Sharing Our Best Crypto Business Ideas To Start In 2022

Sam Parr

Why does everyone hate on getting rich quick? Get rich quick schemes are the best! I want to get rich quick; I don't want to get rich slow.

Greg Isenberg

it's actually colder here than the arctic circle

Sam Parr

why do you live there

Greg Isenberg

Well, I mostly live in Miami... [IRS, if you're listening to this]. But I'm sometimes in a mountain town in the middle of nowhere. Sam, I saw you posted today that you've got about 20 acres in Texas. But I'm staring out at 95 acres of arctic winterland right now.

Sam Parr

is that cool or no

Greg Isenberg

I mean, I love it out here. I'm from here, so for me, it's slow living. It's nice. Yeah, I love it.

Shaan Puri

Is that why you look like a pilot right now? In the cockpit or what? What's going on here?

Greg Isenberg

I mean, Sahil makes fun of me. Sahil Blue, my co-host on the "Where It Happens" pod, we do it together. He always makes fun of this, but I'm a gamer, so I'm not afraid to admit it.

Shaan Puri

It be who you are, man. Be who you are, Greg. So, you're here because... I don't even know why. We weren't even... I don't even know what we were saying. We were talking about the Will Smith thing. You had some hot takes, Sam had some hot takes. How can we start with anything else but the "bitch slap of the century"? Will Smith bitch slaps Chris Rock for making fun of his wife. I think we have a different opinion on each one of these things. Sam, give me your first... Where were you when it happened? How did you hear about it? What was your first take?

Sam Parr

I was laying in bed when I heard Sarah say, "Oh my gosh, you gotta come down and watch this! This is crazy." I saw it, and here's the thing...

Shaan Puri

are you the

Sam Parr

type by

Shaan Puri

the way do you just go or do you wait you ask what is it

Sam Parr

no I go right away I

Shaan Puri

could tell

Sam Parr

alright that's like a

Shaan Puri

good guy right there

Sam Parr

So here's the thing. Listen, I tweeted about this right away. People were like, "Well, what would you do?" The truth is, maybe I would do the same thing, but that's wrong. If I had run up there and bitch slapped Chris Rock, I would have been tackled and taken away. He should too. That's what should have happened. I wanted to see him tackled and taken away, or at least not allowed to be on stage for 5 minutes to accept an award. That is ridiculous to me. I cannot believe that happened.

Shaan Puri

greg give me your where were you what was your initial reaction

Greg Isenberg

So, my girlfriend texted me and she's like, "You're not gonna believe what just happened! Will Smith just slapped Chris Rock." Then she's like, "Wait, I don't know if it was a slap; maybe it was a punch." There was this confusion—this like 5-minute confusion—where people didn't know what it was. So, the first place I go to is Twitter. I'm on Twitter, and I looked at the video. I couldn't believe it was happening, right? It was like, you remember when Janet Jackson had the whole Super Bowl thing?

Shaan Puri

yeah

Greg Isenberg

I feel like I remember where I was during 9/11. I remember what happened during the Janet Jackson boob incident at the Super Bowl. It's like...

Sam Parr

and like oj and then now will smith

Greg Isenberg

Yeah, now Will Smith... I wasn't happy with the videos that were coming out, but I found the Japanese and Australian videos. Did you guys see those?

Shaan Puri

for sure and the uncensored uncut versions

Greg Isenberg

Yeah, and that one where you got a better view of the punch. I needed a better view.

Shaan Puri

it was a it was a slap though I don't know how good your view was it was a slap

Greg Isenberg

It was a... yeah, okay, it was a slap. But what bugged me about the whole thing—and I'm glad you invited me to talk about Will Smith, because you know that's why I'm here—is that I think that, okay, obviously it was a douchey thing for Will Smith to do. However, I was unimpressed with how Chris Rock wasn't able to make a joke out of the whole thing. He could have made comedic history, and he didn't. I expected more from him.

Shaan Puri

Wow, I'm disappointed with Chris Rock. That is not the take I thought was going to come. That's why we bring Greg on for the "when everybody zigs, you zag" with the new take. It's disappointing.

Sam Parr

Dude, Chris Rock is crazy impressive. He took it, man. He took a hit. He did tear up; he didn't like it. When you get punched in the face, sometimes you're not crying, but your eyes water. None of that happened. He kept smiling, and he was a pro, man.

Shaan Puri

sam you know what happens if you get hit in the side of the head what's the first thing that you feel or you hear

Sam Parr

you you you your ears hurt and you wanna like grab your face

Shaan Puri

Yeah, you hear this ringing buzz. It's like a giant ringing sound. Then you gotta touch your face. He didn't touch his face, so you gotta give him respect for the chin that he showed.

Sam Parr

yeah the round was that was a 10 9 chris rock round

Shaan Puri

But then Greg's right, actually. He had, I mean, the world was his oyster with all the potential jokes that he could've gone with—the one-liners.

Sam Parr

like I can't believe I can't believe they had you in ali or something like that

Shaan Puri

Exactly. You know, I don't even know what the joke should have been. You know, Greg, what direction would you have gone with the joke?

Greg Isenberg

I would have said, "And the winner of the biggest bitch slap award 2022 goes to William Smith."

Shaan Puri

yeah exactly could have given him the oscar for bitch slap of the year

Sam Parr

wait but honestly what was your take though

Shaan Puri

Okay, so I'm outside of a Cold Stone. I just gave my daughter some ice cream, and we're trying to get back to the car. I don't know if you know how it is—getting kids in the car is like... that's the battle every day. In fact, there's a great Louis C.K. joke where he's like, "The greatest moment of any Father's Day is the 30 seconds from when you close the door and you have them in the car seat, and you walk around the car back to the driver's seat." It's like the 30 seconds of peace that you have in that moment. That's everything. So, I'm trying to get in the car, and my wife has stopped. She's stunned, doing the "oh my god" face while looking at her phone, almost like a cartoon character. I was like, "What? It can't be much." Then she said, "No, Will Smith just punched Chris Rock." I was like, "What?" So then I watched the video. She made me pull over—we were driving—and I pulled over to watch the Japanese uncensored version because we just had to debrief it in the moment. I was team Will Smith; I thought it was awesome, frankly. The only part that I thought was not cool was that when they first said the joke, he was laughing at it. So, bro, you can't laugh at the joke, admit that it's funny, and then basically two seconds later build up this rage and pretend it was so not cool when you were laughing. We caught you on camera laughing just two seconds before that.

Sam Parr

you don't think that he should have any consequences

Shaan Puri

no no I didn't say that he should have consequences sure

Sam Parr

okay

Shaan Puri

sure lock him up throw away the key whatever you gotta do

Sam Parr

No, no jail time. I don't even think... I'm not... I don't even want handcuffs. I don't want jail. Just like a, "Hey, you can't hit someone. You gotta leave." That would have been sufficient.

Shaan Puri

Well, the thing they showed in the Taiwanese cut... I don't know if you guys saw this. Somebody comes running up to him, and I think, "Oh wow, they're gonna be like, dude, what the fuck? We need to get you out of here." Sorry, it's his publicist just immediately giving him notes on how to play this. So when he goes up for his speech, what do you know? The first line he says is, "You know, Richard Williams was a fierce protector of his family." That's the publicist handing him the feeding of the line on how he's going to spin this to his advantage. Who hates a guy who protects his family? And dude, I think it worked.

Sam Parr

I watched his speech, and I think he's losing it. So, in a way, I feel sorry for him. I definitely feel a little sorry.

Shaan Puri

he looked a little off right

Sam Parr

He looked a little off. He looked like he's kind of... he's getting a little... something's going on. I hope he works through it and gets back. And also, there, dude, him and his wife, man, that's some weird stuff. Like, what's going on? Like, hey, did you see that thing called "Red Table"? That show where she just did a whole episode with him on there talking about how she cheated on him and everything like that? And then she went...

Shaan Puri

To the work show with you, but I watch everything that's trashy like that. So yeah, I saw it. I saw it twice.

Sam Parr

Man, so like, that's weird to me a little bit. There's like a... this dynamic is weird. He's got a lot of pressure on him. I think he just kind of snapped. I think he's working through some stuff, but dude, I feel a little sad for him.

Shaan Puri

Everybody knows a couple that's like this. They're kind of toxic; they're toxically in love with each other. It's like they have some weird Bonnie and Clyde dynamic where they make the wrong decisions sometimes. They even hurt each other's feelings, but then they're like, "If anybody else ever tries to encroach, we'll murder for them." It's like, bro, where's the balance here? It's us against the world. They love this "us against the world" mentality, and they're definitely one of those couples.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it was messed up. Do you want to talk about Alex Hormozi? Hormozi... Mosey?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, what did you do? You were like, "Bro, I'm going deep on Alex Hormozi." I was like, "We are!" It would have been nice to do that before we had him on the pod. You did it like 10 episodes later.

