4 Side Hustle Ideas To Make $1000/Day In 2023 (#393)
Side Hustles, Location, Luck, and Unpopular Lessons - December 8, 2022 (over 2 years ago) • 01:00:22
Transcript:
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Shaan Puri | Here's the headline great headline | |
Sam Parr | great headline | |
Shaan Puri | Guy sells $1 bills for $15. Here's how.
So, here's what he did. He was 15 years old and he saw a dollar bill on eBay that instead of having George Washington's face on it, it had Michael Jordan's face in the middle. He ordered it because he loved Michael Jordan and thought it was funny.
When he received it, it was basically a normal dollar bill, but there was just a sticker over George Washington's face. You could easily go to OfficeMax and do this yourself.
So, that's exactly what he did. He went to OfficeMax and said, "I need to be able to create these." What better business is there than selling dollar bills for $15?
He went there, created the bills, and then put them up on eBay.
What's up? Let's jump in. What you got?
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Sam Parr | You tell me... I think I've been driving the last handful of sessions. I'm going to ask you to drive right now.
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Shaan Puri | Let's switch gears. I want to do a topic about... do you know Mark Jenny? You know Mark Jenny?
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Sam Parr | mark jenny is a great friend of mine he's he's an amazing amazing amazing entrepreneur | |
Shaan Puri |
He's an awesome guy. We're going... I'm gonna meet him next week. We're going down to stay at one of his... He has this luxury Airbnb portfolio. You should follow him on Twitter. I don't... Well, do.
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Sam Parr | you want me to give his background | |
Shaan Puri | do you | |
Sam Parr | know his background | |
Shaan Puri | I know a little bit of it but go give give the story | |
Sam Parr | So, if I remember correctly, I think he was raised in a household that was a little wonky. I believe he didn't have a dad and was raised in a single-parent household or something like that. He wasn't raised in a very privileged environment.
At one point, I think he was even homeless and lived out of a storage unit or something like that. He started a bunch of different companies, like info marketing stuff, and everything did kind of okay. Then he started RV Trader, I believe, or is it RV Share? RV Share, which was like Airbnb for RVs.
He eventually sold a large portion of it to KKR, I think, a large private equity company, and he probably made many, many tens of millions of dollars—a lifetime of money.
Now, he has a new venture that he's been doing for the last maybe five years or so, where he buys... I think he owns 20 of them now. He's got a huge portfolio of Airbnbs, and these are high-end luxury homes that sleep like 20 people.
It's like a 2-acre plot with a fancy 4,000 to 6,000 square foot home, complete with basketball courts, tennis courts, and mini putt-putt. He's built this really, really good business, making millions of dollars renting Airbnbs. He's doing it right, and he has a small team. It's a proper company, not just a side project. | |
Shaan Puri | yeah I think what is it like a $50,000,000 luxury airbnb portfolio at this. | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, I mean, I'm friends with Mark, so he tells me lots of stuff. I'm trying not to say any of the numbers because I forget what's public and what's private. So anything that you... I'll let you actually say any of the numbers because you're probably getting...
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Shaan Puri |
It's public, just what he tweets out. You should follow him on Twitter; he's a good follow. It's cool to see... like he'll post a before and after photo of these properties. He's like, "Here's what it was," and then, "We added a McDonald's play place in the backyard." It's like he does dope stuff, which I like. You know, he's not just...
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Sam Parr | And he's totally unheard of. Mahole, like he has maybe 2,000 or 3,000 followers on Twitter. I think he's not like a popular, big-name person.
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Shaan Puri |
So he tweeted this out the other day, and I thought that this was great. We haven't done a blue-collar side hustle in a while, so I thought this is kind of a great little... almost like a blue-collar side hustle that he said he had done.
Did you see this? He was talking about one of his very first sort of side hustles or early hustles. It was selling dollar bills for $15. Did you see this?
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Sam Parr | yes yeah good tell tell the story | |
Shaan Puri | so he tweeted this out you can kinda look at it but here's the headline | |
Sam Parr | great headline | |
Shaan Puri | Guy sells $1 bills for $15. Here's how.
So, he’s 15 years old and he sees a dollar bill on eBay that instead of having George Washington's face on it, it has Michael Jordan's face in the middle. He orders it because he loves Michael Jordan or whatever, and he thinks it's funny.
When he gets it, it’s basically a normal dollar bill, but there’s just a sticker over George Washington's face. You could just go to OfficeMax and do this. So, that’s exactly what he did. He goes to OfficeMax and says, "I need to be able to create these because what better business is there than selling dollar bills for $15?"
He goes there, puts them up on eBay, and I mean, first he looked on eBay. At that time, eBay was showing how many items a seller would sell, and he could just keep track of it. He thought, "Okay, this week, oh wow, they’re selling like 100 of these. That’s amazing!"
So, he starts doing it. He creates an eBay account and starts selling these. He starts averaging 100 bills sold per day for $15, which includes the shipping cost. His general profit was about...
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Sam Parr | 1500 a day | |
Shaan Puri |
About $1,500 a day, he's profiting basically $1,000 a day doing this. Then he ramped it up and he got it to, I think, $10,000 a day in sales. He became the largest seller of custom novelty collectible dollar bills on eBay.
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Sam Parr | but it's a real dollar it's it was a real dollar bill | |
Shaan Puri | it's a real dollar yeah and then you just add the the sticker on top so you could sell it | |
Sam Parr | can you do that legally | |
Shaan Puri | I guess so why not | |
Sam Parr | I don't know I I don't know there I just thought there'd be some weird rules around money | |
Shaan Puri | No, I think you could do it. You know, people sell these coins and whatever; it seems legit.
So then, what he would do is, you know, here's the thing. They had to start thinking of growth hacks. How do I beat these other eBay guys at doing this?
What he would do is he would do one of the auctions and then he would direct message everybody who didn't win the auction, offering them the bill at whatever their highest price was. So, he's like, "You know, whatever $8 was your top price? Alright, I'll do it for $8."
He started racking up as many sales as he could doing this. Then, he became the top-ranked seller, which helped him in the organic search as he was going from there.
I kind of love this, and I loved it for a couple of reasons. One, it's just another example of these little nuggets, these little stories that show you there's a trillion ways to win. There are a trillion ways to get rich, right?
He was doing basically $365,000 a year in sales or whatever. You know, he was doing really, really well at that time. I just had a hundred of these a day. What? How old?
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Sam Parr | was he did did you say he was | |
Shaan Puri | like kid his teens he was 15 16 years old | |
Sam Parr | that's amazing | |
Shaan Puri | And, you know, it probably didn't last forever, but these little arbitrage opportunities that come up...
Then I started thinking, okay, what would somebody do if they're doing that now? So here’s... I'm going to give you three ideas of how you could do that now.
