The Step By Step Guide To Starting A Business From $0

Shaan Puri

Describe your approach. Like, okay, you're starting a company from scratch. I would say it's just a question of priorities. I would say the first priority is building an awesome team. That means recruiting high-level people and then really setting a cultural foundation around that. So that's the non-poking fun way of looking at it. That's their priority. So what's your priority when you start an endeavor? Did you see this email I sent you? I forwarded you an investor update I got. Did you see that email I sent?

Sam Parr

no from who

Shaan Puri

well I can't say but because I was sort of like you know this person's smart they actually they've sold the company before

Sam Parr

which address did you send it to

Shaan Puri

I don't know, maybe you're like the hustle one. I don't know, but just see if you see an email from me. Anyways, I'll just explain to you. You don't even need to read the email. Basically, this is so different from anything I would do. I was like, if this person wasn't already successful—like they built a cool company before this—they are a smart person. I've met them before. Their company updates or their investor updates are highly aspirational. They haven't launched yet. The team is like, it's like, oh, the team is growing. We have, like, I don't know how many people they have—like 30, 40 people now. We did our second off-site because remote work is hard to build our bonds. At our off-site, we played these games, did this mission statement thing, and here's our values. On top of the values, we're thinking about how to build a culture that's really transparent and collaborative. And again, they haven't launched yet—no revenue, no nothing—but they have a professional photographer. The update is super robust. On one hand, when I read this, I'm just like, oh no. This is like watching a car drive off a cliff. It's like this is all the parts of a startup except for the important parts. I know they must be doing the important things; they must be building the product too. It's not like they're not. But I would never prioritize these things in my own companies. I know you're the same way, where we're both a little bit brash. You're like, no, the office doesn't have cups; we use these...

Sam Parr

your hands

Shaan Puri

yeah like can you put your hand like this yeah like what

Sam Parr

do you think hands are for dawg

Shaan Puri

Yeah, like they don't call me Sam Hose Water Parr. For now, they're like, "Grab the hose and suck some down." If you need some, I'll bring it to your desk so you don't even have to get up.

Sam Parr

waste time he's convenient

Shaan Puri

the hose is 18 foot I sprung for the big one and

Sam Parr

it's like

Shaan Puri

And so, I know you're like me, where we do this very bootleg company building. You know, we look up and it's like, "Oh shit, we have 18 dudes. Okay, diversity, yeah, okay, we're going to change that." Or it's like the company culture is, "Oh yeah, come to my house tonight. I'm going to cook for you guys." I don't know, like, can you guys just stop at Safeway and buy a bunch of chips? Like, everybody likes chips, right? It's like, "Yeah, alright, everybody likes chips. Everybody go buy your favorite bag of chips. That's what we're doing tonight." You know, it's like these kinds of company building at the minimum. It's the "as you go" style. Then I see this and I'm like, either there are just many play styles and that's how you can win in different ways, or they're way wrong, or I'm way wrong. I don't know. What do you think about this sort of thing?

Sam Parr

I think that for a very particular type of person, I wouldn't be concerned about this type of email. I think that you should most likely assume you are not that person. Not even like you, but like anyone. They should default to the idea that they are not this. Like, if you are, you know, like some big swinging dick, some big deal...

Shaan Puri

Here's the analogy: it's like Steve Jobs. He was a perfectionist; he would build it and then release the perfect product. He wasn't trying to iterate. He didn't ask consumers for feedback, you know, like early on, early and often. He was a product visionary genius. Okay, but to assume that you're Steve Jobs-ish...

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

To assume that you're... that is a dangerous path to go down.

Sam Parr

I think this is a horrible idea. You and I have a friend who started a company. When they were only two people—him and his business partner—they hired a CEO coach to help with culture building. That's another sign. But yeah, I think they would go to retreats for this type of stuff. So, no, I think that this is not a good sign. It's not very good at all.

Shaan Puri

Have you... I guess, what's your approach? Okay, you're starting a company from scratch. I would say it's just a question of priorities. I would say this versus priorities is building an awesome team, recruiting high-level people, and then really setting a cultural foundation around that. So that's the non-poking fun way of looking at it. That's their priority. So what's your priority when you start an endeavor?

Sam Parr

Yeah, I'm doing that now. So, I'm going to start getting into it, and we could talk about it. But I'm going to start getting into something, and I'm thinking, "Alright, is this something that I want to build to sell, or is this something that I want to run forever?" Because that actually kind of matters in how you set up your entity. So, I think about what I want personally. What type of life do I want, and how long do I want to operate this for? So, that's it.

Shaan Puri

What would you do differently? Let's say, build to own forever or build to sell. What's the core difference?

Sam Parr

Well, if you want to pay yourself from the business as you go, an LLC makes sense. If you want to sell the company and you're willing to not pay yourself a little bit, or you only want to pay yourself as a W-2, then you want to be a C Corporation. I guess you could be an S Corporation, but if you want to sell your company in 5+ years and take advantage of QSBS, which is $10,000,000 of... or sorry, $3,000,000 of tax savings, then you for sure want to be a C Corporation because you can't get that on the other two. So, I would think about it like this: what type of structure do I want this to be? Of course, I have a history of getting hits, so if you don't have a history of making money, then I wouldn't even worry about that stuff, you know what I mean? Right? Like, I have proven to myself that if I say I'm going to do something, I follow through. You don't want to be the nerd that just buys business cards before you even have anything done.

Shaan Puri

Good. Okay, so that's literally a company structure. By the way, I think I told you this: one of the tax/lawyer people that's advising us gave us a pretty great structure that gives us the best of both worlds. They're like, "Just have a C Corporation that owns the business assets, and that's what will be eligible for Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) down the road." Then, the C Corporation will pay your LLCs, which are for each of the co-founders, as a management thing. So, you're going to get personally paid out through your LLC, but you still retain the long-term benefits of raising money or selling a C Corporation.