Sam Parr

I had a call with him today greg do you know who this guy is

Greg Isenberg

I don't know who is that

Sam Parr

Alright, actually, I feel bad. I consider him a friend, but I don't know if it's pronounced "Mozy" or "Moezy." Is it Alex Hormozi? No, Mozy, Alex Hormozi.

Greg Isenberg

it's one of those things where it's like too like you've known him for a decade

Sam Parr

yeah

Greg Isenberg

and it's like you can't ask him now no

Shaan Puri

you no you gotta be like I just call him mazi I just go by mazi because it's

Greg Isenberg

one of the

Shaan Puri

things I don't know about his name

Sam Parr

Dude, one of my best friends' name is Cieva. I don't even know how to pronounce his last name, and I've been best friends with him for 10 years. He's in my wedding. So anyway, this guy Alex had this company called Gym Launch. It was really interesting because some people, and I wouldn't call myself totally on that side, but I understand it, appeared a little scammy. However, I don't think it's scammy at all anymore. He ended up... wait, wait.

Shaan Puri

sam you gotta describe the guy's look first

Sam Parr

So, he looks like a straight version of the construction worker in the village... was it the Village People? I mean, he looks like a construction worker. He wears flannel, has this beautiful thick mustache, and long, awesome hair—like a Persian Samson. He is just yoked; he's jacked, he's huge, and he's good-looking. He looks a bit like Arnold Schwarzenegger. He created this business called Gym Launch. Basically, you would pay either $4,000 for one thing or $20,000 for another. It was for people who owned small gyms, whether that's a CrossFit gym or a personal training gym. He would teach you how to make your gym better because he owned gyms himself. He promised something like, "You'll gain at least $75,000 in new revenue," but for a lot of people, he averaged that they would improve by $200,000 in revenue. The business model he had was crazy, and the results were even crazier. By the time the business was four years old, he bootstrapped it and had paid himself $45,000,000 in dividends. Then, in the fifth year, I believe he sold it and netted something like $50,000,000 or $60,000,000. He said, "Yeah, I paid myself $45,000,000, so I had about $25,000,000 just in cash in the bank. Then we sold and I netted like another $50,000,000." That story alone is crazy, right, Sean?

Shaan Puri

I don't know if those exact numbers are right, but it sounds like you talked to them, so let's go with that. I don't really know, but yeah, you got the product right. The interesting part is that most gym memberships are like, you know, "pay $20 a month and you get into a membership." It's hard to sell people that. What he ended up doing was saying, "Alright, well, people don't want a membership. What do they really want? They want to lose weight. They want to lose weight in 6 weeks or less. They want to lose weight so they look good on the beach." So, he decided to sell a program that would make you look good on the beach in 6 weeks. He got good at selling for his own gym, where he could get people to pay like $3 upfront for a fitness training package with nutrition meal plans and stuff like that. Then, someone pointed out to him— I think it was Russell Brunson, the ClickFunnels guy— that instead of just opening gyms and doing this himself, he should teach other gym owners how to do this. That’s a better product. Helping a gym add $100 in revenue in 30 days is a better product than trying to open your own gym and use that method. So then he started doing that, and that's kind of how he went. Now he owns something called Acquisitions.com, where he'll buy your business if you're doing, I don't know, $5 million or more in revenue. Something like that.

Sam Parr

That well, he's buying course businesses and applying his methodology. But basically, what he sold was—this is where things got interesting—I went deep on how this worked. This is crazy! So, he basically sold not a franchise, but like an operating system. He used HubSpot as his backend. He would get people to sign up for these ads that he was running. You do an onboarding, and you pay $20 to get 4 months of service. After the end of 4 months, you could decide to stay in part of the group for $45 a year. After you sign up, you receive a checklist of things that you have to do. It's like: raise your price to this, sign up for this software, use these emails, and the shrimp campaign. Get this many people to sign up by doing X, Y, and Z. Here's the ad campaign that you can just copy and paste and already use. Then, he had a Facebook group where all the members could talk. That was it! The business was super simple and it was doing tens of millions a year in revenue and also tens of millions in profit. I thought this was crazy fascinating, and I wanted to ask you guys: what other niches would you use this for? Also, does this model even interest you? It seems pretty amazing to me; I've never heard of it.

Greg Isenberg

I think that if you did this for agencies, like digital agencies, that this is a no-brainer. So, you know, I run an agency called Late Checkout. We're about 50 people, so we're starting to really hit some scale.

Sam Parr

can you say your revenue

Greg Isenberg

I mean, I don't want to say my revenue, but we have 50 people, so you can do some of the math yourself. I will say that, yeah, we work with some of the biggest brands in the world. It's very lonely to be the CEO of an agency. I don't know if I'm overcharging or undercharging. I don't know if I'm doing the right thing. Should I be doing more marketing or less marketing? So, would I pay $2, $5, or $10 a month for something like this? Probably, if the ROI is there.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's basically a sales machine, right? So what he said was, if you have a business and you have whatever number of customers, if I could get you more customers, that's clearly of value to you. I think he basically tried to capture 10 to 20% of the value that he was giving. So, you know, if I'm going to generate $100,000 in new incremental sales for you, how do I capture $10,000 to $20,000? I'm taking the risk; if I don't do that, then I don't earn anything. I think that's kind of how he started it, at least. An agency is a perfect example of that because every client you sign is cash in the bank. Typically, the agency might be good at one thing but not necessarily good at getting new clients.

Sam Parr

so what what you just read this guy's book sean alex's book

Shaan Puri

I'm reading it right now

Sam Parr

what what do you think about it

Shaan Puri

The book is good. It's basically a marketing book, right? So, it's essentially a marketing book. He does a good job of breaking things down and being simple. It's not altogether new information, but who gives a shit? It's good information presented well, and if you're running a business right now, it'll help you. Now, the thing I think he overindexes on is that he uses the gym launch example really hard. So, it's like, yeah, this is clearly... He talks about basically saying, "The secret to sales is to make somebody an offer so good they'd be stupid to refuse you." Okay, how do you do that? It's about getting them to perceive that there's a lot of value and that they're going to get it in a short amount of time, with not a lot of cost, and that it is highly likely to happen. His model was like, "Hey, gym owner, I've worked with 100 gyms. On average, I could bring them each $100,000 in new sales. I can do that for you in 30 days, and if I don't hit that mark, I don't get paid. How's that?" So, yeah, that is what he calls a "grand slam offer" because it's going to work. If you have a grand slam offer, you can win a lot of business and grow very fast. But I don't think that works in a whole bunch of other product categories. I think it works in the agency consulting world, which is where he was.

Sam Parr

it's services I think it it works in services yeah all services

Shaan Puri

But you know, if I'm selling shoes online, it's very hard to create a grand slam offer for selling shoes. I can't tell you how much more money this is going to make you, right? So already, the offer is a lot less compelling. I'm telling you it looks cool, and that people might like your shoes, but that's just fundamentally less compelling. I think it's really, really good for a service business, especially a service business that's in the business of helping other people make money. For example, if I wanted to send it to my accountant and say, "Hey, you're charging me like $5 or $6 a year. You should really be charging $50." If you did this method, I think you would have, you know, like 10 times more clients and make 10 times more money off them if you presented your stuff this way. Because you're an accountant, you're saving people money on taxes, and you could basically offer a no-brainer offer like this, take more value, and grow your business faster if you did it this way. But it doesn't work for everything. That's kind of the takeaway, I think.

Greg Isenberg

The pitch, I think, is taking a consultancy from a consultancy and turning it into selling luxury. That's the opportunity for a lot of these people, right? When you look at McKinsey, McKinsey isn't a consultancy to me. McKinsey is selling luxury multimillion-dollar contracts. You're buying confidence when you're buying a luxury product.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's exactly right. He talks about that pretty extensively in the book. But I gotta say, I am reading this book and I have two kind of like my right-hand man and my left-hand man. I have Ben and then I have this guy Andre. I told them, "Guys, is this good stuff in this book that we should be using?" So I created a little mini book club inside of our company to do this. Have you guys ever done that? Like, have you basically... I've been wanting to do this with podcasts as well. Sometimes I'll listen to podcasts that are just *amazing*, and what I want to do is stop listening to it myself and say, "Hey guys, we're going to have a meeting, but the meeting is us listening to this podcast." Every time they say something good, I'm going to pause and we're going to talk about it. It might take us like six hours to get through this one-hour podcast, but I'm telling you, it's going to be worth it. We're actually going to apply the things versus just sharing the link, you read it, I read it, and we each kind of move on with our day because we're busy. Have you guys ever done anything like this to get more juice out of the fruit?