First, I think you could probably do the same thing. What's old is new; what's out is in. I believe you could do the same thing either on eBay or Etsy, or find one of the marketplaces, and you could try to win by doing the same thing. I went on Etsy and actually saw that there are people doing this on Etsy right now. You could see how they're doing, so possibly you could go do the same thing and compete, especially if you could pick a different celebrity face to put on the item.
Like, Trump is the obvious one, but if it's not Trump, maybe there are some other options you could consider. But Trump dollar bills is my first idea of how I would do this.
Second idea... okay, well, let's remix it, right? We want to keep 80% of the idea and change 20%. So what's the 20% change? I would try to piggyback off of whatever's trending in movies or music or something like that.
For example, remember when *Superbad* came out and there was the McLovin' Hawaii ID? It had that iconic look. I think you could just do McLovin' IDs at that time. If that was the movie that had come out now, I think you could take a prop from a movie.
In *Pulp Fiction*, they had the "Bad Motherf***er" wallet or whatever. I don't know; I had one. I don't watch a bunch of movies now, but yeah, exactly! I wanted one of those.
You could just jump on that trend and be like, "Cool! For the McLovin' ones, upload your photo and we'll send you yourself as a McLovin' ID." Maybe use some of these AI tools to create the avatar where it looks the same. I think that's one you could do really cheaply to print and laminate, and then you can send these out very cheaply because they're so thin.
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Sam Parr | then I saw some other ones | |
Shaan Puri |
If you go on TikTok, you'll see things that are like this. For example, I think the second biggest Etsy store - maybe the first actually, now I think it's second or first on the planet - is this thing called **Caitlin Minimalist**. I'm guessing you've never heard of this, but...
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Sam Parr | what is this | |
Shaan Puri | I got a whole thing coming on the pod about my Etsy deep dive, but I'll just give you a little sneak peek.
The top-selling store is **Caitlin Minimalist**. What she does, and how she got her break, is that she was making jewelry for herself. Her friends were like, "Oh, that's cool." Then, one of her friends had a special request. She said, "My mom or dad passed away, I forgot which one, and the last thing they wrote me was this note. Is it possible to get their signature in their handwriting as a bracelet?"
And she's like, "Yeah, I can do that for you." She just gave it to her for free, saying, "This is so meaningful to you, I'll just give it to you for free." The friend was overwhelmed and said, "This is the most meaningful thing in the world."
So, Caitlin realized that people just want, you know, their name, their parents' name, their kids' name, ideally in their own handwriting, done in jewelry. And so that's what she does.
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Sam Parr | she how she got to that you like send her or is it all digital you like sign her | |
Shaan Puri | A picture or you write the name. You know, it depends. If you want to match the handwriting, you gotta send a picture of a piece of paper with the writing on it.
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Sam Parr | and there's some tech that just then like tells her | |
Shaan Puri | what yeah just like etches it in that that look right | |
Sam Parr | It's just copies that, so it's not like it's made out of metal. It's a metal plaque, or it's like a dog tag. And then she, like, no.
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Shaan Puri |
No, it is. It's cut. It's like the name is cut in... it's like out of the chain or whatever. So yeah, it is like, you know, somehow cut. I don't know exactly her manufacturing process, but these little custom name things, I think, work.
I was on TikTok yesterday when I was thinking about this idea...
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Sam Parr | big is it | |
Shaan Puri |
Oh, it's huge! She's done like probably $80-90 million in sales, is my... Oh my god! So she's done 2,000,000 transactions. I would guess her average transaction's like, you know, something $40-$50, something like that.
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Sam Parr | wow so you | |
Shaan Puri | I know that's like **$80,000,000** in lifetime sales, and she's just this woman out of LA or whatever. I was on TikTok, scrolling, and I saw another one of these.
It was a hoodie. It said, "Here's a perfect gift for the holidays or for Valentine's Day." It's a hoodie where you take a picture of you and your boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, or whatever. Basically, if it's a picture of you and your wife kissing, it will etch or stitch a silhouette of that into the hoodie.
So, it's a meaningful gift. But again, it's this kind of what they call **mass customization**. If you can figure out a manufacturing process to do this, there's a lot of opportunity to sell these kinds of gimmick gifts that I think can and will work.
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Sam Parr | do you remember teespring | |
Shaan Puri | teespring yeah it was like the print on demand type of | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, it was a really cool T-shirt company started by this guy named Walker Williams. They were one of those companies that was like, "Oh, this is going to be one of the fastest companies ever to get to $100,000,000 in revenue."
The way they got popular was through on-demand T-shirt printing. They figured out this hack on Facebook where you could target people by their last name. For example, "The one thing we all know about Smiths is that they love to party." They also did it by location, like "The one thing we know about people who are raised in Boston is that they love [blank]."
It had a T-shirt that said, "I'm from Boston and I'm proud," or "I'm from Boston and I love [blank]," or "I'm a proud Smith," or something like that. The engagement on those ads was crazy, so their customer acquisition cost (CAC) was incredibly low.
That's one of the ways they grew. It's just like that thing from Dale Carnegie: "The most beautiful word in any language is a person's name."
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Shaan Puri | right | |
Sam Parr | And I think it's like name, location, maybe where you went to school, and then followed by your friends' names. If you could figure out how to incorporate those into ads, the click-through rate is crazy.
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Shaan Puri | The pet's face... So there's another one, which is pet socks. Pets' face on socks, I think.
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Sam Parr | I have a pair | |
Shaan Puri | Jungle Creations was the name of it. If I remember correctly, at one point, they did like **$1,000,000** in just a week. You would basically go on the website, upload a photo of your pet's face, and they would print it on socks. They would just drop ship that to you.
Let me see if I can find it... Yeah, in **2018**, they did **$17,000,000** in revenue. They did **$17,000,000** in revenue doing basically pet faces on socks.
Right? And so that's the same thing. You know, celebrity faces on dollar bills, pet faces on socks. We have a buddy who is doing pet portraits, right? Like a painting of your pet that would just be like mass-customized production. There are tons of these little opportunities.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, and the click-through rates on these things are like killing it for the ads. So, yeah, that's an interesting idea. Let's see if anyone actually follows through with it. But Mark Jenny's amazing, man. He's awesome. | |
Shaan Puri | alright so | |
Sam Parr | Let me break one thing up. Dude, this guy made fun of me the other day for having a course, and it hurt my feelings.
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Shaan Puri | or a internet stranger | |
Sam Parr | A little bit of both, and it really hurt my feelings.
Do you feel like... because, alright, so I built a business before. I've built a few businesses before—some that I've gotten to 7 figures and a few that I've gotten to 8 figures. I've sold things, so I should feel confident about this.
You and I both have courses. I'm actually going to launch another course that I think can be like a $1,000,000+ a year income stream for me and my family, which is awesome.
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Shaan Puri |
It's never good when you have to say "for me and my family." If you have to justify feeding your family, that means there's... that's just the insecurity poking out. Poking out of there.
