How To Write Off $1,000,000 In Taxes (#447)

Shaan Puri

You put down, let's say, $150,000 in cash, and you get a $1,000,000 deduction.

Sam Parr

oh my gosh

Shaan Puri

So, let's say you're in California. A $1,000,000 deduction is saving you $400,000 in taxes.

Sam Parr

alright we're live what's going on

Shaan Puri

Can I tell you about a cool rich people's tax credit scheme I discovered? Yep! So, actually, a mutual friend of ours is the one who put me onto this, but I won't say his name because, you know, never talk about another man's taxes. So, when we sold The Milk Road, I was like, "Oh man, how do you reduce taxes in a situation like this? Is there anything I could do?" I think we sold in October, so it was like, you know, you get this windfall of profits in October. Is there anything between October and December I can do to lower taxes? I looked at it: what are the different options? What are the legal, clear, by-the-book options that I could do? When most people try to generate large deductions or write-offs, they typically think of what...

Sam Parr

a car

Shaan Puri

car I mean even big breakfast let's say you need 1,000,000 of dollars of of of depreciation

Sam Parr

real estate

Shaan Puri

You'll go for real estate. So, real estate's typically the one, but your boy's lazy. Your boy doesn't like to go and own things or have to manage properties or anything like that. You can always put your money with somebody else and try to do it that way. But this is pretty interesting.

Sam Parr

but you still gotta research all of them and and yeah it's still a little bit of a pain

Shaan Puri

Exactly. You have to buy size. So, like, how do you get... you know, let's say you buy a tip of a property. You're only going to be able to write off a portion of it, right? So you'll get the sort of depreciation. Then you can get the bonus or accelerated depreciation if you maybe do cost segregation or something. You'll get 20 or 30% of the value of the property to write off. But let's say you needed... I don't know, pick a number. Let's say you needed $10,000,000. If you had $10,000,000 of taxable income, you would need to buy like a $30,000,000 property or so just to be even close to deducting enough to make it significant. That's a big deal, especially if somebody's not in real estate. So I was like, "Okay, I don't want to do that." And our friend put me onto this thing. He's like, "You know, there's this other form of depreciation in the form of financing movies." Have you heard about this?

Sam Parr

no but tell me about this

Shaan Puri

okay so okay so here's by the way I

Sam Parr

this sounds like a horrible idea

Shaan Puri

No, it's a great idea. I think it's a great idea. So basically, there's this thing called film production tax credits. What ends up happening is the following: a movie needs to get made. Let's just use some numbers. By the way, I'm not an expert at this, but I get the broad strokes. So forgive me if I get some of the ratios and percentages wrong.

Sam Parr

instead of bro science this is bro tax

Shaan Puri

yeah exactly right numbers numbers and

Sam Parr

words aren't my thing

Shaan Puri

I'm a body language guy, so let's just pretend you have a filmmaker who wants to make a movie for $1,000,000. In order to make a film for $1,000,000, you need to raise that money from somewhere. What happened was there were always these depreciation incentives, but when Obama came into power, he added to them. What Obama did was change the rules, I believe during his time, to say you can write off 100% of a film's cost before they even make the film. Before, the money spent on that film was just on the budget. So, let's say it's a $1,000,000 movie. If you buy that movie, you could write off $1,000,000 right then and there. Nobody... you don't have to wait for the whole thing to be shot. Before, you had to wait for certain days of production in order to write off those costs. Now, you can just write off from day one as an incentive to get people to fund more movies and fund more art and culture. This sort of thing is important because movies aren't really the best moneymakers, so you needed a little bit of an additional incentive if we want wealthy people to do this. Now, what happens is you put down, let's say, $150,000 in cash, and you get a $1,000,000 deduction.

Sam Parr

oh my gosh

Shaan Puri

So, let's say you're in California. A $1,000,000 deduction is saving you $400,000 in taxes. So already, you see the spread, right? I put in $150,000 and I save $400,000 in my taxes. Now, it gets better. So where does the rest of the money come from? You need the other $850,000 in order to finance the movie. You could go to a bank and get a loan for that. You can also get basically rebates in the form of taxes. I don't know if you know this, but most movies are not made in Hollywood. Do you know where they're made?

Sam Parr

I think as of recently georgia is that right

Shaan Puri

Yeah, Georgia and Alabama, basically a bunch of states come in and they say, "Hey, if you got a $1,000,000 movie, we'll give you up to 30% in tax credits." So, you don't need $1,000,000 to fund the movie; you're going to get $300,000 from the state in order to do it. Why does the state want it? Right? Because the state wants jobs. If something's filmed there and it looks cool, that's tourism. Maybe if you filmed in New York and New York looks really glamorous, now you get additional tourism appeal. You get jobs, culture, or art in your community, and you get business coming there. Where otherwise, who's going to Georgia to do something cool? Right? Like, who's going to Alabama? No shots fired at Georgia or Alabama, but...

Sam Parr

but kinda

Shaan Puri

But it's humid. So, basically, now you get funding on that side. By the way, you can just sell those credits for 90¢ on the dollar if you wanted, or you can use them to fund the movie. This collection of things is part of a system that wealthy people use in order to get write-offs. What happens is there are companies that, throughout the year, are buying up rights to movies or scoping out rights to movies. They're looking at it not in terms of, "How's the plot? How's the script?" They're like, "What's the budget? I need a $1,000,000 budget. I need a $5,000,000 budget. I need a $15,000,000 budget," because they need options available for their clients at the end of the year. So, they basically hold options on all these things until the very end of the year. Then they go to their clients and say, "How much of a write-off do you need?" "Oh, you need $3,000,000? Cool! Here's a $10,000,000 project we're going to buy. We're going to put in this much cash, we're going to get that much of a write-off, we're going to finance the rest." And we could do this as a group of investors, not just one person.

Sam Parr

Wait, you're forgetting the second part, and the more important part, which is the movie needs to be made and make a profit.

Shaan Puri

Not necessarily does the movie need to be made for a profit. So, what happens is the movie starts to get made once it gets the funding. It's going to start getting made, and then they'll do things to help. But what you have to do is pay off the loan. So, where am I going to pay off this $1,000,000? In this example, where am I going to pay off this $850,000 from? Well, they'll get the tax credits for part of it. They'll go sell the international rights before the movie's made, or they'll go sell an option to Netflix. Then they'll get some revenue in that way while the movie's being made, and they're using that to pay down this loan. So, that you get, you know, five years later when the movie is finally made, hopefully the movie's paid off. If it's not fully paid off, it's getting close. Then you basically have the revenue from the movie once it happens. So, it doesn't even need to be this awesome, you know, 20% annual return because you got your tax benefits five years ago. You just need to make sure it's going to pay off the loan amount.