Greg Isenberg

I haven't... I haven't. I've done a book club, and I feel like a book club is like, you know, a lot of people go to the gym. It's like you start going to the gym and then you kind of stop. It's really hard to create a well-designed book club that keeps people engaged.

Sam Parr

Yeah, we did book club, but it's the same thing. No one finished a book. So, I actually think if we all just listen to a podcast together, that might be a lot easier.

Greg Isenberg

it's a lot easier

Sam Parr

It's like when you go to school and the teacher brings in the TV. That's how I would feel going to this meeting. I'd be like, "Oh hell yeah!"

Shaan Puri

Rolling in the T... that gives me that "It's like Magic School Bus, baby!" Yeah, at Amazon, they do this too where people write all kinds of documents inside companies—like memos, plans, whatever. Then it's like, "Hey, did you read my plan?" and you're like, "Oh yeah, either I kinda did or I didn't." Very rarely is it like, "I read it, I remember it, I took notes on it, and I'm ready to take action from it." At Amazon, they basically hack that process. The rule is, if you're going to make a plan or try to do anything, you have to write your memo. But the memo gets read in the meeting itself. So, every meeting, if it's an hour, the first 10 to 20 minutes are silent reading. Everybody reads it together at the same time, and there's zero expectation for you to ever read something beforehand or afterwards.

Sam Parr

was that a feeling like

Shaan Puri

Baked into reading itself... oh yeah, it was huge. Also, while you're reading, you know you're taking notes because right after this reading ends in 20 minutes. It's a bit like school; it's like, "I'm going to have to have something to say," right? I need to be bringing something to the table from this. So yeah, that was huge. I think way more companies should do that. It was one of the few big company things that I was like, "This is a process that is so much better than what I used to do at our startup."

Sam Parr

yeah well I think that podcast idea that you just had is actually fantastic

Shaan Puri

Cool, alright. We lost Greg for a second, but let's keep going. Did you have anything more on Hermozzi, or did you want to move on?

Sam Parr

no that's it what do you got

Shaan Puri

I was thinking about doing a kind of summary or lessons learned because I have a whole bunch of screenshots and highlights from the book. I might do a separate podcast that's just that if you want to do that.

Sam Parr

I'm down. I just bought the book. I've been watching a lot of his YouTube videos. There's just something about this person; he's very interesting to me. He's so transparent to the point where it's almost weird. It's like he reveals so much.

Shaan Puri

don't believe you

Sam Parr

No, I believe him. I believe him for sure. But he's revealing so much that I'm like, "Are you sure, man? You want to be talking about this?" This is crazy. It's just weird, right? I mean, he talks like...

Shaan Puri

The best thing... it's weird. I think it's smart, and that's why I say, like, "Do I believe this?" It's not that I think he's lying about anything; I think he's telling the truth. It's just that when somebody is that forthcoming, it's sort of like, "Well, what's in this for you?" And I think clearly...

Sam Parr

it's my I'm

Shaan Puri

I'm trying to get you to trust me, so I'm going to be kind of explicitly transparent about something. There’s a motive behind that, and I think that’s okay. But I think a lot of people are like, "Wow, thanks dude for the favors." The truth is, there are no favors. People do things because they have a motive. They want to build their brand in a certain way, attract more readers or viewers, or they're trying to build trust in a way that gives them some advantage. You know, and that’s okay. I think it’s a good thing. I do it too. I do it all the time.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I've gotten to know him over the past few weeks. I'm a fan, man. I'm a fan of Alex's. But what do you got?

Shaan Puri

Well, actually, we should. So, Greg, I told you to bring 3 or 4 bullets. I don't know if you had time to do that, but I have some if you don't have any. I'd like to use yours if you do, because you're here. You're the guest of honor.

Greg Isenberg

I mean, I always have a notes file with some ideas. I can tell you I'm not going to say they're great ideas, but let's start with that. I'd love your feedback.

Shaan Puri

alright let's do it

Greg Isenberg

So, I went to a restaurant two nights ago and saw that a bunch of kids were playing these games, like at Applebee's. Picture a bunch of vending machines, you know, those games that you can play. I'm thinking NFT vending machines. You have to pay like 100 Doge to get in, and you can win a Bored Ape. Instead of winning collectibles, you're winning digital assets. Is there a business to be created around that?

Shaan Puri

You're talking about the thing where, in the old way, you would put your quarter in and there would be a bunch of plastic balls. You'd get one out and you'd get this little, cheap toy. I think in Japan they call these the **gacha games**, is that right? Like the **gacha mechanic**, where you have this sort of variable reward. You might win the good thing, but you almost never win the good thing. Then you kind of keep wanting to open up these boxes and see what you get.

Greg Isenberg

Exactly that, but with Doge and winning NFTs... and NFTs inside.

Sam Parr

greg do you own any nfts are you on board with us or

Greg Isenberg

no yeah I mean I've got 100 of nfts

Sam Parr

that's crazy

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think the problem is Doge. I think not enough people own Doge. So, I kind of feel like you need Apple Pay to quickly, like instantaneously, buy Doge and then use it in the game. Basically, you need some way for their phone to just buy the thing and then just keep swiping their phone, basically.

Greg Isenberg

I guess what I'm particularly interested in here is: what are the real-life experiences that you can create that connect with crypto?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, another version of this, by the way. Because I don't eat at restaurants anymore, I just deliver everything. So it's like, you know, a QR code that comes with DoorDash that I just scan, and I get to play the game on my phone. Right? Like, why do they need to buy a screen when I carry a screen in my pocket? So really, all you just need is a QR code to do this game. You don't even have to build the vending machine necessarily.

Greg Isenberg

It's true, it's true. Alright, I got another one. So, I moved out of my apartment on December 15th. It's now March 28th, and my landlord hasn't returned my security deposit.

Sam Parr

is that in america or

Greg Isenberg

it's in florida yeah miami

Sam Parr

oh there's a bunch of laws around that in california

Greg Isenberg

Well, there are laws around it in Florida too. I Googled it, and there's a whole process you can go through. I'm sure it's probably not as intense as California, but you know, you have certain rights. There's a whole process that you have to follow, and eventually, you go to small claims court, etcetera, etcetera.

Sam Parr

well how much was it

Greg Isenberg

It's a few hundred dollars, but it's just like the pain to go through it. It's not really worth it. My security deposit is $57,100. So what I really want to do is scare my landlord, basically. That's what I want to do. I need to get his attention; that's what I really need to do. So I Googled sending a lawyer letter. I didn't want to call my lawyer because I was like, at $750 an hour, it's going to cost like $2 for this lawyer letter. So the idea is a $99 lawyer letter on demand to go scare someone. Basically, what do you think?

Shaan Puri

have you carried letter I love it

Sam Parr

So listen, we gotta talk about this, Sean. You know where I'm gonna go with this, right? Do not pay.

Shaan Puri

you're going to petty court

Sam Parr

oh I like petty court

Shaan Puri

do not pay

Sam Parr

I'm but I'm gonna go do not pay great have you not heard of do not pay

Greg Isenberg

Yeah, so is "Do Not Pay" that service? That like, if you have a parking ticket, you send it to them and they deal with it? You get a percentage of it back or something like that?

Sam Parr

They do a bunch of stuff, but that is one of the ways they started. How do you explain this company now, Sean, now that it has so many features?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think it starts basically with trying to save you money from things that you shouldn't have to pay for or don't want to pay for. It started with subscriptions you're not using. Alright, cool, unsubscribe me from a bunch of subscriptions I'm not using. Then it became... they also added, you know, "Go contest this parking ticket," because like, I don't know, 20 or 30% of parking tickets are filled out incorrectly, and you actually shouldn't have to pay. If they save you money, they will keep a little bit, but you do no work. They just keep a portion of the savings that they earn for you. Then they expanded into things like the 83(b) election, saying, "Hey, we'll do that for you for your startup." So they're just trying to eliminate the busy paperwork that nobody wants to do. They're like, "We'll just take care of that for you." How would that feel? A bunch of people like us, who are millennials, are like, "I just don't know how to do it. I don't want to do it. I don't like printing things or going to the post office and doing all this stuff." Yeah, please take care of this for me. So it's a time-saver company, is how I think about it.