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Sam Parr |
Well, it gives context, and what I mean is... The question that I'm going to ask is: **Is it worth it?** Because part of me thinks, "Well, if I'm such a big shot, I shouldn't talk about it. I should just have shit and not teach it." But then I'm like, "I like doing it, and it's significant... like it pays for my whole life." So, do you...?
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, if you... again, the only question I was going to ask is: do you like it? Do you like doing it?
Yeah? Alright, then that's enough, right? Like, who cares?
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Sam Parr | but do you feel like a you feel like a fraud sometimes too or at least I you've never said that to me but you said that when | |
Shaan Puri | we had when we | |
Sam Parr | Were you interviewing that one person? You're like, "I kinda feel like a fraud" every once in a while, or I forget what you said.
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Shaan Puri | Not a fraud, but I do feel like I make fun of myself about the course thing because it's the same thing.
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Sam Parr | self conscious maybe self conscious is a better word | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, you know, I would say somebody who is really locked in... and I'll use the word "locked in" because it's not about how much money you have.
But it's true, somebody who's really, really wealthy would not do a paid course. I don't think somebody who's super wealthy probably should be or would be doing paid courses. It's pretty unusual to do that. | |
Sam Parr | I think that's actually wrong, though, because Warren Buffett had a course at Columbia. I mean, there are a lot of examples of wonderful investors who go and they...
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Shaan Puri | I don't think Warren Buffett did his course for profit. I don't think he was pocketing a bunch of money doing a direct sales course type of thing.
If I went and taught as a guest lecturer at Stanford, right? I drove 45 minutes away to be a guest lecturer there. I would be doing that for different reasons, and it would feel totally different than me saying, "Hey, I have my power writing course. Go sign up and pay for it." I don't know why it is; it's just different.
But I would say two things. I said "locked in" because if you have a main thing that is totally an obsession for you, you're loving working on it. There’s so much more to do than you'll ever have time for. You really wouldn't take the time to stop, pause, and go sell the course. In my opinion, I would not do that.
To me, as long as I'm still doing courses, it's part of my wandering-around phase, trying to figure out what I really want to do when I grow up, what I want to do with my life, and what I want to do with my time.
I know that if I get locked in on, "Oh man, I really love this project I'm building brick by brick," this is something that I'm really excited about. There’s no chance in hell that I would push pause and teach a course. Even though my courses are only two weeks out of the year, it's not a lot of time. But even those two weeks, I probably wouldn't do if I was in that position.
In the same way that when I was building my startup, I had no podcast, no angel investing, no courses. I didn't tweet; I didn't do anything when I was building my startup for about seven years because I was fully locked in on that. It's only after we sold that I started doing a bunch of these things, and that became the new business: the podcast and other ventures.
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Sam Parr | I think I'm gonna keep doing it but I | |
Shaan Puri | I think you should totally keep doing it. You said you like it, so keep doing it.
Let me share a little thing I do during my course. Because during the writing course, some people will be like, "Okay, I get it. This lesson was really great. I feel like I now have a much better idea of how I would write to kind of grow viral or build my brand."
There's a part of me that just feels like, you know, they'll ask you a question that's like, "How much content would you say is too much? What's too much to post?" Or would you say that, like, "I should wait until my product launches to start doing content?"
They ask all these questions that are sort of like...
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Sam Parr | self promote y and self conscious feelings | |
Shaan Puri | Self-consciousness... there's just a layer of self-consciousness around the whole thing.
You know, what do you say if you post something and then somebody comments? Do you take it down? How do you deal with negativity?
I always just say the same thing. I go, "Oh, I'm gonna answer your question, but hang on, what time is it? I want to make sure we don't go over."
Then they're like, "9:34." I'm like, "No, no, it's meal o'clock! You forgot that it's meal o'clock."
You know, you're thinking about what everybody else might think, what they might say, and how they might feel. But, bro, you forgot the main thing: it's always meal o'clock.
You just gotta ask yourself, "Do I like this? Do I want to do this? How do I feel about doing this?"
Remember, it is always meal o'clock. In fact, I want to get watches made or a clock on my wall that just reminds me, "It is meal o'clock."
Should I wait to go do this thing? No, it's meal o'clock. Should I care what other people are thinking? No, it's meal o'clock. How do I feel? That's what I'm gonna base my decisions on.
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Sam Parr |
Dude, there's this funny picture of Fidel Castro, you know, like the dictator of Cuba, and he's wearing two Rolexes at the same time, both on the same wrist. Just because he... he just wants to flex that hard.
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Shaan Puri | fidel knows it's emil you need | |
Sam Parr | to get 2 watches on each hand that say wait just let me make sure this other one's not broken | |
Shaan Puri | yeah that's exactly how I feel | |
Sam Parr | dude I | |
Shaan Puri |
So your question to me? I don't even need to answer. I just gotta remind you: **it's me o'clock**. You do what the hell you want, alright?
You have another thing on here that was like the 10 list?
Yeah, the list. I'm gonna read the title and you go from there. So it just says:
> "A few non-popular things I've learned from this pod"
Pretty good headline. 8 out of 10.
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Sam Parr | Thank you. We'll accept... I'm going to say each one, and I want you to give me your reaction. Then I'll explain a little more context. Alright, the first one.
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Shaan Puri | Well, can you give context on the whole thing? Like, where did this come from? Or why did you even think of this list of non-popular things you've learned from the pod?
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Sam Parr | I see a lot of things online where people try to explain rules, like "you have to work this much" or "you don't have to work this much." The reality is that there are a million ways to get the same things done.
For every example of one person succeeding in one way, there are lots of examples of them succeeding in a totally different way. So, I think it's silly to have rules.
I often see people posting things like, "Oh, you know, they say it's a 10-year overnight success." In my head, I think, "Man, I know people who have had overnight successes where, literally in 3 months, their life has changed." I think it's silly not to acknowledge that.
So, that's how I kind of came up with this list.
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Shaan Puri | alright hit me I'm excited now | |
Sam Parr |
Alright, the first one I just said... so an overnight success, which is like 1 or 6 months, it's absolutely possible and those exist and they're real. What do you think? Agree or disagree?
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Shaan Puri | alright give us an example | |
Sam Parr |
For example, we covered this company called **BrĂĽMate** (B-R-U-M-A-T-E). I think in like year two, they got to $20 million in revenue. In year one, they got to like $8 million.
I know a few people that have had other companies where, like in the first 6 months, it kind of just took off and it worked.
So we interviewed... who else did we interview?
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Shaan Puri | Well, I would say your current stealth company hasn't taken off right away.
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Sam Parr | yeah it's it's succeeded like pretty quickly how do you | |
Shaan Puri | Do you count that as overnight success, or do you say, "I've been preparing my whole life for this"? Right? That's the counterargument.
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Sam Parr | I'll say, like, I built up a reputation, and I'm trading off that reputation. But there are times you and I have talked to people. For example, I had this guy on who you weren't here for, but you know him. His name's Val. Do you know Val? V-A-L, Val.