Sam Parr

dude this sounds like such a racket where is there like a

Shaan Puri

it's hollywood baby it's hollywood

Sam Parr

Just because you say it that way doesn't mean that it's less of a racket. You know what I mean? Just because you say it's the "world's best cup of coffee" doesn't mean it is. Where do you go? Do you go to a website? Do you have a guy? You got a movie guy?

Shaan Puri

I got a guy now. I haven't done it, by the way. So I should say I didn't do this last year because I learned about it like 4 days before the end of the year. Then I was like, "What the hell is this?" I was...

Sam Parr

like I don't need to make a movie baby

Shaan Puri

I was like, "Oh my God!" I won't say his name, let's just pronounce his name Charlie. I just got off the phone with Charlie. He's got a $10,000,000 movie for me. Alright, hey, why are the funds? It was a little too rushed, but the more I looked into it, it is a legitimate thing. It's completely by the book. You can go read, you know, section 26 of the tax code, and you could do the bonus depreciation of 100% of the film's cost in that time. I think the key part is there's a little nuance. Just like with real estate, you gotta be an active investor. So, you have to be an active film investor in order to offset against your active income. You have to go to film festivals and do like 36 hours of film study online in order to be qualified as active or whatever the rules are. I'm making up those exact numbers, but you know there obviously is a lot of nuance to these things. But just broad strokes, it's pretty interesting that rich people can get huge tax write-offs financing movies.

Sam Parr

so I'm I'm just looking at this so you said obama did this or he like accelerated it

Shaan Puri

he he increased it so that you can depreciate a 100%

Sam Parr

So, coincidentally, the Obamas now have a wonderful production company. They do beautiful work in Georgia. It's called **Higher Ground Media**, and they’ve made a handful of movies that I’ve noticed or that I’ve seen. If you go to **highergroundmedia.com**, they also have podcasts. They have an Audible deal. Michelle Obama did it; it used to be with Spotify, now it's with Amazon Audible. They have "The Sum of Us"—I don't know what that is—but it's a big hit show. They also have "Renegades," which is like this Barack one. So, does this work for podcasts? Is the question.

Shaan Puri

what's that smell

Sam Parr

is that opportunity

Shaan Puri

Oh, self-dealing. I smell a little baroque special.

Sam Parr

you call it do

Shaan Puri

they little mama

Sam Parr

Does this work for... by the way, he did it right. Man, have you heard? You haven't? He... he says he did this thing. He did an alright job. Whether you like him or love him, he either did great or he did fine. So, he did an alright job and then he bounced. You know what I'm saying? He did bounce; he's out. So, he's hanging out with Oprah and David Geffen on their yacht. So, he did it right. But does this count for podcasts? Do we have a...

Shaan Puri

Well, I don't know if my camera's on. You got video over there? That's great! People would call... I've seen in the YouTube comments that people consider us, you know, a film... a premium production. A premium pro, exactly. I think we did change the LLC to Premium Productions. And you're in Texas. Texas is not far from Alabama. We can do a little road trip!

Sam Parr

Yeah, that's interesting. Hopefully, this works for podcasts. But that's an interesting find. I thought it was stupid, and it's actually more interesting than I thought.

Shaan Puri

how was your pod with ramit

Sam Parr

it was awesome you wanna do a recap

Shaan Puri

yeah I haven't listened to it so what's what was the best part

Sam Parr

He made fun of you a little bit. He took a jab before, not at you. There was a podcast where I asked you, "If you could get 8% consistently but you can't invest in anything other than your own private business, would you do it?" He was like, "Sean was crazy." I was yelling at the screen, furious that he wouldn't accept that. He didn't actually give you a hard time; that was it. He's very principled, which I actually like. I think you are the opposite. Not that I think you are one extreme, but I actually think I'm a little closer to you than I am to him. He is just like, "This is what I want. I'm going to do it, and I'm going to do nothing else." He's laser-focused on a couple of things, which I admire.

Shaan Puri

what what is he focused on

Sam Parr

He was like, "I can make more money with my business. I could have done a podcast years ago, but I just wanted to wait until I felt it was the perfect right time." So he just calculated. Well, you know, you and I like to just throw little things out there and see what catches. He's not so much that. He also did a really good job. Have you ever heard him talk about the "rich life"?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I've heard him explain. It's kind of like he made a list of what the rich life is to him and then used that as his financial blueprint.

Sam Parr

Exactly. He's got a handful of things. He's like, "I just wanted to have the best assistant because I want them to book things perfectly." So, he's like, "When I fly, I try to fly on a very specific type of airline with a very specific seat. I want a certain plane when I fly. I want a certain type of food ready for me when I arrive in my hotel room." It was just very exact, and I love how exact he was. It sounded like a lot of work to set it up, so I found it intimidating, but he knew exactly what he wanted.

Shaan Puri

I hate people who are that particular. I hate people who are particular in general. I find it to be truly spoiled and snobbish. You know, I have sort of a belief that you are what you admire, and I have the opposite of admiration for people that are extremely particular about how they want everything managed and taken care of in their life. Versus people who are like, "Look, I'm blessed. I'm gonna roll with the punches. You don't have to cater to me. You could serve me food I'm allergic to, and I'm gonna find a way to have a party in the ER." That is more of the mindset that I admire. It's someone who is what I call **unconditional**, meaning their happiness or their mood is not contingent on anything. I find that to be an absolute superpower. I say this not to hate on Ramit; I say this because I kind of only ever hear about the opposite, especially in this kind of life-hacking, productivity porn, hustle culture type of thing. I think people get praised for being super meticulous, for being super organized, for planning out everything, for scoping it out, for working backwards, all that stuff. But I never hear about anybody who's praised for being like, "You know what? This guy's always in a good mood regardless of what's happening." To me, that's the superpower.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I'm closer to you in that regard. Recently, I went to a place, ordered a steak, and they brought me a pizza that was pesto chicken. I didn't... I didn't even tell my wife. I was halfway through when she asked, "Didn't you order a steak?" I said, "Yeah, but it was here and whatever." So, I'm more like you, but I respect that he knows what he wants and he lives that way. I respect that. And then, Martin Shkreli... do you want to talk about him really quick?

Shaan Puri

yeah we never got to to debrief that so fun pod I

Sam Parr

got a lot of shit did did you get shit I got a ton of flack that we had him on

Shaan Puri

from from where

Sam Parr

And dude, just online, friends were messaging me. They're like, "Why would you give this guy a platform?" I don't think they even listened to the episode because my response to "Why would you give this person a platform?" is twofold. It's number one: I'm like, "Well, did you watch the documentary about him on Netflix?" If they say yes, then I say, "Well, then he has a platform. Did you criticize Netflix?" Right? Did you know you watched it?