Sam Parr

And Greg, I had a landlord. I had a $16,000 deposit for our office. When COVID hit, our office lease just so happened to end right around that time, so we got really lucky and we just canceled it. This guy would not give me the $16,000. I found out where he lived and I showed up at his house, but he wasn't there. I found out where he worked and I showed up there, and he wasn't there either. I used DoNotPay to send him a letter, and finally, he got back to me. He was like, "Oh yeah, you know, it just slipped my mind." He was acting like it was no big deal. I was like, "Dude, I've been hunting you for six weeks, man! Where's this money?"

Shaan Puri

and so they they have that feature where you

Sam Parr

can

Shaan Puri

just send a scary letter

Sam Parr

You sent a scary letter, and it worked. So, I got my $16. But legally, you're supposed to get $16 plus interest, which I did not get. I thought about fighting over this just out of principle because I love petty stuff.

Greg Isenberg

So, I feel like the idea of "Do Not Pay" is really, you know, getting big. It's like the unbundling of "Do Not Pay," and it's taking this idea and saying, "Okay, I'm going to run a bunch of Google ads against getting security deposits back in Florida and getting security deposits back in California." I think there's a big business to be created here because that's a good wedge to sort of expand into a bunch of different services.

Shaan Puri

And I think there's the other version. I think we've once said, which was like, "Call my politician." There are all these things where it's like, "This bill could get passed that's bad for crypto holders. Make sure you call your politician and let them know you don't want this." It's like, I don't know... I don't want to call my politician. And like, who? What if they pick up? What am I gonna say? You know, there are all kinds of problems with this idea of calling. I don't like calling. What happens if they pick up? You know, I really don't want to go down that road. But I would happily, you know, sort of tip $10 to just have someone annoy the shit out of my politician about this issue that I care about. Like, if my donation funded like 18 annoying calls... If there was just a website that said, "Would you like to donate $10 to the cause and that will fund 18 annoying phone calls from Sri Lanka to this politician?" I'd be like, "Fuck yeah, put me down for $20." So I think that's the other version of "do not pay"—it's like, go hassle for me.

Sam Parr

that's awesome I'm on board with that can you

Shaan Puri

what else you got greg

Greg Isenberg

My other idea relates to law, actually a little bit. So, you know, we've been... and then Sean, I know you're into crypto, so I've been spending a lot of money on crypto accounting and crypto law firms. I think there's an opportunity to create a Web 3 crypto accounting firm and a Web 3 crypto law firm. All you have to do is basically find an existing law firm that understands securities law. You approach them and say, "Hey, you know, you're a shop of 10 lawyers and you understand securities law. Maybe there's some up-leveling in terms of learning specifics about NFTs, etc." I'm going to be the marketing engine for you. You can use things like the Milk Road and Late Checkout, and I'm going to send you leads. The customer is happy because they're like, "Wow, this is like a Web 3-related law firm, and I want to work with someone who's..."

Sam Parr

What does that mean? I don't know what you're using. You're using words that I have no idea what they mean. What does a "Web 3" related law firm mean?

Greg Isenberg

Okay, so let's just say you're creating an NFT project, but you want to make sure that you don't go to jail. You don't want to commit any SEC violations. Do you feel comfortable calling up your regular lawyer, who might not even know what an NFT is? Or would you specifically want to talk to a law firm that lives and breathes Web 3?

Sam Parr

It depends. If they have... what's the term? If I follow something my lawyer says and they're supposed to be the expert, and I get in trouble, sometimes I can blame them. What's that called? God, I can't remember. I can't remember, but scapegoating... no, it's like... it's like when you hire a CPA. If you hire a CPA and your CPA screws you, like blatantly, sometimes you're not always... you know how that goes. You're taking into account, like, "Ah dude, I thought he was doing it right, and he's a CPA." So, like, your CPA can actually get in trouble, not necessarily you. So it depends if that lawyer has that... but I don't know. I'd rather just go to a lawyer that specializes in this thing. But I don't know why you'd call it a Web 3.

Shaan Puri

what he's describing

Sam Parr

but he said a web 3 law firm

Shaan Puri

yeah like they specialize and they they know the laws around they specialize

Sam Parr

in enterprise meant like

Shaan Puri

around this

Sam Parr

web 3

Shaan Puri

not a digital law firm

Sam Parr

yeah okay

Greg Isenberg

Yeah, all this is, is like... I mean, this is a marketing challenge more than anything. One of the hardest problems about running a law firm or an accounting firm is getting clients. We talked about this with agencies, and the same thing is true with law firms and accountancy firms. I think, you know, I don't know the margins of some of these businesses, but I imagine they're quite big. So, I think there's something there.

Shaan Puri

So, I considered doing this before I started The Milk Road. I was like, "Alright, what do I want to do?" I have this audience that's growing, right? It's like Twitter's pretty big now. I don't know, a quarter of a million followers. The newsletter's growing. I could just, you know, make no money off this. That's fine.

Sam Parr

how big would your newsletter be

Shaan Puri

ads in the newsletter that's what's that

Sam Parr

how big was the newsletter

Shaan Puri

it was like at 30 40 k or something at the time

Sam Parr

oh I

Shaan Puri

Could put it in there before Milk Road. I, yeah, before Milk Road. And I was like, "I could teach a course." So I did that. I taught a course. I was like, "Alright, that's cool. It makes way more money than ads, but it's more effort." Then I was like, "You know what's like the highest value business? What's like the best fucking business?" So I started making a list of places where I spend a lot of money that I feel like they're just kind of rinsing and repeating the same stuff for me. I narrowed it down to two. I'll give you the second best one: it was accounting. I was like, "I could just start a bookkeeping firm for startups and entrepreneurs just in my own portfolio." If I invested in 45 companies last year, just within that, I bet I could get 14 clients of just companies that don't have a bookkeeper because most companies don't have bookkeepers right off the bat.

Sam Parr

considering starting a bookkeeping service that's like the worst idea

Shaan Puri

boring thing I could do

Sam Parr

for you that's a horrible idea for you

Shaan Puri

Because I was just going to be the marketing front end. I wasn't going to operate it. I was just going to buy or hire a good bookkeeper and be like, "Cool, you're going to do the books, and I'm just going to send you clients. You just close the clients, and we split this 50/50" or whatever. That was one idea. The better idea is insurance because insurance is like the best business of all time. For insurance, you don't even really do insurance; you just broker the insurance with another carrier, basically. Most businesses, especially e-commerce businesses, need business insurance. I didn't know exactly which insurance I needed or how much coverage I wanted. Most traditional insurance firms don't cover e-commerce, which is insane to me. So I was like, "Alright, well, I could just do that." Startup/e-commerce insurance was another idea. I basically did the math and realized I could make so much more money doing that than if I ever did ads in my newsletter. If all I did in my ad was say, "Hey, by the way, don't go to jail. You should have a bookkeeper," or "Hey, don't lose your business because somebody chokes on the button," that would be more effective.

Sam Parr

That... what was your math for these insurance? What was your math? First of all, I think you made 100% the right move doing what you did. Those businesses do not fit your skill set or mine at all, like ensuring... being on top of things, like crazy amounts, sweating the details.

Shaan Puri

But you're assuming you're going to run it. I'm not going to run it. You're going to find a good person. You and I were...

Sam Parr

gonna throw it as bad

Shaan Puri

as you ton of leads

Sam Parr

but alright so what was your math behind it

Shaan Puri

I don't know. I have to pull up all the spreadsheets, but basically, just with my existing audience size, I think they netted out where it's like I could be easily clearing, you know, $3 to $5 million a year in profit if I hit all my marks.

Sam Parr

tell me more about this this is actually really

Shaan Puri

full full capacity

Sam Parr

This is actually really interesting. So, what are we going to call it? Like "Shawnturance"? What was the name that was going to...?

Shaan Puri

be something I don't know the name was the last thing on my mind

Sam Parr

okay so

Shaan Puri

I even talked to this one lawyer and one accountant who I really love. There's this Ukrainian woman who is an amazing accountant. She was the first accountant I talked to that felt like she worked for me, not like she was just a narc. She said, "Have you thought about this? Does your business need a vehicle? Because I think right now, if you just buy a vehicle in the last week of the year, we can actually depreciate that and use it against your books." She was giving me ideas that were completely legal. She wasn't just sitting there saying, "Yeah, if you give me all your paperwork and your receipts, I'll file your taxes for you." It was the first time someone pointed out, "Wow, you're paying a lot in taxes over here and over here. Let me just make sure I'm saving you money." So, I was going to talk to her and say, "Hey, should you do this? Do you want to leave and start your own firm? I'm sure you're scared of all that, but guess what? You're going to just do the things you're really good at, which is tax strategy and accounting, and I will get you all the clients." That was the core premise. But, of course, I went down a different path and said I created a free crypto newsletter because I figured it would be more fun.