He had a company where, in year one, it made like $10,000,000 in profit, and it was selling ringtones on the internet. Some people just have the "it" factor. And then also, luck is real. So that's another thing: luck is real. Sometimes you just kind of nail it, and it just works. Not always, and most of the time it doesn't, but every once in a while, it just happens.
So I think for people to say "overnight success" isn't real, I think that that's nonsense. Because I know a handful of people who are like 19 or 20-year-old kids who, within a few months, have something making many, many tens, or sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in sales, and it just works.
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Shaan Puri | yeah yeah I'm I'm with you on that I agree | |
Sam Parr |
Alright, here's another one: I think, at least in the beginning of your career, where you live actually really, really matters. It's incredibly important, and the people who don't move to certain places, I think they are at a disadvantage.
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Shaan Puri | 100% agree I did this I was sitting in australia and I wanted to do startups and I was go I went to a local startup like event and I was like okay I'm like looking around everybody's being super nice right it's australia everybody gets along great and I just thought in my head I go who's the most successful entrepreneur in this room and it was this one old ass motherfucker who was like you know had built something in the nineties and he just like stuck around and then nobody else pretty much and then I was asking some questions I was talking something and the the organizer was like dude you should give a talk next next month at the meetup like this is great we would love to have you teach and I was like teach I'm 23 I've done nothing I was like if and I like at first I was flattered and then I caught myself 2 seconds later I was like oh wait this just means I'm in the wrong pond I do not wanna be a smart guy in the room they should be like dude you should shut up you don't know anything about anything that's the type of room I wanna be in and so I literally went home I went on I think like t mobile or whatever I activated a a a phone plan and I got a 650 area number area code because I was like I need to just mentally before I even move I need to go to silicon valley now so I changed my phone number and then I booked a ticket and my mom was like you know where are you gonna where are you gonna stay do you have a job I was like I don't know I I I don't I'm gonna figure it out but I'll I have a better shot of figuring it out there than I do from here and that was my whole mindset and tony robbins has a thing he says about this he goes proximity is power and I am a huge believer that proximity is power I have done pretty crazy things to just get in proximity of people that I think are awesome like I will take jobs that I think are like the worst job of all the job offers I have if I know that it's gonna get me to sit side by side with somebody awesome because I know 6 months next to that person is gonna do more for me than you know like a better higher paying job would have done and so proximity is power | |
Sam Parr |
I'm big on this. It goes beyond business, it's beyond business. It's just anything. If you want to make it in the movie industry, you have a higher likelihood if you at least spend a handful of years early on in Hollywood. Just putting in the time matters, you know?
There are like these funny stories about Bill Murray. He lives in North Carolina or something, and he's like totally out of the loop. It's like, yeah, that definitely works. There are examples of that, but I think it...
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Shaan Puri | helps your odds yeah you you wanna increase your odds of success | |
Sam Parr | The second one, or the third one: luck is incredibly real. You know, I remember early on in my career, I was thinking, "There is no such thing as luck; it's just hard work, and I'm just gonna do it."
No, luck is real. I remember I've told this story a bunch of times. When we were selling our company, Brian Halligan, the CEO of HubSpot at the time, got in a life-threatening accident two weeks after we closed.
There's a world where, two weeks before, if it had happened, it could have ruined everything. I think you've had a couple of examples where if one or two things happened before or after selling a business, like within a month, it could have changed things.
Getting sick really matters. Being born in a healthy place, in a healthy family—things like that. Luck is totally real, and I think that we dismiss it too often. | |
Shaan Puri | yeah I think I agree with that I would say luck is real I would also say a big part of luck is in your control and a small part of luck is out outside of your control so most of the luck you experience in your life there's a whole bunch of things at the beginning being born in a certain place healthy your parents whatever those are outside of your control a lot of what happens after that is in your control and we've done the there's a podcast episode called 4 levels of luck where we you know on framework friday where we talk about actually manipulating luck to be to go towards your advantage if that makes sense there is a set of actions you can take that will increase the amount of luck you end up having in your life and this is not like you know hold crystals or something like that it's like more practical tangible stuff okay the last part of that that I'll say is I remember when I was I had moved to san francisco and I met michael birch the guy I came to work with because again proximity is power I just took the job because I was like oh I get to sit next to this guy this guy's like a billionaire who's built 4 successful internet companies well what is the thing I wanna do build a successful internet company I think this is the place to sit and I was talking to him and I was trying to figure out like did this guy just get lucky or what happened because a lot of people I think would look at him and say oh he got lucky because the thing he sold 2 years later bebo he sold it for $850,000,000 2 years later a year later aol wrote it off for like you know a giant tax write off and just like and nobody uses bebo now facebook won and facebook beat it and so some people would say oh he got lucky right you know he sold it for whatever and I definitely don't think that's true because he's built like multiple companies that have been successful but what I figured out what I the the thing I ended up figuring out was it's not lucky that he won but it is lucky how much he won so he was gonna be successful either way but whether that number was 20,000,000 80,000,000 or 800,000,000 there was a large degree of luck and timing that was outside of his control that contributed to that he could just easily just as easily have been an 80,000,000 guy versus an 800,000,000 guy and that I don't think was necessarily in his control that was right place right right time right circumstances you know the right person had the right drinks at the right bar next to the right person and I think that you know the magnitude of success is a lot more based on luck not the appearance of 6 not the not the existence of the success he was gonna be successful no matter what | |
Sam Parr |
Alright, and I'm gonna jump around. Another one: Ivy League-ish schools. I don't know how we're gonna define that, but like the top 20 universities are totally worth it, even if that means you have to go into a lot of debt. I think it's totally worth it.
I think state schools where you get some type of in-state tuition and you still get a college experience are totally worth it. Most everything in between, if you have to go into debt for it, I think it's absolutely not worth it.
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Shaan Puri | it you're like where I went school | |
Sam Parr | Where I went? I went to Belmont University. I was fortunate; I got a little bit of a scholarship, and my parents paid for it 100%.
**Not worth it.** At the time, I think it was $30 or $40 a year, and it's a no-name university. It's just completely irrelevant—100% not worth it.
But I know people who went to my wife went to an Ivy League school. I know people like you who went to Duke, and you have a handful of connections. If you go to Stanford, you have all these connections that seem 100% worth it.
Here's another thing: if you have Stanford on your resume, you're going to at least get the interview. This is true. If you look at how people recruit, they just scroll through an Excel sheet, and it just says where you graduated.
**Bellarmine in Kentucky** that costs $60,000 a year or whatever it is, that is not the same as Stanford or Dartmouth. You're just automatically going to have an increased likelihood of getting that interview.
But even more important than that, you're going to meet people who have maybe been around the world, have rich parents. That stuff actually matters. Those connections and that influence on your life, it really actually matters, and it's worth going into debt for.
