Bull was like, "Dude, we're an energy drink. We're all about this badass lifestyle." Alright, we're going to put a guy in a wingsuit. We're going to take a guy...

Sam Parr

what skydive would do though like I

Shaan Puri

just name of 1 just okay let me

Sam Parr

think of 1 I think that we could do

Shaan Puri

what do people who are in start ups

Sam Parr

what do

Shaan Puri

People who are into building businesses, what are they super into? That's a fun sign.

Sam Parr

I've gone through this mental exercise and I'm it's it can be a

Shaan Puri

dumb simple one

Sam Parr

for me

Shaan Puri

I have a dumb simple one. I remember these people set up a headshots. By the way, your computer screen is like covering your face or something. Oh, there you go. I remember this like a fitness company did this. They parked their van outside of the Salesforce Tower. Everybody who was coming in, they were like, "Do you want to get your body scanned real quick or do like this BMI test?"

Sam Parr

I'll tell you body sucked loved it

Shaan Puri

They just hired two people to stand outside the tower. They got a bunch of people in, and while they were there, the guys said, "What is this all about? Who's doing this? Why do I get this free thing?" They got to learn about their bodies while then being upsold into signing up for these scans, personal training, and a gym membership after that. I saw somebody else do this with headshots. They were like, "You know what? Your picture online just looks like shit."

Sam Parr

sean but what do we get to do

Shaan Puri

what's that so

Sam Parr

what do you wanna do for us

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so I'm saying we could come up with something where, let's say we had... I don't know if you've ever seen those 360-degree cameras. You can rent these things for like $1,000. We could have a pop-up in a city, in New York, and all you have to do is show that you're subscribed to the pod to get a free epic headshot done for you. We just pop them up, you know, near downtown where a bunch of people live. That thing would cost us, you know, I don't know, $3,000 total for the day, but it might have like a thousand people or even 2,000 people having a unique experience. Or maybe we can have a blimp going over Miami, and the blimp is going to, you know, airdrop some cash or display some QR code or something like that. And there's a giveaway inside... I don't know, like some kind of...

Sam Parr

fake $1,000,000 bills

Shaan Puri

yeah some kind of stunt or whatever like let's say something that's like on brand

Sam Parr

for us I'm on board I've just been going through this and I'm like what is worth pulling off

Shaan Puri

Like, these are bad ideas. I gotta admit, the ideas I had just now are bad ideas. But I feel like if I brainstorm for an hour, which I'm going to do, I feel like we can come up with a great idea. It's a better use than the ads.

Sam Parr

I'll do the same. I think it requires both, to be honest. This is a good example of whenever I talk to people and they're like, "Well, I'll start this company once I get funding." I'm like, if you had the money, you wouldn't even know what to do. Trust me, the money's not the issue, right? And that's how I feel right now.

Shaan Puri

the marketing budget is not the issue

Sam Parr

yeah I'm like we got the money we got the people I just don't know like

Shaan Puri

why this

Sam Parr

Which is kind of messed up. Ramit talks to people about this all the time. He's like, "Once you're rich, what are you going to do?" People actually struggle with this all the time, right? I struggle with it.

Shaan Puri

I had this phrase I used to say at our startup, which is: "You can always run out of money, but you can never declare creative bankruptcy." That was always my rule. It was like, I cannot have a conversation with somebody who says, "I can't think of an idea. I don't know what else we could do." It's like you've declared creative bankruptcy, and now you must go out that door and never return again. That was just my rule, so even if those guys...

Sam Parr

had outside

Shaan Puri

I don't declare bankruptcy

Sam Parr

those guys at outside magazine asked us if we wanted to do the adventure I don't think you replied yet by the way

Shaan Puri

not yet

Sam Parr

I sent you did you see it

Shaan Puri

I sent you

Sam Parr

and they're like well what they're like what else do you wanna do and I'm like

Ben Wilson

I don't know I I

Sam Parr

I have no idea. I feel like such a punk. I can't think when they're like, "Well, we can go anywhere as long as you're there and back in 3 days." I can't think of a thing. It's messed up. Maybe I'm just a loser.

Shaan Puri

Who does our audience look up to? Warren Buffett. He auctions off his lunch every year for like $100 or whatever. It's like, dude, someone...