Sam Parr

Dude, I think these are great ideas, by the way. I think you made the right decision. But this is actually crazy interesting. I wish you would've told me that.

Shaan Puri

you're worth a few about a a fucking genius idea that came out of that so have you I don't know if you ever like onboarded well well like you've probably done some onboarding with some some software that you're trying to use or some company you're trying to use so for example with this with this bookkeeping company right the one I hired I eventually hired for my ecommerce thing they sent me this like super long checklist it was like alright great excited to work with you do these 54 things and then we'll get started like that will be the start of your journey that will get you to the starting line it's like go to shopify give us access to do that you need to go to view accounts permissions add us there add us as a bookkeeper blah blah blah now go to quickbooks do the same thing now go to stripe do the same thing now go to bank of america do the same thing like there was just all these fucking steps it's like then send us this then send us this and it just felt and it was all done in excel right so I discovered this story that basically takes that process and just wraps beautiful user experience around it and I saw it and I was like this is so smart I invested in instantaneously didn't have a meeting with the founder I was like I totally buy it in fact any word you say is only gonna make me less bullish on this idea because I am already convinced this is one of the best ideas I've ever seen so it's called doc so it's doc.us I don't know if you guys have have checked this out and julian julian shapiro sent this to me after I was like seeing this problem and then coincidentally he sent me the same idea so so here's how it works so basically it just creates like kind of like a notion space so the company who's trying to onboard you they just create this thing that's like it's like this is just a beautiful experience so it's like hey sean so glad to have you on board first three things we need to do are these 3 click the checkbox when you're done with them so I'll know that you did it if you have any questions just put it in the comment thing here or click this to watch our tutorial from our library that we have about how to do it and so it just turns that like back and forth email or like excel spreadsheet like janky thing into like like workflow for a client and and a service to like onboard each other and I was like dude that's a problem that like I don't know like I don't know 2,000,000 businesses a year have with every one of their clients this is gonna work I think this is gonna work what do you guys think of this idea brilliant

Greg Isenberg

Well, I love it! I just got a mortgage after my landlord, Tiffany, thing. You know, I go onto Chase's website, and I don't know if you've done this, but you go on Chase's website, you go to the mortgage section, and there's like a thousand things to do. You're like transported back to 1996 because you're in this weird interface. There's like JavaScript breaking everywhere. You like forgot about Flash, and somehow Flash is in there. My banker calls me and she's like, "You didn't finish this one thing." And I was like, "What?"

Shaan Puri

She's like, "I added it to your client portal." It's like, dude, I don't want to get a notification. I don't go check that. I hate that place. I *fucking* hate that place.

Greg Isenberg

So, yes, yes, this is one of those no-brainer ideas. I hope that they actually embed, like, create an SDK. They do, okay?

Shaan Puri

Good. I think that, I don't know if they already do or they're going to, but that was like a big part of it. I was like, "This can live inside of your app or whatever." So, you could just kind of onboard people right there inside their experience.

Sam Parr

this landing page is beautiful this is a beautiful website

Greg Isenberg

Yeah, so it is absolutely beautiful. But I have a question for you guys because it relates actually to this and also Gymshark and even the lawyer stuff. You know, sometimes when we're creating businesses, you can do one of two things. You can either create something brand new, which is like this, or create a new gym, like a new way of doing something. Or you could help existing people, you know, do some marketing and make some money that way. Do you guys... you know, the Silicon Valley way is very much like, "Go raise a bunch of money, invent something new," and it's really frowned upon to do the marketing piece of it and sort of position on top of it. What are your thoughts? Do you think about that a lot? You know, because I've been thinking about it a lot.

Sam Parr

say it again

Shaan Puri

give us 2 examples

Greg Isenberg

I'll give you an example. Give us two examples. You know, my last company, the founder of 24 Hour Fitness invested in my company. He told me that before the 1980s, there weren't membership-based gyms; it was a new thing. He invented the first one, and it became 24 Hour Fitness. I think they sold for $3 or $4 billion. It was a major success. Then, there are a lot of people who copied membership-based gyms. That's an idea of going from 0 to 1—creating an absolutely new product. Whereas what he could have done was create a Gymshark of that era or whatever and consulted.

Shaan Puri

gym launch

Greg Isenberg

Yeah, exact. Gym launch, sorry. I consulted to, you know, add additional revenue to existing trainers, etc. So the question is, do you know how often you are thinking about creating something brand new versus, you know, just kind of a money-making additional marketing layer on top of it?

Shaan Puri

sam what do you think about that

Sam Parr

I don't think of anything that I think of as brand new. I think it's close to zero. Do you agree, Sean?

Shaan Puri

no I think there's sometimes new things but it's extremely rare extremely rare extremely extremely rare

Sam Parr

But I would even argue that most anything that's new, you could probably say, "Oh, well, it's just like a different version of blank."

Shaan Puri

You could trace back, right? So, let's take Airbnb, for example. Airbnb was clearly a breakthrough product that became a huge success. It's like the category killer, the category leader for the sharing economy. Now, it's bigger than all hotels combined. It started off as this fringe thing, but there was couch surfing before that, and that was a product that did a very similar thing. You know, and VRBO, there are other options that are around it. So, I think you're right that it's very hard to do something completely original. But let me frame it slightly differently. It seems like what Greg is almost saying is: do you want to go for trying to have either a new behavior or an existing behavior? Another way of looking at it would be: do you want to create a product or do you want to have a service company? To me, in those examples, it's like 24 Hour Fitness was a new product. You needed customers to go buy it versus servicing trainers and whoever else that was. That's like a service business that can have great cash flow and doesn't require you to have this winning brand, a new product, and new customers from scratch. Is it more about the services versus the product? Is that the idea?

Greg Isenberg

Exactly, yeah. I think, you know, Sean and Sam, having spent time in San Francisco, I feel like when I got to San Francisco, I was all about new behaviors. That was really important to me. Sean, I know that was true for you too because, like, Blab, you’re always pushing the envelope with, you know, new user interfaces and new friend-finding methods. Just new ways of doing things. Versus now that we're in our thirties, it feels like we're doing less. This is just an observation, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it feels like we're doing less of the new behavior type stuff and more of, "Hey, let's just iterate on this thing, focus it on this niche, and do that."

Sam Parr

there's this guy named roger dickey I don't know him I think sean knows him right

Shaan Puri

I never met him I think greg actually knows him

Sam Parr

Oh right, so I don't entirely know his full background, but he used to do a bunch of high-tech stuff. I know that he had the... what's the startup that helps you code stuff? It's like a new age agency. What's it called? Those are the... Gigster.

Shaan Puri

gig giggster

Sam Parr

okay and before giggster greg what was he doing he was doing something like very traditional silicon valley right

Greg Isenberg

I just know him from Twitter, but yes, he was the co-founder and CEO of Giggster, which was huge. He did it through a really interesting way. I think he did it through SearchLab. Do you guys know what a SearchLab is?

Sam Parr

Yeah, and I think before that, he maybe was at Zynga or something like... like he...

Shaan Puri

he made like a mafia game or something like that

Sam Parr

yeah like something no he made mafia wars right

Greg Isenberg

that's what it was yeah he made mafia wars

Sam Parr

Which, at the time, was cutting edge. Now, his latest business, I think it's called "Revolution." Is it called "Revolution"?

Shaan Puri

made made

Sam Parr

Made, and they are renovating bathrooms. As a recent homeowner who needs a new bathroom, I went to the website and I was like, "This is sick! I love this." It looks from the outside like the company is just crushing it. I saw another guy, the guy who started Casper. His name's Luke, one of the four founders. I think he has a new business that's also renovating bathrooms or maybe kitchens. I thought it was interesting that these guys at Casper, not exactly cutting edge, but kind of new behavior—buying a mattress online. Roger Dickey, you know, the definitely new behaviors. They're going to these older businesses and they're definitely using technology. But at the end of the day, they're not reinventing anything new. They're just inventing maybe a more efficient process. In my opinion, those things are far more interesting. It's kind of intriguing to me that these guys are doing that as opposed to some new cutting edge thing.