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Shaan Puri | I kind of disagree here so I went to duke which is not an not technically an ivy league school but is like considered up there with with ivy league's actually like a sports thing but like you know whatever it's considered like a top school and it wasn't worth it for me because I was not ready to figure out how to make it worth it right it's it's what you make of it it is not gonna be handed to you just by showing up and I had the total I had totally the wrong mindset I thought I'm here I gotta I don't know do the thing I've been doing to get here get good grades you know eventually graduate pass the test you know go to med school do whatever I'm supposed to do it was like a track and there are some people who made it worth it the people who were like yo we got these resources for free or I'm gonna go and meet these these 2 professors or I'm gonna get exposure to these other classes that I wanna learn about or I'm gonna use my time here to socialize + spin up some side hustles because man there's no better time to find cofounders and build a startup than when you're in college like there were some people who had that right mindset the light my light bulb is not on right like now I got this floating ass light bulb there was no there was no light bulb on at that time and so I misused it I think the majority of people misuse it I did have one phone call that was really important and I'm just gonna say it out loud here because if there's somebody who needs to hear this you know I got lucky that my dad gave me this phone call maybe your maybe your dad doesn't have the same sort of wisdom that that my mine did so I'm gonna say it out loud I called my dad my 2nd year into college and I was like hey he's like how's it going and I was like I don't know it's it's okay he's like what do you mean like how's your how's your you know how's school and I was like well grades aren't great he's like oh man what what happened and I was like no they're not terrible I'm not failing I just like you know I'm a b - student here and like you know I've been getting a's in high school so b - was like no not very good he's like alright that's alright he's like are you trying and I was like yeah I'm trying but man like everybody here is smart like you know everybody here is just as smart as me if not smarter and they all work harder than me I'm trying to figure out this whole hard work thing but like you know just gonna be honest with you it's like these guys just live in the library and I just don't even like I just figured out where they go they go to the library they go to office hours like I was I didn't even understand where people were going with their free time that's what they were doing | |
Sam Parr | were your was your dad paying | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, parents are paying for it. So, this is what I told him: "You know, you're paying a lot of money for me to go here. I could go to UT, you know, a state school. It'd be, I think, ten times cheaper or something like that—maybe five times cheaper." I was like, "If you want me to, I'm willing to transfer, by the way, just because I don't think I'm going to do that well here. I don't think it's worth it for you to pay this amount of money."
So, I told him that, and he goes, "Why do you say that? You're not like good there." I was like, "Well, dude, my neighbor is like a freaking genius. He just gets the physics stuff right away. And he's also good outside of class. You know, in the summers, he goes and drives an ambulance in the Palestinian war front just for fun. That's how he spends his summers."
Meanwhile, I'm over here picking boogers with you. I don't even know what to do in the summer. These guys all have plans and internships, and this and that. And like, this guy's uncle works at JPMorgan, so he's doing that thing. | |
Sam Parr | that's the. | |
Shaan Puri | And I was like, "Yeah, that's the point." Because that's why you're there. You're not there for the classes; you're there because when everybody around you is like that, it will just raise your standards. You won't even know what mediocre looks like. You think you're mediocre, but that's because you're hanging out with exceptional people.
If I take you and put you in a state school, you're not going to have as many exceptional people around you who, for them, that's normal. So, you know, the purpose of being in college for you to go to that school is not so you could graduate at the top of the class, get the best grades, and be the smartest kid in the classes. It's so that becomes your network and that becomes your normal. He basically said something to that effect.
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Sam Parr | was like so you're proving my. By the way | |
Shaan Puri | it's pretty deep | |
Sam Parr | you're kinda proving my. | |
Shaan Puri |
I know, I know. So I'm saying like that is the saving grace of it. I don't know if... I don't know, like that light bulb went off for me halfway through. Then I started to focus on, "Oh yeah." Once I realized that, I started to get to know those people. Before that, I was like, "Oh, these... they're just different. I'm gonna stay away." And like, I don't know, I gotta find people who are like me, who are just basically bumming around here, who don't know what to do. Instead, I was like, "Oh, the [goal] is to be hanging out with these people and become more like them and not feel like I'm competing with them or intimidated by them."
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Sam Parr | Alright, I've got a few more, and I'm going to actually merge a couple of them.
Another one is having a technical skill. If we're talking about internet companies, this mostly means being able to code or design. In my case, it was writing, which I actually think counts, but it's a little bit less important.
Having a technical skill, like training to have a skill set, is a massive, massive advantage. I think being a generalist is just a bullshit excuse. You should actually be good at at least one thing, and particularly coding or design would be better. But copywriting counts as well. There are a few other things; sales actually can count too.
You need to be good at something, and I think that most people...
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Shaan Puri | don't do that great at something I would say you need | |
Sam Parr |
To be great at something, you've got to train for years to acquire a skill and then go beyond that. But you need a skill, and I think it's a massive advantage. People dismiss that as being a generalist, and that's just like self-masturbation. That is a bullcrap excuse. In reality, you should just try to get great at something.
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Shaan Puri | You know, what's the funniest version of a generalist? A generalist already is like you're teetering on the edge of just being a bullshitter.
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Sam Parr | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | It's people who call themselves a polymath. Have you ever heard somebody call themselves a "bullshit dude"?
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Sam Parr | yes that's like people who call themselves the contrarians like dude if you gotta label it you're probably not it | |
Shaan Puri | You can't be the one who calls yourself a polymath, nor can you call yourself a contrarian. It's other people who have to point it out. That's when that label works. | |
Sam Parr | It's like you can't nickname yourself "Brain." That doesn't work that way, you know? You either... you either... I see you're right.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, no, no, that's not how that works. Other people can call you humble; you can’t call yourself humble.
So, polygynous... like, you've fallen over the fence like Humpty Dumpty, and now you're fully in bullshit land when you're calling yourself a polymath.
So, okay, that's my rant on that. I think you're 100% right. You gotta have some... skip, what do we say? You gotta have some attributes before you fight me.
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Sam Parr | You gotta bring some attributes, man. You gotta have some size, strength, and timing. You can't just be a dope. | |
Shaan Puri | I hired a guy that I thought was going to be great because he was saying all the right things. He was hustling, and within a month, I realized the guy's got no attributes.
He's gotta have some attributes. What are you good at? What can you do?
"Man, I can help with anything."
Okay, you can help with anything. What problem can you solve? What are you great at? If I hand you this thing, what can you just nail this part of it?
I would also consider myself somewhat of a generalist, but you can only really tell what people mean when they're actually a good version of a generalist. They're great at one thing, but they decided not to just specialize in that one tool for the rest of their life. They've decided to go broader, but they have that one or two core skills they're amazing at.
For example, they might be amazing at paid marketing, amazing at copywriting, amazing at building, you know, coding, or amazing at sales. They could just do that as their job and be in the top 10% of people if they did that, not the top 1%, right? Because they're not specializing and saying, "I'm going to hone this craft every day for the rest of my life."