Shaan Puri

did you cancel netflix yeah like you

Sam Parr

You watched Netflix. Do you watch the news about him? Because he has the platform. And second, I'm like...

Shaan Puri

how'd you like that ted bundy docuseries pretty good

Sam Parr

Did you watch that? Did you watch that? Because that's the same thing. And then, second, I'm like, well, we actually did challenge him quite a bit. I think I explicitly said, "Why'd you act like an idiot? Why are you such an asshole when you didn't have to be an asshole?" We had a very productive conversation.

Shaan Puri

I think

Sam Parr

and so

Shaan Puri

There's a fair criticism, which is that he has an explanation about, you know, how the health care system works, blah blah blah. We're not well-versed enough about the health care system to know where to push back. Because, like, let's say, I don't know if he told us anything that was incorrect or sort of sleight of hand, but if he did, there's no way I would have known because that's not my area of expertise, right? You know, it's like I...

Sam Parr

but why is that wrong

Shaan Puri

I don't know if that's wrong I'm saying that's a that would be a fair criticism let's say you did know

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

And then somebody comes on here and they say something that's either not true, or it's sort of misdirection, or it's not really how things work. The hosts don't push back on it, and it could be very frustrating if you do know. So, I'd say that if that's what happened, that would be a fair criticism. On the other hand, I thought the most interesting thing he talked about was just sort of like, "I could be the Pfizer CEO." It's corporate speak: "Don't step outside the line. Don't give the media anything to get mad about. Just quietly make your millions. Just do whatever you're gonna do, right? Raise prices, you know, whatever it is that you're gonna do." It's not like most pharmaceutical companies are seen as angels, but they don't get the same level of flack because he was very loud-mouthed. He was very vocal, and he poked the bear constantly. What I liked was this moment in the thing where I was like, "Dude, you're not dumb." So, you probably knew what you should say, or you had a person on your PR team tell you at some point.

Shaan Puri

Hey, when you go to Congress and they're asking you questions, don't be doodling, you know, like a dog on your piece of paper and smirking, you know, having a...

Sam Parr

don't smile

Shaan Puri

Yeah, don't have a smug look on your face. Like, he knew what to do, but he lives that troll life, baby. He's like, "I don't wanna be that. I don't want a world where everybody who's successful has to be this robot. I'm gonna be me, and I'm gonna have fun with it. I'm gonna call BS where I see BS. I'm gonna fight with people who don't know what they're talking about." I gotta say, that is one part that I really do admire about him. I think somebody said this to me after the episode. They go, "You know, you guys had Billy McFarland from the Fyre Festival on, and he seemed like a dumb cheat. Martin seemed like the opposite; he seemed like a genius cheat." Which is basically like, you know, Billy came back, he's like, "Next thing I'm doing, another Fyre Festival." Or like, actually...

Sam Parr

and he's doing it that that one was doing it

Shaan Puri

He what he had said to us on air was, "I'm gonna do this thing where you could micro do. So people are gonna go to this island and then you could vote with micropayments to get them to like snorkel with sharks. And like, we're gonna jump up the water." He was like, "We're gonna jump up the water if people don't eat." I was like, "Wow, that's your comeback? That's a dumb idea." But with Martin, I would say, you know, I think you could question whatever his ethics are or if he's, you know, gone straight after whatever he did to go to jail. But I think it's hard to deny that the guy's very intelligent and has a lot of interesting things to say. Frankly, you can learn a lot from somebody who's highly intelligent and has interesting things to say.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I... you know what? I was telling people, I'm like, I can learn how to dance like Michael Jackson and I can learn how to moonwalk from him, but also not everything that he did.

Shaan Puri

right you

Sam Parr

know what I'm saying so I I can like both those things

Shaan Puri

how's your moonwalk

Sam Parr

You know, it's a... it's a 3 out of 10, I'd say. But I also... there's one criticism that we're starting to get now that we're a little bit bigger, that I've been thinking about. People are saying, "You have a responsibility to do X, Y, and Z." My gut reaction is like, "F you, I don't have a responsibility. I'm doing whatever the hell I want." But then I'm like, it is journalistically a bit... and that's like a really weird thing to kind of approach, particularly when no one got into this for that reason. We didn't want to pursue truth; we just wanted to have fun, you know what I'm saying?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think that's... I mean, to be perfectly clear, we are not journalists. This is not journalism. We are not reporting anything. This is me and Sam shooting the shit, talking about business and interesting things we see. When we meet interesting people, we have them on the podcast and have a conversation with them. Sometimes we like what they say, and sometimes we don't. Sometimes we buy what they're selling, and sometimes we don't. We defend people because 95% of people hate them, but that doesn't mean we think they're perfect. So, you know, that's my stance on it. Alright, let's move on to something else. You tweeted out that you had nothing to say today, which is always great to hear. I found a few things last minute, though. Did you like my meme?

Sam Parr

Yeah, of the Jesus meme, I thought it was wonderful. There’s like this famous... I, is it Catholic? I don't know where it's like...

Shaan Puri

prince in the sand is the name of the story

Sam Parr

Yeah, whenever we saw two footprints on the beach, or two sets of footprints, and then all of a sudden...

Shaan Puri

I didn't see that's the.

Sam Parr

Well then, if it's no... and then all of a sudden I didn't see the second footprint. What happened? It was like, "That's when I was carrying you, son." No, it was good.

Shaan Puri

It's like, "Where were you when I needed you the most?" Probably the only one... footprints. Alright, so do you want to go first, or do you want me to go?

Sam Parr

I'll go first really quick. This is something that I think both of us are interested in, but I have a feeling you didn't care enough to look into this because it was like a ton of reading. But Tiny, our friend Andrew Wilkinson, he took his company public. It's officially public! I think it was last Friday. The valuation was $750,000,000 CAD, which is about $560,000,000 USD.

