Why This $4M SaaS Founder Started A Trash Collecting Side Hustle

Hubspot

That's a

Sam Parr

great idea I'm glad I brought this up I should do this

Shaan Puri

I love how you were like, "You gave me a great idea," but the thing you said was completely different than what I said. That's how this works. That's how this thing works. You do... that's a little "yes, and" there for you, to all my thespians out there.

Sam Parr

alright we're live sean what are we what are we talking about you're kicking it off

Shaan Puri

Well, maybe you should introduce yourself. I don't even recognize you because it's "new year, new you," am I right, Sam?

Sam Parr

same me new year

Shaan Puri

new year same shit as always

Sam Parr

Yeah, nothing will change. I purposely didn't set any goals this year. I'm just going to go with the flow. What do you think?

Shaan Puri

Well, I want to talk about New Year's resolutions and stuff. At first, I have to apologize. We did not put out a lot of content over the last week or so. Normally, who cares? No big deal. I thought, well, you know, this is good. Let's take a little break, spend time with the family. You're a new dad; I'm an existing dad. Let's just be quality homebodies here and family men. Family first, right? But the thing about family first is that the time I need podcasts the most is when I'm with my family. This might sound crazy to people who aren't podcast people, but I know there are others like me out there who love their family. You spend a lot of time with your family—sometimes a little too much time—and you need these little mini breaks. I was taking out the trash, and then I had to walk my dog. I went to my favorite podcaster's channel, and they didn't have anything new for me. I was like, "Damn, this is what I needed." I needed a little break from the family world just to go and escape. Who's your favorite podcaster? I like Bill Simmons. It's because I like to just listen to basketball stuff or sports things. I've been listening to him since, I don't know, 2006 or something. He's like the first podcaster I've ever heard, so I have this familiarity built up. When there's not a new episode, I hate it. I realized we're that person for some people out there. We are their escape from family life or escape from the boring chores. I know that it is holiday time, but I bet people needed us more, and we weren't there. So next year, we will be there. That's my commitment to you, guy out there who's having to run errands and deal with a bunch of BS.

Sam Parr

we should have just done reruns could we have done a rerun and have been alright

Shaan Puri

Just our voices, actually. Just ASMR of us saying nonsense—just gibberish for hours. Did you ever see this Louis C.K. skit or one of his bits from his stand-up? He talks about being a dad. Now that you're a dad, you're going to start to appreciate this one joke. It's not even that funny. You know, some people are like, "It's so true! That's hilarious!" But this is just... it's so true, it's not even that hilarious.

Sam Parr

what'd he say

Shaan Puri

He talks about what he calls "the greatest 30 seconds in the world." He said, "You know what the greatest 30 seconds in the world is? It's when you put your kid in the car, and you finally get him into the car seat. You clip it all together, and then you close the door. In that moment, you have like 30 seconds while you're walking from their door back to your door. That 30 seconds of silence and solitude is everything in life." And it's so true.

Sam Parr

This was the first week that I experienced where I was like, "Oh, a break would be nice." My baby has been perfect mostly, but she goes through a week of growing and she'll cry more than normal. Mostly, she doesn't cry at all. I remember there was a day where she cried for like an hour, and I was like, "Alright, I understand why people request breaks." Before, I was like, "Why would I ever want to leave this thing? I'm getting so much dopamine from it." Now, it was the first time that I experienced a break, so I'm slowly understanding some of these things.

Shaan Puri

You know how chill I am? When our nanny calls out sick or says, "Oh hey, my daughter's visiting from college. Can I have the day off?" In my head, I'm like, "Yeah, of course, no problem." But in my soul, I'm enraged. I'm like, "How dare you make me spend all day with my kids? How dare you? I have to look after my own!" You know, this is an injustice that has happened to me.

Sam Parr

I can't help you. Don't feel guilt. You're like, "Why am I so reliant on this person?" I experienced that a little bit because we have a nightmare.

Shaan Puri

I'm past that. I fully accepted that this is the way I need to live and that it is a necessity. In fact, it is a right of mine—a core human right, an American right of mine.

Sam Parr

By the way, right up there next to aioli being just flavored mayonnaise, "night nurse" is beautiful rebranding. It's basically just this young woman who I have no idea what her credentials really are, but she just plays on her phone while she lays on the couch next to my daughter. When my daughter cries, it's only one night a week or one time a night, and she gives her a bottle and then just goes back to sleep. I'm basically paying someone a full-time salary to live and sleep on my couch, right? And because they call it a nurse, I think there's some type of medical... it ain't.

Shaan Puri

There isn't... it's not called "sleep sitter." It's a babysitter. We just pay her, you know, to help with one moment while we sleep. It feels...

Sam Parr

a little different than night nurse yes beautiful rebranding

Shaan Puri

By the way, I think that the aioli for this has got to be an au pair. By the way, they're like, "What a word! What a fantastic word!" Okay, we can move on.

Sam Parr

Yeah, an au pair is a beautiful option too, by the way. Do you... we're thinking about getting an au pair, and I was like, "Wait, so we just get this young 23-year-old who's just going to be living at our home?" It's kind of weird. It's pretty weird when you think about it. It's weird.

Shaan Puri

Right, okay. So now I want to talk about resolutions. In the past, do you do resolutions? You said you didn't do it this year. Is that part of like "chill mode"?

Sam Parr

So, what I do is I have four categories, and I named them all "F's" because it's cute. They are: **Family**, **Fitness**, **Fun**, and **Finances**. I'll usually have a finance goal, like "I want to make this much money," or "I want to launch this thing," or "do this." That's a business thing.

Shaan Puri

friendship would be the last one and I was so excited for myself there but okay finances works too

Sam Parr

that that that's fun that's fun

Shaan Puri

it's the forgotten 5th f

Sam Parr

Okay, that's fun. So, fun is like trips I want to do with friends or family. You know, Sarah and I want to achieve this thing together. We want to communicate more. I don't know, whatever it is. Then fitness is, you know, this much weight lifted, this whatever. Normally, I do that. Right now, I've not set it, and I said I'm going to do it quarterly, but I'm not going to start it for another month.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, oh dude, I'm in the same boat. I have a very, very similar exercise that I do. I think mine are like, you know, work, play, love, and, you know, whatever fitness or health, you know, stuff like that.

Sam Parr

my branding is is a lot better you should do family fitness finance fun

Shaan Puri

Well, I just don't want to use your thing now because you're like, "Oh, I'm going to do Sam's New Year's resolutions today." Just kill me now. Alright, so, I agree with what you normally do, and I normally do the same. But I don't know why I had an extreme aversion to it this year. So, I looked up some alternatives to New Year's resolutions. The aversion, I think, came from a bunch of thread boys on Twitter. Honestly, there's just a lot of content on Twitter right now of people being like, "Just wrapped up the annual plan, annual review of 2023, and my predictions and plans for 2024." I was like, "This is too much for me. I can't. I need to just get away from this."

