How a City Tour is Making Millions, & Selling Manhood | My First Million # 177

Shaan Puri

If you're building one of these, please reach out to me. I want to invest in all of these. I want to invest in like 20 of these companies.

Sam Parr

So, we're going to talk about what you can expect in today's episode. But before we do that, **My First Million** just went from 80th in our category on the iTunes store, which is a big deal to us, to number 14! One of the reasons we achieved this is because you folks who are listening have clicked the subscribe button. So, if you're using iTunes or any Apple product, can you please do me a favor? I want you to go and click subscribe. Go to our **My First Million** page and click that subscribe button. We also have an email address: [email protected]. Please send a screenshot of your subscription, and we're going to give you a shoutout on the podcast. Just include your name and show us that you subscribed. Send that screenshot to [email protected], and we'll give a callout at the end of this episode for everyone who did that previously. Now, let's hear what we're going to talk about in this episode. Go ahead, Sean.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, we got a bunch of topics I'm excited about. We talked about creating Barstool Sports for the tech industry. We discussed internal company podcasting platforms like Spoken. Then, we went on a crazy detour for "Crimewalks," "Manhood as a Service," and "Rent a Chicken." We had a bunch of good topics in this week's episode. If you like ideas, I would say you're going to love this episode. Sometimes we're a little bit light on ideas, but we were super heavy on ideas today. So, I think you guys will love it.

Sam Parr

Great! See you in the episode. So, we were just talking for a few minutes about the podcast updates and what we're doing to make it grow. But what I was about to tell you, Sean, is that I have this document that I'm going to send to you. Have you seen how, I don't know if you've seen this or not, but the podcast goes in the email, I think, every day now?

Shaan Puri

oh I have not seen that yeah

Sam Parr

And I'm the one writing it. We set this up so you're going to see the clicks in this document that I sent you every day. But anyway, it's going well today. Did you see that graph I sent you?

Shaan Puri

I tweeted it out. I was like, "This is what I'm talking about." Basically, you sent a graph of the iTunes rankings for the business category. I would guess it's a pretty big category, maybe the biggest. We hovered between 80 and 100; like, we were ranked number 80 or number 100. I guess that was kind of our norm. Then Sam takes over growth and, like, boom! Step change! We're now ranked number 20 for the last, I don't know, week or two. You could just see when he started working on it; it's like a direct correlation. This reminds me of a lesson I always teach everybody on our team. There are lots of marketing things you'll do where you're like, "Did it work?" and it's like, "Ah, I don't know. We gotta look into it." Oh, it wasn't trackable. It's like, "No, no, no! Just show me the revenue graph. Show me the user graph." If I can't notice something happened on this day or, "Hey, we started growing around this time," then it didn't work enough. Because usually, when you're in a small project, you need step changes. You don't need 1%; you need 10%, 30%, or 50% type of changes to work.

Sam Parr

And basically, where we are now is... I mean, you and I are both very capable of doing this. You just kind of look at it. It takes about two weeks. It took me about two weeks to talk to people and to look at the numbers. It's like, "Oh, okay, I now know that if I only do this, I'm going to be mostly there." What I've learned now is it's getting people to click the subscribe button on iTunes. If I get people to do that, mostly everything will be fine.

Shaan Puri

Okay, but that's going to sound overly simplistic. It's like, "Yeah, all I gotta do is get checkmate and then I win a game of chess." Like, well, yeah, but how do you get people to click the subscribe button? It's kind of...

Sam Parr

The question, I mean, it is not overly simplistic. It is simple. It is to get people to click that button. Now, the not simple part is how I'm going to get people to click the button.

Shaan Puri

right exactly but the

Sam Parr

The way to grow is simple. I just get people to click that button, and we've got loads of ways for that. For one, I'm just asking people. So, yeah, we asked people to leave a review the other day, and when I asked people to leave a review that day, we had 600 reviews. Do you know how many reviews we have now?

Shaan Puri

I don't know, there's at least a few hundred that came through. Yeah, 1,400. Okay, so we added 800 reviews just off of a quick one-minute ask: "Hey, if you like the podcast, go review it. We really appreciate it." That's kind of all you offered, really.

Sam Parr

it wasn't quick I like begged and I begged them but

Shaan Puri

Yeah, right. It was sincere. What I'm saying is it wasn't like rocket science. So, you know, I guess one of the reasons I want to share how we grow this podcast is because the way we grow this podcast is kind of... hold on, mosquito on my desk... no, too slow. Okay, so one of the ways that we're going to grow this pod, or one of the reasons we talk about this, is because the things you're doing now are stuff that people can learn to grow whatever their thing is. So I would say so far, two observations: **Number 1:** Intensity. When Sam does something, he really throws himself in, in a more intense way than the average person. The average person thinks they're doing it, and then we watch Sam's level of aggression and intensity towards something. You're like, "Oh, okay, that's what a level 12 is like. Now I know what the sort of theoretical max is." Okay, that's one lesson I get to see. I guess other people don't get to see it on a daily basis, but whatever. **Second thing:** Start with the stupid simple stuff. Okay, we want subscribers. Well, have we just asked people to subscribe? Right? Like, have we tweeted saying, "Go subscribe"? Have we said it on the podcast, "Hey, make sure you subscribe to this thing, go push this button"? That takes zero effort but actually yielded gain because it was just low-hanging fruit. I know that a lot of smart people would have talked themselves out of that because they would be afraid to ask anybody for anything. They're just afraid of getting rejected, afraid of coming across as a salesperson or beggar or whatever. So they're just afraid to ask. Secondly, they would have overcomplicated things. They would have said, "Well, I gotta go do this sophisticated strategy." And it's like, "Wait, have you tried the dumb strategy first?"

Sam Parr

Yes, I completely agree. That's why I always make a joke that when I meet really smart people... We interviewed a biologist the other day, and I don't know when that's going to come out in relation to when this podcast is coming out, but soon. He was one of the most high IQ people I've ever spoken to. I think he might have been the highest IQ person I've ever talked to, and it was very obvious. When I was talking to him, I actually wondered... For the longest time, I thought that the lower your IQ, the better. You want your IQ to be just above average, but not really high. The really smart people I meet, other than him, typically talk themselves out of anything. So anyway, I actually think that being just slightly above average is optimal.

Shaan Puri

but the sweet spot

Sam Parr

I didn't get to ask that, but I would love to know his opinion on that. Because when you meet him, he must know that he's like a kind of a genius, right?

Shaan Puri

He can't say because, you know, he's going to be humble about it. He's not going to say, "Yeah, clearly I'm smarter than everybody," but he is clearly smarter than everyone.

Sam Parr

So, I know where you're going with this top one, and I think I've got a strong opinion on it. Do you want to do your Barstool for Tech? Yes, we've talked about this many times.

Shaan Puri

okay yeah so so maybe we'll keep it short but

Sam Parr

well I don't know I mean you I know what you said but we with our listeners they probably don't

Shaan Puri

Okay, so Barstool, to me, is a super interesting company. Not just because I'm a fan and I consume some of the content, but I'm more interested in the business behind it. They basically went into sports media, which was dominated by ESPN. The upstart made it; they started with nothing. Literally, Dave Portnoy was writing a newspaper himself and then going down to the subway, handing it out to people before they got on their morning commute. That's how that was the humble origins of that—not even like a blog, but a physical newspaper. He was handing it out like the paperboy, and he was the writer and the editor. So, that's how we got started. Ultimately, you know, they sold for, I don't even... you probably know, $610 million.

