Why You Should Spend 5x Your Budget on an Engagement Ring | My First Million #201
Privacy, Ghost, Ikea Hacks, and Life Regrets - July 17, 2021 (over 3 years ago) • 59:30
Transcript:
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Sam Parr | I don't care if I only had $100,000. I'm spending $50,000 because this is the whole point of working really, really hard: spending my money on stuff that will make my family happy and we'll talk about forever.
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Shaan Puri | yeah I feel like | |
Sam Parr | Alright, welcome to the episode! We actually talked about like maybe **eight** legitimately wonderful ideas.
We discussed **privacy startups** and **Ghost.org**, which is a WordPress competitor that we actually think is going to be a **$100 billion+** company.
We also talked about **Burflow.io**, which is a new business that just started like **two weeks ago** and is quite interesting.
What else did we talk about?
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Shaan Puri | We talked about **IKEA hacking**, which is the art of souping up and upgrading your basic furniture into something dope using IKEA parts. You know, that little trend might actually be something that you could build a business around.
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Sam Parr | This is going to be an interesting episode because we actually rattle a ton of stuff. It just went from thing to thing to thing to thing. Dan and the end are giving.
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Shaan Puri | sam tells you why you should be spending 3 times as much on your engagement ring as you're planning to | |
Sam Parr | 5 times as much | |
Shaan Puri | I spent | |
Sam Parr | I spent 5 times as much, and I don't regret it at all. I actually think everyone should.
So, listen to the end; that bit is at the very end, at 54 minutes. I think you should give it a listen.
Also, go and click that subscribe button on iTunes and that follow button on Spotify because we're going to be launching some more interesting episodes next week.
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Shaan Puri | And go subscribe to the YouTube channel! We just had our first video that had 100,000 views on YouTube, so we're getting big over there. Let's do it!
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Sam Parr | Alright, Sean, grab your iPhone for me. I'm going to talk to you about something, but first, I'm going to show you.
So, alright, go to your iPhone, go to **Settings**, type in **Privacy**, and click **Privacy**.
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Shaan Puri | type in privacy alright | |
Sam Parr |
Alright, and if you're following along on an iPhone, do this for me. This isn't... okay, I'll... see, this is like a real thing:
1. Click "Location Services"
2. Scroll all the way to the bottom where it says "System Services"
Yep, alright. After you click that, scroll halfway down to where it says "Significant Locations." Do you see that?
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Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Sam Parr | click that and it asks you for your password probably | |
Shaan Puri | it just face id'd me alright | |
Sam Parr | Alright, now your latest location, it might say Vegas or Nevada or something. Click it.
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Shaan Puri | yep | |
Sam Parr | so what you're gonna see is | |
Shaan Puri | my precise location | |
Sam Parr | Your precise location is tracked forever. Since you use your phone, you could clear your history, but you see how it's tracking all your stuff, by the way.
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Shaan Puri | I clicked it. It says I arrived via a 27-minute drive. It's like it knows exactly when I arrived and how I arrived.
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Sam Parr | Because it uses Apple Maps, or like a bunch of other stuff, it'll tell you how you got there. It'll tell you what apps you were using when you were getting there. It'll tell you all types of interesting stuff.
Now, the reason I'm talking about this is that I want to tell you a story about privacy. I wanted to show you why this is crazy. Because you knew that if I told you this intellectually, you'd be like, "Yeah, of course they're talking to me."
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Shaan Puri | your iphone tracks you yeah of course | |
Sam Parr | so I just wanted to show you | |
Shaan Puri | it is weird to see it like that | |
Sam Parr | right to see it and the reason I'm bringing this up is I read this story about this guy named kyle mcdonald and in 2011 he basically did this story where he well actually let me tell you this first so he was interested in in privacy and he thought he read this line and it said can you imagine living a life without any private information where with no private bank statements no private files in your computer it's hard to understand right but what if you actually ask that question a little bit differently so do you trust the government do you trust large banks do you trust facebook do you trust Google do you trust these large entities with your information because that's kind of like the same thing but just ask a little bit differently and so he did this first test where he created this thing called key tweeter and every a 140 characters on his keyboard automatically tweeted so like there there was no privacy because he wanted to see what was the world like without privacy and he took it a step further and so he went to an apple store in brooklyn and they had 50 computers and he installed an app on all 50 computers that automatically took a picture every like 30 or 60 seconds and anytime it detected a face it would send him the pictures and he published it as like an art an art thing of like look at what people look like when they're looking computers at a laptop in apple and after publishing that the secret service raided his home and apple apple contacted the secret service they raided his home they took his computers they did a thorough investigation they declined to prosecute but they definitely could have done something and I thought that that was amazing when I started thinking about that I'm like isn't that crazy that I am I would be I would be upset too if someone took my picture I wouldn't be upset to call the police but I would be upset I wouldn't like it isn't that crazy that I'm upset about that but I like type in all my information throughout the web or I let someone track me and it's quite an interesting way and I thought what's another way and so I discovered this little hack I'm like when I see that it actually changed my perception and so there's this issue going on where I actually think these privacy startups are gonna be huge in 10 20 30 years now my problem that I'm having personally is I'm actually struggling to find different solutions that need to like different ways to solve or different problems that need to be solved but I agree with this general premise of like when I just did that experiment where I showed you your tracking stuff and when I just did like read this guy's art story I was like yeah I'm totally not okay with that I don't like that | |
Shaan Puri | Right when you tweeted something out, that was like this. You go, "Say your tweet." You go, "Imagine if you walked into..." Go ahead.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, so let's just say that you're walking down the street and a company walks you into their office. They say, "Check this out," and they give you a file cabinet. You open this file cabinet, and there are 10,000 pictures of you and your family taken throughout the last 5 years. You had no idea that those pictures were being taken. How would you feel about that? Of course, you'd feel violated.
Now, they would say, "Look, you were in public," and I would say, "Yeah, I know I was in public. I can't be too angry, but I still don't feel right about this."
Now, that's exactly what happens with your data. You know that you're opting into things; you know you're consenting. But sometimes, you don't realize what you're getting into. If you actually truly knew what was happening, you might regret it.
I think that the next generations of humans, like the kids who are 5 to 10 years old now, are not going to like this stuff. We're going to see a lot of products that come out to fight it. When you think about it, we used to be able to smoke in a restaurant in the 1990s. I remember when I was a kid, I could smoke in a restaurant. Now, we think that's asinine.
I believe that in 20 years, we're going to look back at the privacy issues now and say, "I can't believe that was allowed."
So anyway, I wanted to start off with that experiment.
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Shaan Puri | I like that story a lot, and I'm with you. We've talked about different "privacy-focused" startups, ranging from Privacy.com to DuckDuckGo, and how that's actually become a real competitor to Google. Obviously, it's in a niche, but hey, it made it out after laying out 10 years against Google.