Sam Parr

yeah and no one hits them

Shaan Puri

And in general, I would say if I try to think of, "Alright, what is the new stuff I'm going to do?" it's such a small boy attitude to be like, "Yeah, I waited till the first to do the things I wanted to do." It's like, no! Anything I wanted to do, anything I realized I should do, was a decision I just made in that moment and started doing it immediately. I just did it on November 21st instead of January 1st. And so, I think it...

Sam Parr

what are your alternatives

Shaan Puri

Okay, so a couple of alternatives. You tell me if you like these or not. So, solve this on TikTok. This is definitely such a Gen Z approach to life. They go, "New Year's resolution goals? Ugh, what are you, my dad?" Bingo card! So here's how a New Year's bingo card works. I don't know how many things are on a new bingo grid; I think it's like 16 squares. So you just come up with 16, but also leave a couple blank if you can't think of them. Gen Z, that's how we roll! You just come up with some things that you might do this year. It's a "maybe." You might go traveling, you might go backpacking through Central America, you might not though. You might start dating somebody. Also, find a loan, and that's blank. You just come up with squares of things that might be fun to do this year.

Sam Parr

got it

Shaan Puri

And then you just see if you do them. If you do them, bingo! You just try to shade it in. You shade in the square and you see how you get a bingo card. It's low pressure, but it's like an actionable little vision board. I was like, "I think I kinda like this."

Hubspot

by the

Sam Parr

Way on my bingo card this year, if I were to do it, they're in Houston doing a zero-gravity flight and it's $5. Have you seen that? They take you up into a 747 that's empty and it's full of pillows. You float for like 20 seconds at a time. That's going to be on my bingo card this year. I'm scared of it, but I might do it.

Shaan Puri

Might do it. What an attitude! What a refreshing attitude to the new year, right? So, the Gen Z bingo card.

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.

Hubspot

hubspot grow better

Shaan Puri

Here's another one. This has come from the psychology world: here are my New Year's anticipations. What is that? You just say things you're looking forward to this year. You brainstorm and say, "Oh man, I'm looking forward to that! That would be so fun! That would be amazing!" The reason why is that these psychologists did a study and found that actually more joy is derived from the anticipation of an event versus the actual event itself. I just experienced this with my kids for Christmas. We did the Elf on the Shelf thing, and just in general, the whole build-up to Christmas Day and the idea of Christmas morning and opening up all your presents. I got 25 days of joy out of that from them because of the anticipation. Then on the day of Christmas, they woke up, started ripping open presents, and they didn't even know which toy to play with. It was over in like an hour, and then they were like, "Okay, can we have cartoons with breakfast now?" I was like, "Yep, alright, I guess back to the routine." It was kind of done. I just realized these people are right. New Year's anticipations might be a thing because instead of planning and committing like some brute alpha saying, "I'm gonna do this," you just say, "Oh, I can't wait to have this experience! I can't wait to do that!" That might be a little bit more fulfilling. What do you think?

Sam Parr

8 alright 8 I give that 8 that's pretty good

Shaan Puri

wow okay I thought you were pretty on a bingo card

Sam Parr

Bingo card is cool. You know, anytime you say, "I read a study that said this," it's like when a restaurant has a sign that says, "World's Greatest Cup of Coffee." I have a rule: if I see a restaurant that says "World's Greatest [blank]," I always go to it. That's my rule because I think if you have the audacity to say that, then I won't give you the... I'll try it. So, hearing someone say, "A study once said," just makes me weak in the knees and gets me all hot and bothered. So, I'm...

Shaan Puri

into that the funny thing by the way so I saw that and I was like

Sam Parr

you didn't see a study on it that that's something no

Shaan Puri

So I was like, "Who?" Oh, I was like, for the first time ever, I was like, "Yeah, I'll take the special." Right? Like, you know, the waiter reads the specials. You may have ordered the special. I was like, "Let me read the study." I scrolled down and it said "University of Scranton." I was like, "Pretty sure it's a made-up town from *The Office*. I don't think Scranton exists." And so, oh, oh, Dunder Mifflin came out with a study this year, so this is probably bullshit. But nevertheless, that's where the study came from. Alright, here's another one. There's this guy on Twitter that's made his brand all around the idea of obsession. You know this guy?

Sam Parr

no I

Shaan Puri

don't I wish I

Sam Parr

could be a good guy what's what's what is it

Shaan Puri

Yeah, basically it's like the good version of OCD. He's like, "Anyways, he's all about being obsessed." So he goes, "Instead of New Year's resolution, I have my year of obsession." He believes that a one-year obsession can change your life.

Sam Parr

that's awesome

Shaan Puri

that's an awesome sentence right that's like a actually a pretty powerful sentence

Sam Parr

I'm in

Shaan Puri

I read it, and I was like, "I'm in." I closed the tab and thought, "I don't even want to hear anything else you say. It's going to make me like you less than that first sentence."

Sam Parr

Morgan Housel had this great quote. He said, "People don't remember books; they remember sentences." I try to make memorable sentences. That's a memorable sentence. That's a beautiful sentence.

Shaan Puri

And I think that is so true. One year of obsession really can change your life. If you decide that this year you're going to be obsessed with something, and you just start to rev up that engine of obsession—whether it's around working out, having fun, starting a company, or creating content—whatever it is, I think that's just an amazing attitude. It's different for some reason than a resolution. That's the best.

Sam Parr

I would even say it's the year of identity. I mean, obsession is actually better, but it's like a year where you change your identity. I remember, do you remember like 3 or 4 years ago when I was kind of pudgy? I was like, "This is the year I become a fitness influencer." I was joking, but I was going to make fitness part of my identity. Right? It's the same thing: obsession, identity. That's a beautiful sentence. That's a 9.

Shaan Puri

That's a 9. Okay, you're in on that one. So, okay, but the other one... forget looking forward. Do a New Year's reflection. Just forget the to-do list of "here's a bunch of promises I'm gonna break to myself," you know? That's what New Year's resolutions tend to be. Instead, just triple down on the reflection. Really take a walk down memory lane. Open up your camera, go through your camera roll, and watch, you know, January, February, March, April. Write down what some of your best experiences were. Just do a little bit of a journal entry to end the year. Send a few thank you notes to people or moments, or you know, experiences that you had with people. Just talk about how great they were or how much you appreciated having them. Reflect on, you know, maybe everybody... I think everybody always says, "Oh man, I learned so much and I grew so much." Then if you ever say, "Awesome, what did you learn?" the writer's block occurs. Suddenly, silence sweeps over the room. Try to actually suss out: what did I really learn? What were the big learning moments for me this year? This happened, and my learning was X. I did like a monster reflection exercise the other day. It was so fun, and I think that people should do this in a more intense way. Forget the method; just do it in a more intense way. Just be like, "I'm gonna actually really try."