Sam Parr

650 ish

Shaan Puri

yeah so so great outcome and like you know they they actually mean something in the world a lot of people really love barstool they care about barstool great so why doesn't this exist in the world of business or the world of tech so what did barstool do and could you apply that here so what barstool did if you listen to dave's early interviews he basically says look I want we are an entertainment company so that's that's the first thing we are trying to make people laugh and have a good time if you go to espn that's not their that's not their mindset their mindset is news information analysis and yes we are entertainment but like we're entertainment through news information you know official gay games and and analysis and barstow has no no rights to the games they don't bid for it they don't they don't own any nba games they don't know nfl games they don't do much analysis they don't do much sort of information they don't they don't tell you the news they don't tell you who won and lost and how many points the guy scored but they really focus on that last bit which is making people laugh and being entertained and so I think the world of business is full of espns it's full of information analysis you know like kinda like official broadcast of of of content you know whether it's you know interviews with companies or what whatever I think somebody should make barstool for tech which is I'm here to make you laugh you're you're into the business world you're into the tech world the start up world whatever it is pick your niche and every day we're gonna report news that makes you laugh and today there's like the onion that does that so I would say that's like an example of someone who does that but they're very extreme and maybe that's the right way to go there was like kind of valley wag or these kind of gossip blogs so they took gossip and they brought it to to business and tech they kinda got sued out of business later but they were popular for for a time and there's kinda nobody else and I think that if there is a dave portnoy out there if there's somebody who's interested in this stuff and they're funny as hell or they have this comedic taste you could build a media company doing this that's my theory I feel like you disagree give me give me your take

Sam Parr

Yeah, so I don't disagree with you. I think it would work if you could pull it off. I want to explain to you why this is hard to pull off. When you're a sports journalist who happens to be funny, which I actually think a lot of those people start as, they love sports and they happen to be funny. That's typically how it works. Now, you don't really have that many options. You can work for the local newspaper or try to get one of the few jobs at ESPN. But regardless, if you're lucky, you make $150,000 a year.

Shaan Puri

Right, and you're tabling the comedy side. Nine times out of ten, you're like, "You know, I would say this joke in my text message group with my buddies, but I can't put it in my column on ESPN."

Sam Parr

If you're smart enough to do this for business and you're funny, here's where the rub comes in. You likely can get paid a ton of money as some type of analyst, investor, or operator. It's really hard to retain those types of people because they say, "Well, why would I? If I'm this smart, I'm just going to go and trade stocks, invest in companies, or start a company versus give you my opinion and make you laugh for $80,000." This is the problem I've always had at The Hustle, which is how do you actually retain those people? A lot of the individuals who are best at analyzing companies and giving opinions have sold their company for $80 million. I have found it's quite hard to retain those people. Whereas if you are a journalist in sports, that's like the end goal—to be a journalist in sports, right? Do you know what I mean? When you cover this stuff, the end goal is to start or join an early-stage company that's going to be massive. So, I agree with you that if you could pull this off, it would be a huge hit. It's just that that's one of the hard parts.

Shaan Puri

Right, and so I agree with you. There is a higher opportunity cost for a smart business person who has a good sense of humor to do many things. But here's the kicker: I think this could be fun. I think this could be cool, and I believe there are enough people out there who aren't going to know how to parlay their skills. You kind of need just above average IQ and then two standard deviations above average, like kind of internet funniness, to make this work. So here's my pitch. Oh, here's the camera. I gotta look in... Trung, I'm looking at you. Look into these eyes. I'm looking at you right now, Trung. This is what you should do, my friend: you need to leave the hustle. You need to leave HubSpot, and you need to create the Barstool for tech. You are already doing it on Twitter, and you need to create it. But here's the kicker: here's how you make it more valuable. It's not just a media company; this would actually be an investment fund. So you would be a VC fund whose brand is built through journalism, and whose distribution of how they help their companies is through their media arm. So you're a media arm whose business model is your VC fund. That's...

Sam Parr

Actually, what I was going to say is, I think that would work, but you need to be a VC fund first. Then, you hire content people and offer them some upside there.

Shaan Puri

Your VC fund is kind of how it started because you do have to build up good distribution. It's not, again, I don't think it would be hard because there's nobody really creating this type of content. There's nobody that will just straight up make fun of Zuck when he's talking like a robot somewhere, right? And that's the type of stuff that Deadspin and Barstool do. They find funny, memeable moments and they talk about them. That's why Trump came to mind. He did a tweet the other day about Steve Ballmer. It was like, "Did you know when he first joined Microsoft, this was his salary? Then he renegotiated and was able to get this much equity that turned him into a $30 billion or whatever he is now." By the way, he did the whole thing, and he has this like "Steve Ballmer in 4 decades," and each time he's wearing the same white, you know, New Balance dad shoes. He's like, "He did this the whole time wearing these New Balance shoes. Like anything is possible." I was like, this is the perfect blend of a useful information nugget wrapped in a joke poking fun at the bear. So I think that that's the model. Anyways, I'm bullish on this. Sorry for trying to poach Trung to convince him to go do this, but I think that would be the ultimate manifestation of his talents. Or, if you're the next Trung out there, I don't know you.

Sam Parr

So, I'm not saying Trung is this, and I'm also not saying Trung is not this. But when you hire these types of people, what makes them good also makes them a pain in the ass to work with sometimes. You know, like what makes them good is that they're hilarious. They come up with stuff off the cuff, but they're incredibly challenging to contain. Yes, and you don't want to contain them necessarily, but there is some stuff you need people to do.

Shaan Puri

I'm kind of like this, right? I showed up 10 minutes late today. I know you hate me being late. I wasn't trying to be late, but I'm late. But also, I'm good. I'm good at what I do. You could find somebody who shows up on time for the podcast, but it's hard to find somebody who's going to consistently create great, great content.

Sam Parr

right

Shaan Puri

that is the that's the rub with talent the talent that turned business

Sam Parr

I've learned how to put up with that, but that is the part where sometimes I'm like, "I should just start a software company where the code is never late and the code never complains about X, Y, and Z." Not saying this isn't a true statement; I love you. This is just me as well. I'm a creative person, and so creative people are hard to contain. You want to talk about slips because you were quite interested in this.

Shaan Puri

okay so check out

Sam Parr

dude why do you always say I don't think you're gonna let am I like a default

Shaan Puri

I posted something negative in Slack, and you said, "I hate course businesses." So that's what I'm basing this on. You're like, "Why are you saying I hate this?" You literally told me an hour ago...

Sam Parr

like you

Shaan Puri

hate this

Sam Parr

A company that publishes courses, I think, is awesome to own but horrible to invest in. Am I wrong?

Shaan Puri

I don't know maybe what do you mean company that publishes courses so who's that like what

Sam Parr

like teachable well no teachable is a platform

Shaan Puri

Right, this is a platform. So, let me explain what this is. The domain is **slip.so**, and it's a company I'm looking at potentially investing in. I saw it, and it immediately struck me as a smart idea. So, what did they do? They make it easy for any developer to create a course to teach programming—either a language, how to make something, or how to make something go faster, or whatever. It's any developer teaching other developers. So, why do you need a new platform for this? Why can't you just use Udemy, Udacity, or one of the other ten platforms? Well, those platforms are all teaching through video. You upload a video and maybe some text or PDF, and then people go take that course self-serve. What they did was a little bit different. They took the best ways to learn how to code online today, which are interactive. Like we talked about, **Codecademy**—or is it Codecademy? I don't know, but it's codecademy.com.

Sam Parr

yeah yeah yeah

Shaan Puri

I'm going to say it fast so you don't know if I'm saying it right or wrong. Codecademy.com. You go there; I think they have like 40 million users or something. It's really grown over time.

Sam Parr

it's a thing

Shaan Puri

And all it is, is it's like... you don't have to. It's like if you ever tried to learn how to code. First, you gotta download the text editor; that's what you're gonna use to write your code. Then, you gotta download the Python packages so you can deploy... you know, what the heck is all this? I don't even know what Python is yet, but you need that to get started. So, what Codecademy did that was brilliant was they just put it all in the website, all in the browser. You go to the website, there's a place to type, and you don't have to install anything or download anything. It just says, "Look, write variable equals A." Now you made a variable called A. Fantastic! That's, you know, level 1 complete. Level 2, let's do A + 1, and you do it. If you get it wrong, a little hint pops up. It's like a game. A hint pops up and says, "Type A + 1." So, anyways, are you missing A, or whatever? So, Codecademy built this, and they are a teacher. What Slip did was they made a platform, but they've made the Codecademy-like sandbox or toolkit available for any developer. So, let's say I'm a developer, and I'm really good at front-end development and making parallax scrolling websites. I want to teach that, but I don't want to have to build the underlying infrastructure that Codecademy built in order to just let students come learn from me. That's way too much work. So, what this is, is it's Codecademy in a box. Any developer can now create an interactive course and teach other developers, and they can make money for sharing what they know. I think this is pretty cool. I like the idea of letting developers become teachers. I think we're going to want more programmers over time, and I think that building that underlying sandbox, that infrastructure that lets anybody have this kind of Codecademy in a box, is a cool innovation that's gonna save people a lot of time. So, I'm kind of bullish on this, but it's very, very early. There's not much traction; you know, it just got started. What do you think?