Sam Parr

there's no way it's only a $100

Shaan Puri

I think it is... it might even be less. But like, I know Andrew Wilkinson did his, I think it was like, I don't know, $2 or something to get lunch with him. You know how many people would want to do that? We could just host these events. We could get people to come and be able to hang out, have lunch with Chamath or something like that. We could do a giveaway. We spend the money here, but then we dangle that in front of people in order to get them interested and excited about what we're doing. Now, those are kind of disconnected from what we're doing, but I refuse to declare a creative bankruptcy. That's my answer.

Sam Parr

We just gotta think about it. This has been bothering me as well. I'm like, "What should we do?" Because if...

Shaan Puri

You're listening to this. Imagine this: we have $100 of a $1,000 budget, and we want a whole bunch more people to subscribe to the podcast and just get down with the mission. We want them to realize that there's a cool podcast out there that they might like. The reason you like it is that there are a whole bunch of other people who would like it for that same exact reason. They just don't listen to it yet. They've never heard it, and they don't know that they should try it. So, how would you turn $100 of a $1,000 budget into 100,000 subscribers? That's the question. If you have ideas, obviously my ideas kind of suck. Sam's refusing to have an idea right now, so we need ideas.

Sam Parr

ben what do you think we should do because

Shaan Puri

like the teacher calls on you in the worst possible scenario

Ben Wilson

This is good because I was actually talking about this this morning with Darren and Jonathan. But it's hard... it's hard, right? It's so hard. Here's one idea that we had: we had this TikTok go... not viral, but it did well on TikTok. Did you see that, Sean?

Shaan Puri

no what what was it

Sam Parr

It was a Rob Dyrdek thing. What's his name? Jacob texted me on Saturday night and he was like, "Hey, I made this and posted it on TikTok. It got like 100,000 views."

Ben Wilson

Yeah, which is good. So, what we were saying is, what if we just put up $10,000 or $20,000 and said, "Hey, we're going to put out the video files from *My First Million*?" Anyone can access the raw video files, and if you want to make content for us, great! At the end of the month, we'll give $10,000 or $20,000 to whoever gets the most views on TikTok or Instagram Reels.

Sam Parr

Like a 99designs contest? That's not a bad idea. That's actually a really good idea. $20 to enter, and in order to be submitted to the contest, you have to post it on Twitter or Instagram. Yeah, and that's a great idea actually. So, a consistent $20 a month contest for the best clip.

Ben Wilson

Yeah, you can produce it. You can just put it out there because you have a big audience. But like, whatever. Yeah, do whatever you want.

Sam Parr

That's actually brilliant, right? I don't... I'd say that's the greatest idea yet. Right, Sean?

Shaan Puri

he almost went greatest idea ever he threw yet in there just to save himself

Ben Wilson

I was so close

Sam Parr

yeah let's do that

Shaan Puri

alright I'm gonna publicly brainstorm the ideas on twitter that's how that's how we're gonna do this

Sam Parr

no yeah add that one to it though

Shaan Puri

I'm going to create a thread. I'm going to add these ideas to it, and then I'm just going to continue until we have a winning idea.

Sam Parr

It's just a rolling $20,000. Every single month, one person gets $20,000. The criteria are the people who are posting the best, most interesting, and most viewed MFM video content.

Ben Wilson

My other idea is, I guess I'm just into contests. It's like, "Hey, if you want to join this contest, show up downtown, preferably somewhere where not a lot of people are from, like St. Louis, Cleveland, Austin... whatever." Actually, Austin's a bad idea, but okay. We're going to give you a category. It might be food, or it might be exercise and fitness. You have 24 hours, and whoever can make the most money wins this contest. We'll give you an extra $20,000. Essentially, it's an entrepreneurship contest.

Shaan Puri

I got a better idea. Forget your idea; here's a better one. Alright, here's a great idea. Okay, Sam, how much does it cost to sponsor an open bar at a bar? Like, set up a bar tab. Let's actually do this: we pick 10 cities around the country and we say, "Hey, in these 10 cities, if you're one of us, there is a place where you can go and hang out with other people who are like us at the bar. You know, like our club."