Sam Parr

To dig in, I've been doing that every year for a while. I would just put my reflections in Google Docs. But now, if you're listening... I don't know what day this will go live, but if you go to **theantimba.com**, you'll see my reflections and the Anti-MBA. That's just my personal blog. I barely ever share it. I don't care who reads it; not that many people do because I don't really promote it. However, I started doing this publicly now just to reflect. My family will be able to read it in 10 or 30 years, which is awesome, right? Imagine when your mom was coming from India. If she had a blog instead of just telling you stories, you could read what she thought back then. So, I've been doing that a lot lately. It's awesome! It's really fun to go through your camera roll because your camera tells you exactly what's going on every month.

Shaan Puri

**Relationship hack:** I learned this from Tony Robbins. He basically said that once a month, it's important to be very intentional with your wife or your partner. It's easy to get into a routine where your focus and energy are mostly on your work, your kids, or whatever else is going on. In that process, the kind of dating time can be lost. People often try to reignite the spark with something like, "Oh, it's date night tonight," but then you're both kind of tired. You might have already had a bunch of conversations, and there isn't much new to share. It's like, "Hey, what's new with you?" and the response is often, "I don't know, the same things I've been going through." You know, we've been together for a while.

Sam Parr

My in-laws were in town, and they were like, "Hey, Sam and Sarah, do you guys want us to watch the baby so you can have a date night?" And we were like, "Yeah, but could our date night be just going upstairs and scrolling on our phones?" "Yeah, that sounds great!"

Shaan Puri

sam's gonna turn on the bath and sarah's gonna leave the house

Sam Parr

yeah like that's that that was our version of date night

Shaan Puri

So, well, I have that all the time in that case. But Tony Robbins said that he does an exercise called "flooding." He's like, really romantic. He says to just sit down and basically open up the camera roll or the videos and just watch together, you know, something from like a year ago or three years ago, whatever it is. Just kind of flood those memories together, and it will almost rebond you because you'll both re-experience what you've already experienced. It's a kind of low-bar way to get like sort of a maximum impact in terms of how close you feel with somebody. I've been doing that, and it's pretty awesome. I don't do it every month, but I do it from time to time.

Sam Parr

You should blog this. Just create a blog that you don't care if anyone reads. It kind of forces you to write on there. It's pretty awesome.

Shaan Puri

but dude whenever I write something everybody reads it it gets like super fucked up

Sam Parr

Just don't share it. It's just... it's just like, you know, my big thing is I read a lot of history. It's crazy. People used to journal and keep diaries. Remember when you were a kid and someone told you about having a diary? I was like, "Dude, that's what like chicks do. I'm not gonna write a diary."

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

now we're just gonna rebrand it call it blogging and it's way more fun you don't want that

Shaan Puri

Do I have it here? That's in the other room right now, but I bought—not like a journal, because you know most journals are very small, and that's great, but actually writing in a journal can be kind of hard. It's limited. I bought one of those artist sketch pads—like a huge, thick cardstock canvas thing. This thing is amazing! It's an absolute pleasure to write on and draw on. I don't feel limited in any way. It's way better than a journal. I really love this thing. I leave it on my desk most days, and I just have it there. I can take notes on one side, and I can scribble an idea on the other. The idea of a sketch pad is just way better than these... yeah.

Sam Parr

But in 20 years, your kids are going to be like, "Why did Dad just make these stupid 'S's with the 6 lines? What is that? What is that doodle he keeps? He's a dumbass." Everyone does it. Like, "Why does he keep drawing cubes over and over again?"

Shaan Puri

There's no chance my kids care about what I was thinking when I was 35 years old. That's the reality. They will... or maybe one day, one little thing, but no. Alright, last one here for New Year's. So we got the bingo card, we got anticipations, we got the obsession, we got the reflection. The last one is... this one's actually not, it's kind of the best one to end on, but the magic word. The magic word is you pick a theme for really just the month. So you forget the year; a year is too long. You just say, "Alright, January, my word of the month right now, the theme of this month is gonna be playful flirting." I'm gonna flirt with everybody! You just come up with whatever the word is. I'm gonna take every situation, and I'm gonna try to infuse this word into it, or as often as I can. I'm gonna try to have this be the theme.

Sam Parr

should be that's great what's yours gonna be just like pizza that's what my

Shaan Puri

yes typically ranch is the

Sam Parr

fault right

Shaan Puri

what doesn't get better with ranch ranch

Sam Parr

That's so funny! Yeah, I think January is just carbs. No, I think the answer word is "good."

Shaan Puri

Well, no matter which one of these New Year's resolutions you pick, just remember January 12th. January 12th is National Quitters Day. It's the second Friday after the New Year. By that time, I think more than half of people have completely abandoned their resolutions. I saw the guy who is the founder of that company, Slice Pizza. They're like a...

Hubspot

yeah

Shaan Puri

A nationwide pizza delivery service. He said something like, "January 12th to 25th, sales will be down for the next two weeks, but then our biggest day of the year is coming." He's like...

Sam Parr

is that real

Shaan Puri

The Super Bowl of pizza delivery is on National Quitters Day, which is when people give up on their diets by the second week of January and then move on. So yeah, that is what it is: the second Friday of January.

Sam Parr

that company by the way is killing it who would've thought

Shaan Puri

who not I not I is the answer

Sam Parr

Not I, not I. Alright, let me bring up a juicy topic. I got a big juicy one! When I was researching this, I kept giggling and laughing as a bystander. This topic is awesome; it has made me so happy. Let me explain why. I’ve got this friend. I met him in Hampton. I think he said that you knew him through one of his software companies.

Shaan Puri

he did some he won some contest we did

Sam Parr

His name is Spencer Scott, and he owns two software companies. The software company that I think he spoke to us about is pretty funny. You go to your website, so for our case, let's say mfmpod.com, and you can see who's on your website. You could video call with them, and it just pops up and says, "Hey, you in Austin? If you have any questions, I'm here in real time. You can ask me questions, whatever." He's got these software companies, and I think they probably do $400,000 to $500,000 a year in revenue. He makes a great living. Well, something happened to him, and the way that he reacted to this is just hilarious. So, Spencer lives outside of Dallas, and apparently, there is an issue where the trash collectors come and they leave their trash bins all over the place after picking them up. Seeing that he's a scrappy entrepreneur...

Hubspot

he went on to

Shaan Puri

I'm looking at a photo of that. We should post a photo of this on the YouTube channel. There's somebody's trash cans: one looks like it got into a World Star Hip Hop fight; it just got beat up and is on the ground. Another one is just in the neighbor's lawn, and then one is where it's supposed to be. He's like, "This is how they left my trash again today."

Sam Parr

And it makes... and it made the neighbors really angry. Apparently, people had heard complaints about this. So, the group, I guess, is it called the Wylie, Texas page? Wylie, Texas?

Hubspot

yeah it

Shaan Puri

Says, like, whatever his neighborhood is like, residence, and then it's in the little town that he's in.