Sam Parr

well have you done the math behind this like how many

Shaan Puri

So, he charges, I think, if you are a developer who's using it, he charges **$30 a month** plus **10% of the sales** for your course. That's his business model. He himself taught a course, so how did he arrive here? He created a course on learning **Vim**. I don't even know what Vim is, but it's something developers use. Vim's like your... it's basically like your virtual machine, how you organize and write your code. I think, or maybe it's something completely different. Sean doesn't know. So, he created a Vim course, and in order to do that, he built the infrastructure for himself so that his students would have an interactive way to learn this. Instead of just watching videos and trying to figure it out themselves, they'd have a sandbox to go and write the code to learn. He made **$10,000 to $15,000** selling that course, and then he was like, "Oh dude, I should make this available to any developer." Like, I know Vim, but what about the next guy who knows **Solidity** and is trying to teach **Ethereum** programmers how to write in Solidity? They can now create their course using the same toolkit that I use for myself.

Sam Parr

So, I wish you would have started this like 6 years ago. Right now, these course businesses, or course platforms, we're going to call them, they're not publishers; they're tech companies. They're actually booming right now. Do you know a company called Thinkific?

Shaan Puri

I've heard of it, but it's kind of like Kajabi, right? It's like Teachable; it's the same thing, right?

Sam Parr

do you know they went public yesterday

Shaan Puri

I do not know this how how valid how how big is it

Sam Parr

They went public yesterday on the Canadian Stock Exchange, the Toronto Stock Exchange. Is that what it's called? Yeah, look it up right now. For some reason, when companies go public, it's like impossible to find the market cap in the first couple of days. I don't understand why it's so hard, but it never shows up. Anyway, they only had $20,000,000 in sales and they broke even or lost a little bit of money. They went from $10,000,000 to $20,000,000 in 2020. And guess what their market cap is right now?

Shaan Puri

it's gonna be like I don't know dollars 2,000,000,000 or something stupid

Sam Parr

It's over $1,000,000,000; their market cap is. I asked Ankur—our friend Ankur—who started this company called Teachable. When Teachable sold, they sold for, I think, $250,000,000. This is public information; you can Google it. Whatever the headline says, that's what I'm trying to say. I think it's around $250 million, and I believe it was only doing $25,000,000 a year in sales. They had only raised $4,000,000. It was a really straightforward, simple thing. I mean, hard but simple. Now, Thinkific is quite similar. They went public with a huge, massive valuation. I was like, "Ankur, why are these valuations so high? This is just stupid." He goes, "It's because of..." and I don't understand how this works, but he's like, "It's the payments business." So, I guess once you get someone to start spending, you save their credit card, and then they'll continue buying stuff. That's one of the reasons why investors value these companies incredibly highly at the moment: because they want the payments revenue. I don't entirely understand the mechanics there.

Shaan Puri

But it's the way I would think about it. These are just Shopify. So, what does Shopify do? Shopify, maybe that's exactly it, can create a storefront. What they're saying is it's Shopify, but instead of selling, you know, hats and shirts, you sell information, which is super high margin. If you think, okay, Shopify, there are now X number of sellers, and Shopify is a $100 billion company. Okay, maybe retail is bigger than the additional education business, but we have like a 100-fold difference. From a $100 billion company like Shopify to $1 billion, you can be 100 times smaller than Shopify if you create Shopify for education. If you make it so that any educator can come and create a storefront to sell their information, that's what Teachable is trying to do. That's what many companies try to do, and they're all splitting that pie in a way. But I like this one because I think it doesn't compete with all those. I think the developer ecosystem—developers teaching other developers or wannabe developers—is quite differentiated. The product is quite differentiated from what Teachable, Kajabi, and Thinkific offer. They're all the same; it's just you create a video library, you charge students, they get access to the library, and then the teacher can communicate with the students or whatever.

Sam Parr

how'd you find this

Shaan Puri

I was on Twitter, and I think I just saw something. I don't really recall; maybe one of my guys sent it to me. I think Zach, who is my scout for my phone, saw it and was like, "This is cool." As soon as I went to the landing page, something clicked with me. Now, this is still very small. I think you can repeat it under $1,000 of GMB right now. I believe he has a couple of teachers, and it's been live for a couple of weeks. You know, he's got about $1,000 in the team.

Sam Parr

pills what's that what what's it called

Shaan Puri

slip

Sam Parr

what's the url

Shaan Puri

slip.s0

Sam Parr

Yeah, like it's neat. I think I've always had a little bit of a problem with this type of stuff because whenever... do you know what the finish rate is for courses? You know, it's like...

Shaan Puri

10%%

Sam Parr

Yeah, mhmm. So, if a hundred people buy it, only 10... if you consider using the product and doing the whole thing, only like 10 of the 100 are actually going to do it, if you're lucky.

Shaan Puri

I have a friend who just sold a course with a ticket price of a couple thousand dollars. People are putting down a few thousand dollars to learn this thing. He said, "Guess how many people are finishing the course?" I was like, "No, don't tell me." It was like, I think 12 people had finished the course. It's like, you know, whatever, less than 6% had actually finished the course. He also said, "Guess how many people got to 50%?" I think it was like 20-something percent of people had gotten halfway through the course. He asked, "Did I make a shitty course?" I was like, "No, dude, this is just what self-serve education is." When it's self-serve and there's no peer pressure, there's no accountable teacher who's training you every week, or you know, you're showing up to a live event. When it's on demand, like Netflix, I can go learn more whenever I want. Even paying a thousand dollars is not enough skin in the game to do this. It's very counterintuitive; you would think...

Sam Parr

It's not even you. You paid $60 a year, or whatever you paid, or someone paid for you to go to Duke, and you missed classes.

Shaan Puri

Oh yeah, that's great. Yeah, I basically... you know, for 4 years I took a... *piss down the drain* of my college tuition. That's the way I would describe that experience.

Sam Parr

So anyway, that's one of the reasons why I'm not all gung-ho about course businesses. I'm like, "Damn, no one uses your stuff."

Shaan Puri

I'll say this: not all have that low completion rate. I invested in Maven, Guggen's, you know, Guggen Bayani's company. He did Udemy and saw that low completion rate problem. He created this cohort-based course product where you get a batch of people in, and they're going to do the thing for a defined period of time—5 weeks. There's live instruction every week, and the completion rates are way better. Right? That dramatically increases it. I also invested in Lambda School. Lambda School had like an 80% completion rate when I invested way back in the day. I knew something was different about this company. I knew the standard is 6%, and I knew these guys had 80%+. I was like, "What'd you get different?" He goes, "Well, it's live. You show up to class with a bunch of other students and a teacher." We do good filtering up top. Most course companies are trying to sell as many seats as possible. Lambda School is the opposite; it's like Harvard. They're trying to only accept the 1% of students that are actually going to do the thing. So, you know, depending on the business, you can get wildly different outcomes. But yeah, you're right. As a general rule, their usage kind of sucks.

Sam Parr

dude you have so many ideas here where did you find all this so what the hell is

Shaan Puri

Dude, you were working on growth, and I was like, "If he's doing growth, I better bring the heat on content." So, I was like...

Sam Parr

I'm coming with a bunch of ideas what the fuck is spoken

Shaan Puri

Sounds sick! Yes, okay. You want to do spoken? So, spoken: S-P-O-K-E-N. It's podcasting inside companies.