Sam Parr

yeah that's but is the is the stock owned by the c corp

Shaan Puri

yeah so the company c corp is the one issuing the stock it has the stock that's the stock that we want to sell so if

Sam Parr

you do a stock purchase

Shaan Puri

and we can either we and then the llc doesn't need to own that stock

Sam Parr

it's yeah then that's a great

Shaan Puri

management company

Sam Parr

That's like savvy stuff that I would have to look into and make sure I'm doing it right. Because there's a clock, you need to own it for 5 years. Additionally, what you could do is issue shares to family members in different trusts. Many people could take advantage of the Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) and other long-term capital gains benefits. So, I think a little bit about that stuff. Right now, every business that I'm thinking of, I'm considering how many employees I need to run this and what type of employee I'm going to have to hire. When you go big with some ideas, you're going to have to hire these smart ex-Harvard, ex-Facebook type of folks. You don't have to, but you know, that type of thing. Or is this like, "No, I could actually hire this $60,000 a year person," but where are they going to be coming from? And do I actually want or not want to work with that type of person? So, I think about who I'm going to have to employ and what the business model is going to be. And how stressful will that be? Advertising was really stressful because we had to go out and, well, you're in it now, you gotta hunt every single month. That can be a bit stressful. So now I'm looking at what is a little bit more recurring, which is less stressful. I'm thinking a lot about the business model, what type of lifestyle I want, and who I'd have to hire.

Shaan Puri

And you're thinking about these things, but that's not your priority list, right? So, like, I mean, in terms of action, right? That's thinking and planning. Cool, that'll take you a couple of days to be kind of noodling on that stuff. In terms of how do you like search for the action?

Sam Parr

That's actually the hardest part: figuring out what you want. As Ben said, in terms of action, I narrow it down to what's the one thing that can make this fail or work. Let's say I'm creating HubSpot a few years ago. There are a few items that need to work, or at least I would think they need to work in order to make it happen. For example, can I recruit engineers? That's probably one. Do people want this? And are my engineers even capable enough to create this? If I'm HubSpot, I'd think, "Well, Salesforce exists, so I actually think that people can build this." I'm able to build this product. Number two, I know a bunch of engineers, and I'm pretty good at sales. I think I can recruit engineers. Then it's like, "Well, do people want this?" That's the key question. I have to figure that out before I move on to the next steps. For a company like HubSpot, I would actually just do tons of phone calls and make a judgment call based on that. For this little small copywriting thing, the TryCopyThat.com project, I just put a presale on there and got $5,000 in presales. With Trends, we have $50,000 in presales. Depending on how easy the transaction is, if it's $1,000 or less in transactional value, I can probably create a landing page and presell it. We presold this $1,000 thing for Trends, and we were going to charge $10 for it when it came out. We presold, and I think we got $100,000. So, we got $1,000 from 100 different people to launch it. If it's under $1,000, my first step is selling it and giving myself one month to pull it off.

Shaan Puri

Right, yeah, that's exactly right. To me, I simplify it like this: **Step 1**: Do people want this? That's either through pre-selling, talking to people, or just kind of my own gut feeling. **Step 2**: Where will I get customers? I think I could probably get the first 10 customers from here and the first 100 customers from there. But, on an ongoing basis, do I have a repeatable way to get customers? If I know the answer to those two questions, then I just go for it. I don't do other things besides those two things. I build the thing that they want, give it to them, and see if they actually love it or if they just kind of like it. Then, I check if the way to get customers actually works. Once I do those two things, I don't really want to do anything else besides those two things for a long period of time. All the other stuff—raising money, company culture, hiring, corporate structure, naming, branding, packaging design—comes after.

Sam Parr

Yeah, and you have to... my opinion is not only do you have to say, "I'm not gonna worry about that at this," but you also have to say, "I'm actively actually going to avoid it." So it's like, "I'm gonna actively not care about it." You know what I mean? You kind of have to take that stance. I think there are actually some products where the question is not, "Do people want this?" There are some things that I'll create where I'm like, "Well, I already know people want this. I know they're gonna buy it." The question is, "Can I even get customers to this repeatedly?" Right? And then that's actually... can I...

Shaan Puri

Tell you a couple of tactics that help me with this. Yeah, I wonder if you did something like this. So, I have learned that it's actually best to be a little bit what I'll call **brutal** about this. Okay, so what do I mean by **brutal**? It is very easy, like when somebody hears that, "Oh yeah, you first figure out do people want this?" and you try to like, you know, pre-sell it or offer it to them and see if they sign up for the waitlist or they pre-buy or whatever. Then you figure out, "Where am I gonna get customers repeatedly?" and like you test that marketing channel. Those are the only two things you do. You say no to everything else. That sounds so simple, and then you tell someone, "Go try to build a startup," and they'll do everything else besides those two things.

Sam Parr

that's because that's like the embarrassing hard stuff

Shaan Puri

Yeah, because it's the hard stuff. If it doesn't work, the car doesn't move anywhere. Whereas you could do a whole bunch of other stuff, and it feels like you're moving, but the reality is you're not moving forward; you're moving sideways. But at least moving feels like you're moving, and so people will gravitate towards those things. Let me give you some examples. Yesterday, there was a tweet about Fircon, who was my old co-founder of my last startup. Fircon is like, you know, a man of action—few words, a lot of action. If you ever ask him, "When do you think you could do this?" it is rare for him to not be like, "I should be able to ship it tonight." Now, he only hits the "tonight" thing, I would say, 30% of the time. Like, 30% of the time, nothing happens. 70% of the time, he gets a crappy version that's not ready. But at 2 AM, there will be a message from him saying, "Here's where I left it." You know, like 10 or 20% of the time, he actually finishes the thing. But he almost never says anything besides, "Yeah, we should be able to do that tonight." I learned that from him, and every engineer we hired learned that from him. We're like, you can't give him a timeline that's not "tonight." If you say something besides "tonight," he's just like, "What the fuck are you talking about?" So he now has this new incubator thing called F. Inc.

Sam Parr

dude what was that picture of that

Shaan Puri

Dude, it looks sexy as hell, right? He got this **10,000 square foot** (or at least a **swept 10,000 square foot**) space in Fort Mason. It was beautiful when everybody was leaving San Francisco. Then, remote work shut down all the offices, schools, and in-person events. He was like the only buyer. He was like, "Yeah, I want a big space. I'm in the middle of San Francisco, in the best part." So, he's like, you could see the water and the bridge. He got **10,000 square feet**. He's like, "Oh, I'm gonna put a robotics lab, a hardware lab, desks. I'm just gonna have a bunch of engineers come make stuff here. You don't have to pay me rent; just come build this."

Sam Parr

and it's like beautiful

Shaan Puri

It looks amazing! Renovating it started with an empty blank shell, and now it looks awesome. So, does he make the story?