Sam Parr

and he explains this like in a really funny way he goes we've got my my new my neighborhood it's supposed to be one of these fancy neighborhood gated it's a gated community we've got 24 hour security hell we even have 48 48 hour security if you take into account all the karens that live in my neighborhood and report stuff like we're just full of security and yet our trash it's just so annoying that once a week the the company picks it up and our cans are left all over the place so he makes a facebook post in the neighborhood group and he says hey neighbors is anyone open to switching trash services to a better option my wife and I are mildly frustrated with cards and we've made jokes that we feel we are like unpaid employees every week we play a fun game of where's waldo trying to find our trash cans which are either in the ditch or hidden in our neighbor's yards whatever and then a 150 people commented on that and so this guy spencer Scott he calls himself he's like a jehovah's witness of b to b sales apparently before he started a software company he would go door to door selling internet services or I think phone lines things like that so he's just like a like a door to door sales guy then he got the software and he's a pretty scrappy guy and he goes hell I think I'm gonna do this he finds out that the trash company is actually charging something like $50 a month for 300 houses he does some math he goes this is kind of interesting and so we start sending an email or and so he makes a new post in the facebook group and listen to this he goes in order for this to work we need 200 houses to sign up and commit to switching vendors I and this is a great post by the way I know this is a huge ask and you're gonna you're gonna be taking on a risk on a new startup but I can assure you we're gonna be light years better than cards and this is the good part if we aren't I'm sure they'll take us back I've got everything lined up including 2 advisors who've been in the industry for years what do you say you wanna help us start start a trash company with me and so he creates this website where he just googled like referral programs and I linked to the website where tim ferris he actually made a blog post where he talked about harry's their their prelaunch strategy and so he made this account if you go to his website his website is is it lone star trash dot com

Shaan Puri

great name by the way

Sam Parr

It's hilarious, this website. If you refer a new customer, you get a T-shirt. If you refer 10 customers, you get one free month of trash pickup. So, within like 24 or 48 hours, he sets up a Stripe account and collects $15,000 in sales. With that $15,000, he says, "Shit, I'm in business!" He goes out and buys 200 trash bins because that's, I guess, how many customers he got for month one. There's a picture of all these trash bins in his driveway. Then, he goes on Facebook Marketplace, searches within 500 miles, and finds a garbage truck for sale for $40. Apparently, Amex—I didn't know they allowed this—gives you a line of credit up to $60 or $80 for 7% interest. He uses that and buys this truck without ever seeing it. So, he calls the guy and says, "Hey, do a FaceTime with me," whatever. He spends $2 and gets this truck shipped to his house. Now he's in business, and tomorrow is his first day in business. He's got to get up at 4 AM. It's one day a week. It's one day.

Shaan Puri

a week with him

Sam Parr

I'm going to go with him, not tomorrow, but over the next few weeks. I'm going to get a video crew. I think we have to do this. This guy has started a trash business. Let me see, I have his math here. He was like, "Because I think a bad year is going to be about $150,000 in revenue. I think a decent year will be $250,000, and I think a great year will be $350,000. If it works well, I'll expand to new regions." It's crazy fascinating that he's doing this, and he's doing it mostly in public. He's tweeting out all the stuff that he's doing. It's just so funny that this guy's doing this because he's making a joke about it. For example, he bought hoodies for himself and, I guess, the one employee he has. And what's the t-shirt say? It says...

Shaan Puri

Great days start with a good dump. [Picture of his garbage truck.]

Sam Parr

And I had him interview to get information for this podcast. I asked him all these questions and wrote them down. He's taking a very technical, like, techie analysis towards this. He's like, "Look at the search SEO for the largest company in waste management. They have this many pages, but the second highest in the country only has 650 pages. I think I could rank there by doing X, Y, and Z." It's crazy fascinating! And get this: one truck holds 200 bins worth of trash, and those 200 bins worth of trash cost $250 to dump. So the costs are going to be the truck, the cans—which eventually pay off pretty quickly—and then labor. Right? It's a pretty fascinating business, and I cannot believe that he just went all in on this and he's making it happen. I appreciate people who do this so much.

Shaan Puri

I love this story, and I feel very invested in this. I've invested in a lot of companies, but I feel invested in this one. I need this to work—Lone Star Trash. I feel like we should single-handedly pump this. To all listeners in the... where is he? Dallas?

Sam Parr

He's 30 minutes outside of Dallas, and he explicitly said, "When you talk about this pod on the pod, I'm afraid that too many people are going to go to my website. There's a buy now button, and I'm just going to have to go through all the work of refunding them and telling them we can't service them."

Hubspot

so I

Sam Parr

have to remind people he it's only servicing one region right

Shaan Puri

But he says my neighborhood has, I think, 300 to 400 houses. Then there's 400 houses in the sister neighborhood. He says the trash collecting company is currently charging $33 per month per bin. So, most houses have 2 bins, which makes it $66 a month. Let's just do the math here: $66 a month for just his neighborhood is $26,000 a month, or $316,000 a year. If we double it for both neighborhoods, that's like $600,000 of potential revenue if he got everybody to switch. Of course, he's not going to get everybody to switch, but I do think he could do pretty well. So, here's a question: should we brainstorm a few marketing tactics for him?

Sam Parr

But it actually could be potentially bigger than we think. So, he goes, "I talked..." Basically, I went on Facebook Marketplace and I found all these trash guys who are selling these trucks. I just played dumb with them. I was like, "I didn't even play dumb; I am dumb. I don't know anything about this." He makes friends with all these guys on Facebook Marketplace who are selling trucks. He flies up there and meets one of them. This guy is in Oklahoma. You would think that he's just a country bumpkin, but his business did $9,000,000 in revenue and $2,000,000 in profit. He owns a plane that he flies around in. He starts talking to these guys and learns that there's a small town, McKinney, which is north of Dallas. I guess it's a small city. They just went out to bid for them to get a new trash collector. It was for 50,000 houses, and the contract is $20,000,000 a year. That's a relatively small region outside of Dallas, so it potentially could be bigger. We talked about Wayne Huizenga, a billionaire who started AutoNation, Blockbuster, and Waste Management. He used to own the Florida Panthers. Then we talked about Bradley Jacobs, who's a multibillionaire who also started with trash businesses. Maybe it could be bigger than we think.

Shaan Puri

Spencer, if you're listening to this, which I'd be stunned if you didn't, listen to this giant segment about your company. Me and Sam, we haven't talked about this. I don't know if Sam's cool with this, but we're going to buy your next truck for you, sir. We're going to invest in your company, and we will fund your next truck. That will be the MFM trash truck. How many other podcasts do you know that will have this kind of support?

Sam Parr

their own trash dude I would 1 100 I would I would I would put up $20 to exactly

Hubspot

we're we're

Shaan Puri

Both in for $20, we'll buy the next $40,000 truck whenever he's ready to expand. We'll come in at a low valuation here, right? Give us a $500,000 valuation, and we, as this podcast, will then single-handedly promote this neighborhood by neighborhood as you expand. But I think you should do a couple of things. So here are a few free marketing ideas for him. Do you know, can you design the bins? Could he paint the bins? Could he color the bins in a different way or design them so that if you're using this trash company, your bins will look different?