We've discussed different versions of this, whether it's browsers or phones. A lot of the crypto stuff is based on these same principles, right? You own your data, and you decide to custody it yourself rather than trusting a central company to hold it for you.
I'm definitely with you that I think some really big companies are going to be there because people really care about this. You can tell people care about this. It's ironic you were saying to go to your Apple iPhone settings because if you go down the street in San Francisco, you're going to see huge billboards that just say "Privacy." It's just Apple, and there's a phone blocking out a person's face—like somebody holding a phone, and you can't see their face. That's their whole ad, and that's their differentiation.
At the Super Bowl, they had that ad of someone just looking at their phone, typing a text message to somebody, laughing uncontrollably. But they never explain what it is because it's like, "Hey, that's your information." Apple has basically bet the farm on privacy as their core attribute that they're providing to customers—like the number one value proposition now.
But, you know, you go into your phone settings, and it's like, "Hey, yeah, we've tracked your location, and you can share that." Here are all the different services you've shared that with. They are trying to fight back. You've probably heard about the Facebook stuff that happened, but if you're not advertising on Facebook...
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Sam Parr | you you you should explain how | |
Shaan Puri | big of a deal it was | |
Sam Parr | You should explain what's going on because even I, I don't own an advertising business anymore, but I did. Even I was a little bit undereducated.
But it's actually an incredibly big deal. This is an incredibly big deal for consumers, but also for business people. Last week, we talked about this inflection with the NCAA athlete thing. This is actually a new inflection. It actually helps guys like me who owned an advertising business, but I don't anymore.
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Shaan Puri | right yeah so so basically facebook's this you know obviously it's the advertising juggernaut it's facebook and Google and with facebook facebook relied on having obviously detailed targeting information about you people always said oh it's creepy you know your iphone my iphone's listening to me and and by the way do you know the the real explanation of why of how that works it's like dude I was just talking to my friend about this and then you know and now it's showing up in my my facebook ads and like the reason why is because your your friend has searched for a thing or interacted with a product and then they know that you were close to your friend your phones are in close proximity and so they start showing you ads that have been like your friends that your friends have been interested in because they know that that works and there's a chance that you had talked about it and then you know out of 30 times that that you didn't talk about it you just saw an ad and just you know went by you and then the one time it's the thing you guys were talking about it stands out and you remember that and you think facebook's listening to you but nonetheless facebook basically had the biggest targeting machine in the world right you could segment by state by religion by whatever and then they've slowly stripped away some of those things as they got in trouble for you know like privacy and with the election about what what sorts of things you can target on but fundamentally facebook knew more about you than you knew about yourself facebook knows before you're pregnant right facebook knows you're pregnant before you know you're pregnant and it knows based on your behaviors it knows based on your interests it knows based on many things you know a lot of stuff about you and so what happened is apple basically stripped the one thing facebook needed it lets you facebook basically lets you opt out of data tracking so when you update to the new ios or sorry I appled it when you update to the new ios system it says hey do you wanna share all your data and you're just like no and that one no took away facebook's entire like kind of like knowledge about you as a customer and so you've opted out of of this tracking and so now when you go visit websites facebook doesn't get that data back to it or it doesn't get that that information back and so as a facebook advertiser if you're an ecommerce right now all the numbers just show sort of change to overnight like even when you send a show a facebook ad to somebody they click it and they go buy a product from you facebook's only catching like 60% of those conversions it doesn't know about the other 40% because they've opted out of tracking or it didn't work and so facebook all of a sudden is kinda like scrambling to figure out alright how the heck are we gonna like deliver the same value to our advertisers which is our main business model without the it's like you know fighting with one hand tied behind your back now halfway through the fight and so that's that's sort of what apple did to facebook and facebook tried to fight it in court and they tried to do all this pr where they're like you're hurting small businesses and in in reality they are hurting small businesses | |
Sam Parr | you are yeah | |
Shaan Puri | But, you know, net-net, it's good for the consumer to not have Facebook just build this **super rich profile** of your every move, your every taste, and your every tendency, just so that businesses can advertise to you better.
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Sam Parr | So, if you're listening and you have a privacy concern or something related to this idea, I would love to learn about it.
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Shaan Puri | reach out to us | |
Sam Parr | I'm I'm interested I got a I got a few more ideas do you wanna go you wanna you wanna go after 1 | |
Shaan Puri | yeah go for it you you do 1 | |
Sam Parr | Alright, I'm going to tell you one interesting one. I'll tell you two. The first is called **Ghost**. Have you heard of ghost.org?
I've used Ghost, yeah. Okay, so I'm interested in this Ghost. It's a **WordPress** meets **Substack**; that's the best explanation.
So, it's a WordPress site; it's its own platform, making it a WordPress competitor. They offer a handful of features, like you can accept money for a paywall article. They have a few more features, but I actually don't know all the features that they have and why people love it.
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Shaan Puri | Say the use case is you want to spin up a website for yourself. You can use Ghost. If you want to create an email newsletter that's either free, paid, or both, you can use Ghost instead of Substack.
If you want to set up a paid community, you can also use Ghost. Basically, Ghost is this open-source version of Substack. It's a low-cost alternative. Instead of Substack, which takes 10% of all your revenue, Ghost just says, "Hey, pay us $10 a month, and we're happy."
They don't take a percentage of your revenue. For a lot of people, that could mean saving thousands of dollars a month if you use Ghost. | |
Sam Parr | And they have different tiers: $10 a month, $30 a month, $80 to $200 a month. There are a few interesting things about it, but first, the guy behind it is intriguing. He launched it as a nonprofit, which I actually think is stupid, but it was probably good for PR. A lot of people actually worked on it for free to help him. I think he should definitely switch, but it's actually making $3.5 million a year. He uses a ton of people, like free labor—people who just want to contribute. I think he actually has staff, but what he does is if you go to ghost.org/about, he actually reveals all of his revenue.
I think that's interesting because I was going through this, and I’m an investor in a company called ConvertKit. Maybe you are too; I don't remember. But this company called ConvertKit does something like $30 million in recurring revenue right now. Their value is around $200 to $300 million based on public comps, so about 10 times revenue.
I was looking through Ghost.org's numbers, and they're very similar to what ConvertKit was about four years ago when they just got started. My prediction, and I want to go on record by saying this, is: A) I think this is awesome, and B) I actually think that this could be a multi-hundred-million-dollar company in the making. You could watch this guy build it in public.
I think it's interesting; he had one major quote. Typically, people who build these types of things are kind of nerdy and engineer-like, which means they're sometimes reserved and held back, and I like that. But he had a great quote that I read. Someone asked him, "What's your major advice for people getting started?" He replied, "Honestly, my single biggest piece of advice would probably be to stop looking for so much advice and shut the fuck up and go build something."
So, what do you think about this company? Do you agree with my prediction that this could actually be a multi-hundred-million-dollar business?