Sam Parr

I've heard you guys we can have we can do a lot of drinks for $3

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly! We're going to put up $1,500, and we're going to do this in 10 cities. We're going to do this every Friday for the next, you know, let's call it 3 months or whatever. It's like, you know, the Winter Fest. We say, "Great, we're going to do that." So we're going to do that 12 times. That's $180,000. But basically, you've created a system. All you have to do to redeem your free drink is show that you're subscribed to the pod show. Bartender, boom, you get it! We just call the bars. We have cool bars, so whatever your favorite bar is in Austin, your favorite bar in New York, your favorite bar in San Francisco, whatever. We just make that our little watering hole. People who are into our stuff can go and hang out there. It's not that it's the biggest mass idea, but the spark that would come from a bunch of our fans getting to know each other, hanging out, having drinks, and bringing their friends... I think a lot of good would come of that. A lot of goodwill would come of that.

Sam Parr

it's not

Shaan Puri

that expensive

Sam Parr

I think that's worth doing. I would say that the video bounty is, to me, the most interesting. I think that's wildly interesting. Yeah, bars, that's not a bad idea. I've done that for years, years on all types of stuff. It worked really well for Product Hunt. It worked well for us. Yeah, it works.

Shaan Puri

what what have you done in that

Sam Parr

Well, like for the hustle, we've done meetups forever. When I started my roommate business, we had meetups every single week for like two years. It was basically for anyone who's ever looking for a roommate. You come that day, and we'll have a party with like 150 people who are also looking for housing. In order to come, you gotta download our app.

Shaan Puri

and another one that does this by

Sam Parr

The way it's like... it's physically hard. I remember being exhausted all the time.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, for sure. I remember this agency reached out. They had emailed us before, being like, "Hey, we're a creative ad agency." It's like, yep, into the trash pile. I don't know you; this is just some outbound sales thing. Whatever, I don't care. Then one agency reached out and they sent a package with invites. They sent us physical mail to our office. There was a bunch of flyers inside—cheap flyers, you know, just flyers. They said, "Hey, these are ticket entries. This gets you entry to this party tonight as well as a free drink. We rented out Butter, this bar in San Francisco that's pretty famous." They go, "We're having a meme battle tonight. It's like a rap battle but for memes." And we're like, "What?" Basically, they emailed the office manager and said, "Hey, did you get our package? We sent over a bunch of invites. Make sure that people know that's for you guys. You can come and get a free drink and have a great time. Send 5 or 6 people to happy hour today." So all they did was email and send a flyer. I went there, and it was basically like they had rented out the bar. It was a Tuesday night, so the bar was like, "Yeah, sure, it's all yours. Go ahead." They had a projector on the screen, and they had a guy dressed up as a cat and a person dressed up as a dog. The battle was a 5-round competition. One would show a funny video clip, like a TikTok-length thing, and then the other person would show it, and the crowd had...

Sam Parr

little handles where

Shaan Puri

They could vote for the dog or the cat, like whose was funnier. It would go five rounds, and then the winner would win at the end. That was it. It's just silly. Then the whole shtick was the guy would come on at the end and say, "Hey, by the way, that one, the third one, that was actually a viral video we made. We're Rubber Republic. We make amazing viral videos. Eight out of ten videos we do get over a million views. Like, we're good at this shit. We've done it for these companies. Enjoy yourselves tonight. And if any of you guys ever want to have a video go viral, come find me or the guy dressed up as the cat." I was like, and we worked with them. We did a video with them, and it got over a million views, and it was all...

Sam Parr

is that the one where you're talking about drawing dicks all over bebo

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah exactly

Sam Parr

that was

Shaan Puri

Great! So, they made that video for us, and they were so good. I was like, "Oh, this little sales funnel they did was actually genius."

Sam Parr

that's pretty good

Shaan Puri

You know, because one client to them is worth tens of thousands of dollars. So, renting out this bar and inviting people from these 20 companies and just hoping one of them ends up with you as a client is a great way to go.

Sam Parr

alright let's do it ben let's let's can we please make one of them happen

Shaan Puri

alright let's roll

Sam Parr

yeah you you you

Ben Wilson

tell me money back yeah

Sam Parr

Yeah, we'll work on them. You're fired. Yeah, down. Let's do it. Alright.

Shaan Puri

let's