Sam Parr

I don't see why not I mean like a bright pink one or something

Shaan Puri

like the lyft mustache back in the day remember when yeah

Hubspot

yeah yeah

Shaan Puri

Yeah, you would go through San Francisco and you'd see these cars driving with this fluffy mustache on them. You'd think, "What the heck is that?" Then, somebody would have to tell you. It was so weird; you had to ask, "What is that?" As soon as somebody knew, they were happy to tell you, "Oh, that's Lyft. It's a ride-sharing company. You could actually just request a ride on your phone, and then the driver will show up." Like, that's his car; he puts the mustache on it, and that means he's a taxi. It's like, "Whoa, okay, interesting!" I have a Lyft mustache right here. I admire this marketing tactic so much that I stole a mustache off a car, and I have this thing.

Hubspot

so

Sam Parr

You'll have to have, like, he could paint cookies on the bin, and then the truck will look like Cookie Monster or something. It would be silly when it goes into...

Hubspot

exactly

Shaan Puri

The truck and the bins need to become his marketing assets. The bins should look like you've made a choice to go with the local provider who's all about service. That has fun... blah blah blah, right? So, make the bins fun and interesting in some way.

Sam Parr

great idea

Shaan Puri

1st step, 2nd step. He should go around and basically fly after the other company puts bins out. You know, let's say they're knocked over or they're in the wrong spot. He should put a little thing that says, "We would never do this to you. We're a new company started by a guy who lives here." I was so frustrated. Tell your little founder story and put it as a slip inside of every trash bin because you're really just marketing in this 400-house radius, right? So, pretty easy. Next thing...

Hubspot

I don't

Shaan Puri

Kids love garbage trucks and fire trucks. They just love them! So, take the truck on tour.

Sam Parr

it's like the wienermobile do you remember that the oscar mayer wienermobile

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. We would go to school. This is the Oscar Mayer playbook. In our town, the fire department, for Christmas, they always bring the fire truck out. They play music off it and put a Santa on top. They do the same thing every holiday. Your truck's going to drive around, it's going to be themed, and it's going to create an occasion. For example, when a garbage truck comes outside here, I grab my kids and we run outside because they love to see it. They love to see it pick up the trash, whatever. So, do something that's going to get the kids excited. For example, let the kids ride in the truck or drive the truck, or let everybody get out their hose and wash the truck. You could spray your hose at the truck while it's going by. Create something that's going to get kids excited to see it, and if families are excited to see it, they will know who you are and tell your story. I think if he does this, he could literally get like 80% of the neighborhood on board because the other trash company does no marketing whatsoever. It sounds like they're not doing a great job. There's a little bit of an opening here to go in and sell a better service.

Sam Parr

I think it's just fascinating. I think that, like, obviously the margins are going to be way worse than software. But you have a recurring element here. I mean, the size of the market is every home in America. Also, just somebody's doing... you remember how we talked about Pink's? Pink's was a window cleaning company. Yep. And for some reason, they just have cool hats. People have their hats. They sent me one; I wear it, it's awesome. What he's doing with "Great days start with a good dump," like that little silly stuff, or the fact that his website is kind of funny and how it has an affiliate program... this is brilliant.

Shaan Puri

I do think he's missing that branding, though. There's no, like, you know, Pinks has its color, its name, and whatever. There's also the "Two Guys and a Truck" kind of moving company. That's another good one where it's like, you know, 22 dudes in a truck. He needs something like that.

Sam Parr

Yeah, but keep in mind, I'm pretty sure he started this three weeks ago. So he's like, "Look."

Shaan Puri

why didn't he ever get figured out

Sam Parr

Yeah, I decided this was my mission 8 weeks ago. I'm all in. You know, you can't stop me now.

Shaan Puri

We'll crowdsource this, dude. If there's a design agency that listens to the pod, you need to do a pro bono, free, full branding. You know, where's Red Antler? Red Antler, I need you to take on this project for free in exchange for marketing collateral that you did for this local trash company in Texas. We need a design company to help us crowdsource everything we need to make this happen.

Sam Parr

And he said, "So I had him fill this out on 12:15." He goes, "I came up with this idea 60 days ago." So what's that? That's October 15th. He came up with the idea, and then he got customers that fast. I just can't believe this. It's just so funny. He's got all these pictures of all these bins in front of his house of him and his wife cleaning the bins. It's just... this is...

Shaan Puri

Art also needs to go on TikTok and tell the story. I don't know if you've seen it, but somebody posted this TikTok the other day. They said, "Oh, you're worried about starting to post on TikTok, but you're worried about what you have to say or how you look or whatever." And the woman goes, "Do you know what I watch on this app? I watch guys cut sand. I watch women clean houses. I watch a massage therapist. I don't even get the massage; I watch other people get massages." Dude, it's like...

Sam Parr

I watch chiropractors and fruit getting crushed

Shaan Puri

Yeah, cracking necks and opening up avocados. Like, you know, what are you waiting for? I think that is a... you know, Marc Andreessen did "It's Time to Build" as this rally cry. There's like the equivalent one of like...

Hubspot

do you

Shaan Puri

I know what I watch. I'll watch anything. It's the rally cry on TikTok. I think he's got to tell the story of this dad, this father of two, who got so annoyed with his trash company that he just decided, "Alright, f*** it, I'm doing this."

Sam Parr

He says that his goal is **24 customers in less than 18 months**, which is around **$1,000,000** in ARR. He mentioned he's going to hit **1,000 customers** in the first **6 months**. On his first day driving the truck, he said, "I screwed around with it a little bit to test it out, but I really am just getting going tomorrow for the first time." Then, listen to this guy's humor. I asked, "Are you looking to hire for certain positions?" He replied, "Yeah, in fact, as I'm typing this, I'm sitting at the bar at Dave and Buster's, watching adults play the claw game. Anyone who wins, I slip in my biz card and give them an invite to make **$20 an hour** driving my trash trucks." This guy is great! He's full of humor. This is an awesome idea that he started as just a silly thought, but it's got legs, and I think this is going to be fantastic.

Shaan Puri

This can make sense because I think Spencer also wants a bit of fame... a little bit of content fame.

Hubspot

guess yeah

Sam Parr

yeah yeah

Shaan Puri

Not just that, I think he, you know, from meeting him, has an urge that I have—a very primal urge inside—which is like, I just want to live. I just want to do something different with my life. You know, I just want to do something different than the path. Like, okay, I get it, I could do the path, but I really don't want to just do the path. I think Spencer has this, which is what leads somebody to do something like this. It sounds like he's already pretty all in, but triple down! Go even further all in. Rebrand yourself as "Trash Daddy." Tell your story to the world. Do the unnecessary! You know, every Sunday have a theme. Remember how Goggins used to do this with Sprigg? He used to put a truffle in every box. You know, every time you ordered, you'd get a little chocolate truffle with it. Just keep coming up with surprise and delight ways to go up. Do the absolute unnecessary because that's what people pay attention to—the things you're...