Shaan Puri

somewhere between 1 a1000000000

Sam Parr

yeah so 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars and you know whenever you go public you got to release a huge report and it's 300 pages and I read through a lot of it and I found a bunch of interesting stuff you want you want me to tell you some of the interesting things alright so the foundation for so andrew wilkinson is our friend he owns this thing called tiny tiny owns either outright owns or partially owns something like 10 to 30 things 30 different businesses the whole thing started with metalab metalab was an agency that he created by himself in 2008 and he basically made websites it was nothing fancy at first he made websites for silicon valley companies but that's a little bit glamorizing it because it was like someone paid him like $20,000 to make like a fairly straightforward simple website then he just kept going and kept going and kept going well it's listed in his I actually don't know what this document's called in america I think it's called the 10 q or just whenever they file for to go public this company's in the I think vancouver stock exchange I don't know what it's called there but it's listed as digital services revenue in 2021 it did $62,800,000 and that's interesting because it actually has been growing not crazy fast so it's been growing something like 23% a year or for the last handful of years we can only see a couple of years here but it does a 45% or 40% margin so for every $100 they make their net income is something like 40% $40 which is crazy now if you start in 2008 and you only grow 20% a year you actually get to significantly higher than where he's at now so there was years where it was lumpy where it didn't grow or it grew a lot and then it got smaller but not significant of a business for something that's been around for what's this now 15 years and this has been the foundation of everything he has a ceo of that company and that ceo is paid $1,100,000 which is a good deal I think for everyone so the ceo gets to run a established company that's working and they get paid $1,000,000 so here's something that's really interesting if you scroll down to on this document I they have a list of a bunch of the dividends paid since 2021 and if you add them all up it's something like $15,000,000 that he's took out of the business they took out a bunch more dividends because they actually took down I think something like a $100,000,000 in debt so he he had a debt facility in order to grow the company as opposed to equity which is awesome because you just take a loan and if that works it's significantly cheaper than equity if it doesn't work it's that's not good you owe a bunch of money but he did it and it worked out but as he's been growing he took money like 15 ish million according to these documents out additionally they had a company called mealtime which is like a meal prepping software that he sold for $25,000,000 so he had a and they gained they profited $13,000,000 off that so collectively he's been making tens of 1,000,000 of dollars along the way super fascinating while this business

Shaan Puri

Do you remember when we were having lunch with him? We're going to have to bleep out this number, but do you remember having lunch with him and you asked him some question? You were like, "At what number did life sort of change for you?" or "What numbers mattered in your climb?" Then he says, "Yeah, you know, that's when... blah blah blah." And you go, "Okay, so that's the net worth." He goes, "No, per year."

Sam Parr

yeah and

Shaan Puri

you go what we were both like wait

Sam Parr

and then he skipped over it

Shaan Puri

he annual was by told

Sam Parr

another story

Shaan Puri

He's like, "Yeah, yeah." So, like, every year we were like, "What the actual fuck is this guy talking about? You were making that much?" He's like, "Yeah."

Sam Parr

And now we see that it's all on paperwork. By the way, everything we're saying is strictly from the document, so there's nothing else that we know. But yeah, he kind of killed it there. One last interesting thing is they own this company called Tiny Boards. It's really just WeWorkRemotely.com, and it makes...

Shaan Puri

I think it's like 6,000,000 a year roughly

Sam Parr

so it grew during

Shaan Puri

you know

Sam Parr

In 2020 to 2021, it grew from about 3,000,000 to 6,000,000. Then it went back down to around 3 or 4,000,000. I looked it up on LinkedIn, and I'm pretty sure there are like 3 people running it. Very fascinating.

Shaan Puri

And they bought that from 37signals, from Jason Fried and DHH. So that's pretty cool. Yeah, you know, when I invested in this right before it went public—so privately—and when I had gone into that kind of data room, I was looking around and I was like, "Okay, so it seems like really there are kind of two interesting observations." One is he creates these, like, what they call platforms, which just basically means you're going to buy a bunch of the same type of company. So he has an agency platform; Metalab is the big one, but I think they have like seven or eight other agencies. They're just a lot smaller.

Sam Parr

job boards like a webflow agency there's a

Shaan Puri

There's no code agency; there's a whatever agency. Then there are job boards, and I own a couple of job boards. Then there are creative tools, which is like they own Dribbble, the Dribbble block, Creative Market, and they grew that way. They have a couple of other things, and then they have this long tail of random things. For example, they own BeFunky, the photo editing app, and they own Mealtime. They own some random things. I would say a couple of things really stood out to me when I looked at it. I was like, okay, if you look at where the bulk of the revenue and EBITDA comes from, it's two companies. So yes, he's got a portfolio of 30 companies, but it's MetaLab and Dribbble that are carrying the thing on its back. I guess the other one would be WeCommerce, which had split and gone public. That was a roll-up of Shopify apps, but that one had done pretty well to me.

Sam Parr

and that one's at 25,000,000 in revenue I think

Shaan Puri

It was like something around $10,000,000 if you just look at the EBITDA numbers. Right? I was like... and I'm not quoting this off; I'm not looking at the sheet, but just ballpark, I believe that eCommerce was at about $10,000,000 in EBITDA when it went public. I remember you saying that on the podcast; that's where I'm getting that from. The second one is, you know, Metalab, which you just talked about. Let's say $50,000,000 to $60,000,000 in revenue with a 45% margin, so roughly $30,000,000 in EBITDA. That is just a juggernaut. Then you have Dribbble. Dribbble does... what does it have for a year?

Sam Parr

So, in 2021, here are the numbers: - **Digital services revenue** (which is considered agencies) was **$63,000,000**. - **Creative platform revenue**, which I think is only Dribbble or Dribbble plus a small thing, was **$23,000,000** in 2020 and **$34,000,000** in 2021. - Then they have **other**, which is all the small stuff combined, which was about **$14,000,000**.

Shaan Puri

So, just those first two digital services, which is almost all Metalab, you know, the rest might add up to less than 20% of that. If you just add up 60 + 30 + 13, right? This is roughly a little over $100,000,000.

Sam Parr

and 11

Shaan Puri

of that comes from metalab and and dribbble

Sam Parr

and the ebitda on that I don't know actually that's

Shaan Puri

not my fault

Sam Parr

People are gonna laugh. People are gonna laugh at me. I don't know what adjusted EBITDA means versus just normal EBITDA. But the normal EBITDA, which is earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization, was **$50,000,000** on that revenue.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and you know what I think is remarkable? The amount of equity that they put in to create this. So now this thing is valued at, let's call it **$800,000,000**. Right now, the market cap is **$811,000,000**.

Sam Parr

K, which is Canadian, and I didn't realize it's a 75% to 25% decrease from U.S. trade.

Shaan Puri

so let's say

Sam Parr

so it's that comes out to be a little less than 600

Shaan Puri

$600 million market cap company. I believe he can confirm or deny this, but I believe less than $10 million of total equity was put in. So, how much cash did it take to start this business? Most businesses don't take a ton of cash, but this is an acquisition-based company. They were acquiring companies, and I think less than $10 million of seed capital was put in. I could be wrong on that.