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Shaan Puri | Okay, kind of boring, but I agree. Right? It's more entertaining when we disagree, but I totally agree. I used Ghost for many of the reasons you talked about. I was intrigued; I thought their story was interesting. I liked that they're kind of like pirates. They were sort of just going against the grain on a bunch of stuff that they were doing.
The product is good, but not super simple to use. It's kind of like... I also find, you know, frankly, I find WordPress to be a little bit confusing if you want to actually... | |
Sam Parr | wordpress is in is incredibly confusing | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, like it's kind of easy to get the first thing going, and then to get it to do what you want takes a lot of effort. I'm surprised this is as small as it is.
So, a $3,700,000 annual run rate—I'm surprised it's that small because Ghost has been around for a while, four years. I don't think that's very impressive where it is, but it's sort of like DuckDuckGo. At first, I believe that these guys are not going to quit.
So, I think that's the first thing: these guys aren't going away. When they don't go away, they are very differentiated and uniquely positioned. They're going to pick up about 10% or so of this entire wave of self-publishing that's going on with Substack and others.
I like this business more than I do Substack.
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Sam Parr | 100% I completely agree with you. The reason I'm bringing this up to listeners is not necessarily because this is a new idea that they can go and do, but if you want to go and watch this person, Bill, he updates the blog every month and reveals most of their revenue.
They're also a nonprofit, so if you dig around and Google "Ghost Foundation 501(c)," you can probably see their total financials because nonprofits disclose that.
It's a really cool company that you could watch being built. It's still small now, but it's going to be fun to watch this become huge over the next four years.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, I'm with you on that. Alright, I got some ideas. One is from trends, actually. This IKEA hacking thing...
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Sam Parr | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | So, I saw this in your trends, like whatever the weekly newsletter thing that you guys put out, and I thought this was pretty fascinating.
**What is IKEA hacking?** IKEA hacking is when you buy something that's sort of a basic-looking piece of furniture. IKEA is like a totally modular store; any piece of furniture can accept this one peg, so you can swap 50 different wheels onto the same piece of furniture. The same goes for the handle, the facade, or the tabletop, the glass top, whatever.
It has this uniform nature to it, which lets you swap parts almost like in Minecraft or Roblox. So, IKEA hacking is the art of taking something that's a simple, plain Jane-looking IKEA piece of furniture. Then, you go to the store and buy different little upgrades, like you're souping up a car on "Pimp My Ride."
You're essentially "pimping out" your dresser, your desk, or whatever it is, and you make something that looks pretty sick. It was just like $180 worth of random IKEA parts that, if you assemble them correctly, can take you from this before picture to this after picture. If it's a YouTube video, you can put up the before and after.
It's awesome! It just looks so simple, like a very basic-looking thing, transformed into a really cool-looking piece, all done using IKEA parts.
So, I have some ideas around this, but did I first accurately describe it?
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Sam Parr | Yeah, you described it correctly. The way that we discovered this, or I think I mean, I used this four years ago when we first started our company.
Basically, I found this subreddit called "IKEA hacking." What I did was buy a $150 kitchen countertop. It was basically a really nice wood block; that's all. I mean, that was like a countertop. But then I just went and got some legs from a totally different thing.
This countertop is actually supposed to lay on granite or like a regular countertop, and I did, but I just screwed legs onto it and put it in the middle of our room. That was like our kitchen table at our office.
I think I started talking to Steph about IKEA hacking. It's very fascinating. I don't know what the business ideas are, though. | |
Shaan Puri | Okay, so here's the business idea. First, it's r/IkeaHacks, which has 78,000 members on Reddit.
Back to the episode we did with Greg Eisenberg, where he talked about unbundling Reddit. This is a classic example, so shout out to Greg.
Basically, I would look at a community like this and say these people are pretty passionate about what they're doing here. The photos are kind of amazing; these would make for great ads and great content—just seeing this, right?
So, I would just go to r/reddit.com/r/IkeaHacks and then sort by the top posts, you know, for the year or something like that, and just get a sense of what's there.
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Sam Parr | and then and then click comments and read all the top comments of all the top posts | |
Shaan Puri | So, I think you could do a few things here, right? I think you could do what you...
I would then take many of the proven business models and apply them here. So, if I was getting started, what would I do to start? I would start by saying, "Look, I don't know the exact business model, but what I do know is that this is great content."
So, I would create an Instagram account right away. The first thing that you gotta know is that most people don't bury their head in Reddit. They're not going to find all these new subreddits. Even someone like me, who uses Reddit every day, I didn't know about this subreddit. Let alone my sister, who will never use Reddit and will only use Instagram.
So, the first thing I would do is immediately create an Instagram account that's just posting the IKEA hacks—the best pictures from Reddit. I would basically just plagiarize it and put it there, and then credit the username from Reddit in every photo as a photo credit. Just so you...
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Sam Parr | don't get in trouble | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, just so I would say, "What are you talking about?" I was giving credit right there, and it's like, "Dude, you're ripping this off."
So that's the first thing I would do. I would try to get that to like 50,000 to 100,000 followers on Instagram because that's now my asset. That's my audience that's interested in this thing that I can then leak out different products.
So it could be a course, like a simple $100 to $200 course that's like your guide to IKEA hacking. It could be individual courses, like the bedroom course, the home office course, the home garage, you know, the garage gym course or whatever, right? Maybe different modules that I would do.
So I would maybe think about courses. I would think about maybe I could sell these as kits. Like maybe I could save you the hassle of having to go to IKEA, buy, like, figure out, "Oh, I need this knob and then this little paper thing and then this other thing." And then those three together are what you use to make this vintage-looking dresser.
Maybe I would just sell the vintage-looking dresser kit. It might just be as simple as a recipe: walk into IKEA, go to the section 198C, and go pick up this item, right?
So it might be something like that. I don't know what I would do, but I do think there's a small bootstrap business, and this is a good business for somebody who is genuinely passionate about this.
So, like, how do you take what I'll call your... okay, this is not meant to be offensive, but like there's a lot of hobbies that are like "basic bitch" hobbies. So what's a basic bitch hobby? A basic bitch hobby is a hobby that you think is unique to you.
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Sam Parr | it's like saying like no you're you're fucking disgusting no offense | |
Shaan Puri | like anytime you say no offense it's like and what it means is brace yourself for some offense | |
Sam Parr | yeah no | |
Shaan Puri | Offense, I fucking hate you. No offense.
So, the "no offense" here is that for guys, the basic hobby is like sports. "Oh bro, I love the NBA!" Yeah, you and like 80 million other people right now, right? So it's not a unique hobby.
How do you turn your passion into a business? Well, it's not a unique passion, so you're probably going to have a "me too" business unless you think of a new angle.
Another basic hobby is, "Oh, I love interior decorating." It's like, cool, you and like 90 million other people who like to watch HGTV and just judge stuff. Or you're happy to scroll on Instagram, liking pretty looking things.
Well, I think that's why if you look at it from this angle, with like IKEA hacks, you're finding a niche and building your own audience on that trend. Then maybe you can release some kind of subscription product, educational product, or DTC product—something for that audience. And now you've turned your basic hobby into a business.