But they're in the top 10% already at that, and then they're in the top 30% at four or five other things. That's a real generalist, not somebody who's just average at everything or good at nothing.
What did Ronda Rousey call it? A DNB? You remember that?
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Sam Parr | what's that mean | |
Shaan Puri |
She was talking about when she was on top in the UFC, and she goes, "All these other girls are just DNBs. They're just do-nothing bitches." And so I was like, "Wow, that is an incredible phrase." So in my head, when I hear of a generalist, I'm like, "Let me make sure you're actually not just a DNB."
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Sam Parr | Yeah, dude, a do-nothing bitch. Like, you need to do something. In your case, your skill set could actually be charisma, attracting and recruiting people, and putting them in the right direction. That's a skill set. Leadership is a skill set. Getting things started and being the initial match that gets a fire started, I think that's a skill set.
But I think having a skill and actually being great at something is really important.
Alright, I'll give you a few more. Assume that people don't change. I think that's a safe rule. You know, we have this attitude—maybe it's an American thing, I don't know—where it's just like, "You can change." I do believe that's possible. You know, I've had demons in the past that I've overcome. I know a lot of other people who have had things that they've overcome. That shit does take place, but it's fairly rare.
If you are a person that talks the talk and you don't walk the walk, you will never change. If I meet someone like that, I just assume, "Oh, they're just always going to be like that," and they will not change. No amount of encouragement is gonna make them change. Sometimes that happens. Assume it won't.
I used to have a different attitude when I started my company. I thought, "Oh, I'll just get these people and I'll teach them how to be great," yada, yada, yada. As I've grown with this pod and talked to people, I just see that the people who act a certain way have always acted that way.
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Hubspot | Yeah, there's my sister who says this: "No, no, people change for the worse. They will decay more often than they're going to turn it around."
So, I think you're right. That is the working assumption. You know, "innocent till proven guilty"—it's the same till proven different is how I feel about people.
Right, exactly. You gotta show that something is changing. I am not going to assume, and I'm not going to be that stereotypical woman who wants to fix him. It's like, "Don't." I'm not that. I don't want to be that when I recruit people anymore.
No, I'd rather just recruit people who are great and let them do their thing versus someone that I'm going to train, groom, and turn around a project. It's like, why do all that effort? No bonus points for making it harder.
I can't find this client info. Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform, so it shares its data across every application. Every team can stay aligned—no out-of-sync spreadsheets or dueling databases. HubSpot: grow better. | |
Sam Parr | Alright, the last two. I actually don't think necessarily that the time and effort put into a project will dictate the outcome.
To build a company that makes you potentially worth $100 million, in some cases, you don't necessarily need to work excessively. You can achieve that by having balance. However, to create these massive, outsized, world-changing companies—things that generate tens of billions of dollars in 10 to 15 years and have a meaningful impact in the world, like Tesla or something equally groundbreaking, or Stripe—I think that working 80 hours a week, raising lots and lots of money, and having zero balance is 100% needed.
That said, I believe you could still achieve a significant amount of success compared to the average Joe and actually do it while working 40 hours a week, or in some cases, even less after a while. That's an interesting dichotomy, but I think it's true.
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Shaan Puri | yeah I'll go with that I like that what else you got any one more | |
Sam Parr | Last one, and this is one of the very few irreversible decisions. Having some type of success and taking a meaningful amount of risk before you have a family—meaning you have less time and fewer responsibilities—is crucial.
Unfortunately, it's an irreversible decision, but getting an early win in your career is 100% a huge advantage. You are at a massive disadvantage by having a young family and not having achieved something, and then wanting to go achieve it.
It's not impossible, but taking those risks early on should be encouraged more because it is life-changing.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, I think so. Paul Graham has this essay that he wrote; I don't remember the name of it, but he basically said, "Assume you start out with 7 points as an entrepreneur."
These 7 points represent your capacity to take risks and achieve what you want. Then he's like, "For every one of these things, you know, -1," right? It's like mortgage -1, kids -2, you know?
And he's basically saying, "You can still do it, but your margin of error and the difficulty that you're going to have..."
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Sam Parr | and the stress | |
Shaan Puri |
And the stress you're going to have pulling this off... Like, assume you are sort of sapping your life mana, your points in terms of how much ammo you have to go attack this thing. It's being sapped by each one of these factors.
I don't remember what all of them were, but it's worth, you know, going and finding this essay because I think it's actually true. It's an uncomfortable truth. People don't like this because it doesn't sound politically correct. Because, like, you know, the politically correct thing to say is...
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Sam Parr | you can do | |
Shaan Puri | If you could do anything... and you could argue, and you should, by the way. If you're 40, you shouldn't be listening to this part. You should be saying, "Screw that! I got all the wisdom, I got my purpose, my kids, I got the experience that a 20-year-old will never have."
Yes, you have different advantages, but objectively speaking, it is much easier to take risks. If you were going to just play it out in an ideal scenario, you would take your risks earlier when you have less to lose. You have less pressure, less stress, and fewer financial obligations. It's just a more game theory optimal way to play.
You don't have to play it that way, but I think, sort of objectively speaking, it is a preferred way to play. But you know, if you didn't play that way, it's okay. You can still win anyway.
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Sam Parr |
So that's the list. That's my unpopular truths, my "not awesome" stuff to discuss, but I believe it to be true that I've learned from the pod. And I'll end with this: all of those rules, or whatever I described them as, can be completely broken. There are tons of examples of all of them being not true, but... yep, that's what I believe to be true. So that's my list.
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Shaan Puri |
Okay, I like it. Let me give you another idea. Alright, so I was doing... Do you do like gifts? Like company gifts for the holiday or something like that? Do you send out gifts? You don't seem like that.
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Sam Parr | no that wasn't that wasn't a me thing | |
Shaan Puri | do you are you doing that warm tender person who might that | |
Sam Parr | that you know give give exact my love language bro words of affirmation are | |
Shaan Puri | silent nods of approval yeah my love language | |
Sam Parr | yeah yeah a pat on the back is the greatest gift | |
Shaan Puri |
The greatest gift is the lack of criticism that I just provided you today. So I was thinking about it, I was like, "Oh, you know..." and I remember at a previous company I worked at, the office manager - she was good at this stuff - and she would get like everybody's address and then she would send these Harry & David gift baskets. Have you ever had a Harry & David gift basket?
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Sam Parr | no what's that | |
Shaan Puri |
Oh dude, imagine somebody's at the door. Who could it be? You go to the door...
"Hey, we have this amazing, huge gift basket for you!"
You take it into your kitchen. You're like, "Wow, what's gonna be in this gift basket?" Sam, take a guess. What's in this gift basket?