Sam Parr

gonna be doing a toy trash truck in people's mailbox or something like that

Shaan Puri

eggs sam brilliant

Sam Parr

I should be doing this frankly this is yeah

Shaan Puri

this is my tip of business get out of the way

Sam Parr

Yeah, he said, "Ryan Graves, I'm the Travis Kalanick. I need to take this thing over. This needs to be my business."

Shaan Puri

okay his ass on the on the

Sam Parr

Yeah, I'm sorry. No, I think this is awesome! So, if I... what's his handle? If you look up Spencer Scott, I think his handle is @akaSpencerScott on Twitter. This is going to be a really fun journey for us to follow along. We're early in this, and we're going to help make this a thing. This is awesome!

Hubspot

by the

Sam Parr

Way Spencer, if you're listening, holler at us. I know I talked to you about this before, but now it's public record.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that was awesome! Okay, wow, what a segment. What a way to start off the new year! That was amazing. That's what this podcast is all about. If this is your first time listening to this podcast, that's what this podcast is all about.

Sam Parr

yeah finding cool stuff alright

Shaan Puri

I wanted to tell you another just like fun product real quick

Hubspot

this is

Shaan Puri

A quick one: click this link to this thing. **Birdie** (birdie.design) is the name of it.

Sam Parr

Dude, I can't tell if these things are popular. Is this like a yellow cab, where I've noticed one and they're everywhere? Or have they always been everywhere? We talked about this type of stuff a while ago. It's everywhere now.

Shaan Puri

I've I've never seen one you've seen one of these in real life

Sam Parr

no we'll go ahead and explain what it is

Shaan Puri

Okay, so I'll explain it in the context of this. One of the running jokes on the pod is that a completely valid business model is just "X beautifully done." If you're pitching somebody, you really don't even have to say much more than that. You're like, "What if it was just headphones, just really well done," and everyone else was on the phone?

Sam Parr

a thermostat just a thermostat

Shaan Puri

Can't argue with somebody who is just saying, "We're just not gonna do it." You know, all the bad ways you could do this, we're not gonna do any of those. Just beautifully done is Nest. This is a thermostat that's just beautifully done. This is an air quality monitor that is beautifully done. So go to [birdie.design](https://birdie.design) and you'll see it. It's this white circle with a small yellow bird, like the old Twitter logo. When it's pointed up, like a cuckoo clock, that means the quality is good. If the air quality in your house ever drops, rather than beeping like an annoying smoke alarm or having tons of numbers and strange colors that stress you out, the bird just changes positions to tell you, "Hey, the air quality is not great right now." Then you look in your app, and it'll tell you all about it. So this thing is awesome. I think it's big in Europe. It's not actually... they're like just now...

Sam Parr

actually I don't know if

Shaan Puri

This is true, but they're expanding to the states now. I think it's bigger in Europe. I think this is a fantastic idea and a beautiful website.

Sam Parr

The currency is DKK. What's DKK? Some type of monopoly money? I don't know. Yeah, it's Danish Krone.

Shaan Puri

Ah, Krone! Yes, how could I forget? So, yeah, this thing cost 2,000 DKK, which is an unknown amount of dollars.

Sam Parr

$300 $300 that's 300 it's beautiful

Shaan Puri

it's a piece of heart it's wonderful

Sam Parr

So, we talked about this with Steph Smith. She said that these air quality control monitors are going to... she predicted that the subreddit called "Air Quality" is going to be the next big thing. It only has 4,000 subscribers, but it's been doubling every six months. I think that with wildfires and all this other stuff, air quality control is going to become a huge issue. I keep seeing people tweet about this constantly. They have these little digital meters, and I don't know what the measurement is, but they say CO2 is this number. It looks like a little digital clock, and they're everywhere, man! People are traveling with them. I'm seeing this everywhere now that she told us about this.

Shaan Puri

Yes, exactly. She was saying, like, you know, "I've noticed that sleep hour/sleep quality went through this crazy trend over the last, like, you know, four years where sleep became the vogue kind of health trend." And she's like, "I think air quality is gonna be next. Look at the growth of the air quality subreddit and the products on Amazon that are there." It's kind of like an immature space, and I think this is a wonderful, beautiful product design for a product that's in that space.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I mean, I'm looking at the Amazon ratings right now. Some of these products have tens of thousands of reviews. This is going to be a thing, man. This is going to be like the next version of Ring, I think, these air quality controls. But the thing about it is, I don't know if this is pseudoscience. Like, I don't know the truth of it. Are you willing...?

Shaan Puri

to bet your life on it that's that's the beauty of these products right

Sam Parr

That's the beauty. It's like a dog vitamin. It's like, "I don't know if this works," but I'll buy that insurance, right?

Shaan Puri

but don't you love your dog yeah how do

Sam Parr

I get CO2 out of my house. I can tell you, I don't know how to breed less. I don't know how to remove the car from the living room. I don't know how.

Shaan Puri

to do it it's coming from me I think yeah like don't fart outside

Sam Parr

Yeah, I don't know how to do it, but when I see it, I'm like, "That sounds important." It's like the word "leaky gut" or "juice cleanse." Like, well, if you use those words, I guess I have to do it.

Shaan Puri

Right, I don't know if I have leaky gut, but I sure as hell am willing to take any product that will stop it, you know, just in case.

Sam Parr

Alright, I've got one more quick thing. Yeah, you go. I need some advice. So, I own a Facebook group. You know, one of my hobbies is I have Facebook groups. I'm one of the only people that actually do that. I have 3 or 4 groups. I've got a couple that are in the 16,000 to 70,000 range. But I have one that when trends shut down, I just posted in there and I said, "I don't..."

Hubspot

know what I'm gonna do with this

Sam Parr

but here's a facebook group

Hubspot

I call it I actually am not gonna say

Sam Parr

the name of it because I don't wanna get flooded with

Hubspot

new people joining

Sam Parr

And I just said, "This Facebook group is going to close down. I just made a new one. You guys can all hang out in there." It's got 3,000 members, most of whom are people who have small businesses making hundreds or thousands of dollars. It's mostly that type of business size. I have no intention to monetize it, but I wouldn't be lying if, in the back of my head, I'm just thinking this could be something I'm missing out on. The group has a lot of traction; people post every single day. Are you a member of it?

Shaan Puri

I think what what did you call it let's let's give it a you wanna give it a plug or you don't wanna give a plug

Sam Parr

it's called

Shaan Puri

yeah terrible name I think it's

Sam Parr

A hilarious name, and the tagline is "Shipping products with a bold, fast, fun energy." It's a community of people who build and talk business that are bold, fast, and fun. The artist formerly known as Trends, we're a pirate ship of people who care about talking nerdy business stuff, showing up, asking questions, and commiserating with our fellow pirates. Mostly because Trends kicked us out, and we're a bunch of D-gens. We need a place to go to.

Hubspot

and

Sam Parr

So, I created this group. It's got 3,000 members and dozens of posts per day. If I wanted to monetize this—which I actually am not sure I will because I don't want to work on it—what would you do?