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Sam Parr | We already talked about the "basic bitch" version of this for us, which was the "Knees Over Toes" guy. Yeah, another example.
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Shaan Puri | of this working out dude | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, another example of this is Phillips Hughes. Phillips Hughes light bulbs have a crazy subreddit that has a rabid fan base. I've actually...
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Shaan Puri | like lighting or something right what is it is it | |
Sam Parr | Phillips Hue started as just a bulb that you would say, "Alexa, make the living room purple."
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Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Sam Parr | But then they have like 50 other products now. People have all these blogs, and they're actually making good money. I bet you like Apartment Therapy or one of these bigger brands actually owns one of these blogs. I'd have to scroll down and look at who the copywriter owns the copyright.
But basically, it's blogs on where to put the lights, like under the bed, in order to make it feel cool.
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Shaan Puri | Right, an example of who did this well is House of Highlights. I don't know if you follow them on Instagram, but they're big. Basically, they took ESPN's SportsCenter, which was like this 30-minute television show, highly produced, and all it was doing was showing you the best highlights of the day.
Back in the day, sports would happen all day, and in the evening or the next morning, you would watch SportsCenter to catch up on the best highlights. It's like just the sugar. House of Highlights smartly realized, "Hey, you know, we can just post those as like 10-second clips on Instagram as soon as they happen all day."
I can basically have like two people who like the NBA just run this account, and this account can grow to like a million people. So the guy, like Omar, created this thing.
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Sam Parr | I think that bleacher report owns it | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, so he ends up selling it to Bleacher Report and runs it there. They run it now. I bet you whatever he sold it for, he sold it for way too little.
Over time, he did kind of the same thing. But anyway, that's like an example of taking content that's not your content. It's not original content; it's in this kind of "basic bitch" hobby. Then you turn it into a media property that you own.
You own that audience, and you can figure out what you want to do from there.
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Sam Parr | So, there's this couple who got popular right before the pandemic started. There was a French guy and his American girlfriend, who are now husband and wife. They started baking croissants in their apartment and then brought them to work, selling them to their friends and coworkers. Eventually, they created an Instagram account and went viral.
The apartment that I'm staying in right now bought a pre-order. You have to pre-order **eight weeks** out because they're sold out for weeks. They're just baking these croissants and cookies out of their apartment. The guy who owns my apartment got them and then ended up going out of the country. He said, "Hey, you can actually have my order." It's like **$90** worth of these fancy croissants.
So, on Sunday, I'm going to get those fancy croissants. I invited Dave Nemitz, the founder of Bleacher Report, and his wife to come over and eat these. I was like, "Hey, do you want to come over and eat these fancy girl croissants?" At the time, I didn't know the story, but for some reason, I think this is a big deal. So, I'll be eating croissants with the founder of Bleacher Report on Sunday, and I can ask them the story about House Highlights.
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Shaan Puri | That's... yeah, do please do! It's amazing. Credit to them for picking this up before ESPN or anybody else.
By the way, he listens to the podcast, or at least he talks to us on Twitter a bunch, and he seems great. I saw his talk at HustleCon, very impressive. The way they kind of won and survived... I just remember this one anecdote he told.
He was like, "Yeah, we basically... every other content site was kind of like, okay..." I'm going to butcher this just because I'm trying to remember a talk from three years ago, but here's what I remember him saying: every other sports news website was just talking about whatever was interesting to them. They were all kind of putting out the same content.
He said, "We needed to be smarter, right? We needed to say, every hour a writer's gonna spend... we don't have the same number of writers or budget, so they need to spend writing articles that are gonna get more traffic than anybody else."
So he would just reverse engineer it. They would study Google searches and say, "Everybody's searching, 'What time is the NFL draft?'" He said, "So we would immediately have the number one ranking on Google for 'What time is the NFL draft?', 'Where to watch it?', and 'How to watch it?' and 'What's gonna happen in the draft?'"
It's just like this kind of filler content on a website. He said, "People really like the draft. Okay, we're gonna go all in on the draft, and we're gonna write ten times more content about the draft because that's what there's a big appetite for that ESPN is underserving."
I thought it was pretty awesome how they took a supply-demand approach to it instead of an artsy approach, like, "Oh, you know, this is what this is. We're a journalistic publication, and we should write the hard-hitting pieces about whatever, like, you know, what I'm passionate about."
It's like, you know, they took a science approach to it, which I liked.
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Sam Parr | And then the other founder went and did that. He had a non-compete after he sold Bleacher Report, so he couldn't do sports anymore. But he started a media company called Bustle, which focuses on women's content.
It's all types of articles, but an example of his long-tail search strategy is that he deployed the same approach. So, like, if you Google "What happens when I get my [something] while I'm on the beach," Bustle will show up number one.
There are only going to be about 100 people a month or something that search for that. I mean, I have no idea, but I think I heard through him that was one of the examples. Or if you Google things like that, you'll come across Bustle. They do over $100 million in revenue, and so it still works.
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Shaan Puri | Right, and by the way, we're just pivoting off the Instagram thing. We talked about this in the past, but there's some new news, so we should bring it up.
We talked about this woman who's an influencer. She's a fitness influencer on Instagram, Kayla I think it's Itzines or something. I don't know exactly what you're asking her last name.
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Sam Parr | I think it's it's new every woman listening to this is just gonna be like what the fuck guys I think it's itznew | |
Shaan Puri | What's there? There was something else we tried to pronounce that we just couldn't. Oh, it was just like a fancy luxury brand for purses or something that we liked before.
Yeah, yeah, but she wears Hermès bags. So anyway, she has this app. She basically took this Instagram following and was just posting workout clips on Instagram and stuff. Her and her boyfriend, I think, or her husband—I don't remember who it was.
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Sam Parr | well before the app they were just selling a pdf sarah my wife bought one she bought it for $29 | |
Shaan Puri | My sister-in-law has the PDF, and she was just using it for, is it like the Beachbody? I forgot what it's called. It's some kind of 30-day program, yeah, that's our 30-minute workout that was from this girl. She was buying the PDF, and then they turned it into an app.
The app started doing great. My wife is a subscriber; you pay $100 a year. When you open up the app, there are basically five women who are the trainers. One is very muscular, one is just thin, another is kind of toned, and another one has a huge butt. It's like, "Which body do you want?" and you go follow their program.
You would just pick one, and then you would get daily workouts, kind of like a video that was very good. Anyway, that app was doing really well. I think they had done over $100 million in revenue. I don't know if that's annual or cumulative, but they just sold. I don't know if you have the details in front of you, but they just sold for around $400 million or something, right? They just exited the app this week.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, for **$400,000,000**, they sold to this company called **iFit**, which is about to go public. They said they're doing **$100,000,000** in revenue, and it's pretty amazing. It's a no-brainer to buy; definitely worth it, I think.