Sam Parr

And the seed capital came from the profits of the agency. So, in reality, it's like he started this as an 18 or 19-year-old. He said he was working as a barista. In the papers, it has the stories like, "I was working at a coffee shop," and then I started doing this on the side. It just kept going. So, the takeaway here is simple: it's hard, but it's simple. This has been the case since 2007 or something like that.

Shaan Puri

Amazing! Honestly, it's kind of amazing. Congrats to our buddy Andrew for going public; that's a big deal. You know, that's a decade plus of hard work—15 years plus of hard work to get there. So, you know, it's kind of amazing for him. I love that.

Sam Parr

any other takeaways you have

Shaan Puri

No, those are the main ones. You know, I think one other thing that Chris, his partner, told me at dinner was... I think I might have already shared this in the pod, but he said when he got hired and he met Chris at a bank, Chris was a banker—literally, like at a bank.

Sam Parr

like a like a bank teller

Shaan Puri

like like at at a branch and he met chris and they they were they hit it off about cars they were talking about cars and because andrew had rolled up in a cool looking car and chris was into it or whatever so they hit it off they end up talking for a little while he's like what do you what's your story what are you doing he's like oh I'm starting to get my my like cpa license I wanna be a a finance person or accountant or whatever and andrew's like awesome I need help my business metalab is just getting off the ground it's working pretty well but like we're super disorganized come work with me and chris takes the leap of faith goes to work with him he says that on day 1 he's like I showed up at the office and there's nobody there like andrew's not there nobody's answering at the door and then andrew pulls up at his his uber or whatever his car I guess there's no uber back then but pulls up in a in a car or taxi hops out and he's like opens the trunk takes up this giant box full of paper he's like here here's all of our like numbers financials like this is where it's at you know make sense of this and and help us get organized he hands on this huge box he's like oh by the way I gotta go so I'm not gonna be able to train you right now and there's no room in the office for you so I talked to my neighbor they have like a basement you can sit at their desk in there and be like just knock on the door and tell them you're the guy and then they'll let you into the basement desk or something so he tells the story how he started whatever gets gets it organized and as they're looking at it they're like alright you have a very profitable agency like what do we do with these profits right we're just gonna like accrue them that doesn't seem very good and like well what do other agencies do and they're like they looked around they see the other agencies like all of a sudden there's a giant ball pit in the office there's a basketball court they're flying you know fancy everywhere they're they're hosting you know just basically spending money on like like status stuff or like appearances and he's like we shouldn't do that that doesn't seem to have any roi right like adding the ball pit to the office doesn't yeah it makes it more fun but like you know I I don't think that's the best use of money what what if we just thought of ourselves like a really profitable law firm and like you know what if we were a boring business what would we do with this money well we would just go try to find a place to reinvest this what if we take this business that's okay agencies aren't the best business but we use it to buy better businesses and then that was kinda like the the conversation that they had and that's when they started going out and acquiring other businesses using the profits from metalab

Sam Parr

But there's one part of that story that you're missing. This is probably not fun for them to tell, but they will share it because they blog about it. They actually started other things. They did the same things that we make fun of and that we've done as well. They started a to-do list called Flow. He said he spent like $400,000 or maybe even close to $1,000,000—a lot of money from the profits. They created this thing which was basically like Asana but different. He goes, "Asana crushed us because they spent way more money." Then they started, I think, one or two other things, including another project called Ballpark. So they actually started things right away, and it failed. Then they thought, "Yeah, let's just buy that," and that's what they did.

Shaan Puri

And they still start things like Supercast, or he's got a bunch of different ideas that he started since. But if you just look at them in the grand scheme of things, it's almost like a big company, right? It's like they have the innovator's dilemma. This business is at $1,000,000 in revenue in 9 months. It's like, cool, who cares? You know, that's 1%. It didn't move the needle this year, but it probably took a lot of creative energy, recruiting, and promoting to get to that level. So you have a tough thing where you enjoy starting new things. You want to do it, you keep having new ideas, but it's hard for those new things to really break out and make a difference. Most new things generally will fail or not go exactly to plan either. So it's a tough balance, I think, to have.

Sam Parr

And I know what they paid for Dribbble. Do you think... I think you know too, but we can't say it. Do you think that you can buy companies like this? Is this one of those things, like, you know? Or am I just being a noob here? People say, "Oh, you can't start a newsletter now; there are too many new newsletters." I'm like, "No, that's not true." But what do you think about the competition now to buy companies versus 10 years ago?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, certainly more, but there's also more supply, right? The number of interesting internet companies in 2007 versus 2023 is going to be obviously manyfold more because the internet has just become so dominant. There are so many businesses that are successful and so many playbooks on how to build a good SaaS business or a good marketplace, or whatever. Having said that, this is probably the type of business where you make one good decision, one good deal a year, or two good deals a year, and that would be a great year. I think that speed is just very hard for most entrepreneurial people to go at.

Sam Parr

Right, well, yeah, I agree with what you said. This is pretty inspiring and awesome. So that's the lowdown on Tiny.

Shaan Puri

good stuff

Hubspot

this data is wrong every freaking time

Hubspot

Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated.

Hubspot

Woah! I can see the client's whole history: calls, support tickets, emails, and here's a task from three days ago that I totally missed.

Sam Parr

HubSpot, grow better. Can we talk about... I see you have Harvard's revenue on here. I have an interesting story about Harvard's revenue, so I want to hear your take.

Shaan Puri

yeah I was doing some friday night research and

Sam Parr

as one does

Shaan Puri

just yeah I got got to thinking how much money is harvard making

Sam Parr

and I'd like to

Shaan Puri

Tell you some things about Harvard. So, Harvard is this thing that if you really zoom out, or if you're like an alien looking down at Harvard, you might wonder, "What is that thing on the map?" No, not Boston University, the other one. You know, what's over there in Boston? What you would see is basically some combination of a church, a hedge fund, and a luxury daycare. I'd like to tell you about each of those components and how Harvard is basically this multibillion-dollar, tax-free juggernaut.