Shaan Puri

so so I'll give you my my take on your on your question greg which is in my twenties it's like the way I traveled was I'd be like oh you know fuck it I'll go tomorrow I'll spin the globe put my finger down alright I'm gonna go backpacking through you know eastern europe or I'm gonna go to australia and I'll be you know sleeping in a van type of thing and I wanted the adventure it was actually the right move to do at that time because it's like how do you get max adventure max sort of like discomfort and like out of your comfort zone you know max spontaneity all that stuff and and then like now it's like where's like a sandals resort that I could take my kids and like you know I just want to sit down I just want a place I can go sit that's not my house and this is basically the extent of my adventure right now and so similarly like that's my hope my business career was the same it was like at the beginning it's like yo I'm gonna build the next social network I'm gonna build a dating app where you eat a you might die or whatever it's just like these crazy ideas it's like every idea was like trying to be crazier than the last it's like you know and it all appealed to me that way and now I'm like cool I could sell a product that I you know let me import a product from china and sell it through a facebook ad I click 3 buttons I could just sit in my chair and do that I don't really need a staff I don't really you know I'll just kind of outsource this and that I'll I'm just gonna write a newsletter and I'll just write it in my browser and then that's it like I don't have to like become the next mark zuckerberg I just need to get to like enough people where I'm making a few $1,000,000 a year and living a sweet lifestyle like that's that's a win you know and that's a and I don't have to manage anybody and I don't have to like stress out about this thing and I don't have to know how to code I don't have to know any of these things oh yeah great and so I basically and now I'm in the the sort of sandals resort part of my career and I made that in the best way possible which was back then I was like almost like intrigued by the degree of difficulty and now I'm completely put off by the degree of difficulty and instead I just do the thing that sounds like what's gonna be easy simple fun for me and and you know I'm just gonna go that route and so I am much less interested in like inventing the next big thing as I am like crafting a dope lifestyle doing something I enjoy do do you think that would change feels like

Sam Parr

But do you think that's going to change when your kids get older? So, when your kids become 8, 9, or 10—maybe from ages 8 to 16—they think that you are the coolest guy ever. Or, if they don't think that, maybe it's on the other end of you wanting to think that you're cool and wanting to impress them. I've been thinking a lot about that lately. I'm like, do I think that my attitude will change when my kids become 5, 6, 7, or 8? Will I want to impress them? Do I think that instead of just having a sick lifestyle, I would be like, "Oh man, I want to do something that they are proud of"? Do you think that's going to change?

Shaan Puri

Not because of that reason. I do think it's going to change, but not because of that. I don't think your kids think you're cool based on your business success necessarily. I don't really think that's the main way that kids think you're cool. And even if it was, that's not why I would do something. I would just have more free time. Right? When my kids go to school, that's going to be like a *fucking game changer*. It's like I'm going to get a third of my day back that I don't have today. So when they go to school, I have a lot more bandwidth. If I want to do something more intense, I can ratchet up the intensity and the difficulty level if I so choose at that time. Right now, like, dude, before I do this podcast, I'm not researching every detail for the 20 minutes before this podcast. Typically, I'm reading this book called *Goofy's Adventure* to my daughter, putting her down for a nap. You know, that's how I prep for this pod. Like, 20 minutes before, I'm literally reading Disney books and putting my daughter to bed in time to come back out here. So it's like there's a lifestyle I like right now that's doing this, and I'm optimizing for that. I think in five years, I'm going to be picking a very different challenge than I'm picking today just because it'll be time for another chapter. I'll probably be like, "Oh, that lifestyle shit's boring. I want to go do something big." Or I'm going to be like, "Fuck, business is stupid. I'm going to go try to write a comedy show, and I'm going to try to sell a show for TV." Like, I don't know. I'm going to do something else with my life. Every five years, I want to kind of reinvent myself in terms of what I'm doing.

Greg Isenberg

So, you've come a long way, Sean. One of the first times I met you, you invited me to the Bebo launch party. I asked, "Could I bring a +1?" and you said, "Sure." I brought this brand new friend who was visiting. We walked into this warehouse or something in San Francisco. I remember we had to walk upstairs. Where was it, Sean?

Shaan Puri

It was in a, you know, like a car manufacturing or car repair garage. I don't know, I forgot how to speak English. But basically, Michael had bought one of those places, got rid of all the car maintenance stuff, and just turned it into his man cave. He hadn't filled it up yet with his fancy cars and cool stuff, so it was just an empty warehouse in the middle of San Francisco, downtown San Francisco. We threw our launch party there before he filled it up.

Greg Isenberg

So, I'm there with one of my buddies from this small town in Quebec. The guy has never left his town basically in his entire life. He had landed in San Francisco and was staying with me. He gets into this car shop or whatever, and it's dark with smoke and lights everywhere. Then you walk in, and there are all these people and lights everywhere. He literally whispered to me and said, "Is Kanye West coming to this?"

Sam Parr

did he say yeah

Shaan Puri

he should

Sam Parr

have said yeah

Greg Isenberg

And it was like one of those moments. I'm sure a bunch of people have watched *The Social Network* when Justin Timberlake is talking to, or I guess it's Mark Zuckerberg, in the club. It's just intense.

Shaan Puri

it's like larger

Greg Isenberg

Than life. You were kind of living that lifestyle in San Francisco. Not like... I mean, I'm painting you as very playboy, and I won't say you're 100% playboy, but in the sense of like you were living that lifestyle. You were doing that Zuckerberg thing, and now you're, you know, kind of doing the complete opposite. My question is actually for both of you, but particularly for Sean. If you could redo it, would you have done more of these product bets? There's really less risk. For example, Milk Road—there wasn't that much risk there, yeah, let's be real, right? So, I feel like people, like, worst now that we're in our thirties, we're focusing on different niches. We're taking things that are working in different communities and we're just pushing that out there with, you know, low product risk. Would you have done that, or do you think that you needed to do these crazy bets in your twenties to be where you are today?

Sam Parr

I have a very easy answer but I'll let sean go first

Shaan Puri

no no go

Sam Parr

no I want you to go first I wanna hear what you're gonna say

Greg Isenberg

playboy sean

Shaan Puri

Well, as Playboy Sean, by the way, for that, I flew in this painter that I had met. He did, I don't know if you remember this, he did a live painting where he's painting this abstract thing while breakdancing. There was a guy I had seen at a fair in Greeley, Colorado, many years before that. I was like, "Hey dude, I have a company that has a bunch of funding. Do you want to just fly out for this party and do something dope? Do that thing you did at that little town fair, but do it in front of hundreds of people at this event." He's doing it, and then at the end, he spins the canvas. What looked like this crazy abstract thing was actually him painting a **fucking Bob Marley** upside down. He does this, flips the canvas, and then he's like done. He slaps it with his hand; it's full of paint. That was the moment, and I was just like, "That party was dope. That was a dope party." Actually, now that I remember it, do I regret it? Well, now that I'm thinking about that party, no, I don't regret it. That sounds pretty awesome. I'm glad I did it because I'm happy with where I am now. Having said that, there were so many things that I did foolishly during that time. I'm not just talking about, "Oh, I wasn't as good at this thing as I am now." It's like, no, there was so much opportunity right under my nose, and I was blind to it. One of the biggest, scary things for me now is: what are those things today that are right in front of me that I'm too stupid to see, just like I was too stupid to see it seven years ago when I was doing that other thing? For example, Greg, you were in our early mastermind groups, and the founders of Calm were there. They were talking about how hard it was and how, you know, Alex was just kind of like, "Yeah, it's hard to raise money right now. I'm trying." We were just like, "Dude, it's a cool app, man. You should stick with it." He was like, "Yeah, I'm going to just keep going." And like, that's a $2,000,000,000+ company now. We were helping him. Like, dude, why didn't we cut the check? You were there too. I don't know, you didn't cut a check either, did you?

Greg Isenberg

I remember at the time, if I'm being honest, I felt that it was too niche. We were like, Sean, you and I were focusing on...

Sam Parr

we were doing

Shaan Puri

Big stuff. Stuff that was gonna be big. Yeah, exactly. We were all one acqui-hire later. Exactly. And he's got the huge company. There were so many of those. So in our masterminds itself, I think Loom was in there. That's a $1,000,000,000 company. I remember trying to mentor Shai and being like, "Bro, don't worry. You'll figure it out. This may not be the one, but when you get to your real game, you're gonna be good because of this experience." You were friends with them too. Did you invest in that?

Greg Isenberg

I missed... I missed... I missed it. It was called, what was it called? Opentest.co. That's what Loom was originally. You know, it felt like when you're doing your first startup, and it just feels so shaky because it's your first time doing all this stuff. Like, that's what it felt like. Also, the narrative at the time was, "Don't invest in other people's startups." If you want to make it in Silicon Valley, you've got to give laser focus. So, my mistake in my twenties was I came to San Francisco, and I listened to all these VCs with their narratives, and I did it. If I were to redo it, I would frankly just be doing what I'm doing now, which is focusing on communities, doing agency services, focusing on niches, and web... you know, just build and experiment and not have the biggest exits in the world.