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Shaan Puri | And it's pretty weird that if you're doing $100,000,000 in revenue, you sold for only $400,000,000. So, it's a pretty low multiple for a digital product. But they're probably spending a ton... probably spending a ton on marketing. | |
Sam Parr | Okay, yeah... I maybe, maybe not. I mean, she had 30,000,000 followers, and it is based on her following.
Can I tell you about an idea that someone just sent to me? I thought it was pretty amazing.
Okay, look at the thing called Burpflow in the doc. So it's called burpflow.io. Did you click on that?
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Shaan Puri | I saw you text me about it this morning but I haven't checked out so tell me about it | |
Sam Parr | Okay, so this guy sent it to me. He goes, "Hey, I had this software company and they were trying to solve all these problems. It's called Crowd Flow or something like that."
He's like, "I spent 3 years working on it, and then I just said, 'Forget it! I'm just going to create a really micro small app. I'm going to build it in 2 weeks. It just does one thing really well.' It's called Bird Flow. If you click it, it says 'Marketing automation for Twitter.'"
But basically, I'll tell you, it does 3 different things. The main thing is, everyone who clicks follow on your profile automatically receives a message. You can say anything in that message, like, "Hey, thanks for following," or "Hey, thanks for following! Check out my website."
I installed it. He's charging $29. I installed it, and it's awesome! I love these little micro SaaS tools. I think it's so neat. This is exactly how Buffer got started, and that's a multi-hundred-million-dollar business.
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Shaan Puri | Right, yeah. I like the micro SaaS tool that does one simple thing: it helps you win on a platform you're already trying to win on. That's the key, right?
So, like, I'm already trying to win on Twitter, I'm trying to win on Instagram, I'm trying to win on Reddit, whatever. If you could build the micro SaaS tool, it's like, here are other examples of them.
There's what's it called, Jungle Scout, which is for Amazon. So, let's say you're trying to win as an FBA seller on Amazon. You're selling a product on Amazon, and Jungle Scout is this app you can use.
Basically, when you're searching any Amazon search result, you can open up Jungle Scout, and it'll tell you how much that product is worth, how much search volume there is for it, how competitive it is to be in that niche, and how much money they think that product is making.
This way, you can find winning products that are in high demand with low competition, and then you could build an FBA business in that niche. It's a simple SaaS tool. I think Jungle Scout does some stupid amount of revenue too because they're...
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Sam Parr | not pushing | |
Shaan Puri | too much to | |
Sam Parr | partially acquired by pe in the 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars evaluation greg mercer and | |
Shaan Puri | like | |
Sam Parr | Is he good friends with Neville in Austin? I guess this is public. I mean, he's got like a plane and stuff. So whatever, it was sold for like... Neville will post pictures going to Telluride in a private jet, and I'm like, "Dude, who's Jeff? Was that?" | |
Shaan Puri | guy or he's the jungle scout guy | |
Sam Parr | the guy who sold part of the company who started it | |
Shaan Puri | Gotcha! Yeah, so, a super simple tool that just helped you win there. They just built and kind of dominated that one niche of FBA, you know, FBA selling, or in this case, Twitter automations.
So, I like this a lot. I need something like this for me because I'm trying to basically grow my audience on Twitter. The less work I can do, the better, right? I love digital salespeople.
Alright, a digital salesperson—that's what I think about when I think about landing pages or like these little automations. That's a digital salesperson. That's somebody who's going to work 24/7 for me for zero cost, or you know, in this case, whatever it was, $29 a month. That's their salary, and they're going to do exactly what I say every single time, predictably. They're just going to generate more value for me.
So, I look at my landing page like a digital salesperson. I look at my automations, like ConvertKit and things like that, as digital salespeople.
Yeah, this is a really cool one. I like this a lot. Now, I can see this getting really annoying. I mean, people hate getting these auto DMs, but it still will work.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, it might be annoying, but I actually just made mine. It just says, "Hey!" [exclamation] "Thanks for following."
Now, here's the problem that I already found. It's already sent out a couple hundred messages for me. I guess I get maybe 500 to 1,000 new followers a day. I feel like a dude saying that.
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Shaan Puri | say it a a | |
Sam Parr | couple of women replied | |
Shaan Puri | say it | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, so a couple of really attractive women applied and/or replied, saying, "Hey, what's going on? I like your work."
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Shaan Puri | basically they applied actually | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, so like these attractive women replied, and I was like, "Fuck, I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea and think that I'm hollering just at them or that I'm hollering at all," you know?
So, I didn't reply to them, but I was like, "Oh my gosh, let's see. I actually might be able to... this could definitely get me in trouble a little bit. I could totally see it." Right when I sent you that message, it was kind of weird, right?
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Shaan Puri | It was hilarious! Yeah, I could say the same thing. Somebody else pointed this out too.
Let's say you write a thread that goes viral. You might get 5,000 followers. You're going to send out what? 5,000 auto DMs and then get like 2,000 random replies back. It's going to kind of ruin your inbox and maybe get you banned from Twitter. I don't know, because it'll just rate limit you.
So, I think there are some problems with it. Maybe this guy's built in some rules. For me, I would only want to DM somebody who has over X followers or that I already follow or something like that.
So then it kind of limits the number of people this does it to. I think you need it to be like, "Hey, you know, only if it's a farmer-looking white boy, then send this so I don't get in trouble with my wife." You know, like I need it to be like this guy needs to have, you know, Patel or Gupta as his last name if it's going to send this auto DM. That way, my Indian fanboys can get these messages from me, but not everybody else.
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Sam Parr | yeah it it I could see it getting me in trouble alright you wanna do another one | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, let's do one.
Okay, here's a little idea that I think is kind of interesting. I don't have a ton to say about the business, but it's more like this is a cool way to get ideas.
This is my first time traveling with babies, and traveling with babies is like, you know, all the things you would expect. On the plane, the kid pooped and threw his clothes, so I had to change him on the tray table because we couldn't stand up due to the "fasten seatbelts" sign. The person next to us was looking at us like we were gross. What are you supposed to do? It's disgusting.
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Sam Parr | I mean you are gross | |
Shaan Puri | Exactly, I know, I know, I agree, but there are a bunch of problems.
So, like, we had to take our car seats, right? Because you can't just be like, "I'll get there." You know, I used to pack light. I used to be like, "Cool, I'll get there. I just need my phone. I'll call an Uber to get to my hotel. If I'm missing something, I'll just buy it there."
With kids, it's the opposite. You can't even get in an Uber because you have to have a car seat and all that stuff.
I saw this business called **BabyQuip** that I thought was kind of cool. It's, again, one of our telltale signs: any business that shows up at the top of a popular Google search but the website looks like it was last updated in 1996—those are businesses that print money. So, it's like, "Congratulations, you have identified a money printer."
I don't know how successful BabyQuip is, but I would suspect it's pretty good as a bootstrap business. What it does is basically a marketplace.