Sam Parr

alright

Shaan Puri

there's a lot of taxes in this episode

Sam Parr

yeah alright so buckle up

Shaan Puri

Okay, so how is it a church? Well, universities are tax-exempt. They don't pay taxes on donations, tuition, room and board, or even capital gains from their hedge fund, which is the second part. So, they have an endowment that's about **$50,000,000,000** that they invest across a wide portfolio. I'll tell you their portfolio in a second. They have a **$50,000,000,000** hedge fund, and they're tax-exempt on the gains from the hedge fund, plus all the revenue from their students. Well, I should say revenue from their luxury daycare because parents will pay **$50,000**, **$60,000**, or **$70,000** a year to send their child to this place for four years. They take your kids off your hands for four years and say they're going to come out in a better place. So, here are some of the numbers around this mashup juggernaut. Last year, they had **$5,800,000,000** in total revenue. **$2,000,000,000** of that comes from the profits of their endowment. Actually, this wasn't last year; this was, I think, 2021, so two years ago. So, **$5,800,000,000** in total revenue, **$2,000,000,000** from their endowment, and **$1,200,000,000** from education. What that means is **80%** of the revenue is coming from not education. That's another way to look at that. So, where does the rest come from? They have the endowment, **$1,000,000,000** of grants from government funding for research for their professors, **$500,000,000** of donations, and **$300,000,000** from their publishing arm, which you might know pretty well, their in-house media company. A couple of observations here: the school earns more revenue than both Twitter and Snapchat. Twitter's at **$5,000,000,000**, while Snapchat's at **$4,600,000,000**. Harvard has more revenue than both of them.

Sam Parr

and it's been doing that since when when was harvard created in the

Shaan Puri

harvard's like a 100 + years old I think

Sam Parr

and so it's been doing that forever not forever but for a very long time

Shaan Puri

Amazing business, right? The publishing arm makes $300,000,000 just selling case studies to other business schools and publishing the Harvard Business Review (HBR). The review journal is basically a really fancy paid Substack. It's got 350,000 subscribers who pay for the HBR, the Harvard Business Review.

Sam Parr

But the majority of that revenue, I think I can try to find it. I studied this a lot. I think that a lot of the... So if we go to Harvard Business School, they release all their...

Shaan Puri

they break it out

Sam Parr

They break it all out, and so if I read it here: 34% of their revenue actually went down. In 2019, it was $900,000,000; in 2021, it was $800,000,000. So, 34% of that was whatever you said, $300,000, which comes from publishing. The next thing down is 14% came from tuition. Of the 34% from publishing, most of it is from selling. I think they've sold like 5,000,000 case studies a year.

Shaan Puri

to other business schools

Sam Parr

yeah which is which is insane it's it's a lot

Shaan Puri

And the Harvard Business Review has a lot of revenue from international sources. Here's the other kind of "dirty secret" from Harvard: they make a ton of money off of executive education—$464,000,000. So, almost like, not quite half, but you know, almost half of the money they make from their degree programs comes from executive education. This is basically where you pay to get professional development credits, a.k.a. you get to put "Harvard" on your resume without actually having a Harvard degree.

Sam Parr

Go to Tyra Banks. Remember Tyra Banks, the model? If you go to her LinkedIn, it says Harvard Business School. Then, like, you have to...

Shaan Puri

scroll down and

Sam Parr

You'll see parentheses, and it'll say "extension." It's a very classic technique.

Shaan Puri

Right, my cousin did this. He went there and I was like, "Whoa, will you go to Harvard?" He's like, "I'm going to a... I'm taking classes at Harvard." I'm like, "What?" He's like, "Yeah, taking classes at Harvard." So, you got into Harvard? Yeah, you know, like sure, I got into the executive education program at Harvard. And he's like, "Yeah, like, you know, on my resume it says Harvard." And he's like, "You know, 1 out of 3 people understand what it is and 2 out of 3 don't. I like my odds."

Sam Parr

yeah and so that's exactly

Shaan Puri

The international arm... their international revenue is up like 80% because they're selling their business review over there. They're selling, you know, executive education. "Come on, come to America! Come to the best part of America! Come to the Louis Vuitton of education!" Right? So basically, you've got $1,000,000,000 in revenue, zero taxes owed, a huge barrier to entry, and a brand that's lasted over a century. The government loans your customers money and gives you grants for your R&D. Like, what a business!

Sam Parr

Dude, that's absolutely crazy! A lot of people don't realize this. To put these numbers in perspective, let's just say that... so you said their endowment... I'm just doing all this math right here, so I might be off. I bet you if we Google it, this will be true. If their endowment is... [speaker trails off]

Shaan Puri

doing public math are you

Sam Parr

Well, yeah, I am sorry, but it might be wrong. If their endowment is $55,000,000,000 and their expenses some years, I just Googled it right now, are around $5,000,000,000, that means theoretically there are some years that they can pay or charge their students zero tuition and pay for everything still.

Shaan Puri

The way that the endowment works is it's a **$50 billion** endowment. The plan is to distribute **5%** of it each year. So, **5%** of it a year is used, but the rule is that this endowment needs to last forever. Therefore, they're only going to distribute **5%** because they need the other **95%** to stay in and keep rolling. In **2022**, when my portfolio was down like **45%**, they lost **1.8%**. Well, the "forever geniuses" somehow lost only less than **2%** when the whole market has been terrible this year. Here's their portfolio, by the way: **3% cash**.

Sam Parr

k

Shaan Puri

32% into hedge

Sam Parr

funds which hedge funds does it say

Shaan Puri

It doesn't say which ones. No, 44% in the private equity and venture capital, but most of it's private equity.

Sam Parr

so what do they buy

Shaan Puri

So that's the bulk of it. Then there's **6%** in real estate, **3%** in bonds, **5%** in treasuries, and **6%** in foreign equities.

Sam Parr

Okay, so what's this private equity stuff? Alright, does that mean they're in like actual PE, like Blackstone, BlackRock, or whatever? Or BlackRock? Wow, dude, this is like a circle jerk to the max. Everyone's hands full on this one. This is crazy, right?

Shaan Puri

everyone's hands full on this one

Sam Parr

Yeah, because if you think about it, like if I look up where the hedge fund guys went, I bet you know 70% of them went to Harvard. I mean, this is just... it's pretty wild. It's a very circular thing going on here. I would say it's almost corrupt. And if you think about a $50,000,000,000 endowment, that's bigger than I would imagine 95% of countries' GDP. I mean, it's like... that's massive.

Shaan Puri

gop what is sorry gop

Sam Parr

gop that's the what's that the the republicans what's the gdp

Shaan Puri

Yeah, but... and yeah, like, you know, we think these VC funds like Sequoia and Andreessen are really big. I don't know what Andreessen's total AUM is, but I'm guessing it's between $10 billion and $15 billion.

Sam Parr

it ain't it ain't 50

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. $50,000,000,000. I think they're okay. They're now at $35. They've been scaling it up like crazy.