Sam Parr

make money from that or is he just spending money hoping that one of the companies takes off

Shaan Puri

He... he’s like, he made a bunch of money and he also just invests in the incubator company and the companies that are there. I invested in a bunch of them and like those are already doing well. So, somebody tweeted out, someone who is working out of there, they go, "One thing that Furcon does around the office is if a developer spends more than a day..." I think it's like if you spend more than a day on localhost, which basically just means like you're building your website project but you didn't ship it to the world. Like nobody else besides your laptop can access the site. If you spend more than a day, he'll just start calling you "localhost" until you ship it. He'll stop using your name and he'll just call you "localhost." Because, oh, you're just localhost now, Vicki, right? Like you don't want people to use your product, so you just... "Alright, localhost, you wanna get lunch?" And like I wanted to trade this out. I knew people would take it the wrong way, but like that is a style we kind of incubated at our last startup. It's sort of like bully management. And it's not that you're bullying people; it's that you're bullying your values. It's like, how do I live my values instead of just saying we care about, you know, building things fast? It's like, no, if you don't build things and get it to customers, you will get ridiculed here because that is not cool in our books. You want cool, you want respect? Then you gotta do the thing we respect. And like if you don't, we're gonna tease you until you do it.

Sam Parr

I was giving a guy a hard time in the trends group because he posted, "Hey, so I've got 6 podcast episodes already recorded. Can someone give me an answer on which hosting platform is better?" I replied, "Well, that's not really the important question. The important question is, why did you record 6? Just release 1 and post it." It's almost like...

Shaan Puri

by the way

Sam Parr

so when I started this

Shaan Puri

When I started this podcast, what did I do? I messaged you on Facebook. I said, "Hey, I'm starting a podcast that I think is going to be awesome. Here's the concept." At that moment, I was literally making it up as I went along. I made up the name and the concept right there on the spot. I knew I wanted to do a podcast generally, and I thought, "You have this awesome audience but no audio content. I'll make great audio content if you'll put it in front of your audience." Then I said, "I'm going to send you the first episode later today." There was no first episode at that time. I then went to book a studio, recorded the episode, and sent it to you within 24 hours so you could see that I was being legit about it.

Sam Parr

and it was live like 2 weeks later right

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I was like, "Okay, this is ready to go." Like, here, it's nobody's listening to it, but it's in the store. You can go listen to the podcast if you want to. The guy was like, "We got..."

Sam Parr

We got 6 done, and I'm like, "But that's not the question." The question is, "Why do you have 6 done and none live?" That's just crazy, right? Because people default to... it's embarrassing to post that stuff.

Shaan Puri

So, let me give you some other examples of being brutal about it. At Monkey Inferno, when we were working there, we would sometimes let interesting engineering guys just hang out in our office. We would say, "Ah, just work from here. No, you don't need to pay us. It's not a WeWork; it's a sick office. We got extra space, just come here and work. Just bring some good energy." So, these guys came, and they were working there. They had this idea that was really cool, and they would always ask us questions like, "This investor is interested. What should we think about this? Can you look at our deck? Can you do this and that?" I'm like, "Hey, is your product built? Do you have users?" Those are more important than this fundraising stuff. But I get it; it's flattering when an investor wants to give you money. But now that investor just took over your day. Now your day is all about that instead of the main thing. Right? Like, hey guys...

Sam Parr

and whatever happened to the

Shaan Puri

The main thing is, they get into Y Combinator and they're like, "Oh, we got into Y Combinator!" and we're like, "Awesome! Those guys will keep you on track." Then, over the next six weeks, it was like, "Yo, you're in NYC! What's it like to be in NYC? I've never done it. I heard it's awesome." They're like, "Oh yeah, the office hours are great. They're bringing up this and that." And we're like, "Hey, so how many users do you guys have?" And they'd be like... they didn't know the number.

Sam Parr

oh my god and me

Shaan Puri

And Furqan just looked at each other like, "Alright, new rule. If we ask you how many users you have, how many daily active users you have, and you don't know the number, like 10 push-ups." And they're like, "We're serious about that." Then they still didn't know for two more days and they had to look up the dashboard. We were like, "Alright, ten push-ups not working." So we took a marker and started writing a giant "0" on the wall behind them. We said, "This is the number of users you have according to us because you don't know. So we're just going to keep putting 0 here. It's your job to change this to be the number of users you have every day. When you come to the office, you're going to see this giant 0 above your head until you change that." And again, this worked. All of a sudden, they started thinking about how many users they had. They didn't want that giant 0 hanging over their head. I've seen many versions of this. I heard a story about Peter Thiel doing this too. Peter Thiel's values were all about focus. His thing was that everybody at PayPal, when he was the CEO, would have one thing that they were responsible for. The list could only be one. They had one big thing to care about. If you tried to talk to Peter, like, "Hey Peter, you know, the marketing stuff's going well, but I had this idea around this feature," he would literally just leave the room. If you ever tried to speak to him about the non-one thing you were assigned, he would just ignore you. He'd say, "Oh, that's not important. Remember, we decided what's important, so by definition, this is not important. I'm just not going to talk to you about non-important things. I'm going to leave." I don't know how real that anecdote is because I wasn't there, but let's just say, directionally, it's true. I think that is a really important way to operate a young company.

Sam Parr

what happened to the guys from your office

Shaan Puri

They ended up getting into Y Combinator (YC). They improved and kind of grew, but then they lost momentum. Once the growth wasn't instant, here's my read of it: they pivoted and disbanded. They're all doing different things now. One guy is working on a different company, another guy is working on a different company, and the third guy... I've never heard of him. I don't know where he went.

Sam Parr

probably found some cocaine somewhere

Shaan Puri

And he had told me something once, which was just like... he was like, "You know, maybe he had told me only once." He was like, "They were building a marketplace of supply and demand." The reason we were all excited about them was because they got this huge amount of supply really quickly. They had just posted on Reddit, and people really wanted the thing. So they started posting, but the demand side was slow. He was like, "When I... with the supply side, it felt like I stepped on a landmine. I just took one step and it just blew up." He goes, "I want the demand to feel like that too."

Sam Parr

dude so

Shaan Puri

on one hand I respected that on the other hand I was like dude sometimes you gotta like figure out how to get back to work

Sam Parr

I don't respect that, and the reason why is, you know, we're taught that people can change. We can evolve. Actually, I think last year I made the decision to assume that people don't change. The way you are is the way you are, and you're never changing. That way of thinking—how hopeful of you—has actually been amazing. Because, like, I'll meet someone and I'm just like, "Oh, you are a loser, and you're always going to be a loser." You say you're going to do something, but you don't do it. You don't have big dreams, and you don't work hard.