Sam Parr

I

Shaan Puri

so there there was like 10 examples like that like I remember alex mccall came over one day and he we were catching up and then he went on to start clear I remember thinking this guy's fucking amazing I should invest in this clearbit thing and I like went over to his office and we like hung out I was like we got to meet the guys I was like I love the energy of this office man like if I just couldn't do anything besides feel this office I would be like they're building a winner in here that's also like I don't know I don't know if it's a 1000000000 it's a multi $100,000,000 company and he told me at the end he goes oh by the way I'm buying up I was like what else are you doing finally I started asking more questions I was like what else are you doing he's like oh I bought up some stripe shares this stripe share is available for like $2,000,000,000 so I'm buying a bunch of stripe shares I think it was him maybe it's josh buckley he's one of them everybody knew stripe was fucking amazing it was like the best startup in the whole like you know in silicon valley and I had this opportunity to go buy stripe shares at 2,000,000,000 and I thought how late I was and I was like man I wish I could've got in earlier and now like you know the things I would give for stripe shares at 2,000,000,000 now like it's like that's already like a like a 100 x you know from from there and that was proven right forget that then there was all the services we were using like furkan who's my cto he would be like oh this is a cool cool product let's use this in our tech stack if I had just invested in all the bills we were paying for like software we were using like pagerduty and elasticsearch and you know like one after another those were all huge winners that were pre ipo so first was investing the second was like project selection so like you're talking about greg I did the same thing I was playing by the rules of like I was playing by other people's rules meaning like what was considered cool at silicon valley was to be like a product guy who was building who had a cool product taste and was building like you know like new markets and like going for the the big $1,000,000,000 prizes and then I met sam who was like I'm writing this newsletter it's free I'm gonna have like newsletter ads and I was like yeah but like are you gonna do a start up someday like that's how I felt about it right and sam's company sells for more than more than my company sold for in the end

Sam Parr

He goes, "Look, you're good, but basically, you're showing up to a knife fight with a knife. I wish you would show up with a magic wand that would just murder the competition." I'm like...

Shaan Puri

sounded cool right

Sam Parr

I was like, "That's a great analogy. That's a cool story." But, like, I don't know, man. I think the math kind of... I think it might achieve the desired outcome, which I'm trying to do here. When I started, I was just trying to be financially independent by the age of 30. That was the only goal.

Shaan Puri

and so so like if I could go back and just whisper 3 things about like just just strategy like forget life advice just strategy advice I would have said invest in all the smart people you know like it it'll it'll work out if you don't have the money go convince somebody that you have a bunch of really smart friends that they should give you money to invest in that that would be the first thing the second is invest in all of the expenses on your p and l so go find all the places you're spending money and go try to invest in all those companies that will also do fantastically well you'll make more on that than your own company okay if you really wanna do your own company beyond that fantastic that's great you're gonna build up skills and you got a a lottery ticket there that might work I would have just said like don't try to be mark zuckerberg from the social network like think about what like like basically just open your eyes to the problems and the opportunities that exist today and so like you know whether it was like ecommerce or shopify apps or like these sounded small at the time but they sounded small because that's where they were early and like at that time I needed a vc to like stamp their approval that this was a good market or a good opportunity which by that time is pretty late because what's the vc doing they're looking at what companies are raising huge rounds which means like 4 years ago those were great opportunities 3 years ago those were great opportunities and so I wish I had just kinda been more eyes wide open on like what projects are available to you and like the things that sound kinda niche and funny those are actually better signals for you than the thing that the vc is saying is gonna be huge or is already huge because it's often you know those companies to start are like you're in a you're in an absolute dogfight and it's just like one winner out of a 100 is gonna emerge versus other things where like you could basically take no no product risks no market risks so I had a friend vishal tell me this once he goes I invest in companies with no product market fit risk I had never heard somebody say that it didn't even make sense to me I go what do you mean like every startup is product market fit risk he goes no it's not like what and he goes he was the one who convinced me to buy bitcoin initially as well he was like bitcoin's gonna be the you know the biggest thing in the world he's like I just put basically all the money I have into bitcoin I was like what the fuck this is like back in 2,000 out of 16 15 nobody was really saying that back then so for the product market fit fit thing he goes he goes for example I just invested in a company that's making a robot that makes pizzas and it makes pizza it makes a perfect pizza every time 247 at a lower cost than a human being can do it he goes I don't know if they can he goes there's a ton of engineering risk like they may not be able to technically do it but if they can do it there's zero market risk every pizza shop will want this over paying an employee to make imperfect pizzas only in certain hours call in sick and blah blah blah like for a higher cost and I was like oh shit that's true there are things that have zero market risk and I was taking like maximum market risk before so like that's the other strategy it's like you don't have to take as much market risk the thing you're doing now greg is like way less market risk the thing I'm doing with milk road had like 0 market risk basically and there's just a like there's a lot of money there's life changing money that could be made and a lot of fun that could be had without taking on unnecessary money

Sam Parr

happened to that pizza company

Shaan Puri

I think they're still in engineering risk mode. They got a big contract from Domino's, but then their CEO got them in trouble for something. So, they hired a new CEO. These are legit engineering risks, so I'm not saying that doesn't mean they'll all work. But what I'm doing with the newsletter is neither technical risk nor market risk.

Sam Parr

Yes, operational risk is just about whether you are going to be able or wanting to do it for a long time, which is...

Shaan Puri

yeah

Greg Isenberg

which is good you know

Sam Parr

that's a pretty good thing to try to overcome

Shaan Puri

right

Greg Isenberg

Yeah, it's really tough. You know, I remember coming to San Francisco and hearing all these narratives. These VCs were telling me this, and also entrepreneurs were sort of repeating a lot of this stuff. I will say it's tough to go against what these stamps of approval say to do. You know, you have to tell yourself every day... and I have to do that too. When I started a services business, most of my Silicon Valley friends were like, "A services business? Like an agency? That's what you're gonna do?" You just kind of have to push forward and really remember that just because certain people on Twitter say a certain thing, or Sequoia or Andreessen say a certain thing, doesn't mean you can't have a great life. I would say you can have a better lifestyle not being Mark Zuckerberg than being Mark Zuckerberg.

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah exactly

Sam Parr

the the pope's catholic bro a brown bear shits in the woods right obviously

Shaan Puri

yeah well was that a brown bear shits in the woods yeah

Greg Isenberg

that's a sampar special that's a sampar special

Shaan Puri

is that the number 7 sampar special I just ordered because I think I got it

Sam Parr

does it brown bear shit in the woods yeah

Greg Isenberg

that's why people listen to this podcast though for a couple of samspars sampar specials

Sam Parr

Did you just... what did you say? Did I... did I just order a Sam Bar's iPhone number 7? Because I think I just got it.

Shaan Puri

yeah that's

Sam Parr

Good, by the way. I made a joke recently where Sean said, "Yeah, so there's these short traders," and I replied, "Oh yeah, tall Izzy." You just totally skipped by it. The people that commented on YouTube were like, "I think the joke was funny, but it was definitely funny that Sean just ignored him."

Shaan Puri

Well, no. People were like, "Dude, how did you not acknowledge that absolute gem, 'On Time, On Target'? You were quick with that one."

Sam Parr

Yeah, it got no love, and the commenters pointed it out.

Greg Isenberg

you're the new chris rock man you're the new chris rock you're a better version of chris rock

Sam Parr

Thank God this is digital. He's gonna "bitch slap" me right in the face! Dude, I can't believe that happened. I'm gonna, like, right after this, go see... I can't wait to see Will Smith apologize.

Shaan Puri

Oh yeah, he's for sure gonna come out with something. By the way, the form on his slap—if you look at the photo, full extension, crossbody. I mean, like, do you... I've never slapped anyone. If I tried to slap someone once, I'm not gonna have perfect form. That guy has to have slapped before because you don't just wake up with perfect form on a slap like that. Just look at the extension and tell me that's not his $12,000 slap.

Sam Parr

myth is a habitual slapper man

Shaan Puri

he's he's a perpetual slapper

Sam Parr

this guy has slapped before we gotta we gotta stop this guy before he gets out of control

Greg Isenberg

I wonder

Sam Parr

he's definitely slapped before

Greg Isenberg

As he was walking up the catwalk, there were like 5 seconds there. I wonder what he was thinking. Was he like, "You know, what am I gonna do? Am I gonna punch him? Am I gonna slap him?" I wonder what was going through his mind.