Sam Parr

but that's their full time job

Shaan Puri

is more that's their thing you know what I mean thing yeah

Sam Parr

That's their thing. This is just like, you know, I would imagine there was a... I forget what I was watching, but there was some show where it was like, a lot of people don't realize this. Venture capital and private equity—like the biggest... I always hate it when people celebrate a venture capital company going bust. Like, what was that one guy? The Disney guy who went and started that thing, Quibi? You know, it raised like $1 billion and then it went bust. What a lot of people don't realize is that the money given to Andreessen Horowitz and others comes from universities. It also comes from California's teachers' pension plan, or the police pension plan, or firefighters. And like, I think if I remember correctly, I believe the state of Nevada, for some reason, had one of the best returns for their pension plan for government workers. Something like that. They had one dorky guy who was pretty much just like Warren Buffett. You know, he has a similar style or a similar budget where he has all this money, and he just would sit in this office. Except, unlike Warren Buffett, he's getting paid by the state. So there was a story about how he was making, you know, a nice amount of money a year, but he would bring a brown paper bag lunch and he had just driven a... 4.

Shaan Puri

does 95

Sam Parr

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's like, "Look, I'm on the..." This guy was like a fiduciary of fiduciaries. He was like, "I don't waste taxpayer money." Because of that, I read all this stuff. I very rarely make big bets, but when I do, it crushes it. And so, like, these guys... Hey, Chad.

Shaan Puri

yeah he's he's great

Sam Parr

And he's like, "So anyway, it's just like these guys making these decisions. They're just government workers in a way, but they're basically mini Warren Buffetts." So it's really fascinating, like the world of these endowments and these pensions.

Shaan Puri

I met a guy once who worked for Alaska's Permanent Fund. I don't know if you know about this, but they have $79,000,000,000 in assets under management. So, Alaska has all this money from the oil stuff or whatever, and then they give everybody who lives in Alaska like $3 a year or something like that. Just...

Sam Parr

Which is basically like, well, you know when people were talking about universal income? They're like, "Oh, that sounds crazy." I'm like, you know, they do that in Alaska. I think you get $15 a year if you live in Alaska.

Shaan Puri

Right, yeah, I don't know. I thought it was like maybe 3 or 4, but yeah, maybe it's more. And then, I met a guy who manages that money, and he's just like, "What?"

Sam Parr

was he like

Shaan Puri

Oh, he wasn't the main principal, but he was a guy who worked there. He was at the farming conference, and I asked, "What are you doing here?" He replied, "I'm looking for intelligence and investments. You know, farmland is a great investment." I was like, "Wow, good for you!" This is a... you know, who would have thought? This guy's managing way more money, or these people manage way more money than like the famous hedge funds or venture capitalists that you hear a lot about.

Sam Parr

Dude, I wonder if this topic is interesting. Ben, let me know in the Slack because I'm geeking out on this stuff. I found this to be crazy fascinating. So, he's typing now. You want to do one more thing?

Shaan Puri

yeah let's do one more I have a quick idea

Sam Parr

my 9

Shaan Puri

My 9... okay, so I sound a little bit sick the last 24 hours.

Sam Parr

I don't know, you have a great haircut by the way. I really like the uptown fade you got, you know, high, high fade.

Shaan Puri

it's the uptown fade with the downtown brow

Sam Parr

I don't know if that means... I just wanted to say something cool. It looks good; you look sharp! Have you been... how much weight have you lost in the past 3 years?

Shaan Puri

I think I've gained weight in the last 3 years I just changed the composition like I

Sam Parr

I put on a lot

Shaan Puri

Of muscle... too much muscle in a way that's not good. I'm neither a bodybuilder nor am I ripped; I'm just thick. And thick is like... I don't know anybody who puts "thick" on their vision board. Well, some people do, I guess.

Sam Parr

Mean, look at your right arm right now. Something, dude, your right arm right now. I definitely... let me hit you.

Shaan Puri

with a little

Sam Parr

I definitely see triceps. Yes, I see a great teardrop. Man, you've got good tricep muscles.

Shaan Puri

that's my what do you call it like your your your highlight your keystone asset that's my keystone asset right now right

Sam Parr

your tries

Shaan Puri

Thank God it's in the Zoom view. Yeah, imagine if my quads were what was good. I'd just be wasting it every day.

Sam Parr

I'll have them to my life my friend yeah

Shaan Puri

you should make an excuse to stand up every day every every episode just to you know flex on them a little bit

Sam Parr

Yeah, Quadzilla, no, you look good. You definitely look svelte, and people in the comments are saying it. But sorry, go ahead.

Shaan Puri

Well, no, I mean that was great. Anytime you want to take that tangent, we can go there. Alright, so I was in a fever, and I had a little fever dream. I thought of an idea that I'm pretty sure would go viral. I'm not going to do it, but you know our friend Nikita, who has created the same app twice and sold it twice to similarly stupid tech companies that didn't realize it's just like a nothing app.

Sam Parr

oh you're talking about nikkita the asshole beer

Shaan Puri

that's his

Sam Parr

that's his official name right for those of you don't know

Shaan Puri

we called him db cooper but he just stands for douchebag cooper

Sam Parr

yeah I I know nikita the asshole beer

Shaan Puri

You know, the funny thing is, he's got this persona online of being kind of like a shit poster and like kind of a shithead. But usually, when you meet those people—if you ever meet somebody like that—you're like, "What are they like?" It's like, dude, total sweetheart. Love that guy! Totally not like you see online. No.

Sam Parr

You know how it's a very common thing where you're like, "Oh, you know Sean, you know Sam, whatever"? Oh yeah, great guy, great guy.

Shaan Puri

I don't know if that that note

Sam Parr

that phrase may not be used with him

Shaan Puri

is he getting great kind he's not getting

Sam Parr

great kind yeah

Shaan Puri

yeah he's more of a

Sam Parr

He doesn't get a "wow." He gets a "wow," you know what I mean? That's him.

Shaan Puri

So anyway, the genius of what he's done is that he has undeniably created these really viral team apps. His app works as follows: you download the app and take a quiz that asks, "Who in your school or who in your contacts is most likely to...?" They try to figure out in your contacts who you talk to the most so that they can surface maybe the right person in a multiple-choice format. For example, you might say, "Sam is the guy who I'd want to bail me out of jail." At the end of the quiz, it’s like, "Wow, those are awesome! Do you want to know what Sam says about you?" And you're like, "Yeah, for sure!" Basically, it texts you in the background and says, "Sam, someone said that you would be the most likely person to bail him out of jail. Do you want to see who?" And you're like, "Of course!" You click to download and take the quiz, and that’s the viral loop. Do you remember back in the day the MySpace Top 8? I think it was called that.