Shaan Puri

it's innocent until proven guilty yeah yours is guilty until proven innocent 100%

Sam Parr

And then I meet someone who's just like a baller, like Steph Smith, and I'm like, "Oh, well, you're just a winner." So, just like maybe sometimes you're gonna swing and miss, but you're always gonna swing. Therefore, I'm on board forever with anything you do because I know exactly how you are. People never change, and you're just a winner. You win consistently. Whereas there's a bunch of other people, there's this great article called "Losers Exist: Avoid Them." It's by the founder of Bleacher Report, Brian Goldberg. He writes a blog post about how he interviews people. He's like, "Yeah, see, I just think that losers do exist and not everyone is a winner. I'm just gonna try really hard to avoid those types of people." His way of doing it is he would say, "I asked you about the bottom fourth of your resume, so where you went to school." If I'm interviewing a candidate and she can't tell me passionately about something that she studied for four years, it's like, "Oh, you're just a loser. You don't care about philosophy, even though you studied that for four years. You're uninteresting, and thus, are a loser." But you interview this other woman, and she could passionately tell you a story about something, and it's like, "Well, I don't even care about philosophy, but because you entertained me, you clearly are curious. You're a winner." So anyway, my way of thinking as of late is just that people never change.

Shaan Puri

My sister has a great phrase on this. People will say that people don't change; they change for the worse. So her default is even worse. Like, yeah, this person will change over time. They're going to get worse; they're going to decay basically and harden into these bad patterns until proven otherwise. I think that's actually a pretty good way of thinking about things. Dude, can I tell you about this last thing? Like this experiment I'm doing that I think relates to this, which is: "Losers exist; how to avoid them." So here's my obstacle. That's...

Sam Parr

a good line right

Shaan Puri

It's brilliant! Here's my inversion of that: winners exist. Here's how to attract them. So, I put out this thing the other day. I tweeted out this...

Sam Parr

$50,000 thing

Shaan Puri

yeah I was like yo we just made $25 like a wire just came in from milk road for $25

Sam Parr

I did not think that was gonna work

Shaan Puri

I want to give it all away. I said that, you know, crypto is full of speculators. There are too many speculators and not enough builders. So, if you want to build something, here's the deal: I will give away one Ethereum (ETH), which is like $3,000. I was like, "I'll give you $3,000, no strings attached, no equity, to build whatever you want." You scratch your itch, and I just want to give it to builders. Here’s a link to apply. Two kind of amazing things happened regarding how winners exist and how to attract them. First, a bunch of people who are winners were like, "Hey, great idea! I'll put in money too." It was just an excuse to touch base with a bunch of these winners. So, the prize pool has more than doubled already, and now we're giving away more money to more people because people are like, "Oh, this is cool! I want to know something."

Sam Parr

and it was like the calm guy it was furcon

Shaan Puri

Yeah, the founder of Calm Furcon was like, "We'll match it." Then there were more people that we were like, "Hey, let's just give away this first batch." If this is cool, we're going to do more. We can just grow this into a self-sustaining builder grant. It's philanthropy, but instead of charity, I'd rather give to people building things. I'm sorry to those who are like, "No, there are people suffering out there." I'm like, "Yes, but also, this is where I want to give money—to something like this." By the way, the whole "a wire came in today" was all bullshit. That was just for the story. I was just like, "I want to give away this. I'm willing to give away this much money," and the people...

Sam Parr

You need to realize that lying for the sake of a story is actually okay. Have you remembered the book that we read about storytelling?

Shaan Puri

yes which one storyworthy

Sam Parr

story story worthy story worthy and he was like he's like just lie

Shaan Puri

like for example if you're talking about like yeah so I was

Sam Parr

In the car with my teacher, she started flirting with me. There were actually three people in the back seat, but I couldn't say that because... what I think is...

Shaan Puri

thing was like don't lie to add lie to omit details

Sam Parr

yeah omit details

Shaan Puri

Just omit details that don't add to the story. So, yeah, mine was like, I kind of just framed it as, "Oh, a wire just came in," and because...

Sam Parr

a wire could have came in

Shaan Puri

oh it could have came in and it did come in in pieces like the money did come to me somehow

Sam Parr

you you received a wire that day

Shaan Puri

And so, like, basically, this came on a whim. I told you we hired that new guy, Safwan. I think Safwan's 22, and he's awesome. I just like having winners around me—like young, awesome, energetic people who want to make things happen. I was like, "Yo, I want more people like you around." I'm not going to hire all of them, but how do I just get more? You know, there was Peter Thiel who did that thing where he took young people's blood and put it in his body. I want it in the legend! I want young blood in my body. How am I going to do that? So I was like, "Alright, let me just put out a grant for builders." This will attract people who, A, can build things, and B, know what 1 Ether (1 ETH) is and want 1 Ether. That $3,000 means something to them; this could unlock a month’s worth of... it's like an excuse to go build that thing, right? So what happened? Almost 1,000 applications came in within a week.

Sam Parr

and how long was an application

Shaan Puri

It was like a form that asked, "What's your story?" It was just kind of open-ended. It also included questions like, "What do you want to build? Give me the tweet pitch of it. Why do you want to build it? What's your handle? What's your address? What's your email?" and so on. People wrote in, and I'll share the Airtable with you. It's kind of amazing. Alright, so there's a bunch of junk. We shortlisted about 150 people out of the close to 1,000 as strong candidates. These individuals either had a compelling story or a strong idea. Then we got to the finalists, which are these 35 people. They all seem worthy of receiving this support. Ultimately, we're going to pick around 15 or so for this batch of grants. I think doing this whole thing is going to take me maybe three days total of attention to pull off. But what it's going to create is just a bunch of young, awesome energy. By "young," I don't mean just literal age, but more like people who have that *psychopathic* energy. It's like someone who has an idea, has energy, has optimism, and doesn't think of all the reasons they shouldn't do it. Instead, they're like, "Yeah, fuck yeah! I'm going to apply. I'm going to do this." So they're going to be around me, and I think this is going to be so ROI positive in the long run that it's insane.

Sam Parr

Dude, I just have to say that I've done these things before. I think you did it before when you gave a business to someone, right?

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

And I've never had it work out. Yeah, it just kind of went on the back shelf, and they just kind of forgot about it.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it could be. And like, you know, that's why the main filter is: are you going to actually do anything, or are you just talking about it? Or is your day job, or your student status, or whatever, going to just trump this and you never get around to actually making things happen? That's the number one criteria here. But dude, the stories are like amazing of who writes in. It's like it just reminds you of, "Oh wow, the world is way bigger than the amount of people that I interact with on a day-to-day basis."