Sam Parr

what's the url

Shaan Puri

s p o k n I don't know you'd have to Google it I don't have the url here

Sam Parr

I did I it's so new they don't even show up really

Shaan Puri

shit sad because I'm giving this guy a shout out they're growing fast

Sam Parr

Got it. So if you go to **getspoken.com** or if you just Google **"sp0kn"** in quotation marks, you'll find it.

Shaan Puri

Right, and tell them I sent you. So, okay, what is this? When I first started this podcast, I used to record out of a studio. In San Francisco, there's this old radio station place, and they're like, "Radio's kinda dying. What if we converted these radio studios to podcast studios?" They were the only ones in San Francisco. If you just Google for it, it's kind of amazing—$100 an hour to go record. I wanted good quality, so I went there and I used to book on their little scheduler. Some days, I would see it was just all booked. I was talking to the dude and I was like, "Who the hell is booking? How many podcasters are using this thing? I feel like it was not many people." He was like, "Oh, sorry, that day Facebook booked all the hours." I was like, "What do you mean Facebook booked all the hours? Facebook doesn't have a podcast." He goes, "Oh, Facebook has tons of podcasts internally." I was like, "What?" He goes, "Yeah, they have like a manager's manager's podcast that is just an internal podcast for Facebook managers to talk about managing inside Facebook." I was like, "Oh, that's actually kinda smart." We've talked about this before—internal media companies. I think this is a big opportunity. You think it's a big opportunity? We've talked about it from a blogging perspective.

Shaan Puri

Of view newsletters, we've talked about it on like kind of central announcement dashboards. So, building tools for companies to better communicate. Basically, build the internal high school newsletter, or high school newspaper, I think is what we called it. What is the high school newspaper for your company?

Sam Parr

yeah I think this is so awesome

Shaan Puri

Ever since you said that, I can't get that idea out of my head. If you're building one of these, please reach out to me. I want to invest in all of these. I want to invest in like 20 of these companies. I'm trying.

Sam Parr

To find that episode, what would I search to find it on Google? My First Million internal... what do we... what is... yeah.

Shaan Puri

The internal mail, Mailchimp for companies... I think, I don't know what we called it at that time, but the core idea is just like a high school or a college will have their school newspaper. Why don't companies have the same? If it's going to be a newspaper, it's not going to be literally a physical newspaper. In this case, with spoken content, it's a podcast for inside companies. Companies will clearly pay for the platform, the recording, the library, and the private feed that others can't access—that's for your company. You know, the companies that need this are very large companies. So, I don't know realistically... okay, I think that's all cool. I don't know realistically how many people at Facebook are like, "Fuck yeah! I'm commuting to work today; I'm going to listen to the manager podcast." Maybe nobody wants to hear this stuff, but maybe they do. There could be interesting personalities. I know that if Twitch had an internal podcast, I would do one. I would do one on managing, or product, or innovation, or whatever. I don't know how many people will listen to it, but I think it's a very interesting niche. It's a niche of podcasting that is highly monetizable. What do you think?

Sam Parr

Yeah, so on the surface, I think this is so badass. I've been a fan of this idea for a long time. I don't know where we came up with this idea, but I think that at the time we discussed this, we were like, "Oh, this might be one of the most straightforward ways to make a lot of money on this podcast." At that time, I'm looking at...

Shaan Puri

I think we were talking about it because I was publishing my 321, or my 123 newsletter, inside Twitch. I had told you, "Hey, here's a networking hack I'm doing inside the company." I write this thing and send it to all the execs, like the 25-person exec team or whatever. It's just a great way to stay in front of people, stay top of mind, and help them get to know me. It takes me one hour, and I essentially get an hour with all the execs just by putting in that one hour. But I was saying, you know, I'm just sending this in Gmail. Why isn't there like Mailchimp or ConvertKit for sending stuff inside companies? That's kind of...

Sam Parr

of one of the ways we're talking about company called recess it's called recess dot io

Shaan Puri

and bray you've grabbed it so by the way episode 53 is where we talked about if people wanna go

Sam Parr

I'm going to write that up because I'm actually doing this series where I'm going to go back and look at old ideas. This is a good one: Recess.io. It started by a guy named Ryan Deiss. It never really got off the ground, but it's called "Easily Send Internal Email Newsletters and Track Results." So it's basically what we're describing, and it hasn't taken off. I'm also looking at Spoken. They went to Y Combinator; they're in the class of W21, so Winter 21. Does that mean they're still in it?

Shaan Puri

yeah that's like now

Sam Parr

and they the the company launched in

Shaan Puri

feels like not even now it's fucking spring 21 I don't know how that works wait

Sam Parr

yeah what the hell it says lying it says february 21

Shaan Puri

no well it could

Sam Parr

be winter 21 january january 21

Shaan Puri

oh okay I gotcha

Sam Parr

I guess, yeah, not December, January. It started in 2018, and I'm wondering why it hasn't taken off a little bit more. Because three years in, you would think it would have a little bit more traction. On the surface, I think this is a brilliant idea. I'm wondering what's going on and why it's not kicking ass. I think this is a fantastic idea.

Shaan Puri

Alright, I like this idea a little better as the newsletter one because I think it's just more accessible than podcasts. But both are cool. We should ask Ryan D. Ryan Deese is your buddy, right? You should ask him, "What's the deal?"

Sam Parr

I feel like

Shaan Puri

this is I can tell

Sam Parr

You know why? Well, I don't... He's never told me this, but Ryan Deese has loads of companies, right? So, the scene... this is because this is pretty innovative. You'd have to be all in on it, I think, to make it work. And so, I wonder.

Shaan Puri

What's going on with something like this? If you're building this, let us know. If you're like, "No, I want a project. I want to build it," this is one where, if you're a credible person, Sam and I will invest in this. I think to get something like this built.

Sam Parr

By the way, we have a new email. It's called **[email protected]**. I'll give you access, Sean, but basically, it's cool. I get too many emails, and I think you do too. So, if you guys want to contact us, you can email us at **[email protected]** if you're actually making that. Do you want to go to another one?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, let's do another one. Alright, so, Crimewalk. Okay, what is this? I don't even remember what this was. So basically, there's like an Airbnb experiences thing, and you probably know much more about this since your wife works there. You're also, I think, the type that would do something like this. So I saw this and I saw how much money it was making, or I don't remember what it was exactly. Okay, so if you go to Airbnb experiences, there was an experience, and there's a link to it in our document just slightly below. It's a retired NYPD officer who will guide you through a walk in New York. It's a guided mafia and crime walk. I'm like, "Wait, mafia and crime walk?"

Sam Parr

this for so long this is so cool

Shaan Puri

So here's the description. I'm just going to read it word for word. First, let me say that most gangster tours in New York are total BS. This experience comes right from the horse's mouth—no tour guide, no filter. Get real stories while visiting notorious gangland locations as we walk from East Village to Little Italy, experiencing what it was like to be an associate of New York's famous mafia families. You'll hear firsthand accounts of the New York City mafia and crimes in New York, and taste local cuisines. I saw this and thought, "This is such a good idea." I think I saw that this crime tour was making a lot of money, so it was very successful, which is not a surprise to me. I would do this if I was in New York. This is great! But a couple of things... kind of here's the business idea. So first, this is a cool quick reaction, then I have an idea.

Sam Parr

Well, okay, so first of all, I just sent this to my wife because we're moving to New York for a little while. I said, "We're doing this." Second, he charges around $120 to $130, depending on the date, per person. In the description, he says that he has had 8,000 guests. So, $123 times 8,000 is $1,000,000.