I could say, "Hey, I just landed in Las Vegas. I need two car seats. I don't want to lug two car seats, check them in, you know, drag them to the airport, check them in, take them home." Just meet me at the airport with a car seat that I can install into a rental car or I can install into an Uber or whatever.
Then, let me rent it for four days, and when I'm leaving, come pick it back up from the airport.
So, that's what BabyQuip is. It's baby equipment, but it's a marketplace where people will bring you what you need. You need a stroller? I got a stroller for you. Don't lug that heavy thing around; just use mine while I'm here.
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Sam Parr | and people | |
Shaan Puri | Are making a lot of money just Google searching. I was Google searching for a baby travel packing list. I thought, "What am I forgetting here?"
So, they had a blog post that listed all the things you need to pack for your baby. At the bottom, it said, "By the way, if you don't want to pack your stroller and car seats because they're heavy as hell, you could just use baby equipment that you can get when you're there."
I clicked through and thought, "This is cool." I realized this is a very clever business model: look for problems, look for annoyances, look for inconveniences, and then design a solution around them. I just thought it was a clever little business.
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Sam Parr | This is awesome! So, Baby Quip is actually a peer-to-peer marketplace. I don't think you actually said that. I thought it was the company that would give you stuff.
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Shaan Puri | No, it's just like Jane, whose kid outgrew her car seat. She realizes she can make **$200 a month** just renting it out to people, as long as she's willing to drop it off and pick it up from the airport.
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Sam Parr | I have these guys raised money | |
Shaan Puri | They've been around for a while. It doesn't look like they've raised money, but yeah, they are basically like a bootstrap business from everything I could tell.
Launched in 2016, they've had over 30,000 orders. I think they did a crowdfunding campaign at some point, so maybe they...
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Sam Parr | They're on *Shark Tank*. This is kind of interesting. Now, I'm not convinced that this is going to be a huge, huge thing, but what is actually interesting is... let's go to New York.
It tells you how many reservations someone has ever had. I bet you that there could be some mom who's just dominated the L.A. or New York scene and could rank really high in all of the big cities, lending out all her stuff.
So, what it does is it tells you how much it... so what basically happens is you land in New York, but before you land, you tell Baby Quip. You hire Camila Shannon, who's the top in New York. She's rented her stuff out 7.73 times, and she'll bring you any gear that you need. You can see all the gear that she has, and she costs $40 to $60 to deliver the stuff to you.
There's gear for... there's a car seat for $10 a day, a playpen for $40 a day, and 15-pound dumbbells for $5 a day. This is crazy! This is awesome! This is a great find!
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Shaan Puri | So, another example of this. By the way, have you used—or probably not used—but you're familiar with them, I'm assuming: Teachers Pay Teachers?
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Sam Parr | no what's that | |
Shaan Puri | you've never heard of teachers pay teachers | |
Sam Parr | no what me well I I did I don't Google this | |
Shaan Puri | It doesn't matter. This is just one of those things that you know about because it's just awesome. So, Google "Teachers Pay Teachers." So, what this is...
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Sam Parr | oh my god | |
Shaan Puri | If you remember, a teacher spends a huge amount of time—every teacher spends a huge amount of time—creating their lesson plans, quizzes, and tests. They have to keep recreating content for their little classroom of 30 people. It's pretty inefficient, right?
So, you teach kids all day, which is already kind of an exhausting thing. Then you go home, and you have to grade papers. You have to come up with tomorrow's lesson plan, design the quiz for Thursday's quiz, and prepare for next Friday's test. You have all this stuff; you're just constantly on this content treadmill.
What Teachers Pay Teachers did that was genius was they said, "Look, that's a lot of effort, and you may not be the best person at coming up with the lesson plan or the quiz for this science topic. So why don't we just create a marketplace where any teacher can list their lesson plans, quizzes, and tests?"
Instead of just making your own, you can go on here, find the best science material for a 4th grader trying to learn about geology right now, and buy it for $10. You save 4 hours of time, so it was like a great trade.
Teachers Pay Teachers is a marketplace doing this. Some teachers were making $1,000,000 just by putting their content up for sale here. The business itself does, I think, over $300 million a year in revenue.
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Sam Parr | in gross | |
Shaan Puri | bought out by pe | |
Sam Parr | in gross revenue yeah | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, but it was bought by a private equity firm. Just look at their traffic on this thing, man. It's over 30,000,000 hits a month.
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Sam Parr | or something | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, holy smokes! It's an insane business, a beautiful business too. Because it's like, wow, you turned some teachers who created amazing lessons, tests, and quizzes into stars and millionaires, which is fantastic.
I think the best teachers should be millionaires. In the age of the internet, there's no reason they shouldn't be. On the other side, you saved a bunch of time for all the other teachers so that they're more rested and can go into class and perform instead of, you know, kind of falling behind constantly on the content treadmill.
I thought this is like, you know, an amazing idea. It reminds me of the Baby Quip thing. Obviously, this is much bigger and much more successful, but it's like these niche pain points turned into, you know, marketplace solutions.
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Sam Parr | This is badass! Maybe you could also do this for speeches. I remember my brother John gave a really...
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Shaan Puri | good writing speeches | |
Sam Parr | he gave a great best man speech and | |
Shaan Puri | is that a great idea | |
Sam Parr | Three people paid him money to write their speeches. I think you could start with just wedding speeches, but eventually, you could do all other types of speeches. | |
Shaan Puri | Dude, that is hilarious! Somebody should absolutely do that because there's a ton of Googling involved.
When you have to give your speech, you're like, "Oh God, the pressure is super high." You think, "How many reps have I had doing this?" Zero? Okay, let me go to Google and try to get some inspiration. Let me try to get the ball rolling.
People go to YouTube and they try to watch, you know, "Best Best Man Speech Ever" or "Best Bridesmaid Speech Ever." Then you're like, "Okay, am I going to copy this?" Not quite.
But if somebody created these with templates, that could be pretty good. I like that!
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Sam Parr | I actually think you could do that. There's this company called **Book in a Box**, started by Tucker Max, who was one of my investors.
When they did Book in a Box, you would pay them any amount from $20 to $100,000 for a bunch of different options, and they would write a book about your life. You could use it to get speaking gigs, give it to your kids, or for any number of reasons. You could look like an expert and be a thought leader.
Then, a lot of other authors started getting speaking offers. Someone would pay $10,000 to $20,000 to have someone come and talk about best practices in meetings because some guy had written a book on how meetings suck and how to make them better.
They then created a new subsidiary that would write your PowerPoint and presentation for you, and you'd pay more money for that. I thought, "That's cool! That should probably be the business, more so than just the book thing."
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Shaan Puri | right | |
Sam Parr | And so, I think that actually, Teachers Pay Teachers, you could also do Speakers Pay Speakers. I mean, you could do the same thing.
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Shaan Puri | There's another angle to this, which is that I think teachers and nurses are two workforces that are very, very large. They have a unique set of problems and are extremely word-of-mouth heavy. I don't think that the existing solutions were great for them.