Sam Parr

are you giving the money all to one person

Shaan Puri

no no no there's gonna be like 15 people who get the grant

Sam Parr

and it's like a few grand each

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

alright well I'm eager to see what's happen what's gonna happen when are you gonna decide

Shaan Puri

We'll decide, like, in the next 5 days who gets it. Then we're just setting up, like, we're just gonna run the whole thing in a Telegram group or something like that. And yeah, we'll see what happens. But I think, guys, my advice is to do things that create and attract winners to you. This is the opposite lesson of, like, "losers exist and how to avoid them." That's great advice. I think actually slightly less great advice is that winners also exist. Here's how to get near them, get around them, and figure out different ways to have them around you. This is one that, like, you know, not everybody can afford to do a grant program or whatever, but...

Sam Parr

like yeah but if

Shaan Puri

I had no money. I could have hustled and created this grant program instantaneously. I could have emailed, you know, 50 people and been like, "Hey, will you put up $1,000 for this? Here are all the benefits you're going to get." And you know, which is how, by the way, I hired Safwan. He initially emailed me saying, "Hey, you should do a grant program. Here are five reasons why." I was like, "Oh, that's actually a great idea. Will you do all the work?" He said, "Yeah, I'll do all the work."

Sam Parr

Did you ever read San Francisco's subreddit? No? Alright, so I used to go to the subreddit for San Francisco all the time. There was this guy who started posting about five years ago. He just said, "Hey everyone," and posted a picture of himself holding a beer. He goes, "I'm at this bar," I forget what it was in Haight-Ashbury, "I'm at this bar, come down, your first drink's on me." He just posted that, and people made fun of him. Then he did it again the next week, and he did this for literally like 60 weeks in a row. He became famous for it! The guy was like, "Oh, you did it! You wanna have a good time?" This guy seems really nice. Everyone goes to Pug's Sobe; he's a really cool dude. He'll buy your first drink, whatever. If you do that with building cool stuff, it actually works out quite well. It's like, "Hey, I'm building this thing, tag along for the ride." Right? It tends to work well. The guy does it all the time; it's great. He became famous for saying, "Oh, come have your first drink on me, I'm down here." I wonder how much he spent. Dude, we used to do these mixers, these roommate mixers in San Francisco, and we would only spend $500. But we were like the man! We were the most popular people for a long time. We did that every week for like two years.

Shaan Puri

what and what were you doing what $500 went to doing what

Sam Parr

I bought everyone beer at a bar. We’d host them at a bar, and I would just be like, “Hey, can I get $2 beers?” I might come every week and spend at least $500. They were like, “Alright, cool.” So I was like, “Alright, here’s my card. Stop it at $500.” It was pretty sick.

Shaan Puri

can we turn the ship around we need to circle back business term

Sam Parr

Let me tell you about a cool company that I just discovered. The guy told me to tell you "Hey." So, dude, I don't know if you know... I don't know if that was like he's a fan or if he actually knows you. Have you... it's called... So I'm linking to it in here in the doc. I'm highlighting it right now. It's called getcyberleads.com. Have you ever seen this?

Shaan Puri

no who so who's the guy

Sam Parr

I don't I don't know I don't even know his name I just dm ed him on alex alex westco

Shaan Puri

okay yeah I don't think I know this person

Sam Parr

He said, "Tell Sean I said hey." Alex West is his name. I didn't know if he was saying it as a way that he knows you. He must just be a fan.

Shaan Puri

alright so let's get cyber leads

Sam Parr

The reason it's cool is that it's just him. Basically, what it is, is you pay... let's see, how much is it? So, like, you pay between $100 and $1,000 a month for a bunch of different versions. But basically, every month, just one time, he sends you a list of 1,000+ handpicked companies that just raised a lot of money and are highly likely to look to outsource, whether it's technology or design. They're looking to outsource stuff. If you're an agency owner, you sign up for this, and every month you just get a bunch of new leads. The lead list includes the CEO's name, the CEO's contact information, what this person is likely to outsource, where they're located, how big they are, and how much money they just raised. The reason why this is cool is because it's so freaking simple. There's very clear value. It's just...

Shaan Puri

one person it's making $300,000 a year

Sam Parr

So, sorry, yeah, $300,000 a year. In March, he said he did $20,000 a month with a net profit of $17,000. It's now gone up to like $30,000 a month. I just thought this was unique, and I love these types of businesses because the value proposition is so clear. If just one of these things closes a deal, it's worth it. I actually think that you could do this for a bunch of different verticals. You've never seen this before.

Shaan Puri

No, I've never seen this. How does he do the... like what they're likely to outsource? Is he just guessing based on that?

Sam Parr

on the industry or

Shaan Puri

is it something

Sam Parr

I go, "Are you doing this handpicked?" He goes, "Yeah, every report takes me about 100 hours."

Shaan Puri

to do the whole leads list

Sam Parr

And he sends one email per month. If you go to the website and click "Live Demo," you can basically see what he sends you. It's just like an Airtable, an Airtable table, and you can kind of see all the information.

Shaan Puri

wow that's kinda cool

Sam Parr

alright I like this pretty cool right

Shaan Puri

yeah good good for him

Sam Parr

And I... it's just him. He's like, "Can this scale?" He goes, "I think I can get $1,000,000 a year pretty soon, and I'm not sure what I could do after that, but I think just me, this could get $1,000,000." Honestly, I totally agree. I think this is a beautiful business. I think this is really, really cool.

Shaan Puri

So, he said, "Okay, let's just look at his March numbers." Alright, so he said March revenue was $20,000, with a cost of $3,000 a month. That gives a net profit of $17,000 and a profit margin of 85%. Last March, for example, he was basically five times less. Revenue was $4,000, and now it's $20,000. This is pretty good. I mean, this is what basically one guy and a virtual assistant (VA) can run. Yeah, one guy and one VA can run this thing, and it's providing, like you said, clear value. In the sense that if I pay for this, I'm likely to get more customers and make more money. So, it pays for itself. And "it pays for itself" is actually a pretty valuable thing. There are a bunch of things in my businesses that I'm like, "Oh yeah, I want to do that," but I kind of have these other priorities. I was like, "Well, I really do just need to look at all these things as: can I hire somebody and it be immediately value-accretive in the next 6 to 12 months?" Because that job that I'm hiring them for is not just to make my life easier; it's to literally generate revenue and profits. So, there is no way that if I hire this person, if they are competent, this has to be an ROI-positive thing to do. The only thing I need to consider is: do I have the bandwidth to hire this person? To me, you know, like that's... and then there are products like that too. This is a product like that where it's like, "Yeah, I pay $99 or whatever $199 a month, whatever this thing costs." And if I can't make more than $199 off this, like, that's just my own incompetence at that.