Shaan Puri

The real answer is kind of a boring answer. I would absolutely not bother monetizing this.

Sam Parr

I'm not going to there's a 1% chance

Shaan Puri

Some reason why you have an incredible business that you already own and can focus on. Any ounce of my mind share and time share that you spend on not that business, on some really secondary business, is dumb and wasted. I agree.

Sam Parr

so I agree

Shaan Puri

that's the first thing

Sam Parr

but but but we are a podcast so we talk about stuff right right right

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so for the sake of argument, I'll tell you what you could do. I do think you should probably have called it something like "The Artist's Phone," really known as Trends. I think that's a better name. You could simply reboot Trends. That's the first simple, obvious idea, right? So let's not overcomplicate things. People liked Trends. These are people that were already in Trends and paying customers of Trends. Trends is now free... let's just say there's an opportunity to do this. I actually think this is true about many businesses. There is this window, like I don't know, three years after a company has been acquired, where you can literally just start the same company again. This is so common. I see this all the time. People can literally build the same company again. The guy we sold The Milk Road to did the same thing. He built a company, sold it for $45 million, and then he built the same company and sold it again for another $45 million to the same company. Finally, they were like, "Hey, non-compete this time. You can't do this again to us." People really underestimate how much you can do this, especially a few years after a product has been acquired. By that time, the team has changed, the product's been folded in... you know, a whole bunch of stuff has gone awry. So I think that's the easiest thing you could do.

Sam Parr

I believe they shut down Trends because it had 500,000 people on the email list. HubSpot was like, "Dude, Trends charges $300 a year. It probably makes, I don't know, what it made, but let's say $5 or $6 million a year." We have 400,000 people saying they're interested but haven't bought it yet. We can make way more money just making it free, and a portion of them will buy our software. But many entrepreneurs would be like, "Yeah, but $5 million or $6 million a year with two people running it? That's pretty dope. I would like that as well."

Shaan Puri

The next thing is, I think you could use it for growing Hampton. So, the way that Y Combinator uses Hacker News is interesting. Paul Graham basically created Hacker News, which became the most popular forum or message board for developers. He could have been like, "Guys, we gotta do a job board, and then we gotta do sponsored posts, and then we gotta make a paid tier. That paid tier is gonna have certain permissions." But he was like, "No, no, no. I already have one of the best business models in the world where YC can basically invest in young hackers." At that time, they were giving you like $18,000 for 6% of your company or something like that. All he needed to do was just keep the thing free and keep it awesome so that it became a marketing asset for YC. I think that was the right move, and that's what I would do if I were you for Hampton.

Sam Parr

You've given me ideas. So, look, here's how I think about some of these small projects. I think, "I don't want to spend a second doing it," but what I love about little projects like this is that there are people in my family and friends who I can involve. I'm like, "I don't want to spend a second doing this, but I will give this to you as long as you keep it awesome and it makes a little bit of money for yourself." You could just pay yourself with all that money; I don't care. But as long as this thing lives and it's great, I don't need to make a cent from it. I think what I can do is make this a thing where the community stays amazing. Once or twice a month, I can have a sponsor that pays a small enough salary for the person running it to make a living while keeping the community great.

Hubspot

that's a

Sam Parr

great idea I'm glad I brought this up I should do this

Shaan Puri

I love how you were like, "You gave me a great idea," but the thing you said was completely different than what I said. That's how this works. That's how this thing works. You think you... that's a little "yes, and" there for you. To all my thespians out there, Sam just "yes, and" it with a huge leap.

Sam Parr

didn't you say sponsor

Shaan Puri

it's yeah yeah I said the word sponsor

Sam Parr

oh you're talking about job posts on hacker news that's why I prefer one or the other

Shaan Puri

What Paul Graham didn't do... and then he'll go, "That's what I..." You stopped listening, and then you said, "Sponsorships, that's a great idea."

Sam Parr

For the record, I'm not going to spend any more than 10 minutes a month on this thing. I'm not actually going to do anything, but it is fun. The purpose of the podcast is to think about this stuff. We'll see what happens, but I'm not personally going to spend a second on this. You know what I mean? All these young bloods that we have in our crew, I would love to work with them in some capacity. I don't have an option to work with them or something. I'm just thinking about it. I'm going to start doing it. Yes, I say it to my wife, "Hey, let's go do this." Yeah, let's do that, and we're going to.

Shaan Puri

do it differently than what you said we're gonna do what I said instead

Sam Parr

Yes, sand is my new thing. Yeah, that's a great idea. And also, at that time, we're...

Shaan Puri

Gonna do this other thing. You're like, "What are you gonna eat for dinner?" and I'm like, "Well, I had Thai for lunch, so not that." You're like, "Thai? That's a great idea! I'm so glad you said Thai."

Sam Parr

that is so fucking funny I'm gonna yet say the shit out of people from now on

Shaan Puri

well the beauty

Hubspot

of the beauty of

Shaan Puri

The beauty of the "yes, and" approach is that instead of saying "they can't" or arguing with you, people are like, "Oh, are you trying to be a buzzkill and not 'yes, and'?" or "Are you trying to stop our flow?" They're like, "I guess I gotta go with this." It's not going...

Sam Parr

The direction I want... but I guess the last thing you have is Camp MFM coming up on Wednesday. I had to bow out because I'm committed to this whole being a parent thing, you know, whatever that is. The whole, you know, being a person, dad, and all that nonsense. I'm committed to it. I saw the flyer you made for it, and I did not have any FOMO until I saw that the Airbnb founder is going. In particular, the Airbnb founder who interviewed me for my job at Airbnb and then fired me four days later, one day before I was supposed to start. He's going, and I would have loved to have gone to see that guy. By the way, he fired me for just cause. He was right; I was wrong. How did you get him?

Shaan Puri

Ben is the easy answer. So, we went into Camp MFM this year with a fresh mindset: new year, new us.

Sam Parr

And Camp MFM is basically Sean and Ben. You went and found last year, or we did two years ago, 15 people, including Mr. Beast, maybe 20 people. Last year, we went to a kind of crummy house that was just huge. You somehow got us all Nikes, and then we went, like, basketball shoes, and then we went and played basketball. The story sucks.