So, on the podcast a long time ago, we had the founder of Incredible Health come on, which is basically like a job marketplace—kind of like a LinkedIn for nurses.
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Sam Parr | that was right before covid how'd that do | |
Shaan Puri | They raised a bunch of money. I don't know if they're doing well or not, but I can't really say. However, they've raised a bunch of money because the opportunity is large.
There are so many nurses, and there's a shortage of nurses along with a high demand for them. Nurses want great jobs, and hospitals and clinics are happy to pay to place nurses. So, there's a lot of money to be made if you can build the right network.
If you can build a vertical LinkedIn for just nurses, I think there's a similar opportunity for teachers. However, it's not in terms of placing teachers because it's not the same level of demand for hiring teachers.
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Sam Parr | or okay | |
Shaan Puri | I do think that if you built a professional networking platform for teachers, it could be better than LinkedIn. Teachers don't necessarily want or need to use LinkedIn.
I think you could create a custom solution specifically for teachers. It's about how teachers can engage with their peers. What do they need to do? Do they need to share tips? Are they looking for job opportunities? Is it content, like "Teachers Pay Teachers"?
I think if you brainstormed this idea, and if that's the niche you were in, there would be a lot of opportunities for teachers. There's such a huge workforce, and a generic solution like LinkedIn is not going to be tailored to them.
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Sam Parr | how much do you think teachers paying teachers got acquired for | |
Shaan Puri | I would say if I was gonna put a guess I would say $500,000,000 | |
Sam Parr | yeah I I would I would guess that as well 100 | |
Shaan Puri | because it it is kind of a monopoly in its niche | |
Sam Parr | Or more... or more. Even if, or rather, if you said it's worth more than that now, I wouldn't be surprised.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, and we can research. I didn't plan to bring it up, but we can look it up. It might be out there publicly.
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Sam Parr | No, I looked it up while you were talking. I don't have much more. What do you have? I blew my load early.
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Shaan Puri | I have one. Okay, so we can end on kind of like this life wisdom thing. So, last night, we were hanging out, talking. You know, I'm hanging out with some other folks who are traveling with us.
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Sam Parr | I asked this question | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, family members. So, I asked this question. I said, "Alright, let's fast forward. How old are you? 31? 30? Something like that? You're 31."
I said, "Alright, fast forward. You're 90 years old. Let's say your life has gone as it has so far. Now, let's just kind of project forward. If things keep going the way they have been, like the track you're on, let's say you continue on that track. You end up at 90. What do you think, if you look back, you're going to be most happy with about the way you lived your life? And what do you think you're going to regret the most about the way you lived your life so far?"
I was curious. After I asked that question, I got some answers from the group. I was curious, so I thought, "I'm going to ask Sam this." Because I don't know what he would say. I think it's a hard question, to be fair, but I'm curious what comes to mind for you.
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Sam Parr | I would say that I let my temper control things. You know, I lose my temper easily sometimes. You've seen it, sometimes when I get mad at you or when I get mad at Dan or someone else.
It's like, sometimes they've actually done something that is warranted. Oftentimes, it's not that big a deal. I get super frustrated and I'll hold grudges over relatively small frustrations. I let my emotions control some of my decisions, and I've lost a lot of money and a lot of friends because of it.
So that's what I regret. I work quite hard to fix it, but I wish I would have been even more aware of that early on. What else do I do? I regret...
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Shaan Puri | that's a great answer | |
Sam Parr | Do I think that I'll regret it? I wish I didn't spend years neglecting my health, thinking, "Oh, I can get to it later." I should have had fun now, but I wish that when I was a kid, my parents had instilled healthy eating habits. I think that like, that still kind of messed with me, right? Eating a lot of bad sugar... what else?
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Shaan Puri | What about the flip side? What's the one thing you're going to look back on and be glad that you lived that way, or that you did that thing, or that you made those choices?
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Sam Parr | Starting at age 20, I wrote this down: "By 30, I want to have started something that will make enough money so that when I have children, I won't ever have to worry about how to give them what they need. Also, I'll be able to spend time with my family."
Even though I didn't have a family or anything like that at the time, I thought, "That's what I think I'm going to want by the time I'm 30." So, I worked towards that, and I achieved it.
I'm most proud that I can now only worry about the emotional aspects of the family, even though I don't even have a family.
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Shaan Puri | right okay | |
Sam Parr | I'm most proud I got that problem out of the way the the the financial problem | |
Shaan Puri | what do you think of that question is this a is it a good question or is it kind | |
Sam Parr | Of a question, I actually changed it around. I ask myself this all the time.
Well, it's quite similar. I think, "What can I do today that will make my future self proud and not regretful?"
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Shaan Puri | yeah well I'll make myself for | |
Sam Parr | And I say 10 years, but I would actually change it to 6 months. Because oftentimes, how many times... the other question I ask myself is, "In 6 months, will you wish that you had done this or wish that you had started trying to do blank?"
So, it's like losing weight or exercising. Is a really good one. In 6 months, will you look back at yourself and be like, "Fuck, I wish I had already started learning how to speak Spanish. I wish I had already read these books. I wish I had already done this."
So just fucking do it! Make your future self proud. So that's the question I ask. I think it's a great question. And what was your answer? What do you regret and what are you proud of?
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Shaan Puri | So, I had trouble with the regret side. I was thinking about it and I was like, "Okay." I went through some thoughts and said, "Okay, I couldn't think of an easy answer."
So, I asked myself, "What happens when you can't think of the answer right away?" You just start throwing out what might it be, right? It doesn't have to be this, but what even comes to mind?
I was like, "Oh, well, I regret kind of like spending too much time working." Okay, it's possible.
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Sam Parr | No, I don't think so. I mean, I think you're pretty healthy with that. You worked really hard when you were single or not married.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, I worked like three times harder than I do now. So, it's something that made that shift.
I was like, "Will I regret working on the wrong things?" Like, I just worked on this. Right now, I'm building this D2C (direct-to-consumer) business. It's like, "Oh, well, you know, this is frankly a business that's meant to make money." It's not like the joy of my life.
This podcast is more like the joy, right? This is the fun, and it's building up into something that's big. But the business I'm doing, I'm doing it as a business. So maybe I'll say, "Why didn't I go try to change the world in some bigger way?" Maybe I'll say that.
So, I started brainstorming these thoughts. What I realized was that the only things I think I'm going to regret are either going to be health-related. But even then, by the time I'm 90, I don't know how much I'm going to care about that if I, you know, if I get to 90.
So, it didn't quite work, but I think if I asked that question for like 50 or 60, I would say definitely one of the top answers would be taking care of my health better. You know, just prioritizing that.
Number two is like, when you're 90, you're short on time. So, I'll probably look back and think, "Fuck, I pissed away a bunch of time on the wrong stuff."