Sam Parr

It's sick, man. It's really sick. So, it says there are 1,000 leads. If you go to pricing, the prices range from $200 to $2,000. And it says, let's see... it says you get 1,000 leads. Maybe that includes all the past months. It's pretty cool.

Shaan Puri

By the way, check out this tweet I put in the chat. This is a good example of content that's not... it's like this is the easy mode of creating content that people resonate with. So, this is just a beautiful tweet. Alright, this guy tweeted out on December 21st. He goes, "One year ago today, I was fired from my job making $2,000 a month. Today, I'm making $6,000 a month with my own business." And he posts, more importantly, a screenshot of his calendar planner. It says, "Fired!" [exclamation]. "Last day at work." That's on the 21st. On the 22nd, it says, "Day 1 as a self-employed man!" [exclamation]. And it's just like, you kind of root for the person. You know, what's in this content? It's nothing, but by showing the raw planner and what I wrote to myself that day, these have an emotional impact on people. I think that's one thing that most people get wrong in content: content is about emotion, not information. Something like that generates a feeling of rooting for the person. Most of you, I know, are really smart, and so you try to outsmart everybody on content. But you don't need to outsmart everybody; you need to trigger an emotional response. Whether it's outrage, compassion, or awe-inspiring... whatever it is. This is a great, simple example of how you can make somebody root for you: a little tweet like this.

Sam Parr

This guy's a good find, I think. So, for context for the listener, there's a guy named **Peter Levels** who I've been begging to get on the pod. He keeps saying yes and then goes... yes. But anyway, this guy **Peter Levels** is not exactly a one-man operation. I think now he's got contractors, but he's got like 4 or 5 different businesses. They're basically all the same thing, like job boards, collectively doing around $4,000,000 in revenue. He posts cute, cool, insightful content on Twitter and blogs. This guy **Alex West** is kind of in the same ballpark as that guy **Peter Levels**.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

He looks cool and well-designed. It seems like he's a nomad as well.

Shaan Puri

I feel like Steph Smith needs to make the definitive list of solopreneurs, freelancers, and digital nomads. Basically, it's like Peter Levels, this guy who is on a journey to reach $100,000 a month in personal revenue. These individuals have certain principles: they're not trying to raise money, they're not trying to build a big team, and they live nomadically. They're just good enough engineers, designers, and copywriters to make it happen. They're doing it all in public. I've found about 20 of these people on Twitter, and all of them are entertaining to me. I feel like most people just don't know who they are. A good service would be to aggregate them and put it in a newsletter. It could be something like, "Hey, I'm following all these people doing this thing. Check this out! This guy posted an update about this." You could create a newsletter following their work and probably build an audience of 50,000 to 100,000 people who are interested in what they're doing, which is sort of meta.

Sam Parr

do you ever read indie hackers

Shaan Puri

I don't personally go there much but I have for sure in the past

Sam Parr

indie hackers is awesome it started by his 2 guys cortland and channing I'm I've

Shaan Puri

twins right

Sam Parr

They're twins. Yeah, I've become friends with Channing over the years. Basically, Indie was like a forum for this weird genre of entrepreneurs called Indie Hackers. They sold it to Stripe, and I have a feeling that each brother will make in the world of $20,000,000 when Stripe goes public. I wouldn't be surprised if it were a little more, but I actually think it's above $20 million. They've never told me; I just am guessing because of when they sold to them. If they sold for $1,000,000, it would have gone up by like that much. So anyway, on their website, they list interviews and they list all the revenue of the companies. It's pretty amazing. You can sort by revenue and just find a list of companies that you basically want to get inspired by or copy.

Shaan Puri

Right, yeah, that's cool. And by the way, just look at their traffic. Their traffic shows about **1,000,000** to **1,500,000** monthly visitors. So, you know, good job by them. This is like real scale. In fact, this is probably like for Milk Road. I should go tell our story on Indie Hackers and Product Hunt. I could probably add **10,000** new subscribers with one day of just crafting a story and posting it on both of these platforms.

Sam Parr

I completely agree. I've done it both times. We did it for trends, and we made a lot of money. I like it.

Shaan Puri

HubSpot allows all our teams to work together seamlessly, so no one's fallen overboard unless we want them to. Okay, what else you got?

Sam Parr

I don't know you tell me what do you got

Shaan Puri

I see one on the other it says wait

Sam Parr

I have a question alright yeah let's let me ask that

Shaan Puri

I think I see this question you're about to ask me alright

Sam Parr

Have you ever seen those movies where it's about drug lords and such, and you find... You see just like a normal guy in a boat off the coast of Florida, and he finds like a brick of cocaine? Yeah, like have you ever seen that premise? My question to you is... because I'm reading this book: Have you seen the movie "No Country for Old Men"? No? So it's like a movie I know about...

Shaan Puri

I've heard of it

Sam Parr

you know what it is

Shaan Puri

that name to me sounds so boring that I will never click on that

Sam Parr

No, it's not a boring one at all. It's like a thriller. I'm reading the book, and basically the premise is this guy comes across a drug deal gone bad. Everyone's dead at the scene, and there's $2.5 million as well as a truck full of cocaine. He takes the $2 million, and the drug guys are looking for him. That's the book. My question is, if I came across that cocaine, what would I do? And what would you do if you came across it? I have no idea how cocaine is measured, but like in that movie scene where you come across a hat... or many bricks, I guess. What do you do with it?

Shaan Puri

Take a picture, put it on Instagram, and be like, "Oh my God!" Get the social clout and get the hell out of there. I am not picking up the cocaine. I'm not becoming a drug dealer. I'm not going to figure out how to flip this. You could also replace that with, "Oh, I find a large supply of copper wires which have a decent market value." I don't know. I've actually been down this path before. Once, I think I talked about this on the pod where we met a guy who had this giant comic book card collection. Yes, and we had this opportunity to buy it for like probably 10 cents on the dollar of what the individual sum of all the parts would have been. But we had to figure out what the hell to do. It's like, "Here's a warehouse. You now have the cost of this warehouse, and then you have all this stuff." None of it's graded, none of it's categorized, none of it's inventoried. It's like, you know, you gotta go do that American Picker style, junkyard flip type thing for this stuff. When I kind of got excited at first because it would have been a multimillion dollar flip if we had done it.