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Sam Parr | chocolate I guess | |
Shaan Puri | could be chocolate could've been chocolate it's not chocolate though what else could it be | |
Sam Parr | like local foods like bricks of salami and cheese | |
Shaan Puri |
It could be salami and cheese. There's a little bit of that, there's a little bit of chocolate, there's a little bit of cheese in there. Pears... they had these jumbo pears, and you know, pears are the most underrated fruit. They are the official fruit of my first meal as far as I'm concerned.
I agree, these huge delicious pears were in there, and I was like, "What the hell is this?" And I was like, "What is this giant gift that I received and why is it so awesome?"
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Sam Parr | it's called the and perry and david harry and david right | |
Shaan Puri | So, they do gift baskets of all kinds, but this one was a giant pear basket that we got. I still remember this thing. I was like, "Dude, you came over to my house. I don't care if you're the cleaner or just a guy walking by, I was slinging pears to you."
I had the juiciest pears that were going to go bad. They were massive, and I needed to offload these things. Everybody asked, "Oh wow, where'd you get this?" I said, "My company sent it to me because they love me," and that's how I felt.
I always remember this experience. So then I started digging, I was like, "What's with this Harry & David thing, by the way?"
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Sam Parr | oh my and they're huge | |
Shaan Puri | Harry and David was sold to a company that you know of, 1-800-Flowers, for **$142,000,000** back in 2014. They have a couple of main brands:
- **Harry and David**, which offers gift baskets
- **Wolferman**, known for gourmet English muffins and other foods
- **Stockyards**, which specializes in prime meats
Harry and David is a super seasonal business; fall and winter are when they get a lot of their orders. They have **50 retail stores** that help them fulfill orders.
This got me thinking about Harry and David and 1-800-Flowers. I did a little deep dive.
1-800-Flowers started off as a phone number **42 years ago**. Literally, it was just **1-800-Flowers**. It has since built a business worth over **$600,000,000**. For a long time, it was just the phone number. Then, in **1985**, they started e-commerce because they realized they needed it. They now have thousands of locations and fulfillment centers, not all owned by them, but with fulfillment partners who can send flowers to you.
Basically, these guys operate as a bundle of **14 brands**. Let me just give you their revenue from last quarter.
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Sam Parr | so they're | |
Shaan Puri | publicly traded | |
Sam Parr | yeah | |
Shaan Puri |
What's that? Publicly traded? They did $485,000,000 in revenue last quarter. So that means they're now a... what is that? 500 times 4?
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Sam Parr | Not even a popular quarter. Probably their February revenue like trumps... like the... the... yeah.
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Shaan Puri | Winter's probably their biggest... well, let's say it's probably **$1.5 billion** a year. It's pretty safe to say that the gift baskets, which are the Harry and David section, did **$148 million** last quarter. So that means that's probably like a **$500 million** a year business.
Florals was **$300 million**, and then, yeah, basically they have some other stuff. They got Cheryl's Cookies; they bought her for **$40 million**. They have Personalization Mall, which is something I don't know, they bought for **$250 million**. They got Sherry's Berries... you know, Sherry's Berries? I love Sherry's Berries!
Yeah, right? It's great! The Popcorn Factory was bought for **$30 million** back in the day. So they own all these brands.
So I'm like, okay, this is great. Now, I've also been doing this food gifting thing lately because I'm not a big gifter, and I'm trying to get better at it. I'm inspired by our buddy Ramon, who is a prolific gifter.
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Sam Parr | the best gifter some would say | |
Shaan Puri |
Absolute savage of a gifter. So he got me thinking, man, he really highlighted my gifting deficiencies. So I said, "Alright, I'm gonna start sending gifts." But I'm not a big plan-ahead guy, so day of, where do you get a last-minute gift that can get to that person's same day, same hour? Maybe it's 11 PM, I'm trying to squeeze it in before midnight...
DoorDash and Uber Eats. That's what I've been doing. I will just DoorDash you food because food is, you know, the universal love language. Yeah, man.
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Sam Parr | what are you gonna do send me a pizza at 11 am that's stupid | |
Shaan Puri | I'll send you a pizza and wings. I'll send you four slushies. I'll send you boba tea. I'll send you a Cinnabon.
Bro, I got options! I have a whole menu of my gifting foods that I'll go to because I gotta know what you like, right? I know you have that sweet tooth. I might hit you with 16 pints of ice cream, and you'll be like, "Sean, this is simply too much ice cream." I'll be like, "I know, because I love you that much!"
So, I'll just hit you with these kinds of gifts. I think that somebody should build a 1-800-Flowers type of brand because the things I'm gifting are not made for this. They're not made to be gifted, right? The Cinnabon is not made to be sent to a friend for their birthday.
But I think somebody should build basically "Birthday Eats" or last-minute gifts on DoorDash.
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Sam Parr | I completely | |
Shaan Puri | I agree, as a cloud kitchen, I'm just getting stronger as the idea builds. As a cloud kitchen nationwide, it is optimized for gifts. So, baskets that are nicely put together, with a bow on them and handwritten notes, that's got to be a part of it.
Maybe something that's going to be able to give you a note or even a little trinket that shows that this is a card for the occasion. "Help me help you help me gift to somebody else" is how I feel about this.
Now, the cloud kitchen is already good, but if you remember back in the day, we had the idea of not just a cloud kitchen but a "clout kitchen," where you partner with a celebrity. So, this is where I need your help. We need our celebrity partner who is going to be the face of this last-minute gifts brand, this gourmet gifts brand that we're going to create and launch nationwide across Uber Eats.
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Sam Parr | it sounds like | |
Shaan Puri | it comes to mind | |
Sam Parr | this this sounds like a rhetorical question so I have a feeling you have someone in mind to | |
Shaan Puri |
Do it... Honestly, the only person I thought of was Ryan Seacrest, and I don't even know why. I mean, I just thought I might as well go with the hardest working man in Hollywood. I haven't seen his face in that app. I think he would like to be in that app, so I'm thinking Ryan Seacrest is a good actor.
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Sam Parr | white white women like you you'd be fine | |
Shaan Puri | Universally, universally not hated, you know, like a recognizable face. But who else could be the guy or the gal? Like, you know, Mariah Carey, she's seasonal. Maybe Mariah's... maybe Mariah's is... is... maybe she needs to get out of the song game and get into the gift game.
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Sam Parr | I don't know, but I do think this is actually brilliant. I've tried to order one from the last-minute gift guide too. I tried to order from 1-800-Flowers the morning of Valentine's Day, and oftentimes they don't let you.
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Shaan Puri | You know, they're just like, "It's too late. If you really loved her, you would have done this three days ago." Yeah, and it's...
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Sam Parr | It's super annoying, so I'm totally on board. I think this is awesome. I think this is great. Can you not do that? Now, there aren't any good gift basket companies on DoorDash.
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Shaan Puri | like if I open doordash right now so let's let's open this | |
Sam Parr | I can't get an edible arrangement also a great gift man edible arrangements wonderful | |
Shaan Puri |
Yeah, those are good, and I think you can get some of those, but I think we need a fresh brand. So like, you know, they have the flower and gift boutique on mine at least, and it's flowers, you know? It's just flowers. Right? Like it's roses for...