Sam Parr

I think he's on his rocker a little right now

Shaan Puri

I've done that before to my sister. I knew I was mad, and I started to charge at her. She's 5 years older than me, so I was just a kid at the time. I knew I was mad, but I had no plan. I had like three steps to improvise a plan. I remember this clearly, and she always tells the story. We were in the kitchen, and I was pissed because she made fun of me. I was about 5 or 6 years old, and as I was walking in the kitchen, I just grabbed a butter knife and said, "Nisha, this is the end." That was my statement. She responded, "The end of what?" I said, "The end!" Nobody knows what happened after that. We both just blacked out. She thought it was hilarious that I said something like a movie line, like a loser, while holding this butter knife. I don't know what I was going to try to do, but it definitely wasn't going to work. She could overpower me pretty handily at that time.

Greg Isenberg

the chantpore is special

Sam Parr

alright that's the episode

Shaan Puri

By the way, Greg, you said something. Don't end it yet! I want to leave with... Greg got my wheels turning. Even while we're joking, my wheels are still turning about what you've just said regarding the narrative. Here's my challenge to each of us: What's one narrative that you think you should actually be going counter to? There's a narrative that we hear as entrepreneurs, as people in kind of tech. What do you think is the... like actually, I don't know, maybe it's this other thing instead? So if anyone has one, do it! But otherwise, I'll give you one.

Greg Isenberg

yeah go for it

Shaan Puri

So, mine would be... I'll give you two. There's the inside crypto narrative that's basically like, "Oh, there's all this innovation happening. It's like the next protocol, the next token, the next whatever." I'm pretty sure that if you just buy three or four things—like if you buy Bitcoin, Ethereum, and I put Luna in there now—just buy those three and you just chill. Either all of crypto is going to work and those will work amazingly, or crypto's not going to work. No matter what you did, if those fail, if those don't go up dramatically in value, crypto just didn't work and none of the other stuff will work. So, I think actually, for a while, the best strategy was "Bitcoin and chill," and now it's "Ethereum and chill." I basically think it's still the same. I think it's like buying two or three tokens and not even needing to know anything more. Just chilling on those is probably the best investment for the next 10 to 15 years. It's going to outperform everything during that time. So, I think going deeper down the rabbit hole and learning more is actually going to mess up your returns versus just buying the main ones and holding for like 10 years without thinking about it. That's one. Then the other is, I think that angel investing doesn't make much sense anymore. I say this as somebody who angel invests. The valuations are so high that if I think about that same money going into one of these sort of boring cash flow businesses, it's so much better for your life. So, if you're like an individual angel investor and you have, let's say, $100,000 or $300,000 that you want to put into a basket of 20 startups, it's like, are you sure you shouldn't just get an SBA loan and go buy some random website that's already producing profit? That would pay itself off in two years or less, and now you own this cash-flowing asset. I'm pretty sure that's just going to do better, dude. I agree, than a basket of angel investments.

Sam Parr

The friends who have all crushed it in angel investing made their investments 5 or 8 years ago. It was different back then; it's outlandish at the moment. So, I agree with that. I think that you only have a few swings in your career. A lot of people say, "Oh, you should be patient and you've got a lot of time to do certain stuff." I actually think you should dedicate your twenties to getting your first significant win. After that, life gets a lot harder. You have a lot less energy, and you're a lot smarter, which is actually bad. It's kind of good to be a little ignorant. Not enough people realize this. Oftentimes, people go the other route and think, "Well, just go join something for a little while and learn." In my opinion, forget that. Dedicate your twenties to getting a win, even if it's relatively small, and do it as fast as possible. Because after that, life is a lot easier.

Greg Isenberg

I'll give my what sean

Shaan Puri

I was gonna say give the moyse quote about getting rich quick

Sam Parr

He goes, "Why does everyone hate on getting rich quick? Get rich quick schemes are the best! I wanna get rich quick; I don't wanna get rich slow."

Greg Isenberg

I got two real quick. I got off the phone with a friend of mine who works at Facebook. He told me this morning that he works roughly 90 to 120 minutes per day on average.

Sam Parr

I thought you're gonna say 90 to a 120 hours a week

Shaan Puri

he yeah it's the best when you measure your work in minutes

Greg Isenberg

He texted me today. He said it was 9:12 AM. He said, "Finish work for the day in 12 minutes."

Shaan Puri

yo put put us in a group chat I want him to text us every day just the timestamp of when you got so

Greg Isenberg

that's what that's what I told

Shaan Puri

him to do

Greg Isenberg

I said you need to create like a twitter and non account

Shaan Puri

a twitter

Greg Isenberg

that's and so I'm gonna stay tuned

Sam Parr

do that

Greg Isenberg

But I think that in your twenties, you should potentially go work at Facebook or Google. Get those high-paying jobs.

Sam Parr

I think that by the way I think I think that's a good way to get a win

Greg Isenberg

Get, you know, do that for a few years while you're doing your learning on the side. Like, join a DAO, build a community, build a newsletter, do whatever speaks to you while you're not, you know, yeah. So you're making money and you're learning. What more could you ask for? And then, my... and you know, just because you gave a crypto one, Sean, I think that... and I spent a lot of time in NFT land and Web 3 land too. I think that NFTs are going to be 99% freedom mint. It's gonna be a free minting thing. I think the idea of selling NFTs will be a very small thing.

Shaan Puri

And, well, okay, so what happens? Why would I give away something for free? What's my incentive? So, what happens after it's free to make?

Greg Isenberg

So, yeah... I mean, you know, okay. The idea right now is like people are selling NFTs and projects for 0.05 to 0.2 [ETH], let's say on average for some of these 10,000 PFP [Profile Picture] projects. I think that's gonna burn out at some point. And I think we're starting to see it burn out a little bit. And I think that... you know, did you see the 100 Thieves drop?

Shaan Puri

yeah they they what did they do exactly they did a much smaller amount

Greg Isenberg

So, they basically... first of all, it was in gaming, and gamers hate NFTs. So, the fact that they did a successful gaming NFT launch—like, obviously, kudos to them. But basically, they won this championship, and they were like, "Okay, in order to get this collectible, you can go grab it. It's free. We're not saying it's going to be worth anything." And they got 700,000 people to collect this collectible.

Shaan Puri

and it's like a trophy

Greg Isenberg

And then they make money if there's value, right? So if it grows in value, they get royalties. I think that's where you're going to see a lot of creators and big communities basically doing freedom initiatives. Even though people today think that selling NFTs is the future, I don't think so.

Shaan Puri

Right, by the way, I'm going to change mine to just simplify it. Instead of starting a company, I think buying an existing business is the most overlooked, obvious thing for a smart person to do. How do you take your market risk to essentially zero? You buy a business that's already working and profitable. You just say, "Cool, I'm a better operator than this person," or "I know about a different form of operation than they do." I can grow this using Facebook ads, or I can grow this using outsourcing, or I can grow this using, you know, code, or whatever it is. You hear almost no narrative about this. You hear tons of narrative around the genius visionary startup—starting a new thing, building a new project, launching a new thing. You hear like one or two examples of people buying businesses. I think that for most smart people, buying a business is a far better idea than starting one.

Greg Isenberg

But when you're in your twenties, my pushback to that is, like, when you're in your early twenties... do you know? Like, you're saying that now, but I think...

Shaan Puri

yeah

Greg Isenberg

You do need that operational experience, and that's where my... It's worthwhile to potentially take a high-paying job and then, on the side, kind of experiment and do stuff.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's true. I'm not really limiting mine to the twenties. I think I'm still making mistakes in my thirties, so I'm assuming other people are too. I guess it's more like, what narrative do I hear now that's easy to float along with? I'm like, you know what? Actually, I don't... I don't actually think this is true. For most people who want to be entrepreneurial, they default to starting a business. I think actually maybe it should be the opposite. Maybe you should default to taking on an existing business and growing it. Only create a new thing if you actually have a new invention in mind, a new idea that really you can't shake in your head, versus just starting a new startup.

Greg Isenberg

I like that

Shaan Puri

Because you want to be an entrepreneur, right? Alright, I think we lost Sam. We gotta go. Alright, Greg, thanks for coming, man. Where should people find you?

Greg Isenberg

twitter at greg eisenberg or on our pod where it happens

Shaan Puri

or in the mountains of canada

Sam Parr

or the

Greg Isenberg

mountains of canada

Shaan Puri

unless you're the irs in which case he's in miami at least a 180 days after

Greg Isenberg

at least alright see you