Sam Parr

how did that end

Shaan Puri

It ended with me realizing this is not worth the time and energy to go do this. Like, this is so much energy.

Sam Parr

but what so the story was basically you came across a guy who owned a warehouse and then you said that really

Shaan Puri

old guy really old guy who was like finally ready to like sell his thing he'd been collecting for 30 years

Sam Parr

like tens of millions of like baseball cards or something

Shaan Puri

Yeah, like he had millions of cards, most of which are useless. But for sure, some of them are valuable. The question is, you had to buy the whole lot. You had to buy the whole thing and then deal with it. I think nobody bought it because, again, nobody wants this headache. Even with the discount, I was like, "Okay, let's say this is discounted." Based on our estimates, this thing is discounted like 90%. Even at a 90% discount, the mental overhead, the literal overhead... Some people out there are like, "Dude, I would have done it." And like, "You should go do it if you have no better options." But for me, I was like, "Wow, this is a lot of work." So I would not do it in the legal case, let alone the illegal case of figuring out how to flip these bricks of cocaine. That's kind of my answer. What's your answer to that?

Sam Parr

it depends what stage of life I'm in like alright

Shaan Puri

so let's let's take it by decade you're 20

Sam Parr

I'm 20 and like like what are these bricks if could they be worth like $2,000,000

Shaan Puri

Let's say the whole thing is worth, you know, $6,000,000 if you sold it all at street value.

Sam Parr

so let's start at the end of you having all this cash

Shaan Puri

let's say

Sam Parr

you have as

Shaan Puri

you know we do we do move straight to the end

Sam Parr

I'm moving straight to the end. Assuming that I had **$6,000,000** in cash, I wouldn't even know what to do with that. If you buy property with **$6,000,000** in cash, can you even do that? Are you even allowed to do that? I mean, where would you keep that money?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I don't know what you would do. You'd have to figure out how to launder it, basically, to legitimately own it. Or you'd have to figure out a way to do some, you know, off-the-counter transaction of gold bars or something else.

Sam Parr

or do you just

Shaan Puri

live a like a cash life forever yeah you go under the mattress

Sam Parr

you just pay for everything with with tens of twenties

Shaan Puri

this is breaking bad right this is the plot of breaking bad basically so what would

Sam Parr

I do... if I was 20 and I found it, I don't even think I'd take it. I don't even know what I would do. I would not be... maybe when I was 20, I wouldn't be opposed to trying something, but I literally would have no idea where to start. Where would you even start? I don't know people who do... I don't even know. I don't know people who do cocaine. I don't hang out with them.

Shaan Puri

but you're in the moment you you have to make a a split decision in the heat of the moment I would have bet

Sam Parr

I'll have to... we'll figure it out. No, I'd have to call the cops. I think I would call the police. I wouldn't know what to do. I wouldn't even know how to execute this.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that’s okay. So that’s one. If you’re not going to do it in your twenties, you’re not going to do it in your thirties. I don’t think it matters what stage of life you’re in. There are a couple of other methods here, right? So, like, let’s say you’re in this... what was the old movie? "No Country for Old Men" or something like that. Basically, the guy finds the briefcase. If I find that briefcase, I’m taking 15% of the cash out and leaving the rest there. Who’s really going to chase me down for the 15%? So I think I get, like, you know, I get... I get, like, really... dude, some awards. None of the work that is...

Sam Parr

The easiest... So, I did the math. The book was set in 1979, and it was $2.5 million, which is the equivalent of about $8 million today. So, finding $8 million today, and this is set in El Paso, Texas, where the guy lives in a trailer, like a mobile home. $7 million might as well be $700 million. It's just a world-changing thing. If I'm that guy, like, that's easy. You just find it, you get the car, and you just never go back home. You're just gone.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, but I'm... what am I gonna do? Sleep, you know, with one eye open every night wondering what's gonna happen? If I see that $2,000,000, I'm taking $247,000 out.

Sam Parr

no way I'm saying

Shaan Puri

They're never... they're never gonna understand why. It was $247,000 short. I'm living a happy, calm lifestyle just as my life was, but with an extra $247,000. That's my move.

Sam Parr

that's so funny I I don't think I could take 15% I would yeah I would definitely take the whole thing

Shaan Puri

the the I was thinking about this the other day that this came up I watched survivor yeah I'm like still watching you know season 48 of whatever survivor that's that's going on and and shout out to the survivor casting directors I'm I'm getting in shape so that I can go on survivor soon but they have this new twist where they have this thing you find and normally it's like survivor you go out in the wild and they have this this this little prize called the immunity idol if you find this thing you're safe from the vote you won't get voted out this week so people always want that thing and they when they find it it's this joyous moment they unroll unscroll the scroll and they're like yes I found the thing but they added a twist this time which it says on the top of the scroll it says beware like this is called a beware advantage like you know there could be something good this this comes with power but also you know some drawbacks and they say you could just put this down right now and you can go on with the game as it is or if you open this you have to you know you get the power but you get the disadvantage as well you get the advantage and disadvantage 100% of the time they open up the scroll and I'm just thinking there I'm like you know the game theory here is that this is gonna put me in a sticky spot they're not giving me something that's gonna give me like it's mostly great with a tiny downside it's gonna be like potentially great later with a downside today right like they find the game that's how I'm organizing this game but everybody picks it up and everybody opens it and I thought what are the things of life that are like this which is like you pick it up you know you shouldn't do this you know this has like drawbacks but you can't resist you just do it anyways because you know yellow and like I started thinking about like what that is in real life right like there's that with food like most junk food is that way you know pleasure now pain later you know but what are the other areas of life like you know what is the career version of this this is like that you got that really great job but like now but you know you were thinking about maybe you wanted to to start your own business or or do your own thing but then you get this like you know job at mckinsey and you're tempted to take it because it has the prestige and it has the money but it also comes with the sticky trap of like this is for sure gonna set you on a path for multiple years in a direction that you don't think you want to be your end goal but you do it anyways and so I'm now looking out for these what I'm calling the beware the beware advantages of life the big

Sam Parr

The takeaway here, though, is with you wanting to go on *Survivor*. Let me tell you about something. There's this podcast called *Dead Eyes*. Do you know what *Dead Eyes* is? No? Never heard of it? Alright, so years ago, Tom Hanks was the producer of *Band of Brothers*. You know, it was like the TV show on HBO about World War II. There was this one comedian who was an extra, one of the guys who was shooting or something. Tom Hanks looked at him and then whispered in the producer's ear or whispered in his assistant's ear and said, "Hey, hey man, you gotta go." Tom Hanks apparently said that he had "dead eyes" and he wanted him off the set. He just didn't like him as an extra. Something that probably happens all the time. He just thought it wasn't working out. So this guy created a podcast called *Dead Eyes*, and the whole podcast was questioning why he got kicked off *Band of Brothers*.