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Sam Parr | both of those | |
Shaan Puri |
A cookie in a bag? Right. You know, a bath bomb? Come on, come on. You think Mariah [Carey] and Ryan Seacrest are just gonna lose to this? No, I'm not extravagant.
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Sam Parr | I’m on board. I’ve experienced the same thing, and I’ve also studied 1-800-Flowers.
1-800-Flowers is a really interesting company because they provide all types of insights in their annual report. They have so much intel because they own so many brands.
For example, in one of their reports, they mentioned that succulents are growing in popularity among millennials. I remember reading about that back in 2018, and I told a couple of people about it. They started succulent delivery businesses geared towards millennials, and they are killing it!
You know, there’s now the... the Sil... there’s another one called... what’s that other one called? Yeah, who knows? Millennial...
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Shaan Puri | millennial yeah succulent side | |
Sam Parr | of it businesses yeah | |
Shaan Puri | I don't know | |
Sam Parr | Dude, they have so much insight. Another insight that you can get from 1-800-Flowers is that they say, "We actually don't make a lot from flowers, but we make a shitload of money from when people buy vases."
So I'm like, why aren't you painting cool designs on these vases and getting people to spend more money on them? You know, like, why don't I see a Frida Kahlo or whoever it is painting on a sick vase? I'd pay you $50 for it!
1-800-Flowers is actually a really, really good business to study. You should read their annual reports because they have such interesting insights. They've been doing it since the seventies, I think. It's a really interesting company to study. I love that business; I love the gifting business.
But their market cap sucks. Why is their market cap so bad? Their market cap is $600 million.
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Shaan Puri | is it really | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, it's horrible. They just like plummeted over the past... well, I guess everything has plummeted, but it's been really bad over the past year. | |
Shaan Puri | That's interesting. I wonder if they think they're getting, like, you know, disrupted by something.
Yes, $600,000,000 is the market cap. That sounds... | |
Sam Parr |
And the guy who runs it is really interesting. I think that the guy who invented it, who founded it, I think his name was Jim McCann, and his son now is the CEO. Jim is like a really interesting guy. I've had him on the... I've talked to him on the phone a couple of times. Really fascinating person. And his son is the CEO now, so it's almost like a really weird family business.
Another one that falls in this category: have you ever studied Omaha Steaks?
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Shaan Puri | no | |
Sam Parr | so omaha do you know what that is | |
Shaan Puri | no but that just sounds like exactly what it is | |
Sam Parr | So, Omaha Steaks is a mail order business that sells steaks. If you want to buy someone about $200 worth of prime rib, filet mignon, chicken, and bratwurst, you can order from there, and they send it to you. It's an awesome gift.
I believe it's privately owned, and they make many, many hundreds... I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually north of $1,000,000,000 in revenue. They were one of the very first companies to take advantage of internet marketing. Right when the internet got popular, you would see Omaha Steaks ads everywhere. They were very progressive in figuring out how to market on the internet.
It's still a really fascinating company, and I think it's interesting to study. I'm shocked you haven't heard of Omaha Steaks, but you also didn't know who Dolly Parton was, so... yeah.
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Shaan Puri | you're really shocked yeah exactly | |
Sam Parr | But anyway, look up Omaha Steaks. You know, I think they're in the $600 to $700 million a year in sales range. They were founded in like 1920. They've been around forever. It's a really fascinating company to study. | |
Shaan Puri | so they are they like in are they mostly in stores or this is like | |
Sam Parr | It's 100% online now. You used to have to call them or there was a catalog, and you would order steaks from that.
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Shaan Puri | The very first thing it says is the classic gift: a $90 package of steaks. That's like, "Dude!"
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Sam Parr |
It's a great gift! Neville, my best friend who's also my neighbor, his mom always is buying them **Omaha Steaks**. So whenever he gets an order of Omaha Steaks, we all go to his house and we grill them. It's an awesome gift! Omaha Steaks is a wonderful gift. I'm shocked you haven't heard of it.
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Shaan Puri |
No, but I also feel like this could be done with the right influencer partners. Just do a sort of... you know, a slightly different version of this. This seems like the type of thing that has a pretty good moat, probably because they likely own the production or something like that.
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Sam Parr |
No, that's not what their moat is. I would think their moat is the fact that it's been around for so long. So like, you saw your parents gift it to people, and then you're like, "Oh man, what should I get this guy?" ... "Oh, I guess like some fucking Omaha Steaks," you know what I mean?
It's like See's Candy. It's like, why does Warren Buffett like that? He's like, "I don't know," just because that's just like the default gift that men give their wives. People have seen their parents do it for years, and then they grow up doing it.
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Shaan Puri |
I don't know... Local See's Candy here near me, they open up a nursing home in the store because everybody there is so old. It's an incredible genius idea on their part. They're like, "Hey, actually we're just a funeral home in the back." It's just, you know, it's like 1 in 5 tens of people.
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Sam Parr | drop dead | |
Shaan Puri | in the store | |
Sam Parr | Dude, See's Candy is pretty whack. Like, I go and eat it, it's shit. But, you know, I guess it does seem kind of dead at this point. But I guess warm up at Lacey because...
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Shaan Puri | It's like a dating center for him. I don't know what's going on. I'm like, "Why is everyone 90 inside See's Candy?" Is that just my local one here?
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Sam Parr | No, it's always like that. But it is like fire. Like, you get some... just some truffles. You ever had a good truffle or turtle? I'm all about it.
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Shaan Puri | The turtles, though, dude. A turtle is a great chocolate turtle. It is nothing to bat an eye about.
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Sam Parr | But yeah, look up Omaha Steaks and 1-800-Flowers. These are really interesting companies to study.
You might think, "Omaha Steaks?" and judge them as just some Omaha company. At least I did. I thought, "They can't be that sophisticated."
However, they are incredibly sophisticated, at least in terms of internet marketing. So, they're really interesting to go and study.
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Shaan Puri | Right, okay, cool. Let's cap it here.
By the way, there's a bunch of fun stuff coming. I want to do the studio tour and a breakdown of how we did this studio change, what we learned from it, and what it cost—all that good stuff.
I want to create a plan for next year. We're going to do our annual awards, drop the new intro music, and do all kinds of different stuff. We're also going to talk about where the podcast is going. I want to do that soon.
Yeah, I think in the next two weeks, we're going to have some fire podcasts.
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Sam Parr | yeah we gotta have are we gonna do the millie awards | |
Shaan Puri | are we gonna | |
Sam Parr | do the millie awards | |
Shaan Puri | again yeah and let's get andrew wilkinson booked again so we can do the millie awards | |
Sam Parr | And we have Austin Reif. I'm excited for Austin, so it's going to be a good couple of weeks.
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