Sam Parr

it was like was that like who was in your top 8 friends

Shaan Puri

Yeah, you just got... I mean, this was like a pretty wild concept, to be honest with you. You just put on your profile, "Yo, these are my top 8 friends in order," which is like, I don't know, today that would be considered like, you know, bullying to the 10th degree.

Sam Parr

But, well, you know, I think where that came from was like, do you remember blog rules? It was like, if you would go to a blog and it would say like...

Shaan Puri

here's who else yeah on the

Sam Parr

Right-hand side, you would list like eight other blogs that were similar to yours and that you were friends with. Which, by the way, I thought was awesome! I always try to find whenever we...

Shaan Puri

want discover things

Sam Parr

Yeah, I love doing that. A lot of people don't know this, but Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos, created what was called MediaLink, I think. It basically went from $0 to a $400,000,000 acquisition. All they did, I think originally it was called Link Exchange, is they helped broker the deals where eventually it was a pay-to-play for like the blog rolls, which are the things on the side. I think that is where MySpace kind of got this idea of "here's my top 8" or whatever, like here's the people I want to help you discover new people.

Shaan Puri

Right, and you know, Tom from MySpace would always be your automatic number one when you started. Then you had to fill in your friends. It was this awesome thing where you could go to someone's profile and see, "Oh, they're best friends with this person," or "Oh, this girl moved to number one; maybe they're dating." It was like this little signaling thing, and it felt so good to be in someone's top 8. Conversely, it felt so bad to be out of someone's top 8. But it let you know where you stood, and there's something I really appreciate about that. So, I think you could recreate that now with something I'm calling "My 9." What My 9 is: you download this app, and it just asks, "Who are your 9 people? Who are you rocking with?" You designate from your contacts who your 9 are, and it lets you publish that as a photo to Instagram or as a video on TikTok or whatever. It just allows you to share that out, saying, "Hey, here's my 9," and you tag them. It also texts them from your phone. If someone puts you in their My 9, do you want to see who? Of course, you're going to download it. Of course, you're going to sign up to see who tagged you. Then, you'll connect your address book and select your 9. You'll reciprocate because that's what people do. I think this would also go super viral because it has those human psychology triggers. If you got that message, you would want to know who did it. Then, when you're there, you'll do it too because it's kind of fun, like a little personality quiz. That triggers the next 9 invites that go out. Nine invites is enough to go viral. Even if you have a 15% conversion rate—which this would likely have more like 40%—your K-factor will be over 1, and you will go viral.

Sam Parr

Dude, I always wanted that for when I die. You know, like my... *9 for when I die*. My die, my die, my die. So, like, I've always wondered, if I die, how is anyone gonna know? Because, like, when you... I imagine this sounds douchey.

Shaan Puri

I don't know tombstone just here's my 9 friends top nine friends

Sam Parr

I don't know... Again, I'm going to preface this by saying it sounds a bit douchey, but when you start having a little bit of something, eventually you have so many different accounts. There are companies that I've invested in, and I honestly forgot about them. When I sold The Hustle, there was this one guy—what was his name? Jonah. He started Moat.com and sold it for like $1,000,000,000. He's just a rich guy, and he gave me very little money—enough that he probably makes that in a day in interest. When we sold it, it took me a year to get in contact with him. I swear to God, it took the lawyers forever. They were like, "Dude, we cannot get in touch with this guy." Because he sold his company, we just couldn't reach him. We had to give him his money, but he was owed money, and it was just sitting there. I'm not close to that, but there are some investments I've made that I've forgotten about. I've always wondered, if I die, how is anyone in my family going to know where the stuff is? Who are they going to contact? Is there like a next of kin checklist, you know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

And it changes all the time too. So even if you wrote it down once, this is going to change. I actually don't know how this works. When you die, how do they discover all your assets? Especially now with things like crypto or angel investing. How do they discover all this stuff?

Sam Parr

And who are they going to know to contact? Because particularly with crypto, it's a lot of single young guys. Like, who's the next of kin for that? I have no idea. You know, do you watch *Succession*?

Ben Wilson

Hey, this is Producer Ben. Quick note: Sam is about to drop a massive spoiler for the HBO series *Succession*. So, if you plan on watching it and you're not all the way caught up, skip ahead like 2 minutes. Enjoy!

Shaan Puri

they're like he he just left everything to this emoji yeah

Sam Parr

Dude, on *Succession*, it's like, you know, the thing. It's basically Rupert Murdoch's family. The Rupert Murdoch character dies, and they find his will. He wrote it in pencil, but there's this part where he's giving stuff from the company to his son. They can't determine if he's crossing out the guy's name or underlining it. It was like a crooked line, and they're like, "Is he crossing it out or underlining it?" We don't really know what that is. But I've thought about that. I'm like, when I die, if I die and my wife dies at the same time—let's say we don't have kids—who are they going to know to contact? They have to figure out where my mother lives. It just seems like an ordeal.

Shaan Puri

they're gonna have a really rich dog

Sam Parr

Yeah, I guess so. So, they need my 9, but like that's like now. Like, you took...

Shaan Puri

This is in terms of a trust and will solution. Yeah, my teenage viral app idea.

Sam Parr

yeah my nine probate is what it's called and it's just like

Shaan Puri

You really... yes, he ended that one. He went full impromptu on that one and took it to an only place.

Sam Parr

Dude, I've just been thinking about that. Have you not thought about it? Because like, there's some stuff that you've probably done. It could be small. Like, every once in a while, I'll just do a deal. I'll just invest like $5 into something, and I don't tell anyone about it. You know?

Shaan Puri

you and I you and

Sam Parr

I was joking. $5 is about the limit where you tell your spouse that you're doing it. You know, there have been things that I've done, like, "Oh, I don't even remember." I guess there's a scratch-off ticket that I won somewhere, but I have no idea.

Shaan Puri

Dude, yes, I've thought about that, especially with crypto. But then when crypto crashed, I was like, "Hey, never mind. Forget what I told you. It doesn't matter anymore." You know those instructions I told you about? How it's written on this fireproof, you know, platinum card that's stored in this safe in this foreign country? Yeah, forget about it. You don't need to go retrieve it anymore.

Sam Parr

Particularly with crypto, it seems crazy. So, I need my 9... but for my will, goddamn.

Shaan Puri

okay fair enough I guess that's the pod

Sam Parr

Did I... I meant to be a "yes man" on that one, by the way, not a "no."

Shaan Puri

yeah you did

Sam Parr

alright good

Shaan Puri

that's good

Sam Parr

alright is that the pod

Shaan Puri

that's the pod