Shaan Puri

exactly so a mill I think that's what I that's what originally caught my attention was here's a who has built an experience I think that was my kind of curiosity who's built an airbnb experience that have made a $1,000,000 right because this is a big platform certainly somebody's doing well and so so this is kind of how it caught my eye okay so what's the idea the idea is this is a cool thing for a cop to do in retirement I I I told you we had that that police situation where I had to go do a shakedown we we brought a cop with us and became friends with that cop later and was getting to know you know I was the 1st cop I really have become friends with as an adult I loved her she was great and I so I was like well what's you know how do cops can can cops make more money because she was describing how hard it is to be a cop nowadays there's like kind of like a lot of cop backlash because of blm and all that stuff she's like but I'm a good cop and like also like budget cuts like defund the police bun budget cuts are happening all around and so anyways long story short I think this is a cool thing for a retired cop to do also could be applied to retired kind of anything anybody who has a cool job like whether you're a swat officer a you know military veteran firefighter whatever it is I think there's a lot of people who there's a lot of people who are like me we're like little weaklings that spend all of our days behind a desk and we want this like safe way to taste you know an adventure and like what the real tough world looks like and so that's why like spartan race and stuff that's why they do well and similarly I think that these like kind of crime walks would be would be cool so then I took it a little bit further well why don't people do this with more things so why don't you take every physical venue where something interesting is happening breweries do this right brewery say hey we got this brewery but we also have this side business of people come through they get a tour of a brewery they get to see how it's made they get to taste the beers they get to take some photos they get to buy our shit on the way out and they've turned brewery tours as a like additional income stream for breweries so why doesn't this happen for more things like when I visited you know the warehouse for my wife's you know e commerce business I was fascinated it's like this 80,000 square foot place you get to see all these forklifts coming around and how it how it works how the fulfillment works when an order comes in how does it get put in the mailer how does it get taken out of here and so I think that for everything factories warehouses police stations firefighter stations I think they should all have this as a business

Sam Parr

VaynerMedia did that where, and you could... well, I don't know about COVID anymore, but prior, I think it was like a $20,000,000 a year business. It would cost $10,000 per person or per couple. You and your co-founder, or you and whoever, could go to the VaynerMedia event. Their head of people would just have a discussion with you, and then eventually, Gary would come in for like half an hour. All you do is learn how an agency works, and you get to walk around the office and see where the departments are. You could go to the Eventbrite page, and it would show you how many seats they had and how many were taken. I did that, and I just did the math. I'm like, "Oh my gosh, this might make like $10 to $20 million a year if, right, if 7 or 8 of the seats are actually full." It's actually...

Shaan Puri

that that was 10 grand

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's called the... If you go to VaynerMedia on Eventbrite, you'll find it. It was called so...

Shaan Puri

So, this is me. I'm a small agency owner. Gary V is my hero. VaynerMedia is like what we want to be someday. I'll pay $10 to basically get to go check it out, see how it works, meet Gary, shake his hand, spend 20 minutes there, and then leave. Is that basically it?

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's called the **VaynerMedia Daily Digital Deep Dive**. If you look it up on Eventbrite...

Shaan Puri

you can name

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's a dumb name, am I right? Abreyu, is that what it's called? If you look up Eventbrite VaynerMedia, you'll see it. You can look at the past events and see how full it is. You could also see the price. It's pretty ridiculous, not really bad, but like...

Shaan Puri

So, I didn't look this up beforehand, but I'll tell you another version of this that's cool. Are you a basketball fan? Do you know who Coach K is?

Sam Parr

yeah duke guy so I I know I'm I'm I'm I'm not an idiot but I'm not a fan

Shaan Puri

okay so the 4 d's

Sam Parr

By the way, it's called the **4 D's**. It's called the **4 D's** at VaynerMedia. I guess that is **Daily Digital Deep Dive**.

Shaan Puri

okay cool so so coach k who is the duke basketball coach he's the most famous college basketball coach probably of all time and he was the men's olympic coach for the dream the the the latest dream teams or regime teams like lebron and kobe and all those guys so he's a pretty popular guy and he does a thing every year called coach k's fantasy camp it's almost identical to what you're talking about and now you got my brain spinning that how many more of these are there how many more should there be and maybe we need the my first million dream camp so here's how this works coach k's fantasy camp you pay $10,000 and you get to go who are these people they are you know duke students who like you know there there's a bunch of duke students who are like kind of investors now ceos of companies and they were big basketball fans now they got a bunch of money they're kind of in their forties or you know fifties and they pay to go to this thing what is it you go for the for I think a 5 day program or something like that you go back to duke campus and you live like a player so you stay in the dorms I think or you you know you stay kind of on campus or right next to campus there's like a bus that basically brings you onto campus and you you come into cameron indoor stadium which is the duke basketball stadium it's like the hallowed ground and coach k takes you through a camp where you you're you know you're on the court you're shooting you're doing the drills that the players do you get the motivational talk that coach k gives he brings in old players to come oh that's carlos boozer oh that's jj reddick you know you get to autograph some kind of you know but but it's more intimate because it's $10 so there's you know a few hundred campers I think and so they actually get to meet those guys and and actually hang with them and for the players it's cool too because these are all like ceos or high level hedge fund guys they actually kinda want this business network also and you get to wear the jersey you get to go into the locker room they play the sounds when you come out and like you know you've got your dad bod like your fats coming out the side of the jersey that's crazy comes here comes duke and you get to run out and there's like no fans there because it's not real again anyways this thing's awesome he must make a ton of money off this thing I haven't really done the math because I heard about this when I was in college my roommate was a manager on the team so he he was part of the kind of the team program so he would stay during the summers to be the the kind of the the uber the shuttle bus driver for these guys and he's like I was like why are you doing this sounds lame like why do you wanna do this he's like oh I make a killing in tips these guys will just hand me 100 when they get out of for the 5 dot 5 5 minute ride of like from the from the dorm or the hotel to the to the gym he's like I'm getting a $100 from these guys every time I do one of these shuttles it's amazing and and the network is great like I meet some of these guys they're like you know this guy started this this guy started that so I think this is cool and I wonder how many more people do this or could do this because it's a very interesting little niche

Sam Parr

You do it for every sport, and I'm so into this. I don't know what I could do it with, but I'm on board.

Shaan Puri

Here's a version of this: If you're a hustler, okay, here's what you do. You go to Grant Cardone, you go to people who have made it and have a high profile, but they still need money, right? So, like, I don't think you could do this with LeBron James necessarily, but I think you could do this with a college football coach. College football coaches, you know, at every program, don't make tons of money, right?

Sam Parr

the big ones or or or a really famous high school coach

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. Or it could be a CEO of a company or, you know, whatever. You basically create the same sort of fantasy camp mindset or the 4D tours. It's like, "Hey, I will run this whole thing for you. I just want 20% of profits." Okay, so here's what I'm gonna ask of you: when I bring people over at this time every week, or once a year, or whatever it is, you come out, you kiss babies, and shake hands, and let me do this. So it's a way to attach yourself to an influential program, institution, or person and create this business line from scratch. Because really, you're just offering this to their fans.

Sam Parr

Dude, I think—this is actually what I've thought about doing—because I enjoy physical work. Whenever I'm done working here, before I start my next company, what I'm going to do is either read a book and master a niche, like crime in New York or the Gold Rush in San Francisco, or I'm going to start a landscaping company. Something that I'm going to have to be outside all day, working really hard. I think I can turn it into a $1,000,000 a year company within 6 months. I truly believe that. The reason why this fascinates me is because, A, I love it. I love being physically exhausted; I enjoy that. But also because I think that far too many people are trying to make money on the internet, which is cool and all, when they could probably crush it and become quite wealthy by just doing something outside that is totally like, "Oh, it won't scale," yada yada. I'm like, "Fuck it, dude!" First of all, everything could scale at least a little bit. And second...