Shaan Puri

here's what happened last year let me just yes andrew real quick so so yes they're completely different last year ben was like why don't you host an event why don't you host like a a conference or something like that there's so many people that were you know are in the kind of podcast audience twitter audience that would love to come I said yes but a couple of problems a I don't really like big groups of people like I really have a bad time when I go to events with like a lot of people in them it's just socially not something I enjoy 2nd conferences are kinda boring and if I don't wanna like if I when I hear oh you're invited to come to a conference either you're gonna watch people talk or you're gonna get to talk on stage it's not again I had that spencer Scott urge to just do something different with my life so I said why don't we do something different I said what would I what would be the instead of just saying no let me instead ask what would be the event that I would love to go to I'd be looking forward to it and I was like oh what I would want is just kinda like a summer camp for adults where it's kinda like a summer camp like I used to go in the summers to play at a basketball camp camp so I love basketball I would just go to something that's super fun we're gonna play and then we hang out and we talk yeah we do that after but like the main thing is we're gonna play and we're gonna compete and we're gonna have a lot of fun and that all the guests you know it's a small number of guests but that all of them are like the 20 most fascinating people I know we tried it last year it was amazing mister beast I tweeted out the thing I said here's my my dream for an event and I had 3 bullet points and I put out a Google form and in that Google form there was like 200 people replied of which a 199 we did not invite to the event but one of them was mister beast and I didn't even know he followed us I thought it was a prank when I was like oh yeah sure your twitter handle's mister beast yeah sure what whatever and then his email was like a real name but it was kinda like a like a yahoo or something like that I was like this gotta be fake then I get a d so I don't even reply the next day he dms me he says so we're doing this or what and I like you know spit out my drink and I was like oh shit oh okay yeah yeah we're doing this where do you live oh north carolina funny coincidence we're doing it there and so I was like I wanna make this easy

Sam Parr

for him

Hubspot

and so

Sam Parr

we just so happen to be doing it in greenville north carolina

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yes, exactly. So, we went—you were there—it was a great time. There were 27 people, and we invited this guy who trains a bunch of NBA stars like Kyrie Irving and Trae Young. He used to train Kobe, and he came down to basically be our coach. It was a bunch of out-of-shape business people plus a couple of entertainers, you know, people from the entertainment world that joined as well. Anyway, it was a good time. This year, we wanted to do it again, but we made some differences. I was like, even fewer people. Last year, we had 27 people; this year, we cut it down to I think 17. We really only tried to have 15, but we ended up with 17. We said, "Well, we don't want to do it with the same exact group every single year," because again, the goal of this is we're trying to rotate. We want to use it as an excuse to meet people. We want to meet...

Hubspot

and so

Sam Parr

By the way, you forgot. We all lived—or it was only two nights—but we all stayed in the same area. It was just a huge house, like a family's house that had all their stuff. I shared a slumber party; I shared a bunk bed with Ramon and his son. They had a lake that we were swimming in. It was awesome! It was a crappy inside house, but that actually made it amazing. It made it really fun.

Shaan Puri

Well, it was the best house in Raleigh, North Carolina, but that says more about Raleigh than it does about the house. So, this year we were like, "Alright, we're doing it again," and we came up with kind of a dream guest list. Now, why did I say that Ben was the way that we got the Airbnb guy to come? Because Ben somehow just... he is like the Twitter API. He just consumes so much content that he knows. I was like, "You know, it's like an AI search." I asked, "Who is a super interesting businessperson who also loves to play basketball?" He said, "Oh, I think the Airbnb guy plays basketball every weekend." I was like, "How could you possibly know that?"

Sam Parr

lanny owns the san antonio spurs he

Shaan Puri

Owns the San Antonio Spurs, and I was like, "Oh wow!" So we reach out to Joe. Joe is a... he finds me his email. I cold email him and I say, "Hey, you don't know me from... you don't know my name, Sean, but you don't know me from John. Here's this event that we're doing. I think you would really like it, Joe. We'd love to have you." He calls me and he's basically asking me some questions, but I could tell he's just like, "Are you... are you like an insane person? Do I want to be around you for two days or not?" And so he's coming. The guest list is kind of amazing, so I'm going to do a recap of it afterwards. But what a thing to manifest! You know, Jess Ma came on the podcast and she said this thing. I was like, "So you run a venture studio, an idea lab? What do you call it?" She's like, "Oh no, I don't call it anything. I have a team of people that are like my little manifestation company. If I want to make something happen, they just help me make it happen, make it go from idea to a thing." Now that's how I think about what me and Ben do. It's not like a holding company; it's like a manifestation company. What is the life we want to have? And then we just sort of make it so. This is one thing that I would want to have as my kind of annual thing that I do.

Sam Parr

yeah oh but dude

Shaan Puri

I gotta tell you so just I'm flying out tomorrow right

Sam Parr

so I'm like alright

Shaan Puri

I gotta get my my haircut and my beard dry I gotta get I gotta get fresh

Sam Parr

by the way your haircut looks quite good you should do that more often

Shaan Puri

Notice, my hair might look good, but my beard looks untouched. Why is that? What happened? Let me tell you a little story. So, this is a little...

Sam Parr

I did I didn't think that

Shaan Puri

Well, I think that... I normally go to this barbershop. I have this guy who comes to my house to cut my hair, and it's like a routine, so I don't need to think about it. But he couldn't come, so I was like, "Alright, I'm going to this place." I go, and I'm like, "Great! I have this big event. I just need a little standard 'f-boy' haircut, trim the beard a little bit, and we're good," right? He's like, "I don't do beards." I was like, "Pretty sure I booked that. What do you mean?" He's like, "I just don't want to mess it up." And I was like, "Well, I also don't want you to mess it up, but I need it." Alright, whatever, weird but okay. Then he's like, "Okay, what do you want for your hair?" I show him a picture, and he starts doing it. Super nice guy, but I noticed that his hand is really trembling while he's cutting my hair. I'm like, "Okay, this is interesting." I feel bad for him, but, you know, Sam, I also feel bad for me because you don't want to get your haircut by somebody whose hand is trembling with the clippers. So I'm like, "Okay, this is now a high-risk situation. I'm about to go to my biggest event of the year. I hired this vlogger guy to follow me around. I'm not trying to have an messed-up haircut." But I put my faith in this guy. We did it, and the haircut turned out okay. I was like, "You know what, Bertram, forget I ever said it. Not doing it." And at the end, he goes, "Thank you so much. You've been so kind to me." I go, "I didn't do anything! What do you mean? I just sat here and got my haircut." He's like, "I was so nervous. I have never done that haircut." And I was like, "Hey man..."

Sam Parr

what the hell

Shaan Puri

what the fuck are you telling me this afterwards

Sam Parr

you got the most basic haircut that every guy ever has

Shaan Puri

This is the standard guy haircut. What do you mean? This is a barbershop. You work here, right? Like, did I just ask a customer to cut my hair? Most bizarre experience. He's like, "I was so nervous. I've done one of these before and I totally screwed it up." Bianca, she's amazing. He points to this woman, Bianca, and he goes, "She had to fix it for me. She's so good with the clippers." I'm like, then why did Bianca cut my hair? What's happening right now?

Sam Parr

you should ask somebody once a you should tell me to start a trash company and fit right in dude

Shaan Puri

outrageous experience

Sam Parr

am I right

Shaan Puri

I was laughing so hard I was like what just happened to me this is like a a comedy skit

Sam Parr

It's going to be Wednesday to Friday. I just got FOMO for the first time last night when I saw that Joe was going to be there. I'm bummed I can't go. Hopefully, you do well and hopefully, you get some good podcasts.

Shaan Puri

yeah that's a lot of pressure I'm just gonna try to have a good time that's my goal

Sam Parr

no or make videos like good views

Shaan Puri

video card

Sam Parr

alright that's the pod