So, that's the second category: where am I pissing away time that when I look back, I'm going to say, "Oh, I can't believe I wasted those precious years on the wrong stuff or on the wrong things, caring about the wrong things, or even in the moment focusing on the wrong things."
The last one is relationships. Ultimately, my answer that I came to in the end was I'll probably regret not having more kids. I think the older I get, the more joy I'm going to find. The most value and joy in my life is just going to come from my kids.
I know right now it feels like, "Oh my God, I couldn't possibly have another," because why? Why is it so hard with two?
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Sam Parr | how how's your wife she's young | |
Shaan Puri | She's 30. It's not the biological clock; it's like the workload. It's like, "Oh my God, how do I have another kid with these two kids, with the business stuff, with the podcast, with the 10 things that..." | |
Sam Parr | I do | |
Shaan Puri | you know | |
Sam Parr | in in 2 years you can you're you're | |
Shaan Puri | I'm not saying I don't... I guess what I'm saying is, I think that's the one thing. If I look back, I'm probably going to wish I had more kids. Because from age 65 to 90, it's probably going to be the number one source of fun in my life. It's going to be my kids and our camping trips.
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Sam Parr | You should address that. I told Sarah I want five, and so we froze our embryos. Listen to this: we froze our embryos, and I've got six kids. The reason I don't want... I've got Sarah's got this thing. There's just a genetic component that we made sure we didn't want to pass on, so the kids were healthy.
I have five kids, all girls, and I'm asking her if I can go and do it again because I would like to have two boys and two girls. So, I've got five kids waiting for me, but they're all girls.
Anyway, I actually think that that's a good one. I asked my Twitter following, "How many of you feel about kids and age?" Almost unanimously, the people who had... So this is like a bias survey, right? So it's like people...
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Shaan Puri | mean how do you think about kids and age what does that mean | |
Sam Parr | I forget... well, I forget the exact way that I asked it, but I said, "Do you wish that you'd had kids sooner or later in life?"
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Shaan Puri | okay gotcha | |
Sam Parr | And, of course, there's a bias here. People who are already bought into one category will likely answer and support that category or support that decision.
But almost unanimously, I feel like the answer was, "I wish I had my kids sooner in life." That actually shocked me because, particularly in New York, Silicon Valley, and LA—these coastal bigger cities—it's actually more normal to get married and have kids at 21, 22, or 23. Whereas on the coasts, it's more like 31, 32, or 33. You're constantly told, "Just wait, just wait."
Even Andrew Wilkinson told me, and a couple of my friends said the same thing. I guess you could actually give your opinion, but most everyone said, "I wish I had kids sooner." One guy actually changed my perspective on everything. I asked him, "Why do you think that?" He replied, "Because now I'm just going to die sooner, and I wish I could have spent more time with them."
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, I don't know the answer. I think it works either way. It's not really... I don't really think there's a right answer there. But kids are great; the kids are really great.
So, I like that question. I like the one you had too.
So, I guess if I was going to recommend something for people to do after the podcast, if you've listened this far, I would basically write down both:
1. What's the thing I'm going to thank myself for?
2. What's the thing I'm going to regret when I'm 90 about the way I'm living my life right now?
If I just project it forward, then there's the one you said, which is: six months from now, what's the thing I'm going to wish I had started doing now or stopped doing now?
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Sam Parr | yeah because | |
Shaan Puri | there's there's a lot wish I'd done then | |
Sam Parr | There's a lot you could do in 6 months. Now, you're not going to maybe have a life-changing thing, but you can lose 60 pounds in 6 months. Maybe you can learn a little bit of a language, enough to go and speak in a different country. You could read a bunch of books. You can learn how to play the piano in 6 months. I mean, you could do a lot of interesting stuff.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, you could go and repair the **shitty** relationship you have with your dad or whatever. You know, you could do many, many things.
Like I said, that's the other one I thought about for the regret: not having maybe spent more time or being kind of just nicer to my parents. I know I'm going to miss them a lot when they're gone.
They're going to go; it's going to happen. Once they do, I think that's probably going to be one of the things I'm going to wish: "Why didn't I talk to them more or spend more time or, you know, tell them thanks?" You know, something like that is probably going to be one of my answers for that.
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Sam Parr | That purpose, I'll wrap this up with a quick story that hopefully will change people's perspective.
So, do you know who Ramit Sethi is? Yeah, he's got this business book and a huge brand called "I Will Teach You to Be Rich." He's a good friend of mine, and whenever I have money doubts or questions, I call him. He kind of... so for example, he always thinks about everything very thoughtfully.
I was talking to him about buying a ring for my wife years ago, and I asked him, "How much should I spend?" I told him I wanted to spend $5,000, and he was like, "No, no, no, no, no." He told me a budget way higher. He said, "Trust me," and he explained his reasoning. I listened to him, and I went and bought a ring that cost $27,000, even though I didn't have that much money.
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Shaan Puri | at the time what was his reasoning though | |
Sam Parr | His reasoning was like, first of all, it's your wife. Whatever she wants, what's the point of working hard? It's to make someone like your wife proud and happy. She's going to want to show this off, so just make her happy.
Second, if you're going to be married to her for potentially 80 years, who gives a fuck over $20 divided by 80 grand or 80 years? Just don't be cheap on the stuff that actually matters. This probably really matters to her. Now, for some people, it doesn't matter.
Then the second thing was, I called Ramit and I go, "Hey Ramit, you took your family to Europe one time, to Italy." He goes, "Yeah, you want me to plan yours for you?" I go, "Well, yeah, but what do you mean?" He goes, "Well, I love doing this and I'll plan yours for you, but I only have one rule." I said, "What?" He goes, "I'll plan it for you, but you have to have an unlimited budget." I was like, "What the hell?"
He goes, "Dude, the whole point of traveling with your family is..." So I'm taking my mom and dad and my wife to Italy. My parents have really never been out of the country other than one time to visit me in Australia. He goes, "I'm going to get you to give them an unlimited budget." I was like, "Dude, I was going to spend like $15,000 maybe." He goes, "No, no, no, no, no. We're going to spend $50,000 at least." I was like, "That's so much money!" He goes, "Dude, you're never going to go out of the country again with your family. I've done it before, like one time. It's the one thing that they will never stop talking about. I don't care if I only had $100,000, I'm spending $50,000 because this is the whole..." | |
Sam Parr | Of working really, really hard is spending my money on stuff that will make my family happy, and they'll talk about forever. I was like, "You're right, I need to quit being a cheapskate."
I'm going to just put it out there: I bought my mom and dad first-class tickets to Europe. They've never been first-class before! We're going to have a great time, and it kind of changed my perspective on spending and being tight.
So that's my quick little story.
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Shaan Puri | That's amazing! I love it.
Alright, we should end on that.
Good episode, Dan. What do you think? This was good. I give you guys a 9.5.
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Sam Parr | no no | |
Shaan Puri | no no okay good | |
Sam Parr | I'll take that last one as an 8, or an 8 and a half. Alright, that's the episode.
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