Shaan Puri

like who cares I would love to see somebody do manhood as a service okay what's manhood as as a service so in the again same way that spartan race and tough mudder they're kind of like these like pseudo tough guy events that you can go do oh I did something hard outdoors I got muddy I got cut you know I I climbed this mountain I got this headband and I drank a beer at the end you know you get your man card now if anybody who really knows knows that this is not a real man card this is a fake id but you know this is your mclovin man card but it that's what these are offering they're offering manhood as a service and I would like to see somebody take this to the extreme so I'll give you the example brother aaron who comes on here I think he's come on here twice or something like that and people know him because people like him because he's kind of a nut like he comes on with conspiracies and rabbit holes and he just goes all in on things he has gone all in on like manhood he's sorta like dude we're all too soft so he trains like jujitsu and boxing and he just wants to do an amateur fight why because he's like I just wanna see what I'm made of and I think you could take that concept and make it a weekend traveling circus that goes from city to city you just say step up and face some pain you wanna see what it's like to get like kind of tortured you wanna get can you take a punch can you get like like a tough motor there's the electric shock at the end and you kinda wanna know like what does that feel like you know like can you go in this isolation tank and like could you last an hour I don't I don't know what the actual product is but I know it's a counterintuitive thing it's like wait people are paying to get like kind of like do physical labor they have to like chop down this fucking tree and they don't get picked up until they're done it's like yeah that's what this is it's like hard work / pain / like manhood like what did we used to have to do that we don't have to do anymore what's hardship that we are sheltered from because other people do it for us or machines do it for us or whatever and I think there's actually like a very big craving in society for for those types of careers

Sam Parr

I totally agree. I've been going boxing every Friday, and I just love it. I'm like, "I need to get punched in the face so I can feel alive." I gotta do it; it's all happening.

Shaan Puri

Again, like Tough Mudder, you make it safe enough where the actual mass market is... well, let's be honest, they're a bit timid. They don't actually want to go get punched. If you really wanted to get in a fight, you could do that. So, you need the people who want to have the experience but with padded walls, with gloves on, where you're not actually going to get severely hurt in any way. But you get to experience your level of toughness, grit, pain tolerance, physical endurance, and physical ability. What is your max? I think Survivor should do this. I'm a big Survivor nerd, and I always see these challenges. I would love to do them. So, if you're Survivor... okay, back to the camera, Jeff Probst, this idea is for you. You're Survivor, you're... I don't know, you're on season 42 or something like that. You're not getting any younger, and the show is not attracting that many new viewers. Here's what you need to do: We need to create the Survivor World Tour. You go city to city and set up the Survivor events that you've seen on TV. You see if people can do it. Can they hang? What will this do? Survivor superfans will have a deeper way to connect with you. They'll pay—shut up and take my money—because I love this show. You can get the ex-players to come out because they aren't doing much anymore; they're just doing cameos. So, they'll come out and participate just to extend their lifeline of fame. You'll get new people who will go with their friends to try this thing. They'll get into the Survivor universe. Then, when I'm watching the show, it's like, "Dude, I did that one where you have to hang on to this pole for as long as you can." It could be at an amusement park, a carnival, or a fair, but branded by one of these shows, or maybe multiple shows that get together to do this. What do you think of my idea?

Sam Parr

In yeah, I mean, it's almost like it's a TV version of Disneyland.

Shaan Puri

Yes, exactly. You take the IP from TV and you make Disneyland out of it. Or, you know, any kind of carnival affair.

Sam Parr

If they had... do you remember that TV show *The Challenge*? Both you and, like, Sean and my wife Sarah...

Shaan Puri

do I remember the show I watched last week yes

Sam Parr

Yeah, they text each other about this thing called "the challenge." I don't know how it ended. I mean, I see it in the background when Sarah's watching it, but they love it.

Shaan Puri

I thought you're a fan you didn't even watch

Sam Parr

The finale... If I don't have anything to do, I'll sit with her and watch it. I have literally no idea how it ended. I think the ending was...

Shaan Puri

like

Sam Parr

Last week, right? Yeah, if they have like a challenge location where you could do... I know there's like a famous one called "Wall Brawl" or something like that.

Shaan Puri

hall brawl

Sam Parr

hall brawl yeah like if they like we would have gone

Shaan Puri

Let me describe Hall Brawl for people who don't know, because there's not many in the crossover between those who care about business and tech and those who watch *The Challenge*. It's a lonely, lonely island. So, Hall Brawl is... imagine a narrow hallway, about 2 feet wide, made of plexiglass. There are two plexiglass walls with a 2-foot gap in between. On one side, there's one person wearing football pads, and on the other side, there's another person. Then the guy says "go," and you have to run straight at each other in this narrow hallway. You smash into each other, and then it's like whoever gets out to the other side and rings the bell first wins. This is the famous thing about Hall Brawl. But this is exactly what I would do in my kind of "manhood as a service" fair or my TV fair. You can do Hall Brawl! Come step up, sign the waiver, and you get to experience this. We have video cameras already positioned everywhere, and you get to share this content on Instagram at the end of it, just like the Museum of Ice Cream or Tough Mudder. It's due!

Sam Parr

to yeah

Shaan Puri

photo opportunities

Sam Parr

I've... alright, I've got... we're probably going to have to wrap it up soon, but I've got two stories that I'm going to bring up. The first is, I was at my friend Nick Gray's house the other day, and I met the founder of the Museum of Ice Cream. I told him we talked about him, and he was like, "Oh, I know." We were never disrespectful about him, but I think we were not bullish on the idea. So, we'll have to...

Shaan Puri

I think we were both like, "This is a great business idea." But hey, if you go, it's kind of underwhelming. I think that was both of our true user opinions of it.

Sam Parr

so we're gonna have to have him come on but second have you heard of museum hack

Shaan Puri

no what is this

Sam Parr

So, I went to my friend Nick's house the other day. I've been buddies with him for a while, and he's got this website called **museumhack.com**. He recently sold the business, but this is just another example of one of these tour things that we've been discussing. I don't even know if he knows a lot about art; I don't know what his background is, actually. But he just enjoys museums. So, he built this business that was making **$2,000,000** a year in sales. You would pay him, or eventually he would train people in a variety of cities, and you would pay **$50 to $100** (I forget the + admission to the museum). In New York, the museums are free, and he would give you a custom tour of a museum and explain the background behind the different paintings and pieces of art. He would do it in a fun way. If you Google "Museum Hack," the meta description is "Museum Hack: fucking awesome museum tours." It was clearly like this young, hip, you know, whatever thing. Companies would pay money to send their employees there, and they did it in six cities, I think. They had people in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and then a few other cities. It was a **$2,000,000** a year business, and this is all that he did. It was very successful. It was a lot of work to set up, but it kind of ran itself after a while. Pretty simple, straightforward, and pretty amazing. It's called **Museum Hack**; that's the business.

Shaan Puri

That's cool! I like that one. You had two stories. Is that the one? Is that both, or is that one?

Sam Parr

that was both

Shaan Puri

Okay, that's both. Can I do one more idea? We want to try to slip it in. Alright, so this is related to manhood as a service, more like back to the roots. I think kind of like what you were talking about. It’s like, "I'm gonna buy a farm. I'm gonna own the farm and I'm gonna offer tours of the farm and let people come farm with me," or a ranch or something like that, right?

Sam Parr

and you're talking about rent the chicken I'm looking at the site now

Shaan Puri

**Rent the Chicken** is what I want to talk about. I saw this little thing that discussed how the chicken rental business has been booming during the pandemic. Okay, what is this? People are renting chickens like pets. It's like a pet in a box! So, chicken owners or breeders—I don't know who you real farm people are—are taking chickens and saying, "Hey Sam, who lives in Austin and has his house, do you want a chicken coop in your backyard?" Here's what you get: there are two chickens back there. Cool! You kind of have a little pet. I'll bring the coop, I bring the feed, and I bring the instructions. I kind of boot you up and let you know how it works. They're going to lay like six eggs a day or whatever. You're going to get fresh eggs that are awesome from your own coop, and you have this pet back there.

Sam Parr

this is awesome

Shaan Puri

You get to talk to them and pet them and blah, blah, blah. I know, for example, my daughter is like 18 months old. Kids love animals, and so I want to get her some kind of animal soon. We have cows that come into our backyard, or like back to our fence, and it's her favorite thing in the whole world to see the cows. She says, "Cow! Cow!" and then she says, "Cow see moo! Cow see moo!" It means, "I want to go see the cows. They go moo." So, I take her to the fence, and she sees them. She wants to touch them, and it's her favorite thing. Our friend Ramon had a little chicken coop in his backyard.