Shaan Puri

that same guy okay yes and he

Sam Parr

And so, the whole podcast, the whole premise, is like he's interviewing people on *Band of Brothers*, asking, "Why do you think I got kicked off? Let's talk through this."

Shaan Puri

Dude, how did you find this? It sounds like the most obscure of the obscure podcasts.

Sam Parr

eventually tom hanks goes on it

Shaan Puri

oh my god that's amazing

Sam Parr

And he lands Tom Hanks as a guest. He explains what was happening from his perspective and what we need to do with you.

Shaan Puri

wait wait hold on what was the explanation what did he say or he was just like I don't remember

Sam Parr

he yeah he was like I I don't like I'm sorry it wasn't let me see

Shaan Puri

he's like this has haunted you for 20 40 years

Sam Parr

Yeah, he was like this. I guess it just... it just wasn't even like a... he didn't really think about it, I believe. Apparently, he said that maybe it was like a mistake; like maybe he said the wrong thing to the wrong person. But it was just... it just dismissed him. It wasn't even like an issue in his life. And this guy has this whole podcast called *Dead Eyes*. Have you not heard of this? It's hilarious.

Shaan Puri

no that's that's hilarious what were you gonna tie that in you said I should do something

Sam Parr

Well, with you wanting to be on Survivor, we need to go through the whole process. You're likely going to get turned down at the audition, but we have to do a whole series of episodes of you going through this process.

Shaan Puri

getting on survivor and documenting it and getting all

Sam Parr

that's a great idea that's a great idea and we we like idea and we we like what you need

Shaan Puri

to do is comment get the person who does casting for survivor and act like you want them to

Sam Parr

Come on as a guest, and we could do it just to humor them. But like, on air, it'd be like, "So, can Sean audition?"

Shaan Puri

Can I get you on? Yeah, I have auditioned before already, so I've been rejected once. I already got that out of my belt now.

Sam Parr

Well, no, we gotta have him on air. We'll do it like funny. Like, you know, I think I said this earlier: wouldn't it be funny if we just started kissing right now? Like, wouldn't it be hilarious? That's gotta be... what if I was on? Yeah, like, would it be hilarious? Imagine that! Can you imagine if I came on the Survivor and if...

Shaan Puri

I would happen yeah like is that allowed

Sam Parr

yeah would it be funny

Shaan Puri

Dude, what is the exact line? Wouldn't it be funny if we... what would happen if we just kissed right now? Would it be funny if we kissed? That's so funny to me. Dude, that tickles my funny bone at the deepest, deepest level. I don't know why it's so funny. There's that, and then there's another one that gets me so bad. Have you heard this joke where it's like, "And then everybody started clapping"? No? Okay, so basically, this is all... it's like a recurring joke that comes in when someone tells a story. By the end of the story, you're sort of like, "Wait, what was the point of the story?" Then you realize the point of the story was them just saying how cool they were in a way that was exaggerated or not really believed. It's like, "Yeah, we were at the restaurant, and then this guy was choking, but like nobody heard him."

Sam Parr

but I

Shaan Puri

I just saw it. I was on my way to the bathroom and I just kind of, you know, did the Heimlich maneuver. But I'd only ever watched the video. And, you know, like, what is this story? Where is this going? Why are you telling me this? Then, there's basically an awkward silence at the end of that story, and they're like, "And then..." They realize the story didn't do it, so they have to one-up it and just say, "Then everybody started clapping." So, it's this genre of stories—these "and then everybody started clapping" stories.

Sam Parr

my version

Shaan Puri

Those also crack me up. When I see someone get stuck in a story like that, I'm like, "Oh yes, it's happening!" They got themselves trapped in a story, and then everybody started clapping. They're about to start exaggerating because the story itself didn't hit, and now they're stuck.

Sam Parr

my version of that is and then I found $5

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly, dude. Okay, so I have a crazy story. Somebody tweeted this at us.

Sam Parr

they love your orlando bloom story by the way

Shaan Puri

Oh, that's... I mean, that's the one where I didn't want to get stuck in that spot, but that's always all true. So, somebody tweeted this at us and they go, "This seems like it's up your alley." And that's when you know you're winning—when somebody sends you something really weird and they say, "I think this is up your alley," and it's 100% up my alley. This is my home address; my P.O. box is in this alley. So, he sent me this post, and it's like a forum post. He goes, "What I'm doing is insane." Here's what it says: He goes, "I have a bot running 24/7 that is buying and selling for $0 target profit just to waste the IRS's manpower and money. I print and send to the IRS all the documentation about every one of these trades in paper form so that they can't automate it or, you know, just get through my report in an easy way. He goes, "I will sometimes mix blank pages, double print, ghost print, use black and white. I will number the pages and put them out of order. I will have people randomly scribbling drawings of dogs into the pages. I will send it as a whole pallet of paper trades. I even have to hire a guy with a forklift just to send it, and I want it to be in a pallet so that it is maximally troublesome for them." And then it says, like, you know...

Sam Parr

is this real

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I don't know if it's real or not. This is like some forum post. He goes, "This costs me $1,000 every year, and I make sure to send them an invoice so that they know I am paying real money on top of the pallet that I've sent them." So whoever's in charge of this knows that I am wasting the equivalent of two months of their wage on this asinine behavior, on top of wasting their time. I was just like, "This needs to go to petty court." It's like, "Who are you? Why are you so troubled?" Okay, you know, if you just wasted a little bit of your own time, that's offensive to me. But if you waste all of your time and money at this, it turns into respect from my point of view. I don't know what your mission is; I don't even really understand it. But I respect the mission-driven nature of this initiative where there's no gain. It's just mutually assured destruction for both parties.

Sam Parr

It's like, have you seen *South Park* where Cartman is dressed up like Steve Jobs at the keynote? He's walking around and instead of saying "thank you," he just says, "fuck you, fuck you, fuck you." The whole presentation is about ways that they're wasting money. He's walking around the stage and he says, "But we didn't just stop there. You see, we moved the couch from the left part of the room to the right part of the room." The entire presentation is just about how they reorganized the furniture in his office that quarter. That was all they did with all their money, and this is a good example of that.