Sam Parr

yeah 3 of them

Shaan Puri

There were 3 chickens back there, and his son liked it. They used to go out there, feed the chickens, and get eggs from them. So, this is booming. They're all sold out. All the chicken rental companies can't get a chicken right now; they're all totally booked. Demand during the pandemic tripled. I think it's still small numbers because they were like, "Oh yeah, demand tripled." Last year, we had 70 chickens to rent, and now we have like 200 chickens to rent. So, it's like that's still not that many coops that you're renting out.

Sam Parr

pretty amazing

Shaan Puri

But I'll call this my new segment, called "Blue Collar Side Hustle." I may never do this segment again, but at least for this...

Sam Parr

one no we're gonna do that that's a good one blue collar

Shaan Puri

side hustle collar side hustle this is a way to make a

Sam Parr

few $1,000 whole episode this whole episode is blue collar side hustles I

Shaan Puri

Think actually, cool. So, we talk about side hustles where it's like, "Oh, make a newsletter, build an audience, build a job board, build a website that does this, do drop shipping," blah, blah, blah. No, no, no. **Blue collar side hustles**—things you could just do with your bare hands to make money. So here's how it works: whatever city you're in, there's probably demand for these chicken rentals where you are too. If all these other ones are sold out, there's probably demand in those cities, and in Nashville, and in Florida, and in LA, and everywhere. So, rent some coops, basically go get some chickens, and start renting them out to people who want to be connected with nature, have a little pet in their backyard that's low maintenance, and get some fresh eggs. I think this is a great idea as a simple way that you could be making, I don't know, $5 to $10 a month of side hustle income through your blue collar side hustle.

Sam Parr

Dude, this website, Rent The Chicken, also has a thing called "Buy The Eggs" or something like that. You could find out where the... so Rent The Chicken.

Shaan Puri

chicken 1 yeah

Sam Parr

They put a device near you, and then they have a feature where you can find out where the nearest one is. You could buy the fresh eggs from your location.

Shaan Puri

Which is cool, right? So you can go farm to table, but you're just in the city and getting it from somebody who lives 2 miles away. They also do this with schools, which I think is again smart because kids love this. Schools and offices... Hey, you use school and office? Great! We can do a 6-week program where you get chickens for 6 weeks. You guys get to name them, take care of them, pet them... blah blah blah. Kids are going to have fun, and then we move on. Back when I was in school, we had the same thing. We had like a class pet for, you know, everybody got to take them home for 2 weeks or something like that. So we had that. You have like a beekeeper thing, or like you're a beekeeper, you have bees... bees and honey. Maybe bees and honey is like another little genre besides chickens. But I think anything where it's a simple, low-maintenance pet that is unorthodox and ideally provides a little bit of food you can eat, like eggs or honey, is a really fun thing to do. Again, dude, your growth... you were working on growth. I said, "I gotta find something good," and then I just closed my eyes and started typing buttons, and this came to me.

Sam Parr

This is very cool! So, Brent, the chicken is not... Okay, so here's the price for Houston (Houston's near San Francisco): They deliver to you for free. It's only $285 for a 5-week rental from February to October. They deliver and set it up for free. You get 7 eggs that are going to be hatched, you get a box, I think you get one chicken... This is so interesting! What a cool one!

Shaan Puri

a week right $60 a week to have you know a chicken or 2 in your backyard making eggs

Sam Parr

Oh, "Rent a Chicken" is cool! I'm into "Rent a Chicken." I went to a party the other day and they had a backyard petting zoo... like a petting zoo delivery service.

Shaan Puri

kid's party or an adult's party

Sam Parr

It was an adult's party, and they had it basically all in the backyard. No, it just means they have chickens, a guinea pig, and I think that's it. Oh, and rabbits. That's what this reminds me of—rent the chicken backyard petting zoos. I'm into all this stuff, man. I like all this. This is a good one! I actually think this is something I might sign up for, but they're not in Austin. My friend who had a chicken said the eggs looked different, but they didn't taste different.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

but I would feel a lot better eating backyard eggs than store eggs

Shaan Puri

for sure

Sam Parr

Can I then switch gears real quick? How do you stay focused? Because when I'm doing this, I'm like, I'm all in on podcasts right now. That's all I think about. It's almost all I work on. I have 200 unread texts, hundreds of voicemails, and I get phone calls from salespeople selling me crap. My email is ruined, Twitter sucks, and my Slack is constantly beeping. It is so hard to get in the zone and focus. How do you do it?

Shaan Puri

do it well I would say this I am not a details person in general so I would say one of the ways to stay focused or one of the ways to get shit done instead of saying stay focused I'll say get shit done is to correctly identify like you said the 80 20 of any project so for you you were like for the podcast okay what do I ultimately need to do I need to get people to smash the subscribe button so how do I get more people to hit subscribe today right so you you focused on the thing that matters and you threw away the rest and then you like did the what's the one step I can take today to like get that to happen more and then tomorrow I'll come up with another one and the next day I'll come up with another one so that's you didn't say it in so many words but that's how I operate I identify what is the thing that if I just do this one thing it's gonna get me 80% of the return or the the reward or the impact and then I try to just set out okay today I gotta get this one outcome done and that one outcome might have like 5 tasks 5 like subtasks underneath but I'm like okay I've if I can correctly identify the high impact thing and then secondly if I can just narrow it down you know make it a memorable like I don't do a to do list it's one thing that I can remember in my head all day that this is the one outcome I gotta get done I'll find a way to get it done it won't leave my brain I don't let my brain get cluttered by all the 10 other things and this bothers the hell out of my wife or like right now my mom's staying with us right she's helping out with the baby and she's like oh you gotta get your car insurance thing done oh and hey did you know your trash thing we should upgrade the thing so you get the bigger bins because your bins are overflowing and like all these people texted you because it was your birthday on sunday you did you reply to any of them I'm like no I I didn't do any of those things I don't plan to do any of those things none of those things are in line with my chief aim right now so like I'm gonna like focus on that and it doesn't matter what the chief aim is right like we just had this baby my chief aim was like I'm gonna be so helpful with this baby because like I can see my wife is like she's gonna drown otherwise this is too hard to have 2 kids under 18 months old I need to be like mister mister helpful and so I like went all in on mister helpful but if it's a project like let's say growing the podcast that's what I would do identify the 80 the thing that will give me 80% of the impact make it every day just choose one high impact thing to do like it might be get booked on other people's podcasts other big podcasts because I know that's gonna drive attention cool I'll only do that thing I won't do anything else

Sam Parr

So, what you're describing, I actually wrote about this. I have this article called "I'll Do It Later: Why You Shouldn't Worry About Procrastinating," and it was written in 2015. I wrote that six years ago, and basically, I stole a lot of ideas from other people, so I don't want to act like I invented this. But there's basically three types of procrastination. The first type is doing nothing, and that type is easy. A lot of people suffer from that, and that's what you want to avoid. You don't want to do number one. The second one is doing something less important than what you should be doing. A lot of people do that too, and that's basically when you know you have to do this school homework, but you play video games instead.

Shaan Puri

Right, no, no. It's like you clean your room. It's like you do some false productive thing when you didn't need to do that. You should have been studying for the test tomorrow.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's called "busy work," and it's meaningless. That's actually the worst type of procrastination because you think you're doing something productive, but in reality, you're not. And that's really dangerous. But the third type of procrastination I think we should all embrace is actually the good type of procrastination. It is when you do something that's more important than the stuff you should be doing. That's actually what you just described. So, getting your car insurance is important, but what's more important—let's say this relates to business—is just making a ton of money. To the point where that car insurance kind of becomes less important. The best example of this is the brilliant scientist who accidentally wears two left shoes, or who forgets to shower, or who doesn't take their trash out. Is taking your trash out important? Yes, it's important, but it's far less important than creating the theory of relativity. You know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

Actually, Balaji said something about this the other day. We asked, "What's your day like?" and he responded, "You know, you're thinking about all these topics like the future of X, the future of Y, and the past of Z. These are heavy, meaty topics to think about. How do you do that every day?" He said, "Actually, that's not so hard for me. That feels like play; I enjoy doing that. What's hard for me is remembering that I have a call I need to be on in 10 minutes. It's stopping what I'm doing, getting there on time, and remembering to go do that thing." He explained, "I get completely engrossed in what I'm doing, and that becomes easy. But what becomes hard is normal life." I thought, "Yeah, you are the absent-minded scientist whose desk is totally messy. To someone else, it looks like chaos, but you know that you're piecing these things together. You just don't care about organizing your desk right now; it's just not what's important to you."

Sam Parr

And the thing is, logically, we all know that the third type of procrastination is good, and you should actually embrace it. But the world basically tries to beat that out of you. They try to totally paint you in this corner and make you vanilla. They say, "But Sean, you have to do your insurance," or "You have to text these people back." The answer is often, or it should be, "But why?" Actually, it's far more important if I do X, Y, and Z. I have found this extreme but helpful question to ask yourself: **Will the task that I'm working on right now be mentioned or be part of me being mentioned in my obituary?** If it's not, then you're procrastinating. Don't, don't, don't do that. Work on the thing that will be mentioned in your obituary or has a chance of being mentioned.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, like I actually got into an argument with my wife yesterday about this because we have a bill that's like a $700 late fee on it. She was like, "Oh my god, we're so wasteful! Why didn't you just pay this bill? I told you about it. I put it on your desk." I was like, "Yes, you did put it on my desk, but I was so knee-deep in learning about DeFi the last three days. And hey, guess what? We've made $68,000 in three days on this DeFi trade that I was making. That's cash in the bank now! Can we not worry about the $700 thing?" For me, it's so black and white, but she comes from a totally different value set. It feels worse to her to take something that was avoidable, something that you could have just taken care of. That would signify adulthood, that you're on top of your bills. For me, it's the exact opposite. My values are to focus on the things that matter and let other stuff fall on the ground. That stuff is on the ground for a reason; I just hop, skip, and jump around it. We are so different, and we constantly get into these arguments. I feel like financially I'm on the right side of history, but in the house, I'm definitely losing rounds every time we do these battles.

Sam Parr

so if your wife is listening to this and for anyone else

Shaan Puri

by the

Sam Parr

The way my wife does, which is weird. But if I show her this episode, and to anyone else out there who fits into this "forgetful scientist" type, where they forget birthdays or they do this and they do that, but they're really actually focused on some interesting thing that will change their life or others' lives... let it slip, let it slide. Do not give in to this societal pressure of having to focus on these unimportant things. Instead, you should be focused on things that actually matter: your health, whatever you're working on, and your family. Everything else is pretty much bullshit.

Shaan Puri

yes so

Sam Parr

can can I give

Shaan Puri

can I give my last last piece on this I know we're gonna move on in a second but I have I have 2 minutes on this which is I made a choice a long time ago alright the way I realized how this works is there are people who are you know there's unproductive people they're just lazy they don't get shit done okay you don't wanna be one of them then in the productive class there's 2 types of people there's efficient productive and there's effective productive I'm effective productive you're effective productive there's a lot of people who we work with in fact we have to hire people that are efficient productive what they do is they get a high number of tasks done and done well but they don't necessarily correctly identify the 1 or 2 tasks that are gonna have disproportionate rewards and they don't go overboard on those tasks so if you look at us well that's what we're gonna do whether it's project selection or even within a project we will find the 1 or 2 things that will drive the most returns we will go give that a 120 180% and then we will do 0% on the other things whereas another person might and and by the way that might all happen in a 2 hour burst of work in the day or a 4 hour late night binge and the other hours of the day were completely you know we were scatterbrained we were doing other shit and it didn't matter there's other people who say I'm gonna work from 9 to 5 I'm gonna make every hour count I'm gonna get a whole bunch of things done I feel good because I plowed through my to do list I was so efficient I used every hour properly and I got a large number of tasks done and I you know I tied up all these loose ends that's efficient productive so decide which one you're gonna be both have pros and cons I think for a ceo entrepreneurial type effective productive is better or at least I've seen that's a more common path to success I should say so that's one the second thing is just like you said that there's procrastination I you you you left the cody sanchez podcast last time but at the end we talked about this where she she's talking about finding mentors and I stole this naval quote which is so true when people think they need a mentor to go do their project or to like start their startup they're looking for a mentor first it's just an advanced form of procrastination you will find mentors along the way you'll find people who are super helpful who have experience they'll guide they'll open doors they'll guide you but that is not what's stopping you from making progress right now and if you are looking for mentors before you do the thing you are procrastinating you're just doing it in a way that other people can't?

Shaan Puri

And laugh at, because you're not just eating Cheetos and watching TV as your form of procrastination. The final... which is the final. There is a class of things, and right now, for example, I do this list. I've put this in my frameworks PDF. If you go sign up for my newsletter on seanpruy.com, this is the first thing I send you—it's my frameworks PDF. I have this like iron cross, or it's called an Eisenhower Matrix. It's basically like two crossed lines. The up and down line is basically impact, so low impact to high impact, and the left to right is urgent and non-urgent. On a given day, you want to do the things that are urgent and high impact. But what do you do next? Once you do those two things, what do you do next? Do you go to the bucket that is urgent but low impact, or high impact non-urgent? What most people do—90 to 95% of people, including myself on many days—is we'll do the urgent low impact thing. We'll pay that bill, we'll call that person back, we'll type those loose ends because they're due today or they were due yesterday. But there's a whole other batch of things that are important and non-urgent. They just sit there like ticking time bombs. The great quote around this is that "what's important but non-urgent becomes urgent very quickly." What ends up happening is it becomes urgent when it's too late. For me right now, this is setting up my tax strategy—my overarching tax strategy. How do I manage? Do I need an estate? Do I need a trust? How am I going to do all this? I don't know about that stuff. It kind of makes my mind bend a little bit. It's easier for me to just avoid that because there's no specific day when I have to get that set up. But every day that I don't, I'm not doing something that's high impact or a very large impact thing. So think about the things you do on this axis, and then try not to just avoid those things that are non-urgent and high impact, because that's actually where a lot of value gets driven.

Sam Parr

I'm doing all that now. I can't stand it. So, I agree. I think we had a good little rant on procrastination and productivity.

Shaan Puri

Okay, great! Good episode. That's it, that's a wrap. I'll bring you... give us the grade. People hated when we put the grade up front. I got like five messages saying, "I prefer it at the end." Alright.

Sam Parr

that's good alright everyone I asked you to either leave a review or subscribe and send me proof and 100 maybe even north of a 1000 people did I'm not gonna read all your names right now but I'm gonna get to everyone eventually but I wanna give a few shout out or I wanna give a shout out to a handful of people that did it so here's everyone who subscribed and sent a screenshot if you wanna get a shout out you can do the same my email is [email protected] so it's my first million m f m m f n m f m sorry at the hustle.c0 subscribe to the podcast and send me a screenshot and I'm gonna read your name so give a shout out to sam dickey to alex khanna to apostolos oh this guy I think he's a greek guy apostolos d delandis adam guskey ryan bennett zach rosen rob borowski alex rodolfi bryon standards sanders will sweat rob phillips richie dawes and then here's a bunch of people on twitter who hollered at me with with a review and a proof of subscription so paul hallsopp jimmy moncrief warren smp cameron walker willie socksy socksy mooney millions miss mcclain ellie lager oh my gosh I'm really sorry guys I just for some reason I have an issue where I I struggle to pronounce certain stuff danny dolly k three goodman lewis shulman dave m smith cheese 3 solar wolf fast coffee wade w wireless landon h 7 and that's that's it for right now I'm gonna get to the rest next week but we'll see if if if this is even good and people like this but go ahead and subscribe to the podcast send me proof that you've subscribed via a screenshot send it to [email protected] and I'll try to read your name